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Submission + - China's Tianhe-2 Tops Supercomputer Chart Again (bbc.com)

Submitted by arisvega on Monday June 23, 2014 @12:04PM

arisvega writes: China has the world's most powerful supercomputer for the third time in a row as the country once again ups its presence in the global top 500.

Tianhe-2 was top of the twice-yearly list that keeps tabs on supercomputer development and growth.

Since the last list, China had 20% more supercomputers in the top 500, while US representation went down 15%.

However, the US still dominates the chart with 233 computers making the latest tally.

China had 76, up from 63 in the last count. This is almost as many as the UK (30), France (27) and Germany (23) combined.

The full list is to be published Monday (today) at a conference in Leipzig, Germany.

Submission + - Linux Mint 17 KDE released! (themukt.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy on Monday June 23, 2014 @10:24AM

sfcrazy writes: The Linux Mint team has announced the release of Linux Mint 17 KDE codenamed Qiana. It’s based on KDE Software Compilation 4.13.0. There are many improvements in things like 'update manager' which improves the use experience and also show which type of updates are these. Then the device manager has also improved and it can install drivers even when the machine can't connect to the Internet as most drivers are available in the iso itself.

Submission + - World's First Large-Scale Waste-to-Biofuels Facility Opens in Canada (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula on Monday June 23, 2014 @09:04AM

Zothecula writes: Thanks to its extensive composting and recycling facilities, the city of Edmonton, Canada is already diverting approximately 60 percent of its municipal waste from the landfill. That figure is expected to rise to 90 percent, however, once the city's new Waste-to-Biofuels and Chemicals Facility starts converting garbage (that can't be composted or recycled) into methanol and ethanol. It's the world's first such plant to operate on an industrial scale, and Gizmag recently got a guided tour of the place.

Submission + - Researchers unveil experimental 36-core chip

Submitted by rtoz on Monday June 23, 2014 @02:59AM

rtoz writes: This week, at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, Peh’s group unveiled a 36-core chip that features just such a “network-on-chip.” In addition to implementing many of the group’s earlier ideas, it also solves one of the problems that has bedeviled previous attempts to design networks-on-chip: maintaining cache coherence, or ensuring that cores’ locally stored copies of globally accessible data remain up to date.

Submission + - Over 300,000 Servers Remain Vulnerable To Heartbleed

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 22, 2014 @02:44PM

An anonymous reader writes: Even though it's been a couple months since the Heartbleed bug was discovered, many servers remain unpatched and vulnerable. "Two months ago, security experts and web users panicked when a Google engineer discovered a major bug — known as Heartbleed — that put over a million web servers at risk. The bug doesn't make the news much anymore, but that doesn't mean the problem's solved. Security researcher Robert David Graham has found that at least 309,197 servers are still vulnerable to the exploit. Immediately after the announcement, Graham found some 600,000 servers were exposed by Heartbleed. One month after the bug was announced, that number dropped down to 318,239. In the past month, however, only 9,042 of those servers have been patched to block Heartbleed. That's cause for concern, because it means that smaller sites aren't making the effort to implement a fix."

Submission + - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Released

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @01:24PM

An anonymous reader writes: Today, Red Hat unveils Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, with new features designed to meet both modern datacenter and next-generation IT requirements for cloud, Linux Containers, and big data. The new version includes Linux containers (LXC) lets Linux users easily create and manage system or application containers, improved MS Active Directory / Identity Management (IdM) integration, XFS as the default file system, scaling to 500 TB (additional file system choices such as btrfs, ext{3,4} and others are available), a new and improved installation experience, managing Linux servers with OpenLMI, enhancements to both NFS and GFS2, optimized network management, bandwidth, the use of KVM Virtualization technology and more. See the list of complete features set here (PDF). CentOS 7 shouldn't be lagging too far behind due to recent cooperation between Red Hat and CentOS project.

Submission + - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Released (eweek.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @01:21PM

darthcamaro writes: Nearly 4 years after RHEL 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 finally hit general availability today. A lot has happened in the last four years and one of the biggest new innovations in RHEL 7 is a technology that didn't exist when development first began. Docker containers are now a fully supported part of RHEL 7.
"RHEL has had to become a lot more flexible because of things like containers and Docker," Denise Dumas, senior director of Platform Engineering at Red Hat said.-

Submission + - Titan Aerospace Acquisition: Why Does Google Want Flying Drones? (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226 on Tuesday April 15, 2014 @07:18AM

concertina226 writes: Google has bought drone start-up Titan Aerospace, which manufactures jet-sized solar-powered unmanned flying drones that can fly for up to five years without needing to land.

Facebook had been considering buying Titan earlier this year to help fulfil Marc Zuckerberg's Internet.org dream of bringing affordable internet access over the air to five billion people in rural areas of the world. He eventually bought UK-based aerospace company Ascenta for $20m instead.

Google topped Facebook's offer for Titan, allegedly paying $60m, insider sources with unauthorised access to the information told Tech Crunch.

The question is, what does Google want drones for?

The internet giant tested out its own global internet plan, Google Loon, in 2013, launching 30 large weather balloons in New Zealand that had been specially developed by its top secret X Lab.

Here are five theories on why Google bought Titan:

Submission + - Japan surpasses Kyoto Protocol emission target 1

Submitted by AmiMoJo on Tuesday April 15, 2014 @03:33AM

AmiMoJo writes: Japan's environment minister says the country has surpassed the target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that it pledged under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Japan had lowered emissions by a 5-year average of 8.4 percent in the 2012 financial year compared to 1990 levels, more than the 6-percent goal the country pledged under the Kyoto Protocol. The 2012 figures are significant as they include the first full year after the March 11th Tohoku earthquake disaster, during which no nuclear power was available.

Submission + - Study Finds U.S. is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 14, 2014 @11:51PM

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Princeton University and Northwestern University have concluded, after extensive analysis of 1,779 policy issues, that the U.S. is in fact an oligarchy and not a democracy. What this means is that, although 'Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance', 'majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.' Their study (PDF), to be published in Perspectives on Politics, found that 'When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.'

Submission + - Humans Are Taking Jobs From Robots in Japan

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com on Monday April 14, 2014 @08:22PM

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Bloomberg reports that humans are taking the place of machines in plants across Japan so workers can develop new skills and figure out ways to improve production lines and the car-building process. “We need to become more solid and get back to basics, to sharpen our manual skills and further develop them,” says Mitsuru Kawai, a half century-long company veteran tapped by President Akio Toyoda to promote craftsmanship at Toyota’s plants. “When I was a novice, experienced masters used to be called gods (Kami-sama in Japanese), and they could make anything.”

According to Kawai, learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn’t get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. At about 100 manual-intensive workspaces introduced over the last three years across Toyota’s factories in Japan, these lessons can then be applied to reprogram machines to cut down on waste and improve processes. In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota’s Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line and Kawai also credits manual labor for helping workers improve production of axle beams and cut the costs of making chassis parts. “We cannot simply depend on the machines that only repeat the same task over and over again,” says Kawai. “To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.”

Submission + - Microsoft Confirms It Is Dropping Windows 8.1 Support 1

Submitted by snydeq on Monday April 14, 2014 @08:01PM

snydeq writes: Microsoft TechNet blog makes clear that Windows 8.1 will not be patched, and that users must get Windows 8.1 Update if they want security patches, InfoWorld's Woody Leonhard reports. 'In what is surely the most customer-antagonistic move of the new Windows regime, Steve Thomas at Microsoft posted a TechNet article on Saturday stating categorically that Microsoft will no longer issue security patches for Windows 8.1, starting in May,' Leonhard writes. 'Never mind that Windows 8.1 customers are still having multiple problems with errors when trying to install the Update. At this point, there are 300 posts on the Microsoft Answers forum thread Windows 8.1 Update 1 Failing to Install with errors 0x80070020, 80073712 and 800F081F. The Answers forum is peppered with similar complaints and a wide range of errors, from 800F0092 to 80070003, for which there are no solutions from Microsoft. Never mind that Microsoft itself yanked Windows 8.1 Update from the corporate WSUS update server chute almost a week ago and still hasn't offered a replacement.'

Submission + - Saturn May Have Given Birth to a Baby Moon (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine on Monday April 14, 2014 @06:29PM

astroengine writes: NASA’s Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft has imaged something peculiar on the outermost edge of the gas giant’s A-ring. A bright knot, or arc, has been spotted 20 percent brighter than the surrounding ring material and astronomers are interpreting it as a gravitational disturbance caused by a tiny moon. “We have not seen anything like this before,” said Carl Murray of Queen Mary University of London. “We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is just leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right.”

Submission + - This 1981 BYTE magazine cover explains why we're so bad at tech predictions (time.com)

Submitted by harrymcc on Monday April 14, 2014 @05:27PM

harrymcc writes: If you remember the golden age of BYTE magazine, you remember Robert Tinney's wonderful cover paintings. BYTE's April 1981 cover featured an amazing Tinney image of a smartwatch with a tiny text-oriented interface, QWERTY keyboard, and floppy drive. It's hilarious--but 33 years later, it's also a smart visual explanation of why the future of technology so often bears so little resemblance to anyone's predictions. I wrote about this over at TIME.com.

Submission + - Heartbleed Disclosure Timeline Revealed 1

Submitted by bennyboy64 on Monday April 14, 2014 @01:59PM

bennyboy64 writes: Ever since the Heartbleed flaw in OpenSSL was made public there have been various questions about who knew what and when. The Sydney Morning Herald has done some analysis of public mailing lists and talked to those involved with disclosing the bug to get the bottom of it. The newspaper finds that Google discovered Heartbleed on or before March 21 and notified OpenSSL on April 1. Other key dates include Finnish security testing firm Codenomicon discovering the flaw independently of Google at 23:30 PDT, April 2. SuSE, Debian, FreeBSD and AltLinux all got a heads up from Red Hat about the flaw in the early hours of April 7 — a few hours before it was made public. Ubuntu, Gentoo and Chromium attempted to get a heads up by responding to an email with few details about it but didn't get a heads up, as the guy at Red Hat sending the disclosure messages out in India went to bed. By the time he woke up, Codenomicon had reported the bug to OpenSSL and they freaked out and decided to tell the world about it.

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