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Submission + - Consumer-grade SSDs survive two petabytes of writes

Submitted by crookedvulture
crookedvulture writes: The SSD Endurance Experiment previously covered on Slashdot has reached another big milestone: two freaking petabytes of writes. That's an astounding total for consumer-grade drives rated to survive no more than a few hundred terabytes. Only two of the initial six subjects made it to 2PB. The Kingston HyperX 3K, Intel 335 Series, and Samsung 840 Series expired on the road to 1PB, while the Corsair Neutron GTX faltered at 1.2PB. The Samsung 840 Pro continues despite logging thousands of reallocated sectors. It has remained completely error-free throughout the experiment, unlike a second HyperX, which has suffered a couple of uncorrectable errors. The second HyperX is mostly intact otherwise, though its built-in compression tech has reduced the 2PB of host writes to just 1.4PB of flash writes. Even accounting for compression, the flash in the second HyperX has proven to be far more robust than in the first. That difference highlights the impact normal manufacturing variances can have on flash wear. It also illustrates why the experiment's sample size is too small to draw definitive conclusions about the durability of specific models. However, the fact that all the drives far exceeded their endurance specifications bodes well for the endurance of consumer-grade SSDs in general.

Submission + - Microsoft, B&N dissolve Nook marriage for $62 million (blogspot.com)

Submitted by taha007
taha007 writes: The joint venture between Microsoft and Barnes & Noble to revive the ailing Nook Media business has gone awry.

The companies announced via a regulatory filing on Thursday that Nook Media — the corporation jointly owned by Microsoft and B&N — has agreed to buy out the Windows maker's shares for $62.4 million in cash and 2.7 million shares of B&N common stock. In addition, all ties between the companies in Nook Media, including contractual obligations, commercial agreements, and international content acquisition, have been revoked.

Microsoft and B&N announced their partnership and the formation of a new corporation in 2012, under which the software giant invested $300 million for a 17.6 percent equity stake in the company, which was valued at $1.7 billion overall. While the companies did not on Thursday say the size of the stake Microsoft currently holds — shares could have been sold or transferred over the last two years that would modify equity percentages — the relatively small amount of cash that Nook Media is paying to get Microsoft out of the equation suggests that the company is not worth all that much.

The partnership between the companies was designed to help B&N offload some of its Nook business, namely its digital and college divisions within the Nook division, from its main operations. It also provided Microsoft an opportunity to break into what was then a major growth area in the industry and potentially profit from the partnership.

However, over the last two years, the Nook business has faltered and B&N has gotten out of the hardware business entirely, relying on a partnership with Samsung to offer new products. In an earnings report on Thursday, B&N revealed that its Nook business saw revenue fall 41.3 percent year over year to $63.9 million during its fiscal second quarter that ended November 1 . The division's operating loss stood at $37.6 million.

B&N said Thursday that it expects the separation to be complete by the end of August.

Neither Barnes & Noble nor Microsoft immediately responded to a request for comment on the announcement.

Submission + - This Circulator Could Double The Wifi And Cellular Bandwidth (gizmorati.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A group of engineers at University of Texas, Austin has claimed to have solved this problem through the creative use of a circulator. It is a fundamentally different solution and a hardware based solution— in that instance, a startup founded by Stanford graduates, Kumu Networks, had developed a software algorithm that allows for simultaneous transmission and reception by predicting how environmental factors will alter data transmission.

Submission + - Apple Cofounder: The Famous Apple Startup Garage Is a Myth

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: When thinking about the early days of Apple, most people who know even a little bit about the company probably picture Steve Jobs and cofounder Steve Wozniak busily brainstorming in a small garage in Silicon Valley. That's how the story goes — in fact, the garage where they famously started the company was even deemed a historical site last year. Wozniak, however, doesn't really see that location as a crucial part of Apple's history. "The garage is a bit of a myth," he told Bloomberg Businessweek's Brandon Lisy when asked whether the garage was important to Apple's story. "We did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no manufacturing there." The garage served as a familiar location for him and Jobs in the early days, Wozniak said, but that's about it. "The garage didn't service much purpose, except it was something for us to feel was our home," he said. "We had no money. You have to work out of your home when you have no money."

Submission + - Most planets in the Universe are homeless

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: We like to think of our Solar System as typical: a central star with a number of planets — some gas giants and some rocky worlds — in orbit around it. Yes, there's some variety, with binary or trinary star systems and huge variance in the masses of the central star being common ones, but from a planetary point of view, our Solar System is a rarity. Even though there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy for planets to orbit, there are most likely around a quadrillion planets in our galaxy, total, with only a few trillion of them orbiting stars at most. Now that we've finally detected the first of these, we have an excellent idea that this picture is the correct one: most planets in the Universe are homeless. Now, thank your lucky star!

Submission + - Is Geometric Algebra finally adopted in STEM curricula? (wavewatching.net)

Submitted by quax
quax writes: It has been over a century that William Kingdon Clifford developed Geometric Algebra. Yet due to his untimely death it was quickly forgotten, only to be partially reinvented when Dirac tackled relativistic quantum mechanics and introduced spinors. But geometric algebra is much more versatile than that, for instance it makes for a better alternative to vector calculus, combining div and curl operators and doing away with the cross-product in favor of bivectors. It is such a straightforward unification of otherwise, disparate mathematical techniques that I very much regret that my physics curriculum twenty years ago didn't cover it. Has this changed? Have you encountered geometric algebra in an undergraduate program?

Comment Re:Is the embargo really affecting them? (Score 1) 540

by Saija (#47880521) Attached to: Cuba Calculates Cost of 54yr US Embargo At $1.1 Trillion
Man I also was in Cuba earlier this year, coming from a south america country I felt my country was doing way better than them, I felt trapped on some kind of 1950's time machine.
The distribution centers where the goverment gives food and commodities(toilet paper and soap) to the people shock me since here in my country we have to work and get our thingies for ourselves.

Submission + - Physicists Prove Surprising Rule of Threes (simonsfoundation.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: More than 40 years after a Soviet nuclear physicist proposed an outlandish theory that trios of particles can arrange themselves in an infinite nesting-doll configuration, experimentalists have reported strong evidence that this bizarre state of matter is real.

Submission + - LogMeIn Free no longer be available, only paid for options available. (logmeinrescue.com)

Submitted by SolarAxix
SolarAxix writes: From the forum post: "LogMeIn Free will no longer be available starting January 21, 2014. We will begin gradually migrating users of LogMeIn and Ignition-branded remote access offerings to a paid-only account-level subscription of LogMeIn Pro."

"...In order to continue using remote access, you will need to purchase an account-level subscription of LogMeIn Pro."

If you've been using the free version, it looks like you don't have access to any of your systems anymore (other than getting a trial license) and have to purchase a license if you want to keep using it. It looks like it's time to look for an alternative free solutions for those of us who were using it to help friends and family members and manage our own systems.

Submission + - 25 worst passwords of 2013 (wtop.com) 1

Submitted by ddelmonte
ddelmonte writes: The Washington Post (Neal Augenstein), is reporting on the wort passwords used in 2013 according to SplashData. There is also a link in the article to the top 100 passwords used in the Adobe heist. Mr. Augenstein concludes that people are more concerned about remembering their passwords than having them as difficult for "crooks to infiltrate" .

Submission + - Candy Crush Saga Has Trademarked the Word 'Candy' (forbes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: King.com, owners of Candy Crush, have received a U.S. trademark on the use of the word "candy" in games and clothing. Forbes thinks it is overly broad. "One would think Hasbro, the maker of that venerable children's board game (which does have video game versions) Candy Land, would already have this trademark sewed up."

Submission + - LogMeIn to discontinue free access with 1 day notice despite $190m in revenue (logmein.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The remote desktop service "LogMeIn" sent an email to its users today notifying them that "LogMeIn Free" will be discontinued — as of today. This is a major shock with minimal warning to the millions of users who have come to rely on their service made all the more surprising by the fact that "consensus revenue estimates for LogMeIn in 2014 are $190.3 million", suggesting that their system of providing both free and paid accounts for what is ultimately a straightforward service that could be duplicated for well under $1 million was already doing quite well.

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