feldhaus writes "The BBC reports that the first beams for over one year have been successfully sent around the complete circumference of the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday."

IP-192.com was one of several readers to note that Google Voice users can now utilize their existing mobile phone number for collecting voice messages instead of applying for a Google Voice number. From the post at the Google Voice blog: "Up until now, if you wanted to use Google Voice, you needed to choose a new number. Taking calls through your Google number allows us to offer features like call recording, call screening and getting text messages via email." Not all features (like conference calling) are available to those bringing their own number, but voice messages by email is my favorite feature.

Jamie found a video showing an unpolished idea demonstrating the use of Microsoft Surface for D&D. Looks like they are using 4th ed as the basis for the system. This comes from the Surfacescapes team at Carnegie Mellon, which strikes me as a very good place to be a nerd right about now... provided you make your saving throws.

An anonymous reader writes "A time lens can focus a chunk of time to a point, rather like a normal lens focuses light rays. Put two time lenses together and you can create what a Cornell University team calls a 'time domain telescope' which can magnify time. They sent a 2.5 nanosecond long light pulse, encoding 24 bits of information, into their time telescope. What came out on the other side was the same 24 bit pulse, but compressed into 92 picoseconds. Squashing more information into a light pulse could help to send more information via optical fibres."

Several readers sent in word that Google has served a Cease and Desist order to Cyanogen, one of the most prolific Android modders: his CyanogenMod is enjoyed by 30,000 users. The move is puzzling. Gizmodo wonders what Google's game is, and Lauren Weinstein calls the move "not of the high 'Googley' caliber" that one would expect of the company.

scrubl writes "China has ditched plans to force foreign and domestic computer manufacturers to install internet filtering technology in computers sold inside its borders. The Chinese government paid $5.85m to develop the software called Green Dam and claimed it was being installed to stop access to porn on computers and protect children. China's industry and information technology minister Li Yizhong said that manufacturers, Internet users, and organisations opposed to the plans had received the wrong message from his department and that installation was never planned to be compulsory."

Reservoir Hill writes "The Guardian reports that a study by Ed H Chi demonstrates that the character of Wikipedia has changed significantly since Wikipedia's first burst of activity between 2004 and 2007. While the encyclopedia is still growing overall, the number of articles being added has reduced from an average of 2,200 a day in July 2007 to around 1,300 today while at the same time, the base of highly active editors has remained more or less static. Chi's team discovered that the way the site operates had changed significantly from the early days, when it ran an open-door policy that allowed in anyone with the time and energy to dedicate to the project. Today, they discovered, a stable group of high-level editors has become increasingly responsible for controlling the encyclopedia, while casual contributors and editors are falling away. 'We found that if you were an elite editor, the chance of your edit being reverted was something in the order of 1% — and that's been very consistent over time from around 2003 or 2004,' says Chi. 'For editors that make between two and nine edits a month, the percentage of their edits being reverted had gone from 5% in 2004 all the way up to about 15% by October 2008. And the 'onesies' — people who only make one edit a month — their edits are now being reverted at a 25% rate.' While Chi points out that this does not necessarily imply causation, he suggests it is concrete evidence to back up what many people have been saying: that it is increasingly difficult to enjoy contributing to Wikipedia unless you are part of the site's inner core of editors. Wikipedia's growth pattern suggests that it is becoming like a community where resources have started to run out. 'As you run out of food, people start competing for that food, and that results in a slowdown in population growth and means that the stronger, more well-adapted part of the population starts to have more power.'"

theodp writes "Many US colleges and universities have notices posted on their websites informing US companies that they're tax chumps if they hire students who are US citizens. 'In fact, a company may save money by hiring international students because the majority of them are exempt from Social Security (FICA) and Medicare tax requirements,' advises the taxpayer-supported University of Pittsburgh (pdf) as it makes the case against hiring its own US students. You'll find identical pitches made by the University of Delaware, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and other public colleges and universities. The same message is also echoed by private schools, such as John Hopkins University, Brown University, Rollins College and Loyola University Chicago."

adeelarshad82 writes "Intel's X58 chipset is the platform of choice for enthusiasts, but Intel serves a heck of a big audience. To please that larger crowd and bring down prices, the company is planning a mainstream iteration of its Nehalem architecture: the P55 chipset. It's designed to work with the forthcoming Lynnfield CPUs, and offers performance close to LGA1366 chips at a much cheaper price. Recently Asus demoed its first intel P55 chip and released exclusive photos. Asus claims to have run its new boards with engineering samples of the Core i5-750 at a 77 percent overclock, boosting speeds from 2.66 GHz to 4.7 GHz. Asus admits this wasn't necessarily stable, but still — that's fast. And on liquid cooling, the boards reportedly hit speeds of 5.1 GHz."