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Submission + - Modern Supercomputers Have Just Hit the End of Another Architectural Era (theplatform.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There has been a steady climb toward accelerators for top-ranked machines, but with the self-hosted model of the upcoming Knights Landing architecture, this offload model and the bottleneck of data movement between the GPU and other elements, will likely go away. The OpenPower efforts of IBM and Nvidia to use NVlink to speed that communication will be put to the test with the Power9 based systems coming to other centers in the next couple of years, including the future 150-petaflop “Sierra” machine coming to Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, but Gara says that these are still using what amounts to an offload model in that data has to be pushed between multiple components.

It is not clear how the Top 500 folks will choose to classify systems that have a GPU that is part of the compute since the accelerators classification generally just refers to a coprocessor that sits across a bus. The main question, however, is how long it will take for this classification to disappear entirely. As it stands, the new top-tier systems that will start to come online, possibly for the November rankings, will sport Knights Landing, wherein the accelerator is not a discrete unit. Gara says the shift away from the offload model is already starting to happen, and will continue with the introduction of Knights Landing into the full HPC market (right now just the national labs—at least as far we know) are part of the early access program for these chips.

Submission + - How Sony & Universal Lobbied For Copyright Reform to Stop Cheap Beatles Reco (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Canadian government's surprise decision to include copyright term extension for sound recordings and performances in this week's budget is being painted by the music industry as important for Canadian artists. But Michael Geist reports that the real reason is lobbying from foreign record labels such as Universal Music and Sony Music, who were increasingly concerned with the appearance of public domain records from artists such as the Beatles appearing on store shelves in Canada.

Submission + - Comcast & Time Warner merger died

Submitted by andyring
andyring writes: According to Bloomberg News, the Time Warner/Comcast merger of raw evil is dead. Comcast plans as early as tomorrow to withdraw the merger proposal, "after regulators decided that the deal wouldn’t help consumers, making approval unlikely" according to the story.

Comment Re:Hello, I want the history of your phone calls (Score 1) 78

by NotInHere (#49535473) Attached to: Facebook's "Hello" Tells You Who's Calling Before You Pick Up

This page doesn't include reading the call history: https://www.facebook.com/help/...
However, the call history appears in the play store appearance of the main facebook app. I'm not sure whether this has been newly added, and they have to refresh that page, or they just don't list it in that page.

Submission + - Official: AdBlock is legal. (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by gbjbaanb
gbjbaanb writes: The creator of software that stops adverts from appearing on websites has defeated two news publishers that want to prevent its tech being used on their pages.

The owners of Germany's Die Zeit and Handelsblatt had claimed that AdBlock Plus's product was anti-competitive and threatened their ability to make money.

But a court in Hamburg ruled that users do have the right to use the plug-in.

Comment Re:Cautionary Tale? (Score 4, Interesting) 182

by NotInHere (#49532511) Attached to: Chinese Scientists Claim To Have Genetically Modified Human Embryos

This stuff is all good as long as its well documented which genes were changed and why. Because copyright (or patents) (or even (worst of all) trade secrets) on human DNA is the worst thing that can happen to our human society. We don't want only the well born to have better genes. But of course this won't happen. There will be a strong gene copyright lobby, and it will demand DNA to be copyrightable, to make research pay off.

Also, we should think of the possible pressure future parents may be in, in giving their children the best genes. Perhaps one day (rather sooner than later) we can change genes of living humans, too, e.g. with viruses, and then at least you can revide your parent's choices about your body.

Comment Re:Raise Them To Infinity! (Score 1) 309

I imagine some/many artists get screwed by the labels by giving up their copyrights. But at least some retain copyright of their work. In other cases, it's not abuse but just transfer of risk from artist to publisher. If your work is probably going to make between $10,000 and $1,000,000, wouldn't you rather sell it for $250,000 and let the publisher deal with the risk? At least conventional medium artists get copyrights, whereas almost all software devs handover copyright of their works to their employers.

Software development usually is done with the developer being hired by the company.

Also, which incentive does it create for content creators to extend periods of existing works?

No matter how much money they make, they still want more. How many financially successful businessmen and artists quit their profession after making a ton of money? Not many. They enjoy their work and they enjoy making money.

So, you agree there is no additional incentive?

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