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Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How do you store a half-petabyte of data? And back it up?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My workplace has recently had two internal groups step forward with a request for almost a half-petabyte of disk to store data. The first is a research project that will computationally analyze a quarter petabyte of data in 100-200MB blobs. The second is looking to archive an ever increasing amount of mixed media. Buying a SAN large enough for these tasks is easy, but how do you present it back to the clients? And how do you back it up?

Both projects have expressed a preference in a single human-navigable directory tree. The solution should involve clustered servers providing the connectivity between storage and client so that there is no system downtime. Many SAN solutions have a maximum volume limit of only 16TB, which means some sort of volume concatenation or spanning would be required, but is that recommended?

Is anyone out there managing gigantic storage needs like this? How did you do it? What worked, what failed, and what would you do differently?

Thanks!

Submission + - Showgoers Brings Circa-1985 Bill Gates 'Virtual Dates' to Netflix

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In their 1992 book Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry — and Made Himself the Richest Man in America, Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews described how Bill Gates and then-girlfriend Ann Winblad conducted a long-distance romance in the mid-eighties: "In a paroxysm of high-tech romanticism, the two would even have 'virtual dates': They would go to the same movie simultaneously in different cities, and discuss it on their car phones on their way to and from the theater." That was then. This is now. "Showgoers is a Chrome browser extension [public beta] to synchronize your Netflix player with someone else so that you can co-watch the same movie on different computers with no hassle. When using Showgoers, clicking play/pause or seeking to a specific spot in the movie will now send out a ping that causes your friend's browser to do the same thing. With your Netflix players automatically synced, you can focus on just sharing the experience together without hassle."

Submission + - Researchers Claim to Have Developed Faster, More Secure Tor

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and University College London published a paper this week describing a faster and more secure version of Tor called HORNET. On one hand, the new onion routing network can purportedly achieve speeds of up to 93 gigabits per second and "be scaled to support large numbers of users with minimal overhead". On the other hand, researchers cannot claim to be immune to "confirmation attacks" known to be implemented on Tor, but they point out that, given how HORNET works, perpetrators of such attacks would have to control significantly more ISPs across multiple geopolitical boundaries and probably sacrifice the secrecy of their operations in order to successfully deploy such attacks on HORNET.

Submission + - Nanostructured Glass Can Switch Between Blocking Heat and Blocking Light (ieee.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Electrochromic glass essentially uses electric charge to switch a window from allowing sunlight in to blocking it out. Some have estimated that such "smart windows" could cut lighting needs by about 20 percent and the cooling load by 25 percent at peak times.

Now researchers at the University of Texas Austin have found a way to make them even better. They developed a novel nanostructure architecture for electrochromic materials that enables a highly selective cool mode and warm mode-something thought to be impossible a few years back.

Submission + - SOLVING THE BLOOD SHORTAGE BY draining the dead? (realclearscience.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Roughly 15 million pints of blood are donated each year by approximately 9.2 million individuals. Over the course of the same year, about 2.6 million Americans will — sadly — pass away. If hospitals were to harvest the blood from a third of those people, roughly 4.5 million liters would be added to the reservoir. . . . Draining the blood from a body is hardly out of the ordinary; it's actually a regular part of the embalming process. To prepare a dead body for funeral services and eventual burial or cremation, morticians pump out all of the blood and interstitial fluids and replace them with an embalming solution, typically containing formaldehyde and methanol. Would it not make more sense to remove the blood at the hospital soon after death, rather than let it all go to waste?

Submission + - Apple Yanks Nest From Stores in Favor of Fussy HomeKit (programmableweb.com)

Submitted by linkchaos
linkchaos writes: Late Thursday, news broke that Apple had fully removed Nest products from its retail stores and website. Nest, now owned by Google, includes the Nest camera, thermostat and smoke detector. All three are connected devices for the home that can be controlled via smartphone apps. We're talking about the Internet of Things here, folks, and Nest's products have been popular as long as they've been in the market.

Submission + - Augmented Reality: Hard Problems of Law and Policy (ssrn.com)

Submitted by UWLawWeb
UWLawWeb writes: An interdisciplinary team of technologists and legal experts examined Augmented Reality (AR) to understand the unique problems presented by AR. In particular they looked at AR’s ability to sense information (input) as well as overlay (output) and how it relates to legal issues surrounding First Amendment issues and the rights to privacy and public information.

“Particular implementations of AR strain prevailing conceptions of privacy and free speech, and
have the potential to compromise the user by overlaying information on the world that is erroneous,
dangerous, or legally problematic.”

Submission + - Eye drops could dissolve cataracts

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As Slashdot readers age, more and more will be facing surgery for cataracts. The lack of cataract surgery in much of the world, is a major cause of blindness. Researchers at University of California San Diego have identified lanosterol as a key molecule in the prevention of cataract formation that points to a novel strategy for cataract prevention and non-surgical treatment.
The abstract is freely available from Nature. If you have cataracts, you might want to purchase a full reprint while you can still read it.

Comment Re:A more complete summary of the situation (Score 2) 581

by jargonburn (#50116745) Attached to: Reddit CEO: Site Is 'Not a Bastion of Free Speech,' Change Coming

The CEO states that "Neither Alexis nor I created reddit to be a bastion of free speech, but rather as a place where open and honest discussion can happen."

[not] a bastion of free speech, but...open and honest discussion

Wow! Steve's gonna want some Tylenol after all the cognitive dissonance!

Comment Re:Why would a license plate point to a person (Score 1) 131

I will quote my own post, tasteless as that is:

I'll try not to get bogged down by the nitty-gritty

I'm not trying to argue that people don't break the law; however, as a sweeping general statement, could agree that actions that are not unlawful are more likely to be performed by the majority of people than actions that are unlawful?

The reason I think it's important to at least try to maintain privacy with regards to license plates is that they are a matter of public record and, more to the point, we've instated rules that make it much easier to make that identification STICK. This contrasts with IP addresses, which are not a "public record" and the sharing of which is socially acceptable (or in many cases even encouraged)!

Comment Re:Why would a license plate point to a person (Score 1) 131

That sounds like the car equivalent of a geek with a cantenna...or just a charged laptop.

First, taking someone's license plate isn't sharing it. Literally. They can't use it at the same time as you. However, I'll try not to get bogged down by the nitty-gritty; instead, here's the difference, as I see it: sharing (duplicating and using) your license plate with another vehicle at the same time is unlawful. Sharing your internet connection ISN'T unlawful, though possibly unwise.

Comment Re:Why would a license plate point to a person (Score 4, Insightful) 131

...when an IP address does not?

Because multiple cars don't share the same license plate. Besides, even if it's just multiple drivers sharing one car (analogous to multiple users on one computer), the "owner" of the car should only be punished incidentally for crimes/violations committed by other people driving the car.

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