Amazon EC2 Container Service (Amazon ECS) now supports automated cleanup of stopped tasks and Docker images that are not being used by any tasks on your container instances.

We are pleased to announce that you can now use the AWS Schema Conversion Tool to copy your existing database schema from a legacy database to a new database on EC2 or RDS for homogeneous replications. The conversion engine has also been enhanced to offer even more automated conversions should you wish to switch from a commercial database to a cloud-native, open-source solution.

AWS Config launched 8 new managed rules that automatically evaluate the configuration of important AWS resources:

1. IAM Password Policy: Checks whether the password policy for IAM Users meets the specified criteria. This rule codifies best practices, and you can further strengthen the policy.
2. RDS encryption: Checks whether storage encryption is enabled for your RDS DB Instances. Optionally, you can specify the KMS Key ID that should be used.
3. RDS Multi-AZ: Checks whether high availability is enabled for your RDS DB Instances.
4. RDS Backup: Checks whether RDS DB Instances have backups enabled. You can also check for expected backup windows and retention policies.
5. EBS Optimized EC2 Instances: Checks whether EBS optimization is enabled for EC2 Instance types that can be EBS optimized. This rule ensures best I/O performance for EBS volumes attached to these instances.
6. EC2 Instance Type: Checks whether EC2 Instances are of the specified set of types. For example, all EC2 Instances must be of type t2.small or m4.large.
7. Approved AMIs by ID: Checks whether running EC2 Instances are using the approved set of AMI IDs.
8. Approved AMIs by Tag: Checks whether running EC2 Instances are using the set of AMIs specified by Tag key/value on these AMIs.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond is to invest £220 million in technology funding to protect the UK’s fledgling technology companies. The Chancellor will announce rhe initiative in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham later this morning. £120 million of the total £220 million will be spent to encourage universities to collaborate …

Read full article: £220m for UK tech, says Hammond

Many of you will be familiar with RJ45 Cables in the Cat 5e & Cat 6 formats they are pretty much commonplace with anyone that has an office network or broadband router at hom

Read full article: Only Connect: A guide to Cat 5e & Cat 6 Ethernet Testing

Imperial College spin-out DNA Electronics is to get $51.9m from the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to develop a sequencing techniques for anti-microbial resistant infections and influenza through a projects called PISCES. PISCES (pathogen identification from specimen, via capture extraction and sequencing) involves development and validation of DNAe’s test platform, branded Genalysis, and support …

Read full article: US pays Imperial spin-out $52m for research

Just imagine being a Motorola Semiconductor employee 13 years ago. First you’d have suffered the 2003 re-org prior to being spun-off as Freescale; Then the re-org prior to the 2004 IPO; Then the re-org after the 2006 buy-out by private equity firm Blackstone; Then the re-org preparing for the 2011 IPO; Then the re-org after …

Read full article: Re-Org Vet

The Pet Cube is a 4-inch cube that allows you to remotely see, communicate and play with your pet when you’re away from home.

Read full article: Pet Cube lets you play with your pet remotely

TI has introduced a power management IC for DDR2, DDR3 and DDR3L memory subsystems in automotive and industrial applications. The TPS54116-Q1 DC/DC buck converter is a 2.95-V to 6-V input, 4-A synchronous step-down converter with a 1-A peak sink/source DDR termination and buffered reference that reduces system size by up to 50 percent compared to …

Read full article: TI’s highly integrated DDR power management IC

Analog Devices has announced a pair of three-axis MEMS accelerometers intended to detect structural defects via wireless sensor networks. “The low noise of ADXL354 (analogue out) and ADXL355 (digital out) with low power consumption makes it now possible enable low-level vibration measurement applications such as structural health monitoring,” said the firm. Claimed noise density is 25µgravity/√Hz  – the analogue …

Read full article: Accelerometers measure the health of buildings