System Architecture

There is extensive work in the community to standardize elements involved in decentralized identities, and soon it will be much easier to use them.

mountebank is the first open source, cross-platform, multi-protocol service virtualization tool

Discover the origins and technology behind composable data systems. Learn about the key layers of data systems, and how to build by reusing open source software components and open standards.

For companies with dual-use software products—those with both civilian and military applications—an ATO can be a significant barrier to entry to the government market. The variable cost and extended timeline often prove fatal to startups targeting DOD customers, which has implications far beyond those companies.

Before adopting platform engineering, companies should consider if it's the right fit for where they are in their software development journey.

One of the significant features added to the mainline kernel during the 6.6 merge window was multi-grain timestamps, which allow the kernel to selectively store file modification times with higher resolution without hurting performance. Unfortunately, this feature also caused some surprising regressions, and was quickly ushered back out of the kernel as a result. It is instructive to look at how this feature went wrong, and how the developers involved plan to move forward from here.

It’s been four years between the release of the Raspberry Pi 4 and the announcement of the Raspberry Pi 5 but the Pi 5 has been in development far longer. Raspberry Pi has published an articl…

Implementing nested sets to performantly lookup hierarchical tags

We are on the threshold of the greatest military change since the Age of Napoleon.

Any future framework for operational adaptation must incorporate the effects of technological change, while avoiding the seductions of strategic paralysis theory.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) officials announced the concept of the Kill Web at the C4ISRNET Conference in May 2018. Throughout the history of war, many elements of the Kill Web were being developed independently, but the dots were not connected until Admiral William Owens wrote a paper about a “system of systems”. He proposed integrating command-and-control, the intelligence from the sensors, and the weapons together in the mid 1990s. He also coined the acronym ISR (for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance).

US combat power is massed just out of range of enemy fires, but there it is stalled, with ships and aircraft unable to penetrate the complex web of enemy sensors, […]

Recently, we interviewed a USAF retired Colonel who was both a combat  veteran and test pilot, Robert “Juice” Newton, with regard to the strategic shift from the land wars to military competition and engagement with peer competitors. Juice has had extensive engagement in the Middle Eastern land wars, and is now focused on advanced technology […]

Two DARPA-developed technologies—a novel decision aid for mission commanders and a rapid software integration tool—played a critical role in the recent Air Force demonstration of the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS).

Two DARPA-developed technologies – a novel decision aid for mission commanders and a rapid software integration tool – played a critical role in the recent Air Force demonstration.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: My last post outlined the strategic reviews and national defense priorities that sit on top of the kill chain. Defense planners at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are now looking at transitioning to a concept they've dubbed the kill web.

On its surface, the BPF virtual machine resembles many other computer architectures; it has registers and instructions to perform the usual operations. But there is a key difference: BPF programs must pass the kernel's verifier before they can be run. The verifier imposes a long list of additional restrictions so that it can prove to itself that any given program is safe to run; getting past those checks can be a source of frustration for BPF developers. At the 2023 GNU Tools Cauldron, José Marchesi looked at the problem of compiling for verified architectures and how the compiler can generate code that will pass verification.

Posted on Friday 6 Oct 2023. 738 words, 6 links. By Matt Webb.

Over the past decade, the desire to share and collaborate has fueled the rise of multiplayer software across many markets and industries…

In 2020, it’s really easy to send money, but still hard to share it.

Like Zero Trust, Zero Data represents a paradigm that organizations can embrace to enhance their overall security posture. But the benefits go far beyond better security.

The eBPF in-kernel virtual machine is approaching its tenth anniversary as part of Linux; it has grown into a tool with many types of uses in the ecosystem. Alexei Starovoitov, who was the creator of eBPF and did much of the development of it, especially in the early going, gave the opening talk at Linux Security Summit Europe 2023 on the relationship between BPF and security. In it, he related some interesting history, from a somewhat different perspective than what is often described, he said. Among other things, it shows how BPF has been both a security problem and a security solution along the way.

When users encounter slow load times or delays in response from any web application or API, they are more likely to abandon it. Caching plays a crucial role in improving performance and efficiency. Here's how it works.