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Submission + - Why Don't Open Source Databases Use GPUs? (gatech.edu) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A recent paper from Georgia Tech describes a system than can run the complete TPC-H benchmark suite on an NVIDIA Titan card, at a 7x speedup over a commercial database running on a 32-core Amazon EC2 node, and a 68x speedup over a single core Xeon. A previous story described an MIT project that achieved similar speedups.

There has been a steady trickle of work on GPU-accelerated database systems for several years, but it doesn't seem like any code has made it into Open Source databases like MonetDB, MySQL, CouchDB, etc. Why not? Many queries that I write are simpler than TPC-H, so what's holding them back?

Submission + - Samsung Galaxy S4 Security Vulnurability (bgu.ac.il)

Submitted by olsmeister
olsmeister writes: The Samsung KNOX enterprise security system (presumably a play on Ft Knox, the location of the United States Bullion Depository) contains a security vulnurability that could put both personal and business data at risk. This is according to a discovery by a Ph.D. student at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. This is the security system used in Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4 phone, which Samsung hopes will allow it to compete with BlackBerry in government and enterprise applications. The flaw could allow attackers to access secure data, as well as load malicious applications.

Submission + - Nest Learning Thermostat And The Peril Of Automated Software Updates

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: The Nest Learning Thermostat is a very clever, albeit expensive device. Hook it up to your furnace or air conditioner, and not only does it learn what temperatures you like, but it also connects to your home or office WiFi network. That lets you monitor and control it remotely from a browser or mobile device. If you have multiple Nest devices, they will talk to each other. What the Nest definitely can do, however, is fail http://sdt.bz/67490 if the company pushes out a buggy software update, which happened in late November. The Nest 4.0 firmware http://support.nest.com/article/What-s-new-in-the-Nest-Thermostat-s-4-0-software-update apparently caused some number of Nest devices to go offline, leaving folks without heating or cooling.

Submission + - Fedora 20 released (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora 20, code named Heisenbug. Fedora 20 is dedicated to Seth Vidal the lead developer of Yum and the Fedora update repository who recently died in a road accident. Gnome is the default DE of Fedora, and so it is for Fedora 20. However unlike Ubuntu (where they had to create different distros for each DE) Fedora comes with KDE, XFCE, LXDE and MATE. You can install the DE of your choice on top of base Fedora.

Submission + - Civet poop coffee may be threatening wildlife (mongabay.com)

Submitted by Damien1972
Damien1972 writes: Popularization of the world's strangest coffee may be imperiling a a suite of small mammals in Indonesia, according to a new study in Small Carnivore Conservation. The coffee, known as kopi luwak (kopi for coffee and luwak for the civet), is made from whole coffee beans that have passed through the gut of the animal. The coffee is apparently noted for its distinct taste, though some have argued it is little more than novelty. Now, this burgeoning kopi luwak industry is creating "civet farms," whereby civets are captured from the wild and kept in cages to eat and crap out coffee beans.

Submission + - Amazon Patents Strange New Lightweight, Transparent Kindle

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Amazon's just filed a patent about a lightweight, transparent Kindle technology that can also be embedded in your eyeglasses or your car windshield — and which never needs to be recharged. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is listed on the patent as a co-inventor of the technology, which converts the handheld Kindle devices into simplified display mechanisms receiving data and electricity from a larger, more powerful central station. This would allow Amazon to create much lighter and cheaper devices, notes one Kindle blog, speculating that Kindles could become not just lighter than paper, but disappearing altogether into other devices, "leaving nothing behind but the words from your ebooks."

Submission + - Opera Confirms It Will Follow Google And Ditch WebKit For Blink

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google on Wednesday made a huge announcement to fork WebKit and build a new rendering engine called Blink. Opera, which only recently decided to replace its own Presto rendering engine for WebKit, has confirmed with TNW that it will be following suit. "When we announced the move away from Presto, we announced that we are going with the Chromium package, and the forking and name change have little practical influence on the Opera browsers. So yes, your understanding is correct," an Opera spokesperson told TNW. This will affect both desktop and mobile versions of Opera the spokesperson further confirmed.

Submission + - Mozilla And Samsung Are Building A New Multi-Core Browser Engine For Android

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla and Samsung on Wednesday announced a new partnership to build a "next generation" web browser engine called Servo. The ultimate goal is to bring the technology to Android and ARM, though the two companies have not shared a timeframe for a possible launch.

With the help of Samsung, Mozilla is bringing both the Rust programming language as well as Servo to Android and ARM. Samsung's contribution so far has been an ARM backend to Rust as well as the build infrastructure necessary to cross-compile to Android. In fact, the code is available now on GitHub, as is the source for Rust and Servo.

Submission + - Over 8000 five star bloatware reviews

Submitted by PuZZleDucK
PuZZleDucK writes: In a virtual Flash mob the shackled users of Samsungs Samsung Push Service have rebelled and swamped the Google App Store with a hilarious array of four and five star reviews. A few choice cuts:

Bryan Steenerson(*****): Money tree awesomeness!!! Before downloading this app I always had to tell my family that money didn't grow on trees. Now it does!!!! Thanks Samsung!!!!

M.Scott Drummond(*****): My Two Senses. No, I didn't make a mistakes in my title. This newest update gave me two new senses. Having the normal five senses was good but now having seven I now know that I was crippled and my life will never be the same again. Thanks Samsung!

Michael Rubin(*****): Attained Jedi Powers As soon as I installed this update, I attained Jedi powers. I can now move objects with my mind, have cat like reflexes, and can see into the future. Thanks Samsung!

but, my favourites are the disappointed 4 star reviews:

Nicolas Brown(**** ): A little disappointed. I thought this app would give it all to me; money, women, powe, and talent. After using this app, I only recieved power and talent. Fix the other two, and I will give five stars!

Comment Try XoticPC (Score 1) 570

by mike.rimov (#42828695) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Buying a Laptop That Doesn't Have Windows 8

Xotic PC has quite a few good laptops and a ton of customization options. I've purchased several laptops for myself, my wife, and my customers through them. The one big warning I would say about them is do NOT order them if you are in a hurry. They do take time to build and ship if you get customization options, and they don't seem to carry a large supply of their parts on hand. (Don't blame them for inventory tax $)

Other than that, they're always super friendly to deal with and I always get my laptop just the way I want it.

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