<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>AP Photo/ISNA)</span></p><p class="caption">The Front Altair oil tanker on fire in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday, June 13, 2019.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>After two oil tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday, which the Trump administration has blamed on Iran, there are increased fears of a conflict between the US and Iran. </li><li>Experts warn that the prospect of a direct military confrontation between the US and Iran is now a "certainty" and that Americans in the region could soon be targeted by Iranian proxies. </li><li><span>"I would assess the certainty of a direct military confrontation between the US and Iran...in which one side or the other strikes national assets or national territory belonging to the other," Aaron David Miller, who advised the State Department on the Middle East for years, told INSIDER.</span></li><li><a href="https://www.insider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit INSIDER's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>Two oil tankers were <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-video-oil-tanker-gulf-of-oman-flames-attack-2019-6">attacked in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday</a>, causing a surge in oil prices and raising fears of a conflict between the US and Iran amid heightened tensions in the region. </p><p>Thursday's attacks occurred in an important waterway through which 30% of the world's oil supply passes, and represents a major escalation in the showdown between Washington and Tehran that could wreak havoc on the global economy. It also came after several attacks on oil tankers in the same area in May, which US officials blamed on Iran.</p><p>Experts warn that the attack is a sign of what's to come from Iran as it seeks to punish the US for sanctions that are pummeling its economy. Some experts also say that Americans in the region could be targeted by Iranian proxies, and that prospect of a direct military confrontation between the US and Iran now appears to be a "certainty."</p><h2>'T<span>hey covered their tracks'</span></h2><p>No one has claimed responsibility for Thursday's incident, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blamed Iran. </p><p><span>"Iran is lashing out because the regime wants our successful maximum pressure campaign lifted," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday. "No economic sanctions entitle the Islamic Republic to attack innocent civilians, disrupt global oil markets and engage in nuclear blackmail."</span></p><p><span>Rockford Weitz, professor and director of the Maritime Studies Program at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, told INSIDER that Pompeo wouldn't have "come out so forcefully" if he didn't have strong evidence pointing to the Iranians being responsible. </span></p><p><em><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-navy-finds-mine-possibly-pointing-to-iran-tanker-attack-2019-6">The Navy has reportedly found a smoking gun as the US blames Iran for the latest tanker attack that threatens the global oil market</a></em></p><p><span>But Weitz added, "Whatever part of Iran's government had any role in these tanker attacks, they covered their tracks to the best of their abilities."</span></p><p><span>One of the tankers attacked was Japanese-owned, and the incident occurred as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - who has a close relationship with President Donald Trump - was in Tehran to try and mitigate tensions between Iran and the US. </span></p><p><span>Weitz said the timing of Abe's visit and the tanker attacks are not a "coincidence" and it's almost as if the Iranians put on a "show" for him. Roughly <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-tanker-attacks-near-iran-150232592.html">80% of Japan's oil</a> comes from the Middle East and travels through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow channel linking the Persian Gult to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.</span></p><p><span>Iran appears to be trying to get Japan unsettled about oil prices, which <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oil-tanker-attack-gulf-of-oman-crude-prices/">rose 4% after Thursday's attacks</a>, so that it pressures Trump to ease up on the sanctions that are crippling the Iranian economy. But Weitz questioned the wisdom of this strategy. </span></p><p><span>"I don't think it helps [Iran] to saber rattle and try to get the Japanese super nervous and pressure Trump. That's not what's going to do it for Trump</span><span>...I think what's at work here is, in many ways, a testing of the waters," Weitz said, noting that the US is not as reliant on foreign oil as it was in previous decades. </span></p><p><span>Weitz also said the spike in oil prices is likely only a "temporary" response to Thursday's incident, and that if Iran really wanted to cause turmoil it would have to stage attacks on a near daily basis - a route that would most likely trigger a global response that would be catastrophic for the Iranian government. </span></p><h2><span>'Expect the Iranians to up the ante at some point'</span></h2><p><span>Randa Slim, director of conflict resolution at the Middle East Institute, echoed these sentiments and said Iran is lashing out at US sanctions - particularly those linked to its oil.</span></p><p><span>"The Iranian strategy is twofold: to make it difficult for their Gulf neighbors to export oil as long as Iran is prevented from doing so; and to retaliate against what [Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif] referred to as US 'economic terrorism.' These attacks are one means to achieve the first objective," Slim told INSIDER, adding that she expects them to "continue doing so as long as the US does not retaliate with force."</span></p><p><span>But Slim is also skeptical that such attacks will help convince the Trump administration to "abandon" its maximum pressure strategy. "They do not increase the costs of this strategy for the US," Slim said.</span></p><p>As Iran becomes increasingly desperate to find relief from sanctions, it could begin targeting Americans in the Middle East. </p><p><em><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-video-oil-tanker-gulf-of-oman-flames-attack-2019-6">Photos and video show flames, ash, and charring on oil tanker after suspected torpedo attack in Gulf of Oman</a></em></p><p><span>"I expect the Iranians to up the ante at some point and target US assets in the region," Slim said, adding that the "kidnapping of US citizens by Iranian proxies is one tool in the Iranian toolbox." She said this would likely occur in places like Iraq, Syria, and Yemen where American NGO workers and journalists are working in "insecure environments where pro-Iran militias enjoy a freedom of maneuvering."</span></p><p><span>Slim said that if Iran goes down this path, it would elevate the "political costs" of the maximum pressure strategy for Trump. </span></p><h2><span>'I would assess the certainty of a direct military confrontation between the US and Iran'</span></h2><p><span>Aaron David Miller, a distinguished scholar at the Wilson Center who advised six secretaries of state, said the Trump administration's efforts to "undermine" and "destroy" the Iranian economy is working. </span><span></span></p><p><span>In this context, Miller told INSIDER that Iran is now trying to signal to the Americans that they have the "capacity to be unpleasant and cause a measure of pain." </span><span></span></p><p><span>Miller said we're witnessing an "unraveling" that began when Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal. </span></p><p><span>The president has said his goal is to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and has in recent weeks signaled a desire to hold talks with the Iranians to negotiate a new nuclear deal, but after Thursday's incident said it's "too soon to even think about making a deal." </span>The Iranians, who for the moment appear to still be in compliance with the JCPOA, have also said they're not interested in talks.  </p><p>Miller said that with the US and Iran are now "drifting," and the big question is, what direction will they drift in? </p><p><span>"I would assess the certainty of a direct military confrontation between the US and Iran...in which one side or the other strikes national assets or national territory belonging to the other," Miller continued. "The reality is that things get messy when there is urgency."</span><span></span></p><p><em>Ellen Ioanes contributed reporting.  </em></p><p class="tagline">Get the latest Oil WTI price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/oil-price?type=WTI"> here.</a></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-american-men-suck-soccer-world-cup-2018-6">The US women's national team dominates soccer, but here's why the US men's team sucks</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

The oil tanker attacks could make a US-Iran military showdown inevitable, experts warn

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<br /></strong><ul class="summary-list "><li><strong><keyword id="72398" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Paul-Allen">Paul Allen</keyword>, the billionaire cofounder of <keyword id="10387" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Microsoft">Microsoft</keyword>, has passed away at age 65 after a battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.</strong></li><li><strong>Allen, a philanthropist, also owned the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trail Blazers.</strong></li><li><strong>A childhood friend of <keyword id="45830" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Bill-Gates">Bill Gates</keyword>, it was actually Allen who came up with the name "Micro-Soft."</strong></li><li><strong>Allen officially left his day-to-day role at Microsoft in 1983, but stayed on the board until 2000.</strong></li></ul>Paul Allen, who cofounded Microsoft with Bill Gates, died Monday afternoon after a battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, his family confirmed to Business Insider. He was 65.<br /><br />Allen, a tech billionaire, was a philanthropist and the owner of the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trail Blazers. He operated Vulcan Ventures, a venture-capital fund.<br /><br />Allen was first diagnosed with the cancer in 2009, and disclosed earlier this month that it had returned after a period of remission. At the time, Allen said that he planned on staying involved with his various business ventures. It was the third time that Allen has been diagnosed with some form of lymphoma. He survived Hodgkin's lymphoma after being diagnosed in the 1980s.<br /><br />Allen, a Seattle native, and Gates were childhood friends. In 1972, while in high school, the pair launched Traf-o-Data, a software company that tracked and analyzed traffic patterns. When Gates went to Harvard, Allen stayed local and went to Washington State University, though he ended up dropping out.<br /><br />It was Allen who suggested that the two work together to make a BASIC language interpreter for the then cutting-edge Altair 8800 microcomputer, which became Microsoft's first product. The name "Micro-Soft" for their joint venture was Allen's idea.<br /><br />Further, Allen was responsible for the key deal that made Microsoft a major player in the PC revolution: When Gates promised IBM in 1980 that Microsoft would supply an operating system for its flagship PC, it was Allen who went and purchased the rights to the "Quick and Dirty Operating System," or QDOS, from developer Tim Paterson. Microsoft rebranded QDOS as MS-DOS, or the Microsoft Disk Operating System, and supplied it to IBM per the deal.<br /><br />In 1983, Allen stepped aside from day-to-day operations at Microsoft, not long after beginning treatment for his first diagnosis with Hodgkin's lymphoma. He remained on the company's board of directors until 2000.<br /><br />Allen would later write that his departure was marked by a period of friction with Gates, where they disagreed over the direction of the company. Allen said that Gates tried to buy out his shares in the company, but that he ultimately decided to hang on to his stake — which made Allen his fortune when Microsoft went public in 1986.<br /><br />Allen was also known as a musician. As a guitarist, he fronted a band called The Underthinkers, and wrote or cowrote every song on their 2013 album. He also founded Seattle's Experience Music Project, or EMP, which was originally a museum devoted to his hero Jimi Hendrix. Allen also started the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, in the same building as the EMP. The two have since been combined into the Museum of Pop Culture.<br /><br />Allen's net worth was <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/paul-allen/#6bbecaa64417">pegged at $20 billion</a>.<br /><br />Lymphomas are cancers that attack the lymphatic system. Non-Hodgkin's is more common than Hodgkin's lymphoma.<br /><h2 style="margin-top: 2.15rem; margin-bottom: 10px; font-family: LabGrotesque-Black, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3em; color: rgb(17, 21, 22); font-size: 31.5px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jody Allen, Paul's sister, issued the following statement:</h2><span class="">My brother was a remarkable individual on every level. While most knew Paul Allen as a technologist and philanthropist, for us he was a much-loved brother and uncle, and an exceptional friend. Paul's family and friends were blessed to experience his wit, warmth, his generosity and deep concern. For all the demands on his schedule, there was always time for family and friends. At this time of loss and grief for us - and so many others - we are profoundly grateful for the care and concern he demonstrated every day.</span><br /><h2 style="margin-top: 2.15rem; margin-bottom: 10px; font-family: LabGrotesque-Black, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3em; color: rgb(17, 21, 22); font-size: 31.5px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6457724980540121088">posted a tribute on his LinkedIn</a>:</h2><span class="">Paul Allen's contributions to our company, our industry and to our community are indispensable. As <keyword id="170488" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="co-founder">co-founder</keyword> of Microsoft, in his own quiet and persistent way, he created magical products, experiences and institutions, and in doing so, he changed the world. I have learned so much from him - his inquisitiveness, curiosity and push for high standards is something that will continue to inspire me and all of us at Microsoft. Our hearts are with Paul's family and loved ones. Rest in peace.</span><br /><br /><h2 style="margin-top: 2.15rem; margin-bottom: 10px; font-family: LabGrotesque-Black, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3em; color: rgb(17, 21, 22); font-size: 31.5px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Bill Hilf, the CEO of Allen's holding company Vulcan Inc., said:</h2><span class="">All of us who had the honor of working with Paul feel inexpressible loss today. He possessed a remarkable intellect and a passion to solve some of the world's most difficult problems, with the conviction that creative thinking and new approaches could make profound and lasting impact.</span><br /><br /><span class="">Millions of people were touched by his generosity, his persistence in pursuit of a better world, and his drive to accomplish as much as he could with the time and resources at his disposal.</span><br /><br /><span class="">Paul's life was diverse and lived with gusto. It reflected his myriad interests in <keyword id="6355118" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="technology">technology</keyword>, music and the arts, biosciences and artificial intelligence, conservation and in the power of shared experience - in a stadium or a neighborhood - to transform individual lives and whole communities.</span><br /><br /><span class="">Paul loved Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. The impact of Paul's efforts can be seen here at every turn. But the true impact of his vision and generosity is evident around the globe.</span><br /><br />Paul thoughtfully addressed how the many institutions he founded and supported would continue after he was no longer able to lead them. This isn't the time to deal in those specifics as we focus on Paul's family. We will continue to work on furthering Paul's mission and the projects he entrusted to us. There are no changes imminent for Vulcan, the teams, the research institutes or museums.<br /><br />Today we mourn our boss, mentor and friend whose 65 years were too short - and acknowledge the honor it has been to work alongside someone whose life transformed the world."<br /><br />Get the latest Microsoft stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/MSFT-Quote"> here.</a><br /><br />            <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/game-of-thrones-star-maisie-williams-ambition-for-daisie-2018-9">'Game of Thrones' star Maisie Williams has left Arya Stark behind to help fight nepotism in the arts industries</a></h3>        <pre style="display: none;">function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</pre>        <br />

Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen dies at age 65

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Wikipedia</span></p><p class="caption">Two of MakerBot's founders Zach Smith and Bre Prettis.</p></div><p></p></div></div>3D printing company MakerBot is laying off 20% of its staff for the second time in six months, CEO Jonathan Jaglom announced in a <a href="http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2015/10/08/makerbot-reorganizes-to-adapt-to-market-dynamics-and-prepare-for-the-future?siteID=TnL5HPStwNw-nsKbiOb85A1Cy50yAvH_zg&amp;ls_affid=TnL5HPStwNw">blog post.</a> The company let 80 staff go back in April, and now the team is at less than 400.</p><p>Jaglom writes that the company has struggled to meet "ambitious goals" thanks to the "broader challenges" in the industry.</p><p>Right now, according to Gartner's annual <a href="http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3114217" target="_blank">Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies</a> report, 3D printing has been out of the "hype" stage (when everyone gets really excited about a new technology) for the last two years. But it could be another <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/gartner-hype-cycle-report-shows-3d-printing-expanding-2015-8">five to 10 years</a> before the tech really takes off with consumers. So that means 3D printing is currently stuck in a "trough of disillusionment" - a stage right after the hype for a new technology reaches its peak and consumers begin to lose interest.</p><p>It's at this point that companies in the space typically either establish their permanence or fail.</p><p class="p1">Cofounder and former CEO Bre Pettis had previously talked ambitiously about the future of 3D printing. "People draw a lot of parallels between the personal computing industry and the personal manufacturing industry," Pettis told Business Insider back in 2012, "and there's a lot of similarities ... now, just like the Altair and the Apple 1 and the homebrew days of homebrew computing, you can now have a MakerBot ... The future's bright."</p><p>After the last round of layoffs the company pivoted to focus on <a href="http://qz.com/519975/the-only-3d-printing-company-anyones-heard-of-just-laid-off-a-huge-chunk-of-its-staff/">the education market</a>, and shut down its <a href="http://qz.com/401569/makerbot-has-found-its-audience-and-its-not-you-or-me/">three retail stores</a> in New York, Boston and Connecticut. Around 5,000 schools across the US now have MakerBot printers.</p><p>The company is also moving its research and development staff from a manufacturing complex in Brooklyn called Industry City to its headquarters at MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn so the teams can work more efficiently together. But the MakerBot factory will remain in Industry City, Jaglom writes. He also hinted that the company would be outsourcing the production of the next generation of its printers.</p><p>Former MakerBot CEO Bre Prettis <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/makerbot-ceo-bre-pettis-steps-down-2014-9">stepped down</a> in September last year, and was initially replaced Jenny Lawton. But after a few months Jaglom took over. He had previously worked for Stratasys, the massive 3D printing company that bought MakerBot for more than $400 million (£260 million) in 2013.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/south-koreans-tech-watching-people-eat-online-mukbang-2015-9">14-year-old makes up to $1,500 a night eating dinner in front of a webcam in South Korea</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="MwMDZkdzr7V54pSPAwMT1JU7p7MqmuY1" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The company that was supposed to take 3D printing to the masses has laid off a huge chunk of staff

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>LinkedIn</span></p><p class="caption">Zaid Ali Kahn at LinkedIn's flagship Oregon data center</p></div><p></p></div></div>In the shadow of its acquisition by Microsoft, LinkedIn has quietly begun talking about an internal project that has the potential to shake up the <a href="http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3482917">$171 billion data center hardware market</a>, </p><p>LinkedIn's plan is somewhat similar to what Facebook is doing with its Open Compute Project. OCP is creating brand new "open source" data center hardware where the engineers from different companies work together, and everyone freely shares the designs.</p><p>In its five years, OCP has upended the data center market and generated a <a href="http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3368517">cult-like following</a> so big, that when Apple forbade its networking team to join OCP, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ocp-project-caused-apple-networking-team-to-quit-2016-10">the whole team up and quit the same day</a>. </p><p>Likewise, LinkedIn is designing and building nearly all the pieces and parts of software and hardware that it needs for its data centers, poaching away key people from Facebook and Juniper to do it.</p><p>"We are not building servers and switches and all these things because we want to be good at it. We are doing it because we believe it gives us an advantage to control our own destiny," LinkedIn's Zaid Ali Kahn, senior director of infrastructure architecture and operations, told Business Insider.</p><p>This is a terrifying trend for vendors like Cisco and Juniper. In the past only the biggest internet companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook have gone this route: designing their own IT infrastructure from scratch.</p><p>LinkedIn isn't as big as those guys. It has a handful of data centers in California, Texas, and Virginia, most of them using leased space at a hosting provider, and only recently started designing and building its own in Singapore and Oregon. The one in Portland, Oregon, is its crown jewel, with the other data centers eventually also to be upgraded with the new technology.</p><p>Internally, this is known as <a href="https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2016/03/project-altair--the-evolution-of-linkedins-data-center-network">Project Altair</a> and the plan to build its own network software to run on dirt-cheap commodity network hardware <a href="https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2016/06/openswitch">known as Project Falco</a>.</p><h2>A super fast network for $1</h2><p>The story begins with a Facebook network hardware engineer named Yuval Bachar . He part of a Facebook team in 2013 that had a big goal: reducing the price of building a super high speed computer networks by 10-fold. Facebook had <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuvalbachar">stolen him from Cisco</a> and he did a stint at Juniper too. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiiLMtO9nW8">YouTube/@Scale</a></span></p><p class="caption">Yuval Bachar</p></div><p></p></div></div>He wanted to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/11g-100g-optics-story-change-yuval-bachar">pay $1 per gigabyte</a>, or $100 for each piece of network equipment that normally cost $2,500, and he publicly announced <a href="https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2016/01/getting-to-know-yuval-bachar">the goal it at an industry conference</a>.</p><p>He then went on to help Facebook build its industry-changing, <a href="https://code.facebook.com/posts/717010588413497/introducing-6-pack-the-first-open-hardware-modular-switch/">l0w-cost, and open source</a> Wedge switch that put market leader Cisco on notice. Earlier this month, Facebook announced <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ocp-project-caused-apple-networking-team-to-quit-2016-10">the second generation of that switch.</a></p><p>About the time Bachar announced his goal, the LinkedIn networking team was struggling with its own network, which wasn't handling the company's user growth very well.</p><p>"The Production Engineering Operations team found it very difficult to meet the demands of our applications when network routers and switches are beholden to commercial vendors, who are in control of features and fixing bugs," Kahn <a href="https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2016/06/openswitch">wrote in a blog post</a>.</p><p>In early 2015, the team began to build their own switch, called Pigeon, and in the fall, they hired Kahn away to help them do it. They began testing the switch early this year.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2016/02/falco-decoupling-switching-hardware-and-software-pigeon">LinkedIn</a></span></p><p class="caption">LinkedIn's Pigeon switch</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Deja-vu all over again</h2><p>In the meantime, having been a part of OCP, Bachar came up with a similar plan for LinkedIn. OCP started by creating a rack that holds stacks of computers, storage drives, and network switches.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://open19.org/">Open19.org</a></span></p><p class="caption">The Open19 rack</p></div><p></p></div></div>As a company grows, it simply adds more switches, servers and disk drives to the rack. But the racks themselves can be expensive, including all sorts of bells and whistles that LinkedIn didn't need.</p><p>Facebook had the same problem, and built for itself a stripped down 21-inch rack, then designed its own servers and storage to put in it.</p><p>But hardly anyone else uses a 21-inch rack. "Probably 99.5% [of companies] are using a 19-inch rack," Kahn tells us. That means for LinkedIn (or anyone else) to use Facebook's rack, it had to renegotiate supply deals with its vendors to get different sized gear.</p><p>So it was deja-vu all over again. Bachar led an initiative called Open 19 to create an open standard for a low-cost 19-inch rack. This rack can be stuffed with 96 servers for $50,000 total cost, saving $25 million across a 500-rack data center, <a href="http://open19.org/">the organization says. </a></p><p>Having seen the impact of OCP, vendors jumped on board, including some of the Chinese contract manufacturers that have made a killing supporting OCP. Hewlett-Packard <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">Enterprise</keyword>, which was late to OCP, is also a member.</p><h2>Full-steam ahead, no turning back </h2><p>Microsoft, which expects its $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn to close by the end of this year, is a member of OCP and has standardized on its 21-inch racks and other OCP technology.</p><p>Kahn wouldn't comment on the impact of acquisition but Microsoft has promised to let LinkedIn operate independently. A person with knowledge of the situation tells us, Projects Altair, Falco and Open19 are still full-steam ahead.</p><p>This person points to the fact that in September, three months after the merger was announced, the company hired <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhanks">Doug Hanks away from Juniper Networks.</a></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhanks">LinkedIn/Doug Hanks</a></span></p><p class="caption">Doug Hanks</p></div><p></p></div></div>Hanks was Juniper's director of product management and strategy and has written a number of books on Juniper's tech. He's now LinkedIn's director of engineering.</p><p>"Doug Hanks reports to me. He recently joined and we're delighted to have him," Kahn said.</p><p>"His focus is to build the network engineering team and take it to the next level and help executive a number of initiatives, understanding the blend between software and networking," he said.</p><p>Our source tells us that with Hanks on board, LinkedIn plans to be nearly fully reliant on its own home-grown network gear in 18 to 24 months and then "it's no turning back at that point."</p><p>Kahn insists that LinkedIn's goal differs from Facebook's. He's not looking to pick a public fight with the network industry led by Cisco.</p><p>In fact, he's still buying network gear from a number of commercial vendors, as long as they allow him to ditch their software so he can install his own, he said. </p><p>"A lot of vendors are open to that, to meet the needs of a web scale company," he said.</p><p>LinkedIn also hasn't fully committed to giving away all of its home grown infrastructure software, the designs of its switch, or other hardware like OCP does. But <span>Kahn</span> hasn't ruled out openly sharing its technology either  </p><p>"LinkedIn's culture is open source, so when the time is right we will be open to that," Kahn told us.</p><p>In fact, LinkedIn was a founding member in Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's open source project<a href="http://www.openswitch.net/"> called OpenSwitch</a>, to build a Linux-based switch. OpenSwitch is now run by the Linux Foundation (and word is that the initiative is floundering and LinkedIn is looking for alternatives). </p><p>Meanwhile LinkedIn has also been sharing <a href="https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2016/03/the-linkedin-data-center-100g-transformation">technical articles</a> about its network software. </p><h2>Big money at stake</h2><p>Internet companies using commercial network gear often spend $40 million to $140 million a year on it with vendors like Cisco, Arista, and others, one person who ran a large internet network recently told Business Insider.</p><p>Seeing a company LinkedIn's size roll their own, they could be encouraged to try that themselves.</p><p>One person not associated with LinkedIn, who built a huge data center for one of the world's largest tech companies, said that after his company starting building its own network equipment, it drove the costs down by a factor of 10: from $40,000 per Cisco switch to $4,000 per cheaper "commodity" switch capable of running home-grown software.</p><p>"Arista, Cisco, Juniper, they are all sh---ing themselves about this trend," said someone familiar with LinkedIn's project. "The big guys, Google, Amazon, Facebook, are all doing this for economies of scale. For them, it's all about money. It's cheaper to build their own. At LinkedIn, cost is not the No. 1 priority at all. They want to have complete control over the user experience, to own everything in the stack. Then they can standardize it."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/richest-village-china-mysterious-international-huaxi-2016-10">The richest village in China is one of the most mysterious places on earth </a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="13bjdrNjE6Tg8f368O5gQ13VZiJ-euV-" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

LinkedIn is working on a project that should terrify Cisco and the rest of the $175 billion hardware industry

<p><span class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><span><span data-post-image="" class="image"></span><p></p></span></span>Mark Zuckerberg is not a "programming prodigy" - that is the verdict of a discussion thread for programmers on the question-and-answer website <a href="https://www.quora.com/How-did-Mark-Zuckerberg-train-himself-to-be-a-programming-prodigy">Quora.</a></p>
<p>And Zuckerberg's peers don't place him in the uppermost tier of skilled coders, according to TopCoder, a site where coders improve and rank their skills. He's only in the third level.</p>
<p>Most people have a vague idea of the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was-founded-2010-3/we-can-talk-about-that-after-i-get-all-the-basic-functionality-up-tomorrow-night-1?IR=T">the story of Facebook's origin:</a> It was initially built by Zuckerberg in a week when he was a student at Harvard as a sort of revenge prank on the university after authorities there banned his "Facemash" web site, which let people compare and rate photos of other students based on their looks.</p>
<p>To people outside the software business, that story makes Zuck seem like a computer wizard - he created Facebook in a week!</p>
<p>In fact, Zuckerberg majored in psychology, not computer science, at Harvard. The initial version of "The Facebook" web site was not particularly sophisticated. And his peers in the business are ranked much more highly than he is as a coder. Zuckerberg's success has more to do with his personal persistence, hard work, a good idea and luck than it is Zuckerberg's coding prowess.</p>
<p>While he's clearly a skilled software engineer and incredibly talented businessman, he's not a "prodigy". The issue of Zuck's relative level of talent as a programmer came up when one Quora user asked&#xa0;<a href="https://www.quora.com/How-did-Mark-Zuckerberg-train-himself-to-be-a-programming-prodigy">how the Facebook CEO trained himself to be</a> a coding genius.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.topcoder.com/tc?cr=276132&amp;module=MemberProfile">One commentator in the Quora discussion cites TopCoder</a>, where hackers can get their skills rated.</p>
<p>Zuckerberg's profile on the site is at the "green" level, which is third tier of coding skills. Adam D'Angelo - the former CTO of Facebook who was pivotal in its creation - is in the top level, "red." (The ranking goes grey, green, blue, yellow, red).&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/in-new-alleged-ims-mark-zuckerberg-talks-about-adam-dangelo-2012-9#ixzz27CQZyU4x">In fact, it recently emerged Zuckerberg apparently wrote that his former colleague "taught him most of what he knows</a>".</p>
<p>David Roth is the Quora conversationalist who calls the question "flawed". Roth notes that Microsoft founder Paul Allen, who wrote the loader for Microsoft Basic for the Altair computer while flying to Albuquerque.</p>
<p>He adds: "Note that this was in 1975; there weren't laptops that you could take on a plane then. Allen was writing machine code on a piece of paper with a pencil, and he created a loader program that worked. That's pretty amazing."&#xa0;</p>
<p>He also talks about Margaret Hamilton: "She wrote the code for the Apollo space program. The sheer scope of that project and the hardware limitations she was dealing with are staggering.&#xa0; She had finished this code by the time she was 31."</p>
<p>Scores of others concur. One Quora user remarks: "<span>I don't think he is a programming prodigy. He was (and is) an ambitious, driven young guy who shipped the right product at the right time, got smart people to work for him from the start and learned to be the CEO of a big company. Not a small feat, but he didn't need to be a prodigy to achieve it."</span></p>
<p><span>As another of Quora's community adds: "<span>Zuckerberg is not a programming prodigy. The application he wrote was not unique, and not all that well-made - that is, not a brilliant, exemplary piece of programming. We can leave it to IT historians to come to a definitive answer for why he was so successful, but my belief is that he happened to strike on the right combin</span><span>ation of timing, marketing, and features in a fairly crowded space."</span></span></p>

The Worst-Kept Secret About Mark Zuckerberg Is That He's *Not* Actually A Coding Genius

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Weighing_of_the_heart3.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></p></div><p></p></div><em><strong>FA Insights is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that delivers the top news and commentary for financial advisors.</strong></em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/altair_060414.php"><strong>Clients Should Remember The Importance Of Investible Benchmarks</strong></a><strong> (Advisor Perspectives)</strong><a href="http://www.advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/altair_060414.php"> </a></p>
<p>Clients should look for "investable benchmarks" not just indexes that are frequently used as benchmarks, writes Jason M. Laurie of Altair Advisers in a new Advisor Perspectives column. "One of the most significant flaws is that indexes, not index funds, are widely used as benchmarks to compare performance," writes Laurie. </p>
<p>"That may seem like a distinction without a difference, but it is not. Indexes are theoretical; they represent a group of securities without any costs and free from all the practicalities of implementing a portfolio, whereas, index funds are the real thing. Not surprisingly, the performance of an actual index fund may differ considerably from that of the index benchmark it is attempting to replicate."</p>
<p>Laurie admits that picking such benchmarks isn't easy. "Choosing investable benchmarks requires an advisor to review all available funds and ETFs to find those that best mimic active strategies, but on a passive basis," he writes. "Benchmarks should be selected based on their historical performance, standard deviation, portfolio characteristics, fund size, liquidity and fees in order to find new benchmarks that most closely resemble their investment targets."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hedge-fund-compensation-for-pms-2014-6"><strong>Here's How Much The Average Money Manager At A Hedge Fund Made Last Year</strong></a><strong> (Institutional Investor's Alpha)</strong></p>
<p>Institutional Investor's Alpha is out with its annual hedge fund report which shows that compensation for hedge fund portfolio managers surged last year. Only 16 hedge funds outperformed the S&amp;P last year, which ended up 30%. "Fueled by fat bonuses, total compensation for senior portfolio managers rose 27.6 percent, to $1,465,468, according to the 2014 Hedge Fund Compensation Report by Institutional Investor's Alpha. Junior-level portfolio managers did even better, with their compensation surging 81.3 percent over 2012, to a mean of $887,717. "</p>
<p><a href="http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20140602/FREE/140609996"><strong>Investors Need To Look For Three Things In A Nontraditional Bond Fund Strategy</strong></a><strong> (Investment News)</strong><a href="http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20140602/FREE/140609996"> </a></p>
<p>Nontraditional bond funds, like unconstrained bond funds, are popular when interest rates are low. Unconstrained bond funds or 'go anywhere funds' allow managers to choose debt securities in the U.S. or abroad; government and corporate. Raman Srivastava, manager of the Dreyfus Opportunistic Fixed Income Fund, told Jeff Benjamin at Investment News, that the popularity of these funds is being "driven by a search for fixed income without the duration risk, as people look for a way to diversify against the main risk in fixed income."</p>
<p>"A key question for investors to be asking are how a portfolio manager intends to deliver the returns they've become accustomed to [in nontraditional bond funds]."</p>
<p>"In my opinion, there are three main things to look for in a strategy: It needs to be able to move tactically across all parts of fixed income. You have to be active. …Secondly, security selection will be much more important than in the past. …And finally, you have to have the right tools to be able to manage risk, because you have to be able to take risk up and down."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fa-mag.com/news/retirees-wish-they-had-waited-to-take-social-security-18193.html"><strong>A Large Number Of Retirees Wished They Had Waited To Collect Social Security Benefits</strong></a><strong> (FA Mag)</strong><a href="http://www.fa-mag.com/news/retirees-wish-they-had-waited-to-take-social-security-18193.html"> </a></p>
<p>38% of retirees surveyed by Nationwide Financial Retirement Institute said they wished they had waited longer before collecting their social security benefits. "Social Security can represent up to 40 percent of the total income the average worker receives throughout retirement and when and how to file are some of the most important financial decisions they make in their lifetimes," David Giertz of Nationwide Financial told FA Mag.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/socgen-10-year-equity-outlook-2014-6"><strong>SocGen: Here Comes A Decade Of Crummy Stock Market Returns</strong></a><strong> (Business Insider)</strong><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/socgen-10-year-equity-outlook-2014-6"> </a></p>
<p>Societe Generale's analysts updated their 10-year outlook for the global stock markets and they think investors should not expect the double-digit annual returns we've seen recently. "US equities face three headwinds: cyclically-adjusted valuations (CAPE, starting date 1881) have returned to very expensive territory, corporate margins stand at historically high levels, and after already five years of growth from the 2009 trough, we estimate that the probability of another recession kicking in is close to 100% within the forecast timeframe (the longest cycle ever was 120 months, or 10 years)," they write. </p>
<p>"But US equities have supports as well, such as impressively strong balance sheets and the beginning of a new M&amp;A cycle, backed by a highly reactive central bank." They project the S&amp;P 500 will get to 2,500 by 2024, which is about 3% growth per year.</p>

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