Tag: Blue

Online Game “Blue Whale” Blamed for Suicides Amongst Players

The Indian Supreme Court says online portals must spread awareness about the deadly game.

India’s Supreme Court is holding hearings by advocates who want the online game “Blue Whale” banned after blaming it for 100 suicides throughout the country, according to The Indian Express.

The game issues various challenges to participants over a 50-day period; on the final day, players are instructed to complete the game by committing suicide.

The phenomenon has recently been in the spotlight in Iran too, after two girls attempted to kill themselves by jumping off a bridge (one died, the other was critically injured). Authorities later found an audio message recorded by the girls, bidding goodbye to their parents and proclaiming they would “take their lives to complete the Blue Whale game”, according to local news agency Mizan Online.

Read: Facebook Takes Steps to Prevent Suicide

The game revolves around an anonymous “master” who assigns various self-harming activities that become incrementally more dangerous, with acts ranging from watching horror movies to self-mutilation. Users are encouraged throughout to post photos of their daily challenges online.

Read: What Twitter’s Future Could Depend On

Blue Whale appears to have origins in the Russian social-networking site VKontakte, and was criticized for the same deadly impact on Russian teens earlier in 2017, according to RFERL.

Tech

Big Blue back on the attack, analysts cautious

(Reuters) – IBM shares surged 5 percent on Wednesday after the world’s first big computing company beat expectations on third-quarter revenue and gave an outlook that hinted it was back on a growth track after six years in retreat.

There was no initial sign of changes to major brokerage trading recommendations or price targets for International Business Machines Inc and most shied away from calling a complete turnaround in the company’s fortunes.

But the results pushed Big Blue shares 4.7 percent higher to $ 153.40 in premarket in New York, in stark contrast with a nearly 12 percent fall so far this year.

“We were pleased to see the quality of IBM’s earnings improve, with IP income and taxes being less of a driver of upside than in prior quarters,” Deutsche Bank analyst Sherri Scribner wrote in a note.

While IBM has struggled more than peers such as Oracle Corp and Microsoft Corp to adjust their approach to a changing market, the quarterly performance of its software business was noteworthy given its presence in key software markets, Jefferies analyst John DiFucci wrote in a note.

IBM’s revenue has fallen for 22 straight quarters as weak demand from customers left its legacy hardware and software businesses stagnating.

The results showed revenue from IBM’s cloud, cybersecurity and data analytics business rose 11 percent to $ 8.8 billion in the quarter, accounting for about 46 percent of total revenue.

The company’s software revenue also grew for the first time after 13 consecutive quarters of declines.

“We see the business as secularly challenged due to its high exposure to a legacy business model, and see continued margin pressure over the long-term as IBM’s business is pressured by competition from lower-cost offerings and the cloud,” Deutsche Bank analyst Sherri Scribner wrote in a note.

But she added: “We are modestly adjusting our FY-17E EPS higher on a lower share count and some additional mainframe sales.”

Out of 25 analysts covering the stock, only 6 have a “buy” or higher rating, 15 are on “hold”, and 4 have a “sell” or lower. They have a median price target of $ 154.50.

Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham

Tech

Growing Demand for Blue Box Cloud Drives Expanded North American and European Data Centers for OpenStack-Powered Private Cloud as a Service


SEATTLE, Wash. (PRWEB UK) 25 February 2015

Customer growth in Europe and the United States is prompting Blue Box—a Seattle-based provider of on-demand OpenStack-powered private cloud as a service (PCaaS) solutions—to continue executing on its global capacity expansion. The company has expanded its relationship with Juniper Networks to build new capacity for its Blue Box Cloud solution at two data centers, one in London and the other at an existing facility in Ashburn.

The opening of the company’s first data center in the U.K. makes Blue Box Cloud available to European customers who require European Union (EU) data center residency.

This is the first full data center that Blue Box is building with integrated routing, switching and security technology exclusively from Juniper Networks. Blue Box will use Juniper Networks® SRX Series Services Gateways to secure its network, and has standardized on Juniper Networks MX480 3D Universal Edge Routers, QFX5100 data center switches and EX4200 Ethernet switches.

With the London expansion, Blue Box increases its global footprint for Blue Box Cloud to four locations, aligning with key markets in North America and EMEA. The London data center will meet EU data sovereignty requirements and join an existing European data center for Blue Box Cloud in Zurich.

The Ashburn data center expansion doubles the company’s current Blue Box Cloud capacity in that facility. The expansion is in response to growing demand from Blue Box Cloud customers requiring additional compute and storage resources to support new and growing application workloads hosted in the facility.

European Proof of Concept Program Underway

Blue Box recently announced a proof-of-concept (PoC) program for European customers evaluating OpenStack-powered private clouds. The program helps customers determine whether a hosted or an on-prem private cloud solution is better suited to their workloads. As part of the launch of the PoC and the new U.K. data center, Blue Box will sponsor Cloud Expo Europe in London on March 11 and 12. European companies interested in Blue Box Cloud can schedule one-on-one meetings with Blue Box senior management by signing up here. Blue Box is targeting participants in market sectors with specific workloads requiring control, performance, security and predictability in a variety of sectors, including media and entertainment, financial services, technology and retail.

Cloud Expo Europe Exhibition Information

Blue Box is exhibiting with the OpenStack Foundation and other OpenStack community members in the Open Cloud Park, Pod #3, at Cloud Expo Europe. In addition, Blue Box CTO and founder Jesse Proudman will speak during two sessions:

1.    Public vs Private vs Hybrid Cloud: Which One? (in the Open Cloud Theater)

2.    Interoperability on the Cloud: Myth or Reality? (Panel in Cloud Service Providers & Business Theater)

Private Cloud as a Service Benefits

PCaaS is a term describing private cloud infrastructure resources deployed in a managed environment, on hardware dedicated to specific customers. PCaaS provides the security, performance and cost stability of private cloud, coupled with the agility, scalability and handsfree management common to public clouds. Blue Box Cloud is an OpenStack-powered PCaaS solution that offers the additional benefits of Cloud Foundry Platform as a Service.

Growth Response to Customer Demand

“Blue Box Cloud delivers all of the benefits of a private cloud while removing the burden of day-to-day infrastructure operations. That combination means our customers can focus on developing applications that drive true value to their businesses. Existing customer growth and new deployments will continue to drive our plans for expanding both our data center footprint as well as capacity at existing facilities in the year ahead.”

— Matthew Schiltz, CEO of Blue Box

Networking and Security Powered by Juniper Networks

“We are proud to deliver the technology that will secure private cloud as a service to new customers as Blue Box continues to expand and grow. Blue Box, with its operational expertise and software capabilities, is successfully deploying reliable and secure private clouds quickly in production environments, and we are excited that Juniper will power the new facility in Europe – and the expanded facility in Ashburn.”

— Mike Marcellin, senior vice president of marketing and strategy at Juniper Networks

About Blue Box

Blue Box delivers Private Cloud as a Service (PCaaS) to customers worldwide. The company’s technology platform leverages decades of operational expertise in cloud and distributed systems to deliver Blue Box Cloud—a managed, hosted private cloud on dedicated hardware, powered by OpenStack and available and scalable on demand. Blue Box Cloud delivers core benefits of both public and private clouds in one offering. Blue Box meets the control, performance, and security needs of customers in a wide range of industries, including healthcare, financial services, digital media, gaming, technology and retail. Learn more about Seattle-based Blue Box at blueboxcloud.com or find Blue Box on Twitter at @bluebox.

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Media Contact:

Robert Cathey

Cathey Communications for Blue Box

robert(at)cathey(dot)co

+1 865-386-6118

@robertcathey