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IBM

Submission + - IBM's Sequoia Supercomputer dethrones Fujitsu's "K" as Fastest Computer (bbc.com)

Submitted by
_0x783czar
_0x783czar writes: "IBM's newly installed supercomputer "Sequoia" has led the US to regain the top spot in advanced computing. Reportedly clocking in at 273,930 times faster than the first supercomputer to make the list (Thinking Machines' CM-5/1024) back in 1993; the Sequoia can calculate in one hour, what it would take the entire population of the earth (working non-stop with hand calculators) 320 years to compute. Which is what we might expect from a machine with over 1.5 million processors.
The title had been held by the Fujitsu Company's "K" machine until now, as the Sequoia is apparently 55% faster. However, while the US has taken the lead, it also has fewer computers in the top 10 than it did only a few months ago.
Currently the Sequoia will be tasked with maintaining the US nuclear arsenal & extending the life of aging warheads. Which leaves me with the irresistible urge to quote xkcd: "we tell the robot to kill... but secretly we're afraid to tell it to love""
Cloud

Submission + - ESRI rolls out ArcGIS mapping, map services for the cloud (computerworld.com)

Submitted by cweditor
cweditor writes: ESRI formally unveiled organizational subscriptions for ArcGIS online, in beta since December. ArcGIS online now lets you turn data into a map service with or without a GIS server and adds tools for application development, including both native and HTML 5 support for Android and iOS. Free personal, non-commercial ArcGIS Online accounts continue, but only let you use map services, not create them, and don't include app dev tools.

Submission + - IT Jobs Expected To Grow 22% Through 2020 (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: IT jobs are booming, according to a just-released biennial report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on employment projections. Demand for software developers will be the strongest in over the next eight years, with increases ranging from 28% to 32%, depending on the type of software development. Database admins are running a close second with 31% and network & computer sysadmins are in third with 28% job growth. For IT managers, employment is projected to increase 18% by 55,800 jobs to 363,700 jobs by 2020. The median pay for IT managers in 2010 was $115,780, database admins made an median $73,490.
Android

Submission + - Google Made $550 Million From Android Since 2008 (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes: Figures in court documents filed as part of a settlement with Oracle suggest Google generated only $550 million in Android revenue since 2008. According to the numbers, which were derived from figures offered by Google as part of a damages offer to Oracle, Google receives just over $10 per Android handset annually. Google's presence on iOS was much more lucrative, generating four times a much revenue--though it may not last, as Apple is working to replace its use of Google Maps.
United Kingdom

Submission + - Not Beer goggles, but a beer mirror... (medicalxpress.com)

Submitted by sackbut
sackbut writes: From the "This is obvious" department:

  From the story: "Psychologists led by Laurent Begue at the Pierre-Mendes France University in the southeastern city of Grenoble carried out an unusual experiment in a local bar and then in laboratory conditions. In the first stage, 19 drinkers, two-thirds of them men, were asked to assess their attractiveness on a scale of one to seven. Their alcohol levels were measured by a breathalyser, and true to form, the higher the amount of booze that had been drunk, the rosier the self-assessment."

The interesting second part of the experiment demonstrated that even thinking you had drank alcohol (as a placebo) was enough to inflate the subjects attractiveness in their eyes

So beer goggles are a two way street.
Security

Submission + - Pinterest Makes Spamming Fun and Easy (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "In an interview with Daily Dot, a spammer named 'Steve' explains how he earns over $1,000 a day on Pinterest. 'Pinterest is by FAR the easiest social network to spam right now,' says Steve. But his conscience is clear: 'I have no guilt. I'm not trying to scam anyone, or upload viruses to their computer or anything like that. I simply show products to the Pinterest community.'"
The Internet

Submission + - Thieves to steal "broadband batteries" (pcpro.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "British broadband customers routinely have their service disrupted because of thieves stealing the copper telephone cabling. Now a new potential threat has emerged: battery theft. The former chief technologist of BT has claimed that the company's fibre broadband cabinets will become a target for battery thieves.

"Fibre to the cabinet is one of the biggest mistakes humanity has made," Dr Cochrane told the Lords' Select Committee on Superfast Broadband. "It ties a knot in the cable in terms of bandwidth and imposes huge unreliability risks.

"Once the local bandits have recognised that there is a car battery in the bottom, you can bet your bottom dollar that a crowbar will be out and the battery will keep disappearing.""
Open Source

Submission + - Agencies Use Beta Open Source Project For Public Dataviz

Submitted by cweditor
cweditor writes: Several public agencies are using the beta open-source project Weave to put data visualization and analysis into the hands of planners, community activitists and other citizens. Metro Boston's DataCommon rolled out last month, allowing users to build dataviz dashboards where mousing over one visualization module also highlights or slices data in others. Portals in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Arizona, among other places, are under development. More Weave refinements are on the way, says the project head, including real-time collaboration and connecting maps with collections of documents (whether or not they've been geocoded).

Submission + - Air cooling planned for exascale data center

Submitted by cweditor
cweditor writes: The U.S. Department of Energy's Berkeley Lab has begun building a new computing center that will one day house exascale systems. The DOE doesn't know what an exascale system will look like. The types of chips, the storage, the networking and programming methods that will go into these systems are all works in progress. But what the DOE does have an idea about it is how to cool these systems: the Bay Area's crisp climate; that is, pulling in outdoor air.
Data Storage

Submission + - CIA-backed Cleversafe Announces 10-Exabyte Storage (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Cleversafe, a vendor of an object-based file system that has received backing from the CIA's investment arm, said today that it has developed a storage architecture that can scale to 10 exabytes of capacity. While the current reference configuration is just tens of petabytes in size spread among data centers in eight states, the company said it can store exabytes of data among geographically dispersed data centers under a single domain name, offering administrators a single pane of glass. Of course, building out the storage system would require $705 million just for spindles; in all, it would cost billions of dollars to complete. But, the company said it has Fortune 50 companies, and others, that are interested.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Is The Wireless Well Running Dry? (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: The number of wireless devices in the U.S. has, for the first time, exceeded the number of people. Wireless networks are edging near capacity, not just in the U.S., but all over the world. Credit Suisse conducted a survey that reveals mobile networks in North America were running at 80% of capacity, with 36% of base stations facing capacity constraints. The average globally for base station capacity utilization, the report said, was 65%.The problem is going to get worse before it gets better as advancements in connected cars, smart grids, machine-to-machine communication, and domestic installations such as at-home health monitoring systems, wireless demands will only increase.
Security

Submission + - Corporate boardrooms open to eavesdropping

Submitted by cweditor
cweditor writes: One afternoon this month, a hacker toured a dozen corporate conference rooms via equipment that most every company has in those rooms: videoconferencing. Rapid7 says it could 'easily read a six-digit password from a sticky note over 20 feet away from the camera' and 'clearly hear conversations down the hallway from the video conferencing system.' With some systems, they could even capture keystrokes being typed in the room. Teleconferencing vendors defended their security, saying the auto-answer feature that left those sytsem vulnerable was an effort to strake the right balance between security and usability.
Medicine

Submission + - Medical Imaging with a Hacked LCD Projector (youtube.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Grad students at UC Irvine have built a spatial frequency domain imaging system using parts from a cheap LCD projector and a digital camera. The system can be used to check the level of bruising or oxygenation in layers of tissue that aren't visible to the naked eye, according to an article in Chemical and Engineering News. An accompanying video shows the series of patterned pulses that the improvised imaging system makes in order to read hemoglobin and fat levels below the surface of the skin. A more sophisticated version of the imaging system is being commercialized by a startup within UC Irvine, called Modulated Imaging. The article and video also describe infrared brain scanners that can non-invasively check for brain bleeds, and multiphoton microscopes that produce stunning images of live skin cells.
Government

Submission + - Why Iowa Caucuses Don't Matter (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: When you look at the data, it reveals that the Iowa Caucus really has no impact on who becomes the Republican nominee. Results won't indicate anything beyond who's popular among Iowa Republican activists ... although not for the reason many skeptics cite. It's not the number of people participating that makes Iowa meaningless as a predictor, but its skewed sample. This skewed sample problem shows up in its failure to reflect the eventual winner, according to Computerworld's Sharon Machlis. In other words, Iowa voters are not a random sample of American voters and thus do not reflect all U.S. voters in ways that matter to the ultimate outcome.

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