39645411
submission
pacopico writes:
There's a 30-acre plot of land in Maysville, MO where about two dozen people have gathered to build a Civilization Starter Kit. As Businessweek reports, they're working on open-source versions of bulldozers, bread ovens, saws and other tools right on up to robots and chip fabs. The project has been dubbed the Factor e Farm, and it's run by a former nuclear physicist and a bunch of volunteers. The end goal is to have people modify the tool designs until they're good enough to compete with commercial equipment.
38440497
submission
pacopico writes:
Much has been made about Facebook hitting 1 billion users. But Businessweek has the inside story detailing how the site actually copes with this many people and the software Facebook has invented that pushes the limits of computer science. The story quotes database guru Mike Stonebraker saying, "I think Facebook has the hardest information technology problem on the planet." To keep Facebooking moving fast, Mark Zuckerberg apparently institued a program called Boot Camp in which engineers spend six-weeks learning every bit of Facebook's code.
33273821
submission
pacopico writes:
Bloomberg Businessweek reports that DARPA will pay for the creation of two new TechShops in Washington D.C. and Pittsburgh. The $3.5 million deal includes 2,000 TechShop memberships for military veterans and will have DARPA employees performing top secret work at night. They're part of the iFab team, trying to make factories that can be reconfigured on-the-fly through software. Maker mayhem.
30253497
submission
pacopico writes:
Bloomberg Businessweek reports on a new service from Shapeways that lets people print their own iPhone cases. Basically, you use SoundWave to record a sound and build a wave form of it. Shapeways then grabs the file and 3D prints a plastic iPhone case of the waveform for about 25 bones. So, you can 3D print your favorite song or, as the magazine says, "maybe you’re a sadist and want to capture the sound of a New York City subway screech." Good times.
24393734
submission
pacopico writes:
Ashlee Vance of Businessweek has called for Microsoft and Amazon to merge and form a consumer to corporate computing giant. The theory is that Microzon, as he calls it, would dominate the move toward cloud computing, posing a serious threat to Google, Apple, IBM, and pretty much every other technology company. Jeff Bezos could run the giant, giving investors a reason to love Microsoft again, and Microsoft's riches could fund Amazon's crazy endeavors. It's not a horrible idea.
22579100
submission
pacopico writes:
A story in Bloomberg Businessweek gives the first in-depth look at a wave of new start-ups selling cyber weaponry. The story describes this as the evolution of the defense industry in response to a wave of brazen attacks against Google, the Pentagon, the IMF and thousands of companies. It's pretty scary stuff, especially considering that these new weapons are not regulated at all. Good times!
4520171
submission
pacopico writes:
Dell, of all companies, has ended up as the first server maker to give Via's chips a try. According to the NYTimes, Dell plans begin shipping a Via-based system aimed at web hosting companies. For $400, you get 12 servers in 2U with each server chewing through about 20 watts instead of 200 watts because of the low-power Via Nano chips. Such a risky move is a departure for Dell, which was the last server vendor to pick up AMD's Opteron.
3800905
submission
pacopico writes:
"What if Google decided to sell the ability to do amazing things with data instead of selling advertising?" asked Jeff Hammerbacher, the former chief scientist at Facebook and co-founder of Cloudera, in a recent New York Times article. It's an interesting idea and Cloudera intends to pursue it by selling a commercial version of Hadoop — the open source equivalent to Google's file system and MapReduce. Cloudera is saying it can help companies analyze mountains of data in the petabyte age. So maybe we'll see a genomics advance instead of better text ads.
688081
story
pacopico writes
"The Register has a report on an intriguing Las Vegas-based company which is building one of the world's largest data centers called the SuperNAP. The company — Switch Communications — claims it will be the most densely packed and power efficient data center ever built. The report notes, 'Legend has it that the company managed to acquire what was once meant to be Enron's broadband trading hub for a song. This gave Switch access to more than twenty of the primary carrier backbones in a single location. Switch tied this vast network to existing data center hosting facilities and attracted military clients, among others, to its Las Vegas shop.'"
