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Feed Google News Sci Tech: Discovery of an arsenic-friendly microbe refuted - USA TODAY (google.com)

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USA TODAY
Discovery of an arsenic-friendly microbe refuted
USA TODAY
The discovery of an arsenic-loving microbe that NASA said would rewrite biology textbooks and offered hope of life on other planets now looks like a case study in how science corrects its mistakes, researchers report. In findings released Sunday by the ...
Recommended: Two studies show 'weird life' microbe can't live on arsenicmsnbc.com
New studies nix report of arsenic-loving bacteriaSan Francisco Chronicle
Arsenic-loving bacteria? New studies contradict report of bugs that seemed to ... Washington Post

all 41 news articles

Hardware

Submission + - Samsung Samples First 16GB DDR4 Modules (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Samsung has begun sampling the industry’s first 16GB DDR4, registered dual inline memory modules (RDIMMs), designed for use in enterprise server systems. Employing new circuit architecture for computing systems, DDR4 technology boasts the highest performance among memory products available for today’s computing systems, which by next year will reach twice the current 1,600 megabits per second (Mbps) of DDR3 based modules. Also, by processing data far more efficiently at a mere 1.2 volts, Samsung’s DDR4 modules will reduce power consumption by approximately 40 percent compared to its predecessor DDR3 modules operating at 1.35V.

Submission + - Leap second on June 30th (cnet.com)

Submitted by knorthern knight
knorthern knight writes: The second used to be defined as 1/86,400 th of a 24-hour day. But ocean tides, pounding against shorelines, slow down earth's rotation, so that a day gets 1.4 milliseconds longer each century. This seems small, but it would affect scientific constants (speed of light, etc). Since 1967, the International System of Units (SI) has defined the second as the duration of 9192631770 cycles of radiation corresponding to the transition between two energy levels of the caesium-133 atom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock#Mechanism Every few years, a "leap second" is added as necessary, either on June 30th or December 31st. Enjoy that extra second of sleep.
Linux

Submission + - Nvidia loses huge order due to binary blob (phoronix.com)

Submitted by
David Gerard
David Gerard writes: "Phoronix reports: The Chinese, who also developed the Loongson MIPS CPU, were looking to order at least ten million graphics processors. The problem is that the GeForce/Quadro driver from NVIDIA is only available for Linux x86 and x86_64 architectures, not MIPS or even ARM (only the Tegra driver is for ARMv7). NVIDIA refused to release the source-code to their high-performance feature-complete cross-platform driver to the Chinese, and it would cost them millions of dollars to port the code-base, so they went to AMD for their GPU order."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Word Rage (hpcoders.com.au) 8

Submitted by HighPerformanceCoder
HighPerformanceCoder writes: Way back in the dim distant past (well, the 1980s, for those who remember), whilst a PhD student of theoretical physics, I noticed a distemper amongst my colleagues attempting to write their theses using a word processor. It involved much swearing and cursing at the computer, slamming of doors, and running full tilt down the corridor screaming at the top of one’s lungs.

What prompted me into writing this is that one would have expected that with two decades of computer development in both software and hardware (with the hardware being 10,000 more powerful now than when I wrote my thesis), this condition of “Word rage” would be a thing of the past. Not so. My son recently was writing up a report on his school science assignment. This was no book! It was around 30 pages, and yes, had quite a few figures and tables, but I found him swearing at the computer, complaining of Word “crashing and running slowly” in an eerily similar way I noticed my PhD colleagues do all those years ago.

We need a word for this phenomenon.
Python

Submission + - paste.pocoo.org shut down (pocoo.org)

Submitted by
DangerOnTheRanger
DangerOnTheRanger writes: "Well-known paste site LodgeIt (aka paste.pocoo.org) has shut down. According to the website (the paste submission form has been removed), the pastebin was shut down because "it turns out, running a pastebin is a horrible idea if you don't do entry expiration or spam filtering" and that the site administrators "found that some people were using the pastebin to distribute highly illegal content."

Apparently, none of the pastes are viewable anymore — all paste URLs redirect to a page detailing why the site shut down."

Submission + - Plummeting BDP on High Speed Lines

Submitted by Lawrence_Bird
Lawrence_Bird writes: In trying to track down a tcp problem today I've stumbled upon what seems to be a nasty little issue — incredibly low ping times!

I have a 25Mbps line and in checking RTT to places I frequent, I found that the times are tanking. Not that long ago, a fast link was like 60ms with most around 90-120ms, twice that overseas. Now many are coming in the 45-80ms range. But quite a few others, like youtube (6ms) google (7.5ms), apple (15ms) cbs.com (20ms) slashdot (30ms) , are a lot shorter.

This presents a very difficult problem. How to best tune RWIN? The rule of thumb had been to make rwin just greater than your typical BDP and most information on the topic is written at a time when high speed lines were starting to appear but latency was still high (>100ms). But now we have a situation where yes, rated speeds are high, but latency has dived to next to nothing for major internet sites but may still be high(er) elsewhere creating not a 2 or 3 to 1 range of RTTs but instead as high as 25 or 30x!

To optimize for google would require setting it to under 24,000 bytes. In fact, any average ping time below 48ms will (I think) saturate if RWIN is over 65,535 (the point at which scaling would take over). Yet there are still a goodly number of places that are over 80ms (say stanford.edu) and of course europe and asia can be 200ms.

So I am curious what others are doing to tune RWIN to provide the necessary throughput on the longer latency runs against these now incredibly short pings

Submission + - Ancient Female Genitalia Carving Could Be Older Than Cave Of Forgotten Dreams'

Submitted by oxide7
oxide7 writes: A one-and-a-half metric ton slab of limestone found at the Abri Castanet site in southwestern France is speckled with tool marks and carvings — including one of female genitalia — that could be the oldest wall art ever discovered. a team of American and French anthropologists say the carvings on the slab, which once formed part of the roof of a rock outcropping that ancient humans used for shelter, appear to have been created about 37,000 years ago.
Space

Submission + - Beamed Core Antimatter Propulsion: Engine Design and Optimization (arxiv.org)

Submitted by Ashenkase
Ashenkase writes: A conceptual design for beamed core antimatter propulsion is reported, where electrically charged annihilation products directly generate thrust after being deflected and collimated by a magnetic nozzle. Simulations were carried out using the Geant4 (Geometry and tracking) software toolkit released by the CERN accelerator laboratory for Monte Carlo simulation of the interaction of particles with matter and fields. Geant permits a more sophisticated and comprehensive design and optimization of antimatter engines than the software environment for simulations reported by prior researchers. The main finding is that effective exhaust speeds Ve ~ 0.69c (where c is the speed of light) are feasible for charged pions in beamed core propulsion, a major improvement over the Ve ~ 0.33c estimate based on prior simulations.

Submission + - 3D-Printed Circuit Boards, for solder-free printable electronics (instructables.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Check out the latest success of the OpenSCAD 3d-printed electronics library: https://github.com/CarryTheWhat/3D-PCB

To use it, you just need a 3D printer and some conductive thread. OpenSCAD generates a component holder, and conductive thread wraps it all together — no solder, no etching chemicals, no sending out for anything.

The instructable takes you through all the steps from schematic to circuit, and includes a more useful example: the fully printed LED flashlight:
http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Circuit-Boards-for-solder-free-printab/
Hardware

Submission + - Former MakerBot COO creates the world's first $500 3D printer (geek.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: At first glance Sam Cervantes and his latest invention may seem questionable, but after spending some time talking with him I’m sure what he’s showing off is legit. Cervantes and his team are working on the first $500 3D printer, a device known as the Solidoodle. At the risk of sounding cliche, what you’re witnessing in the video is truly game-changing; the Solidoodle is a significant step towards making 3D printing accessible to the average consumer.
Hardware

Submission + - Open Compute Developing Wider Rack Standard (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by 1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: Are you ready for wider servers? The Open Compute Project today shared details on Open Rack, a new standard for hyperscale data centers, which will feature 21-inch server slots, rather than the traditional 19 inches. "We are ditching the 19-inch rack standard," said Facebook's Frank Frankovsky, who said the wider design offered better heat removal and a unified approach to power, including a 12 volt busbar. The Open Compute Project, developed by Facebook to advance open source hardware design, believes an open approach can avoid the mistakes of blade server chassis design.
Science

Submission + - Serendipitous Discovery Of Assay For Lab Cell Contamination (acs.org)

Submitted by LilaG
LilaG writes: Mycoplasmas are the smallest organisms known, tiny bacteria that most antibiotics don't kill. They also are a worrisome laboratory contaminant, infecting an estimated 15-70 percent of all mammalian cell cultures. They can change cell behavior, making healthy cells look cancerous, or otherwise mucking up research results. Now researchers at Harvard Medical School have made the most of an accidental contamination: they've developed a glowing assay for mycoplasmas.

They did by noticing that an assay for tumor growth gave inconsistent results across cell lines, and realizing the cause was mycoplasma growth in some of their cells. The same assay, an enzyme called Gaussia luciferase, can detect even very low concentrations of mycoplasmas.
Databases

Submission + - Critical Vuln Found In All Current Oracle DB Servers (threatpost.com)

Submitted by
chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: "There's a critical remotely exploitable vulnerability in all of the current versions of the Oracle database server that can enable an attacker to intercept traffic and execute arbitrary commands on the server. The bug, which Oracle reported as fixed in the most recent Critical Patch Update, is only fixed in upcoming versions of the database, not in currently shipping releases, and there is publicly available proof-of-concept exploit code circulating.

The vulnerability lies in the TNS Listener service, which on Oracle databases functions as the service that routes connection requests from clients to the server itself. A researcher named Joxean Koret said that he discovered the vulnerability several years ago and then sold the details of the bug to a third party broker, who reported it to Oracle in 2008. Oracle credited Koret for reporting the bug in its April CPU, but Koret said in a post on the Full Disclosure mailing list this week that the flaw was not actually fixed in the current versions of the Oracle database server."

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