Comment: Re:Wrong architecture! (Score 2) 70
Exactly. Fermi launched two years ago.
Comment: Re:I Left Today (Score 3, Insightful) 722
Better stop using the internet. I hear it's full of bad stuff, just like Reddit!
Comment: Re:Square is the big security fail here... (Score 1) 273
How is Square the problem? They didn't invent the mag stripe.
Comment: Re:And in other news... (Score 1) 273
The problem isn't that technology is scary, it's that the contactless payment stuff is being billed as MORE SECURE than other ways of using your card. This demo shows that the technology is vulnerable to being exploited with commonly available hardware.
Comment: Crash? More like correction. (Score 4, Insightful) 709
It seems more like a correction to me. The idea that a BTC was worth $20 or more seemed too good to be true, probably because it was.
I think BitCoin is a great concept, but it needs more of a real economy and less currency speculation. I suspect that will come once the hype dies down. Maybe now that the value has gone down, that'll happen soon.
Diabetic Men May Be Able To Grow Their Own Insulin-Producing Cells 148
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the presto-chango dept.
from the presto-chango dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Men with type 1 diabetes may be able to grow their own insulin-producing cells from their testicular tissue, say Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) researchers who presented their findings today at the American Society of Cell Biology 50th annual meeting in Philadelphia. Their laboratory and animal study is a proof of principle that human spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) extracted from testicular tissue can morph into insulin-secreting beta islet cells normally found in the pancreas. And the researchers say they accomplished this feat without use of any of the extra genes now employed in most labs to turn adult stem cells into a tissue of choice."
Which Shipping Company Is Kindest To Your Packages? 480
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the handle-however-you-want dept.
from the handle-however-you-want dept.
Ant writes "Popular Mechanics mailed a bunch of sensors on an epic journey to find out which American shipping company is the most careful with your packages. From the article: 'One disheartening result was that our package received more abuse when marked "Fragile" or "This Side Up." The carriers flipped the package more, and it registered above-average acceleration spikes during trips for which we requested careful treatment.' Here's what they found."
Google's New Meta-Tags For News Story Authors 71
Posted
by
timothy
from the tree-of-attribution dept.
from the tree-of-attribution dept.
EreIamJH writes "Google News is experimenting with meta-tags in an effort to ensure that the correct news source is credited with an article. The original-source meta-tag will identify the newspaper that breaks a story, while syndication-source is for everyone who repeats the story. Both meta-tags can appear multiple times — for instance an article that sources information from other articles would include an original-source tag for each article used in preparing the new article. While the intention is worthy, I look forward to lots of snarky blogger fights as journalists vent their hurt feelings for having been omitted as an original source."
Microsoft To Offer Free Anti-Virus Software 448
Posted
by
kdawson
from the another-industry-done-gone dept.
from the another-industry-done-gone dept.
Dynamoo writes "The good news is that Microsoft have announced free anti-virus software for consumers, dubbed Morro, available late next year. The bad news is ... well, exactly the same. Although Microsoft's anti-malware products are pretty good, this move could drive many competitors out of business and create a dangerous security monoculture; major rivals will be lawyering up already. On the other hand, many malware infections could be prevented even by basic software. So is this going to be a good or bad thing overall?"
Science's Alternative To an Intelligent Creator 683
Posted
by
kdawson
from the theory-of-anything dept.
from the theory-of-anything dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Discover magazine has an interesting article on the multiverse theory — a synthesis of string theory and the anthropic principle that explains why our universe seems perfectly tailored for life without invoking an intelligent creator. Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. While most of those universes are barren, some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life. The idea that the universe was made just for us — known as the anthropic principle — debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter proposed that a purely random assortment of laws would have left the universe dead and dark, and that life limits the values that physical constants can have. The anthropic principle languished on the fringes of science for years, but in 2000, new theoretical work threatened to unravel string theory when researchers calculated that the basic equations of string theory have an astronomical number of different possible solutions, perhaps as many as 101,000, with each solution representing a unique way to describe the universe. The latest iteration of string theory provides a natural explanation for the anthropic principle. If there are vast numbers of other universes, all with different properties, at least one of them ought to have the right combination of conditions to bring forth stars, planets, and living things." So far xkcd is simulating just one single universe.
DNS Inventor Tackles Flaw 101
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the always-evolving dept.
from the always-evolving dept.
nk497 writes "Dr Paul Mockapetris is looking to fix the flaws in the Domain Name System he helped invent. 'It was never meant to be the only security mechanism for naming data on the internet, but was intended for additional security measures to be added to it later.' The flaws, first uncovered by security researcher Dan Kaminsky over the summer, lets attackers redirect genuine URLs to malicious ones — a problem Mockapetris believes could be solved using digital signatures."
Daylight Savings Time Increases Energy Use In Indiana 388
Posted
by
timothy
from the all-change-has-friction dept.
from the all-change-has-friction dept.
enbody writes "The Freakonomics Blog at NYTimes.com reports on a study of Indiana energy use for daylight savings time showing an increase in energy use of 1%. 'The dataset consists of more than 7 million observations on monthly billing data for the vast majority of households in southern Indiana for three years. Our main finding is that — contrary to the policy's intent — D.S.T. increases residential electricity demand.'" Maybe that's just from millions of coffee makers being pressed into extra duty.
Inventor Open Sources "TV-B-Gone," and Why 340
Posted
by
kdawson
from the patents-b-gone dept.
from the patents-b-gone dept.
ptorrone writes "Inventor Mitch Altman explains why he open-sourced his TV-B-Gone kit, the original stealth keychain fob for defeating TVs in public places. The title of the article is 'Patent-B-Gone' and perhaps the most interesting fact is that Mitch's brother is a patent attorney, but he still decided to release an open source hardware version of the TV-B-Gone, with pretty impressive results."
US ISPs Announce Anti-Child-Porn Agreement 613
Posted
by
timothy
from the little-timmy's-law-against-all-things-that-are-bad dept.
from the little-timmy's-law-against-all-things-that-are-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It seems that ISPs have gathered together with 45 attorney generals and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to form an agreement to crush child pornography. What does that mean? Probably the same as it meant for RoadRunner, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon customers — the end of the newsgroups." Here's the back-patting press-release from the various parties who signed on (the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the National Association of Attorneys General), though the actual text of the agreement does not seem to have been made public.
Laptops Screens, Glare or Matte? 663
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the the-glare-it-burns-us dept.
from the the-glare-it-burns-us dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This weekend I spent half a day surfing the web looking for a new laptop.
I just want (to be able to switch to) 1650x1280, or at least ...x1024, and a *non*-Glossy Display . To my surprise I found out that many vendors leave me not that much choice: ...x800, and glossy, i.e., higher-reflective type screens seem to have become the promoted defaults. Should I give up on my non-glossy wishes, or should I start flaming vendors?" I still can't understand the glossy screens. They make my eyes hurt almost immediately in any sort of ambient light, and do nothing in low light. Glossy laptop screens are like TVs on the shelf in the store with their colors all whacked out to look brighter. Once you get them into the real world, you realize that the colors are just wrong.