März 2017 - Seite 135 von 221 - Cloud Computing Köln

By Jason Polites, Product Manager

Developers rely on many cloud services to build their apps today: everything from storage and messaging services like Google Cloud Storage and Google Cloud Pub/Sub and mobile development platforms like Firebase, to data and analytics platforms like Google Cloud Dataflow and Google BigQuery. As developers consume more cloud services from their applications, it becomes increasingly complex to coordinate them and ensure they all work together seamlessly. Last week at Google Cloud Next ’17, we announced the public beta of a new capability for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) called Google Cloud Functions that allows developers to connect services together and extend their behavior with code, or to build brand new services using a completely serverless approach.

With Cloud Functions you write simple, single-purpose functions that are attached to events emitted from cloud services. Your Cloud Function is triggered when an event being watched is fired. Your code executes in a fully managed environment and can effectively connect or extend services in Google’s cloud, or services in other clouds across the internet; no need to provision any infrastructure or worry about managing servers. A function can scale from a few invocations a day to many millions of invocations without any work from you, and you only pay while your function is executing.

Asynchronous workloads like lightweight ETL, or cloud automation tasks such as triggering an application build no longer require an always-on server that’s manually connected to the event source. You simply deploy a Cloud Function bound to the event you want and you’re done.

“Semios uses Google Cloud Functions as a critical part of our data ingestion pipeline, which asynchronously aggregates micro-climate telemetry data from our IoT network of 150,000 in-field sensors to give growers real-time insights about their orchards.”
— Maysam Emadi, Data Scientist, Semios
Cloud Function’s fine-grained nature also makes it a perfect candidate for building lightweight APIs, microservices and webhooks. HTTP endpoints are automatically configured when you deploy a function you intend to trigger using HTTP — no complicated configuration (or integration with other products) required. Simply deploy your function with an HTTP trigger, and we’ll give you back a secure URL you can curl immediately.

“At Vroom, we work with a number of partners to market our services and provide us with leads. Google Cloud Functions makes integration with these partners as simple as publishing a new webhook, which scales automatically with use, all without having to manage a single machine.” — Benjamin Rothschild, Director of Analytics, Vroom
If you’re a mobile developer using Firebase, you can now connect your Firebase app to one or more Cloud Functions by binding a Cloud Function to mutation events in the Firebase Realtime Database, events from Firebase Authentication, and even execute a Cloud Function in response to a conversion event in Firebase Analytics. You can find out more about this Firebase integration at https://firebase.google.com/features/functions.

Cloud Functions also empowers developers to quickly and easily build messaging bots and create custom actions for Google Assistant.

“At Meetup, we wanted to improve developer productivity by integrating task management with Slack. Google Cloud Functions made this integration as simple as publishing a new HTTP function. We’ve now rolled the tool out across the entire organization without ever touching a server or VM.” — Jose Rodriguez, Lead of Engineering Effectiveness, Meetup
In our commitment to openness, Cloud Functions uses only standard, off-the-shelf runtimes and doesn’t require any proprietary modules or libraries in your code: your functions will just work. In addition, the execution environment doesn’t rely on a proprietary or forked operating system, which means your dependencies have native library compatibility. We currently support the Node.js runtime and have a set of open source Node.js client libraries for connecting to a wide range of GCP services.

As part of the built-in deployment pipeline we’ll resolve all dependencies by running npm install for you (or npm rebuild if you provide packages that require compilation), so you don’t have to worry about building for a specific environment. We also have an open source local emulator so you can build and quickly iterate on your Cloud Functions from your local machine.

“Node.js is continually growing across the cloud, especially when it comes to the container and serverless space. This new offering from Google, built in collaboration with the open source community, will provide even more options to the Node.js community going forward.” — Mikeal Rogers, Community Manager, Node.js Foundation
Head over to our quickstart guide to dive right in! Best of all, we’ve created a generous free tier to allow you to experiment, prototype and play with the product without spending a dime. You can find out more on our pricing page.

We look forward to seeing what you create with Cloud Functions. We’d love to hear your feedback on StackOverflow.
Quelle: Google Cloud Platform

14. März 201714. März 2017

da Agency

Facebook Bans Developers From Using Its Data To Make Surveillance Tools

Stephen Lam / Reuters

Facebook and Instagram developers are no longer allowed to siphon information about you from public posts and package that information into surveillance tools for law enforcement, Facebook announced Monday.

The social networking giant updated its policy, clarifying that developers can't “use data obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance.” Facebook said the new policy now makes the ban on surveillance tools explicit. “Over the past several months we have taken enforcement action against developers who created and marketed tools meant for surveillance, in violation of our existing policies; we want to be sure everyone understands the underlying policy and how to comply,” Facebook said.

The announcement follows a widely discussed American Civil Liberties Union investigation last year that uncovered a partnership between law enforcement officials across the country and a social media monitoring company called Geofeedia. Through public records requests, the ACLU learned that Geofeedia had been providing law enforcement with information gathered from social media, including people&039;s location data. Geofeedia, which works with hundreds of local police departments, also specifically targeted people on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter who had participated in demonstrations against police violence and abuse, the ACLU found.

The investigation raised serious concerns about Twitter and Facebook&039;s role in aiding government surveillance, and it undercut the companies&039; public commitments to supporting activism and free speech. Since the results of the ACLU&039;s investigation went public, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have cut off Geofeedia&039;s access to their users&039; data.

The ACLU praised Facebook&039;s updated developer policy as a positive change. “Now more than ever, we expect companies to slam shut any surveillance side doors and make sure nobody can use their platforms to target people of color and activists,” said Nicole Ozer, the director of technology and civil liberties at the ACLU of California, in a statement.

Still, the ACLU, the Center for Media Justice, and Color of Change have urged Facebook to do more to enforce their prohibition on surveillance. In a statement Monday, the advocacy groups described the updated policy as a “first step.”

Facebook enforces its developer rules through both automated and human audits. The company told BuzzFeed News that developers must disclose what they are using Facebook data for, and that Facebook can conduct broader audits after they receive a complaint of potential violations. But the advocacy groups emphasized the need for strict enforcement of Facebook&039;s policies to suss out developers who break surveillance rules, and “swift action for violations.”

Quelle: <a href="Facebook Bans Developers From Using Its Data To Make Surveillance Tools“>BuzzFeed