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Submission + - Yahoo deletes journalists prepaid legacy site after suicide (mashable.com)

Submitted by digitalFlack
digitalFlack writes: Apparently Martin Manly has been a popular blogger and newspaper journalist for many years. For his own reasons, no indication of illness, he decided sixty years on this planet was enough. He designed a 40 page website with titles such as:
      "Why Suicide?," "Why Age 60?," "Growing Up," "The Heavens,"
        "First Two Loves," "Pictures," "KC Star," "Legal," "911 & Conspiracies" and "COOL STUFF."
Martin planned his suicide meticulously, but to manage his legacy — HE PICKED YAHOO! Even pre-paid for five years... After he left this mortal coil on his 60th birthday, Yahoo decided they don't want his traffic, so they took the site down. Sorry, Martin.

Submission + - Supercomputer Launches World's Largest Neuronal-Network Simulation (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Researchers in Japan and Germany have carried out what’s being described as the largest neuronal network simulation to date. That simulation leveraged open-source NEST software running on K computer, a Fujitsu-manufactured supercomputer based at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) in Japan. K computer ranked fourth on the most recent Top500 list, a ranking of the world’s fastest supercomputers; the platform, armed with 705,024 cores, is capable of 10,510 teraflops of performance (as measured via the Linpack benchmark; in theory, the system could push that to 11,280.4 teraflops). In conjunction with a research team at the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine at Jülich, K computer simulated a neuronal network of 1.73 billion nerve cells connected by 10.4 trillion synapses. That sounds like a whole lot of nerve cells and synapses, but in fact it’s only 1 percent of the neuronal network in the brain. “If peta-scale computers like the K computer are capable of representing 1 percent of the network of a human brain today,” team leader Markus Diesmann wrote in a statement, “then we know that simulating the whole brain at the level of the individual nerve cell and its synapses will be possible with exa-scale computers hopefully available within the next decade.”

Submission + - Open Source Drug Discovery Prompts a Fundamental Heart Failure Breakthrough (sciencecodex.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Case-Western researchers, led by Saptarsi Haldar MD., have made a fundamental discovery that could prevent heart failure after reviewing the "chemical recipe" for a cancer-treating molecule made open source by Jay Bradner MD. (whose TED Talk articulates the open source approach to drug discovery: http://www.ted.com/talks/jay_bradner_open_source_cancer_research.html) This cross-discipline discovery, which was published in the August 2013 issue of CELL, is a fundamental breakthrough in heart failure research, and highlights the value of an open source approach outside of software development. Now, if only drug companies could be held to the same ideals!

Submission + - New JavaScript-Based Timing Attack Steals All Browser Source Data

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Security researchers have been warning about the weaknesses and issues with JavaScript and iframes for years now, but the problem goes far deeper than even many of them thought. A researcher in the U.K. has developed a new technique that uses a combination of JavaScript-based timing attacks and other tactics to read any information he wants from a targeted user’s browser and sites the victim is logged into. The attack works on all of the major browsers and researchers say there’s no simple fix to prevent it.

Comment Re:Wow... (Score 1) 367

by Raelus (#41984593) Attached to: Artificial Wombs In the Near Future?

Blame the lazy media culture we live in. A deep story about philosophy and morality and the nature of the universe and trying to predict the future? Fuck that, we need another humdrum action movie instead but with worms and sand instead of cartel lords and lone police officers.
United States

US Air Force Can 'Accidentally' Spy On American Citizens For 90 Days 200

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the never-leaving-the-house-again dept.
AstroPhilosopher writes "Researchers at the Federation of American Scientists have discovered documentation (PDF) that allows the military to keep footage from drones for up to 90 days to determine whether further investigation is warranted. Besides using footage from natural disasters and monitoring of domestic military bases, all that's truly required is for an operator to 'accidentally' have the camera running while flying."
Games

More Devs Going Indie, To Gamers' Benefit 137

Posted by Soulskill from the granularization-of-an-industry dept.
Wired is running a feature about how a growing number of game developers are abandoning jobs at major publishers and studios and taking their experience to the indie scene instead. Quoting: "They’re veterans of the triple-A game biz with decades of experience behind them. They’ve worked for the biggest companies and had a hand in some of the industry’s biggest blockbusters. They could work on anything, but they’ve found creative fulfillment splitting off into a tiny crew and doing their own thing. They’re using everything they’ve learned working on big-budget epics and applying it to small, downloadable games. The good news for gamers is that, as the industry’s top talents depart the big studios and go into business for themselves, players are being treated to a new class of indie game. They’re smaller and carry cheaper price tags, but they’re produced by industry veterans instead of thrown together by B teams and interns. Most importantly, unlike big-budget games that need to appeal to the lowest common denominator to turn a profit, these indie gems reveal the undiluted creative vision of their makers."
Medicine

Rare Sharing of Data Led To Results In Alzheimer's Research 159

Posted by Soulskill from the never-forget dept.
jamie passes along a story in the NY Times about how an unprecedented level of openness and data-sharing among scientists involved in the study of Alzheimer's disease has yielded a wealth of new research papers and may become the template for making progress in dealing with other afflictions. Quoting: "The key to the Alzheimer's project was an agreement as ambitious as its goal: not just to raise money, not just to do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding public immediately, available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world. No one would own the data. No one could submit patent applications, though private companies would ultimately profit from any drugs or imaging tests developed as a result of the effort. 'It was unbelievable,' said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, an Alzheimer's researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. 'It's not science the way most of us have practiced it in our careers. But we all realized that we would never get biomarkers unless all of us parked our egos and intellectual-property noses outside the door and agreed that all of our data would be public immediately.'"
HP

HP Board Sued Over Hurd Departure 136

Posted by Soulskill from the following-the-hurd dept.
Stoobalou writes "A shareholding company launched a lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard's board of directors earlier this week, claiming they bungled their fiduciary duties over the departure of CEO Mark Hurd. 'The HP board put shareholders' finances at risk by not telling them about the sexual harassment inquiry, and then later rewarded Hurd with an estimated $40 million severance package, the suit said. The board also failed to adequately police insider trading by HP executives, allowing Hurd and chief financial officer Cathie Lesjak to sell off HP stock in the midst of the inquiry, according to the suit, which was filed in California Superior Court.'" HP is also facing increased scrutiny from the unrelated bribery probe that began earlier this year when their Moscow offices were raided.
PC Games (Games)

BioWare's Star Wars MMO To Have Space Combat 122

Posted by Soulskill from the just-in-case-they-weren't-busy-enough dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Big news for Star Wars fans looking forward to BioWare's upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG — space combat has been confirmed for the game. Players will be able to fly around the galaxy in their own personal starships, avoiding asteroid belts, landing in dangerous territory and battling other vessels. The initial news makes it sound like a cross between Mass Effect's galaxy map and a traditional space fighting game, where players will have to find 'hotspots' on the galaxy map in order to enter a particular zone."

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