"For the last two decades, our social networking and social media platforms have been universes unto themselves," writes the Verge's editor-at-large: Each has its own social graph, charting who you follow and who follows you. Each has its own feed, its own algorithms, its own apps, and its own user interfaces (though they've all pretty much landed on the same aesthetics over time). Each also has its own publishing tools, its own character limits, its own image filters. Being online means constantly flitting between these places and their ever-shifting sets of rules and norms. Now, though, we may be at the beginning of a new era. Instead of a half-dozen platforms competing to own your entire life, apps like Mastodon, Bluesky, Pixelfed, Lemmy, and others are building a more interconnected social ecosystem.

If this ActivityPub-fueled change takes off, it will break every social network into a thousand pieces. All posts, of all types, will be separated from their platforms. We'll get new tools for creating those posts, new tools for reading them, new tools for organizing them, and new tools for moderating them and sharing them and remixing them and everything else besides.
He's talking about a decades-old concept called POSSE: Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. ("Sometimes the P is also 'Post,' and the E can be 'Elsewhere.' The idea is the same either way." The idea is that you, the poster, should post on a website that you own. Not an app that can go away and take all your posts with it, not a platform with ever-shifting rules and algorithms. Your website. But people who want to read or watch or listen to or look at your posts can do that almost anywhere because your content is syndicated to all those platforms... [Y]our blog becomes the hub for everything, your main home on the internet.
The article argues that for now, "the best we have are tools like Micro.blog, a six-year-old platform for cross-posters." But the article ultimately envisions a future with not just new posting tools, but also new reading tools "with different ideas about how to display and organize posts."

VentureBeat reports: Thursday San Francisco-based Oxide, a startup founded by computing experts from Joyent and Dell, launched what it calls the world's first "commercial cloud computer," a rack-scale system that enterprises can own to reap the benefits and flexibility of cloud computing on-premises, right within their data center. The company believes the new offering can finally put an end to the "cloud vs on-prem" dilemma enterprises face while setting up their infrastructure...

It also announced $44 million in a series A round of funding, led by Eclipse VC with participation from Intel Capital, Riot Ventures, Counterpart Ventures and Rally Ventures. Oxide plans to use this money to accelerate the adoption of its cloud computer, giving teams a new, better option to serve their customers... The round brings Oxide's total financing raised to date to $78 million.
Since 2019 Oxide has thrown a team of 60 technologists at the problem — and Thursday, Oxide also revealed an impressive list of current customers: There's the U.S. Department of Energy — specifically its Idaho National Laboratory (which has historically been involved in nuclear research) — as well as "a well-known financial services firm". Oxide also announced that within just a few months, there'll be additional installments at multiple Fortune 1000 companies. And beyond that, Oxide is also boasting that they now have "a long wait list of customers ready to install once production catches up with demand...."

Will Coffield, a partner at Riot Ventures, quipped that Oxide had "essentially wrapped all the hopes and dreams of a software engineer, IT manager, and a CFO into a single box...." Steve Tuck, CEO and co-founder of Oxide, pointed out that cloud computing "remains restricted to a centralized, rental-only model." There are many reasons why an enteprise might want to own their infrastructure — security, reliability, cost, and response time/latency issues — and as Tuck sees it, "the rental-only model has denied them modern cloud capabilities for these use cases.

"We are changing that."
Earlier this year on the Software Engineering Daily podcast, CTO/co-founder Bryan Cantrill remembered that when doing their compliance testing, "The folks at the compliance lab — they see a lot of servers — and they're like, 'Are you sure it's on?' Because it's so quiet!" (This June article notes that later on the podcast Cantrill argued that the acoustics of today's data centers are "almost like an odor. It is this visceral reminder that this domain has suffered for lack of real systemic holistic thinking...")

Oxide's press packet lays out other advantages for their servers. "Power usage is 2x efficient, takes up half the space, and can be up and running in just four hours instead of three months."

Google Fiber plans to upgrade some users to 20Gbps service by the end of the year. Ars Technica reports: Google's Wednesday blog post calls this part of a "GFiber Labs" experiment and says the service "will initially be available as an early access offering to a small group of GFiber customers in select areas." The 20Gbps service is made possible by new networking gear: Nokia's 25G PON (passive optical network) technology, which lets Internet service providers push more bandwidth over existing fiber lines. Google says it's "one of the first" ISPs to adopt the technology for consumers, though at least one other US ISP, the Tennessee provider "EPB," has rolled out the technology. Customers will need new networking gear, too, and Google says you'll get a new fiber modem with built-in Wi-Fi 7.

Fierce Telecom spoke with Google's Nick Saporito, head of product at Google Fiber, who said, "We definitely see a need" for 20Gbps service. For now, Saporito says the service is "a very early adopter product," but it will eventually roll out "in most, if not all, of our markets." According to that Fierce report, Fiber is built on Nokia's "Quillion" Fiber platform, which is upgradable, so Google only needed to "plug in a new optical module and replace the optical network terminal on the end-user side" to take its 5 and 8Gbps infrastructure to 20Gbps.

There's no word yet on the price or which utopian Google Fiber cities will get access to the 20Gbps service, but Google has already run trials in Kansas City, Missouri. Currently, Google Fiber costs $70 for 1Gbps and $150 for 8Gbps. Interested customers can sign up for early access at this link.

NASA is demonstrating laser communications on multiple missions -- showcasing the benefits infrared light can have for science and exploration missions transmitting terabytes of important data. NASA: The International Space Station is getting a "flashy" technology demonstration this November. The ILLUMA-T (Integrated Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) payload is launching to the International Space Station to demonstrate how missions in low Earth orbit can benefit from laser communications. Laser communications uses invisible infrared light to send and receive information at higher data rates, providing spacecraft with the capability to send more data back to Earth in a single transmission and expediting discoveries for researchers.

Managed by NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, ILLUMA-T is completing NASA's first bi-directional, end-to-end laser communications relay by working with the agency's LCRD (Laser Communications Relay Demonstration). LCRD launched in December 2021 and is currently demonstrating the benefits of laser communications from geosynchronous orbit by transmitting data between two ground stations on Earth in a series of experiments. Some of LCRD's experiments include studying atmospheric impact on laser signals, confirming LCRD's ability to work with multiple users, testing network capabilities like delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN) over laser links, and investigating improved navigation capabilities.

A critical vulnerability that hackers have exploited since August, which allows them to bypass multifactor authentication in Citrix networking hardware, has received a patch from the manufacturer. Unfortunately, applying it isn't enough to protect affected systems. ArsTechnica: The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-4966 and carrying a severity rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10, resides in the NetScaler Application Delivery Controller and NetScaler Gateway, which provide load balancing and single sign-on in enterprise networks, respectively. Stemming from a flaw in a currently unknown function, the information-disclosure vulnerability can be exploited so hackers can intercept encrypted communications passing between devices. The vulnerability can be exploited remotely and with no human action required, even when attackers have no system privileges on a vulnerable system.

Citrix released a patch for the vulnerability last week, along with an advisory that provided few details. On Wednesday, researchers from security firm Mandiant said that the vulnerability has been under active exploitation since August, possibly for espionage against professional services, technology, and government organizations. Mandiant warned that patching the vulnerability wasn't sufficient to lock down affected networks because any sessions hijacked before the security update would persist afterward.

Computer networking company Sandvine has scrapped an effort to sell US law enforcement agencies a controversial internet surveillance technology that tracks encrypted messages and laid off most of the employees involved in the initiative, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing four people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: Sandvine had pitched the new product, called "Digital Witness," to governments and law enforcement agencies in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America. It was marketed as a tool to covertly monitor people's internet use and encrypted messages sent using popular applications such as Meta Platform's WhatsApp and Signal, according to the people, who asked not to be identified to discuss confidential matters.

Sandvine had already provided trial versions of the technology in the US, these people said. But a combination of broader economic woes and lingering concern over the company's previous work with authoritarian governments hindered the product's success, the people said. Sandvine declined to comment when asked about Digital Witness. The company's marketing materials indicate the product is sold only to law enforcement and government agencies, and it is still listed on Sandvine's website.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Microsoft's proprietary protocol, Remote Network Driver Interface Specification (RNDIS), started with a good idea. It would enable hardware vendors to add networking support to USB devices without having to build them from scratch. There was only one little problem. RNDIS has no security to speak of. As Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux Foundation fellow responsible for stable Linux kernel releases, wrote in November 2022 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), "The Microsoft RNDIS protocol is, as designed, insecure and vulnerable on any system that uses it with untrusted hosts or devices. Because the protocol is impossible to make secure, just disable all RNDIS drivers to prevent anyone from using them again."

He added, in another message, "The protocol was never designed to be used with untrusted devices. It was created, and we implemented support for it, when we trusted USB devices that we plugged into our systems, AND we trusted the systems we plugged our USB devices into." That's no longer the case. Kroah-Hartman concluded, "Today, with untrusted hosts and devices, it's time just to retire this protocol. As I mentioned in the patch comments, Android disabled this many years ago in their devices, with no loss of functionality."

[...] But now, sick and tired of having a built-in Windows security exploit in Linux, Kroah-Hartman has decided that enough was enough. He's disabled all the RNDIS protocol drivers in Linux's Git repository. That means that while the RNDIS code is still in the Linux kernel, if you try to build Linux using this new patch, all your RNDIS drivers will be broken and won't build. This is one step short of purging RNDIS from Linux.

Kyle Orland writes via Ars Technica: The "first official Unity user group in the world" has announced that it is dissolving after 13 years because "the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded." The move comes as many developers are saying they will continue to stay away from the company's products even after last week's partial rollback of some of the most controversial parts of its fee structure plans.

Since its founding in 2010, the Boston Unity Group (BUG) has attracted thousands of members to regular gatherings, talks, and networking events, including many technical lectures archived on YouTube. But the group says it will be hosting its last meeting Wednesday evening via Zoom because the Unity of today is very different from the Dave Helgason-led company that BUG says "enthusiastically sanctioned and supported" the group at its founding.

"Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its focus away from the games industry and away from supporting developer communities," the group leadership wrote in a departure note. "Following the IPO, the company has seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with the messaging that advertising and revenue matter more to Unity than the functionality game developers care about."

BUG says the install-fee terms Unity first announced earlier this month were "unthinkably hostile" to users and that even the "new concessions" in an updated pricing model offered late last week "disproportionately affect the success of indie studios in our community." But it's the fact that such "resounding, unequivocal condemnation from the games industry" was necessary to get those changes in the first place that has really shaken the community to its core. "We've seen how easily and flippantly an executive-led business decision can risk bankrupting the studios we've worked so hard to build, threaten our livelihoods as professionals, and challenge the longevity of our industry," BUG wrote. "The Unity of today isn't the same company that it was when the group was founded, and the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Following the launch of the iPhone 15 series today, a few readers of our website have reached out to highlight that the devices support USB-C to Ethernet adapters, allowing for a wired internet connection with faster download speeds than Wi-Fi. Apple confirmed this information in a support document last week, with USB to Ethernet adapters listed as compatible with iPhone 15 models. When an iPhone is connected to an Ethernet cable, an otherwise hidden Ethernet menu appears in the Settings app with IP-related information and various configuration options.

Cisco agreed to buy Splunk in a deal valued at about $28 billion, representing its biggest acquisition yet and a massive push into software and artificial intelligence-powered data analysis. From a report: Cisco will pay $157 a share in cash, the companies said in a statement Thursday, or a 31% premium to Splunk's previous closing price on Wednesday. Cisco has been expanding its software and services business in an attempt to rely less on its hallmark networking hardware. The Silicon Valley giant has traditionally generated the bulk of its revenue from equipment that forms the backbone of computer networks, but that's been changing. Last month Cisco outlined the headway it's making in artificial intelligence and security technology.

The deal is also arguably just as much a bet on artificial intelligence as it is on the business of software and data security. Earlier this year, Splunk announced a new line of AI offerings that it said would, among other things, allow companies to detect and respond to anomalies in their data faster. The merger offers the companies' AI products "substantial scale" and more visibility into data, they said in Thursday's statement.

The infrastructure behind popular AI workloads is so demanding that Schneider Electric has suggested it may be time to reevaluate the way we build datacenters. The Register reports: In a recent white paper [PDF], the French multinational broke down several of the factors that make accommodating AI workloads so challenging and offered its guidance for how future datacenters could be optimized for them. The bad news is some of the recommendations may not make sense for existing facilities. The problem boils down to the fact that AI workloads often require low-latency, high-bandwidth networking to operate efficiently, which forces densification of racks, and ultimately puts pressure on existing datacenters' power delivery and thermal management systems.

Today it's not uncommon for GPUs to consume upwards of 700W and servers to exceed 10kW. Hundreds of these systems may be required to train a large language model in a reasonable timescale. According to Schneider, this is already at odds with what most datacenters can manage at 10-20kW per rack. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that training workloads benefit heavily from maximizing the number of systems per rack as it reduces network latency and costs associated with optics. In other words, spreading the systems out can reduce the load on each rack, but if doing so requires using slower optics, bottlenecks can be introduced that negatively affect cluster performance.

The situation isn't nearly as dire for inferencing -- the act of putting trained models to work generating text, images, or analyzing mountains of unstructured data -- as fewer AI accelerators per task are required compared to training. Then how do you safely and reliably deliver adequate power to these dense 20-plus kilowatt racks and how do you efficiently reject the heat generated in the process? "These challenges are not insurmountable but operators should proceed with a full understanding of the requirements, not only with respect to IT, but to physical infrastructure, especially existing datacenter facilities," the report's authors write. The whitepaper highlights several changes to datacenter power, cooling, rack configuration, and software management that operators can implement to mitigate the demands of widespread AI adoption.

Reddit's forum about home food canning used to have two moderators with science-related master's degrees. And Reddit's home automation forum used to be moderated by a former IT worker with decades of networking experiencing — and some training from a professional electrician.

After the great Reddit protests, all three were removed from their positions. But now Ars Technica asks whether Reddit's replacement moderators will be as capable of spotting dangerous advice? In response to concerns that the new r/homeautomation mod team could overlook posts with dangerous misinformation, one moderator requesting anonymity pointed me to the subreddit's sidebar, which has a disclaimer about the dangers of electricity. However, the disclaimer is only visible on old Reddit. The mod doesn't know why...

One of the top complaints I've heard about the Great Reddit Mod Purge is the company's alleged disregard for replaced mods' expertise. The swift, contentious nature of the mod replacements meant that old mods often didn't share advice with new mods. Meanwhile, the users Reddit chose to replace protesting mods may not have been properly vetted. That includes one of the new mods of the 3D-printing-focused subreddit r/ender3, who requested to only be referred to as the subreddit's top moderator. This person replied to a post by the Reddit employee going by u/ModCodeofConduct and requested to mod the subreddit as a "joke," they said. The user got the job despite telling me, "I have never touched a 3D printer in my life, and there is zero activity on my Reddit account related to 3D printing...." [T]hat mod will step down eventually, "as the joke is starting to wear off." But the story suggests that new mods weren't selected with the utmost care...

None of the forcibly removed mods I spoke with have worked with or plan to work with replacement mods to pass on knowledge gained through years of experience... In addition to lost knowledge, new and old mods are also dealing with the loss of third-party apps considered helpful for moderating.

Tuesday Mark Zuckerberg shared a photo on Instagram with "actual footage of me building Threads for web." And now ZDNet reports that Zuckerberg's photo is available on his new Threads page on the web.

"As of Thursday, Meta's new platform is fully accessible to all users from any computer and desktop browser, Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed in a new Threads post."

"Use your Instagram account to log in: threads.net," explains the official Threads account. "Scroll to catch up on the conversation, or start a new thread of your own." Posts can include photos and videos, or you can reply and repost to other posts. "This is just the beginning. We're working on bringing everything you know and love from mobile over to web. More soon."

Wired argues the move makes Threads "more broadly usable." Most users will still access it through mobile, if the way people currently access the internet is any indication. But the move to the web is the next step in Meta creating an application just sticky enough to kneecap X and draw attention away from Bluesky, Mastodon, Spoutible, Post, and any other newish social app.

It's also a way to juice its users again. After that spectacular initial sign-up period in July, Threads usage dropped off precipitously. New data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower suggests that daily active users are down more than 60 percent from its first-week average, though it's now back on the upswing. Threads amassed 44 million daily active users during its launch peak, then saw usage drop to a low of 7 million DAUs in late July. As of mid-August, the app has seen increases of 11 million DAUs, Sensor Tower analysts say. However, time spent on the app per daily active user has also fallen, the firm says.
Caling Threads "a work in progress," Wired notes it ""will supposedly be compatible with ActivityPub, an open social networking protocol, but that hasn't happened yet. The app also doesn't currently support direct messages, a popular feature on X. And Threads is not available in the European Union, due to the regulatory climate there."

Their article also shares an idea from data journalist and engineer Surya Mattu: that both devices and social media apps like Threads should implement a transparency-guaranteeing "inspectability API" to always allow users to inspect their data and activity in real-time.

Once known for distributing hacking tools and shaming software companies into improving their security, a famed group of technology activists is now working to develop a system that will allow the creation of messaging and social networking apps that won't keep hold of users' personal data. From a report: The group, Cult of the Dead Cow, has developed a coding framework that can be used by app developers who are willing to embrace strong encryption and forsake revenue from advertising that is targeted to individuals based on detailed profiles gleaned from the data most apps now routinely collect. The team is building on the work of such free products as Signal, which offers strong encryption for text messages and voice calls, and Tor, which offers anonymous web surfing by routing traffic through a series of servers to disguise the location of the person conducting the search.

The latest effort, to be detailed at the massive annual Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas next week, seeks to provide a foundation for messaging, file sharing and even social networking apps without harvesting any data, all secured by the kind of end-to-end encryption that makes interception hard even for governments. Called Veilid, and pronounced vay-lid, the code can be used by developers to build applications for mobile devices or the web. Those apps will pass fully encrypted content to one another using the Veilid protocol, its developers say. As with the file-sharing software BitTorrent, which distributes different pieces of the same content simultaneously, the network will get faster as more devices join and share the load, the developers say. In such decentralized "peer-to-peer" networks, users download data from each other instead of from a central machine.

Intel reported second-quarter earnings on Thursday, including a return to profitability after two straight quarters of losses, and a stronger-than-expected forecast. CNBC reports: For the third quarter, Intel expects earnings of $0.20 per share, adjusted, on revenue of $13.4 billion at the midpoint, versus analyst expectations of 16 cents per share on $13.23 billion in sales. Intel posted net income of $1.5 billion, or earnings of $0.35 per share, versus a net loss of $454 million, or a loss of 11 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.

Intel CFO David Zinsner said in a statement that part of the reason that Intel's report was stronger than expected was because of the progress it has made towards slashing $3 billion in costs this year. Earlier this year, Intel slashed its dividend and announced plans to save $10 billion per year by 2025, including through layoffs. Revenue fell to $12.9 billion from $15.3 billion a year ago, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of declining sales for the company.

Here's how Intel's business units performed:
- Intel's Client Computing group, which includes the company's laptop and desktop processor shipments, fell 12% annually to $6.8 billion.The overall PC market has been slumping for over a year.
- Intel's server chip division, which is reported as Data Center and AI, declined 15% to $4.0 billion in sales.
- Intel's Network and Edge division, which sells networking products for telecommunications, declined 28% to $1.4 billion.
- Mobileye, a publicly-traded Intel subsidiary focusing on self-driving cars, saw sales down 1% on an annual basis to $454 million.
- It reported $232 million in revenue for its foundry business, Intel Foundry Services, that makes chips for other companies.

Qualcomm and Meta will enable the social networking company's new large language model, Llama 2, to run on Qualcomm chips on phones and PCs starting in 2024, the companies announced today. From a report: So far, LLMs have primarily run in large server farms, on Nvidia graphics processors, due to the technology's vast needs for computational power and data, boosting Nvidia stock, which is up more than 220% this year. But the AI boom has largely missed the companies that make leading edge processors for phones and PCs, like Qualcomm. Its stock is up about 10% so far in 2023, trailing the NASDAQ's gain of 36%. The announcement on Tuesday suggests that Qualcomm wants to position its processors as well-suited for A.I. but "on the edge," or on a device, instead of "in the cloud." If large language models can run on phones instead of in large data centers, it could push down the significant cost of running A.I. models, and could lead to better and faster voice assistants and other apps.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: Today, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has added 802.11bb as a standard for light-based wireless communications. The publishing of the standard has been welcomed by global Li-Fi businesses, as it will help speed the rollout and adoption of the data-transmission technology standard. Advantages of using light rather than radio frequencies (RF) are highlighted by Li-Fi proponents including pureLiFi, Fraunhofer HHI, and the Light Communications 802.11bb Task Group. Li-Fi is said to deliver "faster, more reliable wireless communications with unparalleled security compared to conventional technologies such as Wi-Fi and 5G." Now that the IEEE 802.11bb Li-Fi standard has been released, it is hoped that interoperability between Li-Fi systems with the successful Wi-Fi will be fully addressed.

Of course, Li-Fi isn't going to sweep away Wi-Fi and 5G alternatives (nor wired networks). Radio waves still have a distinct advantage with regard to transmission through the atmosphere at great distance, and though opaque objects. Instead, work must concentrate on using horses for courses -- with Li-Fi advantages being harvested where possible. [...] Now the IEEE 802.11bb standard is published, manufacturers can have greater confidence in the ecosystem and start integrating the tech, where suitable. One of the big wheels of Li-Fi, pureLiFi, has already prepared the Light Antenna ONE module for integration into connected devices. This 14.5mm long component is currently being provided to OEMs for evaluation. In its promotional materials the firm suggests that Li-Fi is preferable over Wi-Fi for: more connections without congestion, greater security and privacy, and doing the heavy lifting for the highest bandwidth tasks. We expect to see a far fuller gamut of Li-Fi network devices, and user devices which support the standard, emerge between now and MWC next February.

Damus, a decentralized social networking app backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, will be removed from the App Store due to Apple's strict payment rules. From a report: Apple had threatened to remove Damus earlier this month over the app's tips feature, claiming that it could be used by content creators to sell digital content on the platform. The tech giant has a long history of prohibiting developers from selling additional in-app content unless the transactions go through Apple, which takes a 30% cut. To avoid a ban, the team behind Damus had to tweak the app's tipping feature, which is made possible by way of Bitcoin's Lightning Network. The company previously explained in a tweet that it had to remove the tips button from posts and was only allowed to permit tips on profiles.

Recent graduates from Generation Z, who have primarily experienced virtual classes and remote internships during college, may need to improve their soft skills such as email writing, casual conversation, and appropriate work attire. According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, companies like KPMG, Deloitte, and PwC are offering training programs to help these employees adapt to the office, focusing on in-person communication, eye contact, conversation pauses, and professional dress. Insider reports: KPMG is offering new hires introductory training that includes how to talk to people in person, with tips on the appropriate level of eye contact and pauses in a conversation, the company's vice chair of talent and culture, Sandy Torchia, told the Journal. Deloitte and PwC also began offering similar trainings earlier this year, the Financial Times reported in May. Similarly, the consulting company Proviti said it expanded its training for new hires during the pandemic to include a series of virtual meetings that focus on issues like how to make authentic conversation, according to the Journal. Scott Redfearn, Protiviti's executive vice president of global human resources, told the Journal the company has had to remind new hires to avoid casual attire like blue jeans with holes in them.

Some universities have also stepped in to bridge the gap. Michigan State University's director of career management, Marla McGraw, told the Journal that companies need to be more direct when it comes to telling new hires what to wear and how to act in the office. The school now requires many of its business majors to take classes that foster soft skills like how to network in person. The Journal reported that one course breaks down a networking conversation by reminding students to pause after they introduce themselves in order to let the other person say their name, as well as respond to signs the other person might be looking to end the conversation. While it's common for companies to host onboarding sessions that cover office dynamics like attire and rules for interpersonal relationships, some experts say younger employees need these reminders now more than ever.

This week the Linux Foundation and the National Spectrum Consortium "announced formal collaboration" on developing software prototypes and demonstrations for Open RAN (open radio access network):

The two organizations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to solidify their working relationship and commitment to minimizing barriers to further R&D necessary for OpenRAN acceleration within the United States.

More open and flexible wireless networks ultimately increase vendor diversity and competition, prevent vendor lock-in, increase innovation in wireless networking technology, lower deployment and operational costs, and even increase security and energy efficiency. "We are eager to work with the NSC in creating a stable, open, secure reference stack for Open RAN," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge & IoT, the Linux Foundation. "By combining resources, we'll accelerate access to Open RAN and wireless technology across the United States across verticals and into government, academia, and small business."
The collaborations goals include:

• Establish an open source reference software architecture for Open RAN that will kickstart academic and commercial R&D by lowering the cost and complexity of entry

• Rally support from industry with guidance and funds to leap forward in a true open and secure RAN