China Makes World’s Fastest Supercomputer With 10 Million Cores And 93 Petaflops Speed

The top 500 ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers was introduced 23 years ago. For the first time in history, China has toppled the US to become the country with the most entries on the list. Now, China has 167 machines on the list, compared to the U.S.’s 165.

The new Chinese supercomputer has beaten another Chinese machine that ruled this list for the past three years. Called TaihuLight, this supercomputer is about three times more powerful than the previous record-holder. Compared to the fastest U.S. supercomputer Cray XK7, that ranks 3rd, TaihuLight is five times faster.

The latest supercomputer rankings were released today at International Supercomputer Conference in Frankfurt.

Another important thing about TaihuLight is the use of homegrown Chinese chips. After the U.S. banned the export of Intel chips last year, China decided to use its superconductor technology.

The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer was developed at the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC). TaihuLight features the Made In China SW26010 processors that are said to be similar to the Digital Alpha chip.

TaihuLight has more than 40,000 chips with 10.65 million processor cores stacked in 40 cabinets. Compared to this, the fastest supercomputer of the U.S. has just 560,000 cores.

This beast showed a capacity of 93 petaflops per second on benchmark tests, which is about three times faster than past record-holder Tianhe-2.

If you think that the U.S. is simply sitting and watching these developments, read the next sentence. The American government has already granted a $200 million contract to Intel and NVIDIA to build a 150 petaflop machine.

Microsoft Shows Why Chrome And Firefox Are Bad For Your Laptop’s Battery

Poor power efficiency is one of the most troubling problems a laptop user faces. Combine it with some RAM-hogging web browser and you’ve prepared a perfect disaster recipe. According to Microsoft’s latest video advertisements, you can go an extra mile while using its Edge web browser.

As a part of a new campaign to tell the people about plus points of its Edge web browser and Windows 10, Microsoft has released a new video that shows why using Chrome and Firefox on your laptop might be a bad idea.

Microsoft says that it has compared the leading web browsers–Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera–and measured the power consumption in a controlled environment.

Thanks to its power-saving improvements like fewer CPU cycles, lesser memory, minimizing background processes, Edge is made to maximise your hardware’s potential and battery life — according to Microsoft.

The company conducted these tests on four identical Surface Books and automated the web browsers to perform same activities.

The test results show that Microsoft Edge is a more energy efficient option on Windows 10, giving you up to 36%-53% extra juice. In the video, RAM-killer Google Chrome just lasts 4 hours and 19 minutes and Edge streamed the same content for 7 hours and 22 minutes.

Watch the video below:

Microsoft is using its Edge web browsers as one of the major selling points of Windows 10. Microsoft is continuously making improvements to this Internet Explorer-replacement with every new Windows 10 Insider Build.

Microsoft Brings Linux-based Docker Containers To Windows 10

In my previous post on Windows 10, I told you about a major change brought by Microsoft to its Windows 10 operating system. As a part of the new Windows 10 Build 14361, Redmond improved its Linux subsystem that runs Ubuntu on Windows 10 by bringing the Tmux support.

The same Windows 10 Build 14361 brought another big change in the form of support for Hyper-V containers. These new builds are first made available to the Fast Ring of Microsoft’s Windows Insider programme.

As a result of the newly rolled out Hyper-V support, users can now use Linux-based Docker containers natively on the latest iteration of Windows OS.

This functionality has been added with the help of Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 Nano Server. Redmond has also geared up and improved the DockerFile syntax with a fresh Docker engine for Windows.

For those who don’t know, Windows Containers allow a user to take the advantage of OS-level virtualization, allowing the installation and running of multiple isolated programs on a single system.

The working of Hyper-V containers could be understood by considering a small virtual machine encapsulating a container.

If you want to get started with Docker container on Windows 10, you need to enable the preloaded Hyper-V feature on Windows 10. This could be done by running few simple commands in PowerShell with elevated permissions.

The further steps involve installing Docker, installing the base container images, and deploying your first container. These steps have been discussed by Microsoft in detail on its developer page.

New Chip Makes Parallel Programming Much Easier, Needs Lesser Lines Of Code

Before telling you about an important advancement that could make parallel programming a less tedious job, I would like to tell the beginners about its basics. Parallel programming is a method of performing multiple computations simultaneously. This operates on the principle that a large problem can be divided into smaller fragments, which are then solved together using 2 or more processors.

If you apply your theoretical knowledge, you might think that a multicore machine–let’s say n-core–will be n times faster than a single core machine. However, as a large chunk of computer programs are sequential, breaking them to use parallel computing concept is a tiresome process.

However, the latest developments made at the MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) can change this scenario.

The researchers have created a new chip design named Swarm, which lets them make parallel programs easier to write and operate with more efficiency.

In their tests, the researchers compared the existing parallel programming models with their Swarm versions. They found that Swarm versions were about 18 times faster. Surprisingly, the newly engineered model needed just 10% of the code.

Also, Swarm design was able to speed up one program–that computer scientists had previously failed to parallelise–by a factor of 75.

Explaining how multicore systems are harder to program, Daniel Sanchez, an MIT assistant professor says:

You have to explicitly divide the work that you’re doing into tasks, then you need to enforce some synchronisation between tasks accessing shared data. What this architecture does, essentially, is to remove all sorts of explicit synchronisation to make parallel programming easier.

Compared to the usual multicore chips, Swarm features extra circuits to handle prioritization. The work is performed according to priority and the task with the highest priority gets executed first. These high priority tasks have their low priority task–something that’s automatically slotted into the queue by Swarm.

Writing a program with Swarm functionality is equally easier. When a programmer defines a function, he/she just needs to add a line of code that loads that function into Swarm’s queue.

With inputs from ScienceDaily

Did you find this article helpful? Don’t forget to drop your feedback in the comments section below.

What Are The Different Types Of Application Layer Attacks?

One of the easiest ways to hack into a system is to exploit a software by launching an application layer attacks.

A person with even a little bit of programming knowledge can use these techniques to hack into a system or software. Here are some of the ways which are well known for the application layer attacks:

Exploiting a weakness in the software:

One of the most common methods of launching application layer attacks is to exploit the software-level weaknesses commonly found on servers. Some of these weaknesses are pertaining to Sendmail, PostScript, and FTP.

Once you have exploited these weaknesses, you can easily get access to a computer with the account-level permissions running the application.

Trojan Horse — Application layer attacks:

Trojan horses are nothing but the fake programs which pretend to be the original programs. Since they can replicate most of the application level behavior of an application, a trojan horse is one of the of the most famous styles to launch application layer attacks. You can read our dedicated article on differences between virus, trojan, malware etc.

Besides providing the functionalities of a normal application, a trojan horse also contains other features which work in the background such as monitoring login to capture password and other sensitive data information like credit card details etc.

In the background, a trojan horse keeps sending the sensitive information to the attacker. If you want, you can also modify application functionality to exploit more such as applying a bcc to all e-mails etc.

Exploiting HTML, HTTP, and web browser technology:

These forms of application layer attacks are the newest ones. These attacks basically exploit the overt nature of the new technologies such as HTMP, web browsers, HTTP etc.

These application layer attacks mostly include Java applets and ActiveX controls. A powerful harmful program is passed in the network and loaded in the user’s browser.

6 New Programming Languages You Need To Learn In 2016

Even though languages like HTML, Java, JavaScript, C++ etc. remain the backbone of today’s IT development, there is no dearth of new programming languages getting created every other day. Some of them are even weird and absurd like TrumpScript, others are ‘happy’ like Emojicode.

In the recent years, many important languages have appeared and left an impact on the technology world. Due to their simplicity and user-friendliness, they have managed to surpass the more established languages.

From time-to-time, we keep bringing to you the lists of the most popular languages. However, apart from mastering a popular programming language, programmers need to learn new skills to keep themselves in demand.

So, in this article, I’m going to tell you about some new programming languages that you’ll find interesting. These languages are rising rapidly in the popularity charts and gaining impressive reviews.

Go ahead, take a look at these new programming languages that you need to learn in 2016:

1. Go

We’ll be starting our list of the new programming languages with Go. Also known as Golang, Go is an open source programming language that was created by 3 Google employees and launched in 2009.

Go is derived from popular programming languages like C and Java, It offers a concise notation and aims to keep the code simpler and readable. The language designers, Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson, have said that the complexity of C++ was their primary motivation.

This simple programming language accomplishes its most tasks with just the standard library. Combining the speed of dynamic languages like Python and reliability of C/C++, Go is the perfect tool for building high volume distributed systems.

2. Swift

Apple launched Swift programming language at 2014 WWDC as a replacement of Objective-C. Designed to be simple in nature, Swift focuses on speed and safety.

Later in December 2015, Apple made Swift open source under the Apache license. Since its launch, Swift has enjoyed an exponential growth and it has become one of the hottest programming languages out there.

Learning Swift ensures you a bright future as it gives you the power to code apps for Apple’s vast iOS ecosystem.

3. Rust

Created by Mozilla in 2014, in the StackOverflow’s 2016 developer survey, Rust was voted the most loved programming language.

Rust was developed as an alternative to C++ by Mozilla, who called a new language which focuses on “performance, parallelisation, and memory safety”.

Rust has been created from scratch and it employs a modern programming language design. The language is well supported by a larger number of developers and libraries.

4. Julia

Julia programming language was designed to help mathematicians and data scientists. It calls itself a complete high-level and dynamic programming solution for technical computing.

Julia is slowly gaining more userbase and its growth rate is doubling every nine months. In the upcoming times, Julia is being seen as one of the highest paying skills in the finance industry.

5. Hack

Hack is another new programming language that was created by another tech giant Facebook in 2014.

The social networking giant is deploying Hack at Facebook and calls it a great success. The company is also migrating its entire PHP codebase to hack.

Facebook has also released an open source version of the programming language as a part of its HHVM runtime platform.

6. Scala

Scala is a relatively older programming language as compared to the others on this list. While one could find this language relatively harder to learn, but the time you’ll invest in Scala won’t go in vain.

Its complex features allow you to write better and performance-oriented code. This object-oriented and functional programming language allows one to write scalable code. Created with an aim to design a “better Java”, Scala is becoming an in-demand language at large companies.

Did you find this article helpful? Don’t forget to drop your feedback in the comments section below.

Types Of Networks: Trusted, Untrusted, And Unknown Networks

When a network is created by the network manager or the network administrator, it is classified under one of the three network types:

• Trusted network
• Untrusted network
• Unknown network

Let’s know about them one by one —

Trusted Networks

A trusted network is the one which is under the control of the network manager or the network administrator.

Basically, this is the network that a network admin tries to protect and defines the security parameters for the same. So, it can also be said that the trusted networks are within the security perimeter.

Also Read: OSI Model And 7 Layers Of OSI Model Explained

To monitor the outgoing as well as incoming traffic, we set up a firewall and define some rules for the bidirectional packets exchange on the firewall server. Once we do the initial configuration for the firewall, all the network behind the firewall lies within the trusted network.

Exception — Virtual private networks (VPNs)As far as VPNs are concerned, they transfer data across an untrusted network and still are counted as the trusted networks because the origination of the packet is within the trusted network.

As far as VPNs are concerned, they transfer data across an untrusted network and are still counted as the trusted networks because the origin of the packet is within the trusted network.

Untrusted Networks

Untrusted networks are situated outside the security perimeter and control of the network admin. They could even be a private or a shared network.

When the firewall is configured, we initialize a rule and identify the untrusted networks from which the firewall can accept data requests.

Also Read: What Is Network Topology And What Are Its Different Types?

Unknown Networks

Unknown networks are networks that are neither trusted nor untrusted. They are said to be unknown because firewall has no knowledge about those networks. Mathematically, Unknown networks are a subset of Untrusted networks.

33% Of Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines Now Run Linux Operating System

If you think that Microsoft’s love for Linux and open source is selfless, think once more. This self-pronounced love for Linux is helping Redmond earn big bucks in the field of cloud computing.

Recently, Microsoft brought support for Linux-based Docker containers on Windows 10. At DockerCon 2016, Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich told more about its ongoing adoption of open source technologies and Microsoft’s future plans.

One of the major highlights that he mentioned was the rise of Linux on Azure virtual machines. According to Microsoft, one-third of its Azure machines are running a Linux image. This percentage has grown from 25 percent to 33 percent since last year.

To battle Red Hat, its arch-rival in the cloud, Microsoft has already allied with the big players in the Linux world. Its partners include SUSE and Canonical.

From the DockerCon stage, Russinovich showed the Windows Server support that is supposed to come to Redmond’s Azure Container Service (ACS) soon.

He also showed off a Linux-based SQL Server preview running on a Docker container. The final version of SQL Server for Linux is slated to arrive next year.

If we take a look at the bigger picture, Microsoft’s investments in open sourceare looking beneficial. Redmond knows that customer demand for Linux on Azure is very high and it’s continuously making efforts to improve its presence in the cloud.

In another related open source news, Microsoft recently improved its Ubuntu port on Windows by bringing the support for Tmux.

Windows 10 secret menu

Accessing the Secret Menu 

There is such a thing as the “Secret Start Menu” but now, it’s not that secret anymore, isn’t it?

Here’s how you can access it.

 1. Right click on the Start icon.

 2. You will then see a pop-up menu with mostly everything you can do with the computer!

3. If using touchscreen, you can access this menu by tapping and holding he start button for at least 5 to 10 seconds!

How to Hide System Tray Windows 10

Hide Tray Temporarily

There are two ways to hide the system tray. First is the temporary fix which goes like this:
 1. If you cannot see all the items that you need in the tray, just click right under the arrow.
 2. Now, if all the icons are present, go ahead and open the task manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL), then terminate GWUX/GWXUX Process.

 Hide Tray Permanently 

Now, if you really feel like you’re not ever going to use the tray, you can hide it permanently by doing the following:
 1. Go to Control Panel > Windows Update.
 2. Choose Installed Updates on the left side of the screen, followed by View Installed Updates. You’ll now seeInstalled Updates on top of the screen.
 3. When you see the update labeled Update for Microsoft Windows KB3035583, go ahead and remove it.
 4. Just skip this update if it shows up another time, just in case.

How to hack Windows 7

Hacking into Windows 7

 Have you ever wanted to learn how to hack into Windows 7? 

The best way to start is by figuring out how to hack the administrator password.

This is the guide that will teach you how.

- Start the computer.

Tap F8 button a few times in order to get a few startup options. Go for ‘Start windows normally’ option, then turn off your power supply. This is so that an error can be recorded.

 - Turn on the computer again and let it load. The boot screen will pop up and you will have two options. Go for the first option which will state

- ‘Launch Startup Repair(recommended)’. - Allow it to load as it scans for issues. This can take up to 5 minutes after which you will be asked to restore defaults. Go for the ‘cancel’ option. Give it time to continue loading. - After a few more minutes, you will get an error report pop up on your screen, requiring you to send information or not. Go for ‘View Problem Details’,, then scroll down the options to a link X:\windows\ something…something (the link starts with an”X”)

- A notepad will pop up. Go for the File on the Menu Bar and open it. Another window will pop up. - Navigate to the drive on which windows is installed, which in most cases is C:Drive. Click on the windows, then to system 32, then go for file type and select all files.

 - Look for sethc file and rename it to something else. - Look for cmd to make its copy and rename it to sethc

- Now close everything then start your computer again. On your log-in screen, press the shift key until a command prompt pops up. Enter ‘net user administrator /active:yes’ to activate the admin account of the computer. This is the point where you will change, delete or add an admin password of your choice

What is RAID ?

RAID Explanation

 

 RAID is a way to get protected from hard­disk failures.
 An example of RAID ?
Let'simagine the three directors of Coca­Cola company.
 If one of them knows the entire production secrets, he might build his own company. If each of them knows only the third of the secret, as soon as one dies, the product is lost.

So, let's divide the product secret in three: part A, B and C. Director 1 knows secret A, director 2 knows secret B and director 3 knows secret C. 

For redundancy reasons, let's learn to director 1 the secret B too, to director 2 the secret C and to director 3 the secret A.
In this case, none of them knows the entire production method, but any of them might die, the remaining knows what to learn to the newly hired director. 

The only thing we know about hard­disks is: they will die.
But no one's know when.
 If you want your data to survive your hard disk, use RAID (as Linux provides you for free). You will have the opportunity to replace your crashed hard­disk and see the system rebuild the missing data without even stopping you to work !

Creating Hidden Net User Administrator on Windows 10

• Open Notepad. To Open Notepad, press Windows + R and type Notepad inside the box

• Copy and paste the code below in Notepad:

1 2 3

@echo off net user hidden mypassword /add net local group Administrators hiddenuser /add

• In the above code, Replace mypassword with your own password and hiddenuser with your administrator name.
• Now save the file as Hidden.bat. Here, .bat stand for the batch file extension.
• Once you save, you will see a bat file icon created in the folder where you saved the .bat file.
• Right click on the icon and select ‘Run as Administrator’. Once you ‘Run as Administrator’, a command prompt will appear showing that your account is being created.

• Once it’s done, you might want to recheck it. So, to recheck and confirm your created account, open a Command Prompt window. PressWindows+R and type cmd in the box and a Command Prompt window will appear. 

• Type the command net user in the command prompt. There should space in between net and user in the command and press enter. Now you can see your hidden Net User Administrator account On Windows 10.

Hiding The Hidden Net User Administrator:

• Now, the next step is to hide this account. Open a new Command Prompt window with administrative permissions by right clicking on the cmd icon.

• Now type the following command and press enter: net user hidden /active:no

• Like this, you’ll be able to hide an account on your Windows 10 PC.

Accessing The Hidden Net User Administrator:

• To access this account, you need to open a new Command Prompt window with administrative permissions.
• Now, enter the following command and press enter: net user hidden /active:yes

• This will bring your account to the front with the name you specified. To check this, you need to log off your computer or click on top-right corner of the Start Menu.

• After using this hidden account, follow the step to hide this hidden user account and restrict people from accessing it.

Now with this account, you can ensure privacy by managing all your private information under this hidden account. Moreover, this account will have complete administrator access to your computer.