AWS Service Catalog Now Available in Canada and London Regions

AWS Service Catalog allows organizations on AWS to create and manage catalogs of IT services that are approved for use on AWS resources. These IT services can include everything from virtual machine images, servers, software, and databases to complete multi-tier application architectures. AWS Service Catalog allows you to centrally manage commonly deployed IT services, and helps you to achieve consistent governance and meet your compliance requirements, while enabling users to quickly deploy only the approved IT services that they need.
AWS Service Catalog is currently available in the US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), US West (Oregon), Canada (Central), Europe (Ireland, Frankfurt, and London) and Asia Pacific (Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo) Regions. For more information, see the AWS Service Catalog product page.
Quelle: aws.amazon.com

Man Sues Uber After Driver Beat Him Up For Asking To Go To NJ

Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

An Uber rider is suing the ride-hail giant for negligence, fraud, battery, and assault after one of its drivers in Philadelphia allegedly beat him up after declining to take him home to New Jersey.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday, claims that Joseph Fusco, director of public safety at the security firm Allied Universal, requested an Uber ride from a holiday party near the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on Dec. 22, 2016 at about 11pm. When his Uber driver arrived, Fusco sat in the front seat and asked to be taken home to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, about 30 minutes away. The driver then told Fusco to “get out,” the lawsuit alleges, and said, “I am not driving to New Jersey.”

The driver told Fusco to “get out,” the lawsuit alleges, and said, “I am not driving to New Jersey.”

“The Uber Driver then dragged Plaintiff out of the front seat by his coat collar and severely beat Plaintiff, breaking multiples bones on his face, knocking out teeth, and leaving him in a pool of blood on the pavement (with his body partially in the street) in the freezing cold,” the lawsuit alleges. The driver also stomped on and kicked Fusco while he was already unconscious – something the lawsuit alleges is caught on surveillance video. Two bystanders eventually found Fusco, according to the complaint, and called 911.

The lawsuit alleges Uber allowed the driver to continue working without repercussion. Uber said it does not comment on pending litigation, but a spokesperson confirmed that Fusco reported the incident to Uber on Dec. 23, and said that the company immediately and permanently banned the driver from the app. Uber also said it is talking with law enforcement to support their criminal investigation.

It’s not the first time Uber has been sued for negligence in its hiring of drivers. For example, a Los Angeles woman sued the ridehail giant in July after her Uber driver was sentenced for sexually battering her. The website WhosDrivingYou.com, run by the Taxi, Limousine & Paratransit Association – which of course has skin in the game against Uber – lists dozens of incidents reported in Uber and Lyft vehicles.

Uber claims it is a technology platform that connects riders and drivers, who are hired as independent contractors, not employees. But that defense is facing increasing opposition. in May, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the company can still be sued for negligence in its hiring of drivers.

Matthew Luber, Fusco’s lawyer, told BuzzFeed News that despite classifying drivers as independent contractors, Uber retains a significant amount of control over drivers. He said the company is essentially an app version of a taxi dispatcher.

“At its core, Uber is a transportation company that must ensure passengers are transported safely,” Luber said.

Quelle: <a href="Man Sues Uber After Driver Beat Him Up For Asking To Go To NJ“>BuzzFeed

Sen. Tom Cotton Slams Apple Over China Censorship And FBI Dispute

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton blasted Apple Thursday for participating in “Communistic censorship of an American newspaper.” Cotton&;s attack came a day after the New York Times reported that it&039;s news apps had been removed from the App Store in China, at the request of Chinese officials. Both the English and Chinese-language news apps were taken down on December 23.

Apple maintains that it is merely complying with local laws. But Sen. Cotton believes the iPhone maker could have done more to resist the government&039;s request: “it instead sought to protect its market access at the expense of liberty,” he said.

Cotton also invoked Apple&039;s controversial dispute with the FBI over an encrypted iPhone in San Bernardino last year. “Apple&039;s protestations that it&039;s merely complying with Chinese law ring hollow when, just last year, it openly challenged a U.S. court order to assist a terrorism investigation and unlock the iPhone of a dead ISIS terrorist.”

At the start of the encryption battle, Sen. Cotton, who was once believed by some to be in the running for a top cabinet position in the Trump administration was one of Apple&039;s fiercest critics. In February he said, “Apple chose to protect a dead ISIS terrorist’s privacy over the security of the American people.”

President-elect Donald Trump at the time was another outspoken critic of Apple. Trump called for a boycott of Apple products until the company compromised security tools to assist law enforcement in the investigation. He has also criticized Apple for manufacturing many of its products overseas. “We’re going to get Apple to build their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries,” he said last January.

Quelle: <a href="Sen. Tom Cotton Slams Apple Over China Censorship And FBI Dispute“>BuzzFeed

AWS Batch Now Generally Available

AWS Batch is now available for all customers. AWS Batch enables developers, scientists, and engineers to easily and efficiently run hundreds of thousands of batch computing jobs on AWS. AWS Batch dynamically provisions the optimal quantity and type of compute resources (e.g., CPU or memory optimized instances) based on the volume and specific resource requirements of the batch jobs submitted. With AWS Batch, there is no need to install and manage batch computing software or server clusters that run your jobs, allowing you to focus on analyzing results and solving problems. AWS Batch plans, schedules, and executes your batch computing workloads across the full range of AWS compute services and features, such as Amazon EC2 and Spot Instances.
There is no additional charge for AWS Batch. You only pay for the AWS resources (e.g. EC2 instances) you create to store and run your batch jobs. AWS Batch is available in the US East (N. Virginia) region.
To learn more, please visit the AWS Batch Product Page.
Quelle: aws.amazon.com

DockerCon workshops: Which one will you be attending?

Following in last year’s major success, we are excited to be bringing back and expand the paid workshops at 2017. The pre-conference workshops will focus on a range of subjects from Docker 101 to deep dives in networking, Docker for JAVA and  advanced orchestration. Each workshop is designed to give you hands-on instruction and insight on key Docker topics, taught by Docker Engineers and Docker Captains. The workshops are a great opportunity to get better acquainted and excited about Docker technology to start off DockerCon week.

Take advantage of the lowest DockerCon pricing and get your Early Bird Ticket + Workshop now! Early Bird Tickets are limited and will sell out in the next two weeks!
Here are the basics of the DockerCon workshops:
Date: Monday, April 17, 2017
Time: 2:00pm &; 5:00pm
Where: Austin Convention Center &8211; 500 E. Cesar Chavez Street, Austin, TX
Cost: $150
Class size: Classes will remain small and are limited to 50 attendees per class.
Registration: The workshops are only open to DockerCon attendees. You can register for the workshops as an add-on package through the registration site here.

Below are overviews of each workshop. To learn more about each topic head over to the DockerCon 2017 registration site.
Learn Docker
If you are just getting started learning about Docker and want to get up to speed, this is the workshop for you. Come learn Docker basics including running containers, building images and basics on networking, orchestration, security and  volumes.
Orchestration Workshop: Beginner
You&;ve installed Docker, you know how to run containers, you&8217;ve written Dockerfiles to build container images for your applications (or parts of your applications), and perhaps you&8217;re even using Compose to describe your application stack as an assemblage of multiple containers.
But how do you go to production? What modifications are necessary in your code to allow it to run on a cluster? (Spoiler alert: very little, if any.) How does one set up such a cluster, anyway? Then how can we use it to deploy and scale applications with high availability requirements?
In this workshop, we will answer those questions using tools from the Docker ecosystem, with a strong focus on the native orchestration capabilities available since Docker Engine 1.12, aka &;Swarm Mode.&;
Orchestration Workshop: Advanced
Already using Docker and recently started using Swarm Mode in 1.12? Let’s start where previous Orchestration workshops may have left off, and dive into monitoring, logging, troubleshooting, and security of docker engine and docker services (Swarm Mode) for production workloads. Pulled from real world deployments, we&8217;ll cover centralized logging with ELK, SaaS, and others, monitoring/alerting with CAdvisor and Prometheus, backups of persistent storage, optional security features (namespaces, seccomp and apparmor profiles, notary), and a few cli tools for troubleshooting. Come away ready to take your Swarm to the next level!
Stay tuned as more workshop topics will be announced in the coming weeks! The workshops will sell out, so act fast and add the pre-conference workshops to your DockerCon 2017 registration!
Docker Networking
In this 3-hour, instructor-led training, you will get an in-depth look into Docker Networking. We will cover all the networking features natively available in Docker and take you through hands-on exercises designed to help you learn the skills you need to deploy and maintain Docker containers in your existing network environment.
Docker Store for Publishers
This workshop is designed to help potential Docker Store Publishers to understand the process, the best practices and the workflow of creating and publishing great content. You will get to interact with the members of the Docker Store’s engineering team. Whether you are an established ISV, a startup trying to distribute your software creation using Docker Containers or an independent developer, just trying to reach as many users as possible, you will benefit from this workshop by learning how to create and distribute trusted and Enterprise-ready content for the Docker Store.
Docker for Java Developers
Docker provides PODA (Package Once Deploy Anywhere) and complements WORA (Write Once Run Anywhere) provided by Java. It also helps you reduce the impedance mismatch between dev, test, and production environment and simplifies Java application deployment.
This workshop will explain how to:

Running first Java application with Docker
Package your Java application with Docker
Sharing your Java application using Docker Hub
Deploy your Java application using Maven
Deploy your application using Docker for AWS
Scaling Java services with Docker Engine swarm mode
Package your multi-container application and use service discovery
Monitor your Docker + Java applications
Build a deployment pipeline using common tools

Hands-On Docker for Raspberry Pi
Take part in our first-of-a-kind hands-on Raspberry Pi and Docker workshop where you will be given all the hardware you need to start creating and deploying containers with Docker including an 8-LED RGB add-on from Pimoroni. You will learn the subtleties of working with an ARM processor and how to control physical hardware through the GPIO interface. Programming experience is not required but a basic understanding of Python is helpful.
Microservices Lifecycle Explained Through Docker and Continuous Deployment
The workshop will go through the whole microservices development lifecycle. We’ll start from the very beginning and define and design architecture. From there on we’ll do some coding and testing all the way until the final deployment to production. Once our new services are up and running we’ll see how to maintain them, scale them, and recover them in case of failures. The goal will be to design a fully automated continuous deployment (CDP) pipeline with Docker containers.
During the workshop we’ll explore tools like Docker Engine with built in orchestration via swarm mode,, Docker Compose, Jenkins, HAProxy, and a few others.
Modernizing Monolothic ASP.NET Applications with Docker
Learn how to use Docker to run traditional ASP.NET applications In Windows containers without an application re-write. We’ll use Docker tools to containerize a monolithic ASP.NET app, then see how the platform helps us iterate quickly &8211; pulling high-value features out of the app and running them in separate containers. This workshop gives you a roadmap for modernizing your own ASP.NET workloads.

What dockercon workshop will you be attending? Limited number of spots => save yours now!Click To Tweet

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Quelle: https://blog.docker.com/feed/

Blockchain Basics & Partner Strategy

Thank you to all of you who packed the aisles at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference for our Blockchain Basics presentations.  We had overwhelming feedback from you that we needed to make our presentation available to those who were not able to see it in Toronto. Please enjoy! And let us know if you have any feedback or questions.

Blockchain is a secure, shared, distributed ledger that can be public, private, or consortium

Secure – Uses cryptography to create transactions that are impervious to fraud and establishes a shared truth.

Shared – Blockchain value is directly linked to the number of organizations or companies that participate in them. There is huge value for even the fiercest of competitors to participate with each other in these shared database implementations.

Distributed – There are many replicas of the blockchain database. In fact, the more replicas there are the more authentic it becomes.

Ledger – The database is append only so it is an immutable record of every transaction that occurs.

Microsoft is implementing a three part strategy

Build and learn from key partner-driven POCs built on top of various blockchain technologies
Grow the blockchain marketplace ecosystem & artifacts together with our partners & customers
Develop key Azure blockchain middleware services to ensure the infrastructure is enterprise ready

 

Project Bletchley middleware and cryptlets

Project Bletchley is the code name for extending blockchain by creating both new middleware as well as secure cryptlets. We are connecting to many different ledgers and existing external and internal services to enable a robust blockchain ecosystem for the enterprise.

 

 

How do you get started?

– SIGN UP FOR AN AZURE ACCOUNT

– SETUP BLOCKCHAIN ON AZURE & PLAY WITH TEMPLATES

– JOIN OUR BLOCKCHAIN ADVISORY YAMMER GROUP

– ONCE YOU FEEL CONFIDENT, ESTABLISH A LAB

Contact us with any questions (BaaS@Microsoft.com)
Keep up-to-date with Blockchain on Azure

Why Microsoft?

We have world class Identity Services through Azure Active Directory
Our corporate strategy is focused on creating and nurturing an open cloud ecosystem
We have flexible architecture that allows you to avoid vendor lock-in

Thank you, and let us know if you have any questions or requests.
Quelle: Azure