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Government

Submission + - Podcast: Chris Soghoian on Exploit Sales (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Gunkerty Jeb
Gunkerty Jeb writes: Threatpost's Dennis Fisher talks with Chris Soghoian, a principal technologist at the ACLU, about the developing market for buying and selling exploits and vulnerabilities. Soghoian has been a vocal critic of exploit sales and in this podcast he discusses the reasons why and why he thinks the policymakers in Washington need to get involved.

Submission + - Rapidshare Limits Public Downloads 1GB/day (myce.com)

Submitted by blindenvy
blindenvy writes: RapidShare has changed its business model (Announcement)) to combat piracy and to avoid ending up in a similar situation as MegaUpload. Under the new policy "Files that are uploaded by free RapidShare accounts will be limited to 1 GB of data traffic a day, where traffic by the user itself or its contacts are not included. All downloads are unrestricted which means they will be served at full speed. The new system will come in effect the 27th of November 2012."
Java

Submission + - Twitter Survives Election after Ruby-to-Java Move

Submitted by mc10
mc10 writes: As the results of the 2012 US Presidential election were being announced Tuesday night, Twitter experienced record traffic to its website, but the service never faltered despite the increased load – something Twitter engineers credit to the company's move from Ruby to Java for its backend software. Unlike in the past, Twitter did not experience service outages, even as the website generated 874,560 posts in a single minute at its peak in traffic.
Politics

Submission + - All of Nate Silver's Presidential Predictions Proved True (singularityhub.com) 2

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "For the last few months, the political pundit class has been at war with NYT/FiveThirtyEight blogger Nate Silver. Joe Scarborough of MSNBC called him a “joke,” while an op-ed in the LA Times accused him of running a “numbers racket.” But last night, Silver triumphed: every one of his state-level presidential predictions proved true. Statistics FTW!"
China

Submission + - Foxconn Sees New Source Of Cheap Labor: The United States (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Foxconn is planning to build manufacturing plants in the U.S., probably in cites such as Detroit and Los Angeles. “Since the manufacturing of Apple’s products is rather complicated, the market watchers expect the rumored plants to focus on LCD TV production, which can be highly automated and easier.” Nice to think they will be hiring herebut still a fascinating insult to U.S. manufacturing prowess, dontcha think – the idea that actually making Apple products is a little too complicated for Americans to handle (Or maybe they won't be able to hire enough workers sitting 8 hours a day screwing really tiny screws into iPhone 5; despite of the higher unemployment rate, laborers here may not be as desperate as the millions of migrant workers looking for work in China.) Foxconn chairman Terry Guo, at a recent public event, noted that the company is planning a training program for US-based engineers, bringing them to Taiwan or China to learn the processes of product design and manufacturing.
Supercomputing

Submission + - Cray Unveils 100 Petaflops XC30 Supercomputer (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Cray has unveiled its supercomputing beast – the XC30, which is capable of achieving over 100 petaflops performance thereby putting not only the Titan but, also China’s Tianhe-2 in the shade. Previously codenamed “Cascade” and based on the new Aries interconnect architecture, the XC30 has been developed in conjunction with DARPA. The supercomputer can scale up to a million cores and uses Intel Xeon E5-2600 processors for now. Cray has revealed that it will equip the future version of the XC30 with Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors along with NVIDIA Tesla GPUs.
Biotech

Submission + - Proteins made to order (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "Proteins are an enormous molecular achievement: chains of amino acids that fold spontaneously into a precise conformation, time after time, optimized by evolution for their particular function. Yet given the exponential number of contortions possible for any chain of amino acids, dictating a sequence that will fold into a predictable structure has been a daunting task.
Now researchers report that they can do just that. By following a set of rules described in a paper published in Nature (abstract), a husband and wife team from David Baker’s laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle has designed five proteins from scratch that fold reliably into predicted conformations. The work could eventually allow scientists to custom design proteins with specific functions."
Piracy

Submission + - BitTorrent traffic is up 40 percent from six months ago (techpounce.com) 2

Submitted by
damagedbits
damagedbits writes: "BitTorrent traffic is still booming even though legal streaming services like Netflix and YouTube are on the rise. It's far from its all time high of the mid 2000's, but BT traffic is up 40 percent from six months ago. BitTorrent is responsible for about 11 percent of total Internet traffic in the US."

Submission + - Public and remote DNS usage without the web performance cost (networkworld.com)

Submitted by mas939
mas939 writes: Northwestern University researchers have found that public Domain Name System (DNS) services could slow down users' Internet connections, and have developed namehelp, a solution that could speed up Web performance by as much as 40 percent. The Northwestern researchers, led by professor Fabian Bustamante, found that users' Web performance can suffer due to the hidden interaction of DNS with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), which help performance by offering exact replicas of Web site content in computer servers around the world. The namehelp system runs personalized benchmarks in the background, from within users' computers, to determine their optimal DNS configuration and improve the Web experience by helping sites load faster.
Android

Submission + - Nexus 7 and Android convertibles drive massive ASUS profit (engadget.com)

Submitted by rtfa-troll
rtfa-troll writes: The collapse of the PC market has had much discussion on Slashdot with a common opinion that, now that Apple is the largest personal computer manufacturer, a loss of sales combined with Apple's iPad will completely eliminate most of them. Now Asustek's most recent results show that there may be a way out for those that can move away from their standard markets. Concentrating on Android tablet devices, the Google Nexus 7, with a help from ASUS transformer tablets has driven the company to massive $230 million profits. Asus gross revenue also climbed 9 percent to around $3.8 billion.

We have discussed related issues recently: Where companies like HTC have lost their focus on open Android devices and suffered from devastating collapses, ASUS has managed to differentiate it's tablets by providing the most open tablet experience possible via with Google's Nexus program and branding.
Network

Submission + - Internet hubs running on generator power (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: Two monolithic buildings in lower Manhattan that serve as major network hubs for the U.S. are operating on generator power, thanks to Hurricane Sandy. The buildings, known as carrier hotels, are a 2.9 million square foot structure at 111 8th Ave., and a 1.8 million square foot facility at 60 Hudson St. Telecom companies use carrier hotels to interconnect networks to allow data sharing and users of one network to connect with those of another. The two buildings are critical to the nation's infrastructure. In 2002, Richard Clarke, then special advisor to the president for cyberspace security, described their importance in a speech. "Transatlantic fiber lands at about 10 different places in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Long Island and New Jersey that, after having landed, it all goes to one of two facilities — 60 Hudson St. or 111 8th Ave in lower Manhattan. If that's true, that would seem to be a problem." Michael Levy, an analyst at Datacenters Tier1 Research, a division of 451 Research, said that "111 8th Ave. and 60 Hudson are two of the most carrier dense buildings in the world." Google owns 111 8th Ave., but isn't commenting on its storm prep for the building.
Transportation

Submission + - Glow-In-The-Dark Smart Highways Coming To the Netherlands in 2013 (wired.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Netherlands is moving forward with plans to build "smart" highways that can become more easily visible or communicate weather conditions to drivers. Work will begin as early as next year. 'Special paint will also be used to paint markers like snowflakes across the road's surface — when temperatures fall to a certain point, these images will become visible, indicating that the surface will likely be slippery. Roosegaarde says this technology has been around for years, on things like baby food — the studio has just upscaled it. The first few hundred metres of glow in the dark, weather-indicating road will be installed in the province of Brabant in mid-2013, followed by priority induction lanes for electric vehicles, interactive lights that switch on as cars pass and wind-powered lights within the next five years.'
Bug

Submission + - Microsoft Site Loophole Lets Anyone Buy Windows 8 Pro For Just $15

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you bought a Windows 7 PC after June 2, you’re eligible for a discounted Windows 8 Pro upgrade for just $15. If you lie and tell Microsoft you bought a Windows 7 PC after June 2, you can also get a discounted Windows 8 Pro upgrade for just $15, thanks to a loophole in the official Windows Upgrade Offer site.

Comment First thoughts... (Score 1) 590

by eexaa (#41821909) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Stands In the Way of a Truly Solar-Powered Airliner?

Just first thoughts:

1- energy efficient (which is necessary with low-surface solar-powered stuff) aircrafts are way too slow, much slower than jets. Customers basically don't like spending time sitting in airplane.
2- more people onboard add weight (there should be at least 3 crew people for a commercial flight, plus at least one passenger, sums to twice the largest amount of people I've ever seen on solar-powered plane)
3- more energy needs more surface, which adds both weight and drag.

I hope someone here will be able to apply some kinetics/aerodynamics equations that show those thoughts more accurately.

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It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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