47596129
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Previously, developer Jeff Cogswell focused on the respective performances of C# and Java. Now he's looking at yet another aspect of the languages: the runtime libraries—what exactly the libraries are, how they are called, and what features the languages provide for calling into them. Examining the official Java API (now owned by Oracle) and the official .NET API owned by Microsoft, he finds both pretty complete and pretty much a "tie" with regard to ease-of-use and functionality, especially since Java version 7 release 6 allows for automatic resource management. Read on and see if you agree."Link to Original Source
47548129
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"When hurricane Sandy pummeled New York City last fall, it left a sizable percentage of the metropolis without electricity. Residents had trouble keeping their phones and tablets charged, and often walked across whole neighborhoods to reach zones with power. Come the next disaster, at least a few citizens could communicate a little easier thanks to 25 solar-powered charging stations going up around the city. The stations—known as “Street Charge”—are the result of a partnership between AT&T, Brooklyn design studio Pensa, and portable solar-power maker Goal Zero (with approval by the city’s Parks Department). The first unit will deploy in Brooklyn’s Fort Green Park on June 18, followed in short order by others in Union Square, Central Park, the Rockaways, and other locations. Each station incorporates lithium-ion batteries in addition to solar panels; charging a phone to full capacity could take as long as two hours, but the time necessary for a partial charge is much shorter. But a couple of charging stations also won't help very much if half the city is without power: In order to help mitigate the effects of the next hurricane, New York City major Michael Bloomberg has put forward a $20 billion plan for seawalls, levees, and dozens of other improvements. “Sandy exposed weaknesses in the city’s telecommunications infrastructure—including the location of critical facilities in areas that are susceptible to flooding,” reads one section of the plan’s accompanying report. The city will harden the system “by increasing the accountability of telecommunications providers to invest in resiliency and by using new regulatory authority to enable rapid recovery after extreme weather events.”"Link to Original Source
47426833
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"In case you didn’t catch it this morning, AllThingsD ran a piece endorsing the idea of the software-defined data center. That’s a venue where hordes of non-technical mid- and upper-level managers will see it and (because of the credibility of AllThingsD) will believe software-defined data centers are not only possible, but that they exist and that your company is somehow falling behind because you personally have not sketched up a topology on a napkin or brought a package of it to install. If mid-level managers in your datacenter or extended IT department have not been pinged at least once today by business-unit managers offering to tip them off to the benefits of software-defined data centers—or demand that they buy one—then someone should go check the internal phone system because not all the calls are coming through. Why was AllThingD’s piece problematic? First, because it’s a good enough publication to explain all the relevant technology terms in ways that even a non-technical audience can understand. Second, it’s also a credible source, owned by Dow Jones & Co. and spun off by The Wall Street Journal. Third, software-defined data centers are genuinely happening—but it’s in the very early stages. The true benefits of the platform won’t arrive for quite some time—and there’s too much to do in the meantime to talk about potential endpoints. Fortunately, there are a number of resources online to help tell hype from reality."Link to Original Source
47387881
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"One year and seven months after beginning construction, Facebook has brought its first datacenter on foreign soil online. That soil is in Lulea, town of 75,000 people on northern Sweden’s east coast, just miles south of the boundary separating the Arctic Circle from the somewhat-less-frigid land below it. Lulea (also nicknamed The Node Pole for the number of datacenters in the area) is in the coldest area of Sweden and shares the same latitude as Fairbanks, Alaska, according to a local booster site. The constant, biting wind may have stunted the growth of Lulea’s tourism industry, but it has proven a big factor in luring big IT facilities into the area. Datacenters in Lulea are just as difficult to power and cool as any other concentrated mass of IT equipment, but their owners can slash the cost of cooling all those servers and storage units simply by opening a window: the temperature in Lulea hasn’t stayed at or above 86 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours since 1961, and the average temperature is a bracing 29.6 Fahrenheit. Air cooling might prove a partial substitute for powered environmental control, but Facebook’s datacenter still needed 120megawatts of steady power to keep the social servers humming. Sweden has among the lowest electricity costs in Europe, and the Lulea area reportedly has among the lowest power costs in Sweden. Low electricity prices are at least partly due to the area’s proximity to the powerful Lulea River and the line of hydroelectric dams that draw power from it."Link to Original Source
47391637
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"As corporations move further up the High-Performance Computing (HPC) spectrum by adding machines powerful enough to handle all modern datacenter challenges, raw computing power has become more important than ever. Even so, the ability to simulate a nuclear explosion or custom-designed molecule is not the kind of problem most corporate datacenters will ever need to handle. As a result, few corporate-computing specialists would ever consider jumping on the latest advances in supercomputing architecture from Cray or IBM. It would be like accompanying Superman on his daily weight-lifting routine—trying to imitate his moves won’t get you any closer to lifting a locomotive. Sometimes, however, advances in supercomputing can help solve pretty much anybody’s datacenter problems. That could be the case with the design changes IBM has made to its BlueGene supercomputer. According to CNET, in order to squeeze out more speed from a supercomputer mapping the brains of mice, IBM did away with some of the hard drives storing the petabytes of data it might need to crunch, and added 128 terabytes’ worth of Solid-State Drives (SSD). Those SSDs allowed it to take advantage of flash memory’s greater speed when compared to hard disks. Flash delivers much higher capacity in a smaller footprint, along with lower power requirements and better performance—but that’s not the only role it can play in high-performance computing, according to Ambuj Goyal, GM of IBM’s system storage and networking group. The access speed of NAND-based SSDs falls in between that of very expensive RAM and DRAM chips and the very slow (comparatively) disk drives. By adding a big chunk of flash memory, BlueGene’s designers created a third tier of memory for optimizing the flow of data and problems, Goyal said."Link to Original Source
47360317
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Flash storage is more common on mobile devices than data-center hardware, but that could soon change. The industry has seen increasing sales of solid-state drives (SSDs) as a replacement for traditional hard drives, according to IHS iSuppli Research. Nearly all of these have been sold for ultrabooks, laptops and other mobile devices that can benefit from a combination of low energy use and high-powered performance. Despite that, businesses have lagged the consumer market in adoption of SSDs, largely due to the format’s comparatively small size, high cost and the concerns of datacenter managers about long-term stability and comparatively high failure rates. But that’s changing quickly, according to market researchers IDC and Gartner: Datacenter- and enterprise-storage managers are buying SSDs in greater numbers for both server-attached storage and mainstream storage infrastructure, according to studies both research firms published in April. That doesn’t mean SSDs will oust hard drives and replace them directly in existing systems, but it does raise a question: are SSDs mature enough (and cheap enough) to support business-sized workloads? Or are they still best suited for laptops and mobile devices?"Link to Original Source
47356435
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Ever wonder what’s inside Google Glass, the search-engine giant’s augmented-reality eyewear? Scott Torborg (co-founder of Crowd Supply) and Star Simpson (maker of many projects) did, and decided to act on that desire by breaking down a unit. The duo (assisted by at least four others) detailed their Google Glass teardown on Catwig.com. After obtaining a unit from the “Glass Studio” on Google’s Mountain View campus, they headed back to the lab and set to work. The first step: removing the Torx T5 screw that holds the “bulge” or “pod” to the Google Glass frame. Once the pod was free, prying off its plastic casing revealed a proximity sensor and “what appears to be an ambient light sensor,” the dissectors wrote in their notes. A few more minutes’ worth of unscrewing and cutting, and they gained access to the touchpad module (users tap or swipe the outside of the pod to interact with the Google Glass screen built into the device’s right lens) and the main CPU board. “This board was stuck to a thermal pad with lots of paste,” they wrote. “After removing it and cleaning off the pink thermal compound, we revealed the core chips powering Glass: a TI OMAP4430, 16GB of SanDisk flash, and an Elpida mobile DRAM chip. A flex PCB and an RF cable, anchored with some metal tabs and an MMCX (?) connector, trailed from this board to the behind-the-ear pod.” The dissectors also peeled away the camera (“typical smartphone-level size and format”) and the in-lens display (“with a native resolution of 640×360, the pixels are roughly 1/8th the physical width of those on the iPhone 5’s retina display”). Lots more about the hardware—including several nifty photos—are available on the Website. Torborg and Simpson didn’t delve into the Google Glass specs, but those are widely available. The hardware features 12GB of usable memory, synced with Google’s cloud storage (actual onboard storage is 16GB); the camera is capable of snapping 5-megapixel photos and 720p video. Google Glass is compatible with any Bluetooth-capable phone, and its MyGlass app—which enables SMS messaging and GPS—requires a companion device running Android 4.0.3 (the “Ice Cream Sandwich” build) or higher."Link to Original Source
47349721
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"If those newspaper reports are accurate, the NSA’s surveillance programs are enormous and sophisticated, and rely on the latest in analytics software. In the face of that, is there any way to keep your communications truly private? Or should you resign yourself to saying or typing, “Hi, NSA!” every time you make a phone call or send an email? Fortunately, as this article outlines, there are ways to gain a measure of security: HTTPS, Tor, SCP, SFTP, and the vendors who build software on top of those protocols. But those host-proof solutions offer security in exchange for some measure of inconvenience. If you lose your access credentials, you’re likely toast: few highly secure services include a “Forgot Your Password?” link, which can be easily engineered to reset a password and username without the account owner’s knowledge. And while "big" providers like Google provide some degree of encryption, they may give up user data in response to a court order. Also, all the privacy software in the world also can't prevent the NSA (or other entities) from capturing metadata and other information. What do you think is the best way to keep your data locked down? Or do you think it's all a lost cause?"Link to Original Source
47327939
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"In an open letter addressed to U.S. attorney general Eric Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller, Google chief legal officer David Drummond again insisted that reports of his company freely offering user data to the NSA and other agencies were untrue. “However,” he wrote, “government nondisclosure obligations regarding the number of FISA national security requests that Google receives, as well as the number of accounts covered by those requests, fuel that speculation.” In light of that, Drummond had a request of the two men: “We therefore ask you to help make it possible for Google to publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures—in terms of both the number we receive and their scope.” Apparently Google’s numbers would show “that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made.” Google, Drummond added, “has nothing to hide.” As part of its regularly updated Transparency Report, Google posts information about the National Security Letters (NSLs) it receives from the federal government; however, the government requires Google to report NSLs as a numerical range rather than an exact number. But even if Google does end up displaying more information about government requests, it doesn’t seem as if many Americans are dismayed about their privacy being invaded: according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post (conducted after the Snowden story broke), concerns about terrorist threats outweigh the need for privacy. “Currently 62 [percent] say it is more important for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy,” read the survey’s summary. “Just 34 [percent] say it is more important for the government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats.”"Link to Original Source
47327005
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Reading the headlines coming out of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), it’s possible to think Apple never made anything that couldn’t be carried into a coffee shop. Judging only from the buzz, it would be hard to tell Apple ever sold servers, despite a user base that continues to love Xserve, Apple’s last explicit effort to build enterprise-class servers. (Apple doesn’t even sell a server-specific version of its operating system, although it does offer a solid deal in server software—”$19.99 for “OS X Server”—a full set of server-specific functions packaged as an application that runs on top of Mac OS X for $19.99.) All that aside, the MacOS update Apple released yesterday—OS X Update 10.8.4—includes as many features to benefit a Mac workgroup server as it does strictly desktop functions. In the update, Apple improved support for Microsoft Exchange calendars. Other updates include better integration with Active Directory that will improve log-in, especially on cached accounts that live on an internal servers using the .local domain-name convention. There’s also support for Apple’s Xsan storage-area-network for some applications, improved replication with OpenDirectory data, and compatibility with 802.1X networks running ActiveDirectory. The last major functional update for OS X Server came last December, when Apple built in a caching function to store updates of the OS and other apps so they could be downloaded in bits in the background rather than in one big chunk while admins waited; that version also got a monitoring function to identify which of the machines attached to an OS X Server had been backed up, as well as the timing and size of the backup."Link to Original Source
47301863
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Lithium-ion batteries—which power everything from the largest datacenter UPS to the smallest mobile device—could be getting a major overhaul that not only increase their power, but also their potential lifespan. Engineers at Germany’s Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research at Baden-Wurrtemberg (ZSW) announced (PDF) that alterations in the manufacturing process could allow some lithium-ion batteries to be recharged as many as 10,000 times and remain useful for as long as 27 years. ZSW’s announcement confirmed it had successfully manufactured batteries with improvements described in a research paper published in the Journal of Power Sources last year. In that paper, researchers described ways to increase the lifespan and power retention of an existing battery by altering the electrodes within it. By changing the thickness of the electrode, the degree of compaction, type of conductive agent and precise composition of the alloy, researchers could balance the flow of current through the battery more efficiently, allowing them to retain as much as 85 percent of their capacity even after 10,000 recharge cycles. ZSW successfully produced batteries in the 1860 format using the new techniques, but plans to develop larger batteries that could work in cars and other electric-powered devices. There is no estimate of when they may be available commercially. Extending the lifecycle of lithium-ion batteries by a couple of decades may seem like small potatoes compared to a design breakthrough at the Dept. of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, however. The Oak Ridge team announced last week they’d quadrupled the amount of energy in lithium-ion batteries by adding sulfur to the mix."Link to Original Source
47299509
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off his company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco with a short video emphasizing the importance of design, particularly that which evokes some sort of emotional connection such as love or delight. But that sentimental bit aside, this WWDC was all business: huge numbers of developers attend this annual event, packing sessions designed to help give their apps an edge in Apple’s crowded online marketplace (some 50 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store, Cook told the audience during his keynote). Apple also uses its WWDC to unveil new products or services, attracting sizable interest from the tech press. This time around, the company introduced Mac OS X "Mavericks," which includes “Finder Tabs” (which allow the user to deploy multiple tabs within a Finder window—great for organization, in theory) and document tags (for easier searching). Macs will now support multiple displays, including HDTVs, with the ability to tweak elements between screens; Apple claims the operating system will also interact with the CPU in a more efficient manner. On top of that, Apple rolled out some new hardware: an upgraded MacBook Air with faster graphics, better battery life (9 hours for the 11-inch edition, while the 13-inch version can draw 12 hours’ worth of power). Apple has decided to jump into the cloud-productivity space with iWork for iCloud, which makes the company’s iWork portfolio (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) browser-based; this is a clear response to Office 365 and Google Docs. And finally, the executives onstage turned back to iOS, which (according to Apple) powers some 600 million devices around the world. This version involves more than a few tweaks: from a redesigned “Slide to Unlock” at the bottom of the screen, to the bottom-up control panel that slides over the home-screen, to the “flat” (as predicted) icons and an interface that adjusts as the phone is tilted, this is a total redesign. As a software designer, Ive is clearly a huge fan of basic shapes—circles and squares— and layering translucent elements atop one another."Link to Original Source
47226873
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Apple’s iOS 7, which is heavily rumored to make its debut at next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, will almost certainly feature a totally redesigned interface. According to recent rumors (including a few key postings on the Apple-centric blog 9 to 5 Mac), the OS will stand as a shining example of “flat” design, which eliminates “real world” elements such as texture and shading in favor of stripped-down, basic shapes. That means certain iOS environments such as Game Center (with its casino-like green felt) and Newsstand (with its wooden shelving) could soon look completely different. But what about iOS 7’s actual features? What could Apple change that would improve the operating system’s chances against the increasingly sophisticated Google Android, not to mention the new-and-improved BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone 8? What would you do to iOS with Apple's full resources at your disposal?"Link to Original Source
47218015
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"James R. Clapper, the nation’s Director of National Intelligence, claimed that recent reports about the NSA monitoring Americans’ Internet and phone communications are inaccurate. “ The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” he wrote in a June 6 statement. “They contain numerous inaccuracies.” While the statement didn’t detail the supposed inaccuracies, it explained why the monitoring described in those articles would, at least in theory, violate the law. “Section 702 is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States,” it read. “It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States.” Those newspaper articles describe an NSA project codenamed Prism, which allegedly taps into the internal databases of nine major technology companies: Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple. Both publications drew their information from an internal PowerPoint presentation used to train intelligence operatives. Speaking to Slashdot, Google, Microsoft and Facebook all again denied knowledge of Prism; the Google spokesperson suggested he didn’t “have any insight” into why Google would have appeared in the NSA’s alleged PowerPoint presentation. But many, many questions remain."Link to Original Source
47194537
submission
Nerval's Lobster writes
"Strengthened by an agreement with Apple that set the prices for their respective e-books higher, publishers strong-armed Amazon into giving them similar terms, an executive for the online retailer has testified in Manhattan federal court. The U.S. Department of Justice has taken Apple to court over the alleged price-fixing, after reaching out-of-court settlements with five publishers (HarperCollins Publishers LLC, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group, and MacMillian). Apple, which competes with Amazon in the e-book space, refused a similar settlement. “Certainly if someone offered reseller, we would have taken them up on that offer,” Russell Grandinetti, Amazon’s vice president for Kindle content, testified before the court, according to Reuters. “Reseller” means a company sells goods to a retailer for a particular price (usually wholesale), allowing the retailer to set the actual sales price. Under the terms of that model, Amazon could sell e-books for super-cheap, even if it meant going beneath the publisher’s wholesale price. Macmillan and Amazon ended up in conflict over the issue, with Amazon temporarily yanking the publisher’s e-books from its digital shelves. “We will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books,” Amazon wrote in a statement at the time. “Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book.” But Amazon eventually relented to Macmillan’s demands, along with those of other publishers, and submitted to the agency model, in which publishers have a heavier hand in setting retail pricing."Link to Original Source