canon123 - Slashdot User

Facebook Acquires Server-Focused Security Startup 18

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday August 07, 2014 @11:03PM from the answering-the-acquisition-request dept.

wiredmikey writes In a move to bolster the security of its massive global server network, Facebook announced on Thursday it was acquiring PrivateCore, a Palo Alto, California-based cybersecurity startup. PrivateCore describes that its vCage software transparently secures data in use with full memory encryption for any application, any data, anywhere on standard x86 servers. "I'm really excited that Facebook has entered into an agreement to acquire PrivateCore," Facebook security chief Joe Sullivan wrote in a post to his own Facebook page. "I believe that PrivateCore's technology and expertise will help support Facebook's mission to help make the world more open and connected, in a secure and trusted way," Sullivan said. "Over time, we plan to deploy PrivateCore's technology directly into the Facebook server stack."

Submission + - Lawyers For Mining Companies Threaten Scientific Journals (litigationandtrial.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 25, 2012 @01:29PM

An anonymous reader writes: ScienceInsider got hold of a letter that lawyers for the mining industry sent to various scientific journals that have either received, or could receive, data from the US "Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study" that many occupational health researchers believe will show a link between diesel exhaust and cancer. ScienceInsider had the scoop, a handful of scientists have comment, and the above URL links to several of them and discusses in depth the back of the lawsuit that prompted the threat.

Submission + - Fraunhofer IIS Demos Full-HD Voice Over LTE On Android (hothardware.com)

Submitted by

MojoKid

on Saturday February 25, 2012 @11:26AM

MojoKid writes: "Fraunhofer IIS has chosen Mobile World Congress as the place to present the world's first Full-HD Voice mobile phone calls over an LTE network. Verizon Wireless has toyed with VoLTE (Voice over LTE) before, but this particular method enables mobile phone calls to sound as clear as talking to another person in the same room. Full-HD Voice is already established in several VoIP, video telephony and conferencing systems. However, this will mark the first time Fraunhofer's Full-HD Voice codec AAC-ELD has been integrated into a mobile communications system. Currently, the majority of phone calls are limited to the 3.5 kHz range, whereas humans are able to perceive audio signals up to 20 kHz. The Full-HD Voice codec AAC-ELD gives access to the full audible audio spectrum."

Submission + - $6 Trillion in Fake US Treasury Bonds Siezed in Switzerland (sfgate.com)

Submitted by ackthpt on Friday February 17, 2012 @12:32PM

ackthpt writes: If you're going to steal, steal big, right? Italian anti-mafia prosecutors announce seizure of $6 trillion of allegedly fake U.S. Treasury bonds, an amount that's almost half of the U.S.'s public debt. The probe focusing upon money laundering has also include financial dealings alleged to direct money to Nigerian sources to buy plutonium. Sound like a movie plot, yet? $6 Trillion, that's a lot of lettuce.

Comment Bias (Score 1) 1123

by canon123 on Saturday May 29, 2010 @05:36PM (#32392050) Attached to: What Scientists Really Think About Religion

First, surveys tend to get the answers that their authors want them to. We see this in polls and focus groups. It is hard to be objective. The phrasing of the questions need to be tested on a control group. The survey should be conducted double-blind. None of that happened in this case. There is prima facie evidence of bias in this survey. One indication of this bias is the skewed interpretation of the data, commented on by others already. Another is the vague nature of some questions, such as asking about "spirituality." Finally, the in depth survey was conducted personally by the author, which allows for unintentional bias via leading questions and non-verbal queuing. Second, whether there are gods is a matter of fact, which cannot be decided by voting. It is irrelevant if many or most people or scientists believe gods exist or not.

Russian Officials To Investigate Regional President's Alien Abduction Claims 184

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 06, 2010 @09:50AM from the mars-wants-to-play-chess dept.

wdef writes "The BBC reports that a Russian MP has asked President Dmitry Medvedev to investigate claims by a regional president that he has met aliens on board a spaceship. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the leader of the southern region of Kalymkia, made his claim in a television interview. Mr Ilyumzhinov said in an interview on primetime television that he had been taken on board an alien spaceship which had come to planet Earth to take samples — and claims to have several witnesses. He has been president of Kalmykia, a small Buddhist region of Russia which lies on the shores of the Caspian Sea, for 17 years. As president of the World Chess Federation, he has spent tens of millions of dollars turning the impoverished republic into a mecca for chess players — building an entire village to host international tournaments. MP Andre Lebedev is not just asking whether Mr Ilyumzhinov is fit to govern. He is also concerned that, if he was abducted, he may have revealed details about his job and state secrets."

Rogue Brown Dwarf Lurks In Our Cosmic Neighborhood 188

Posted by Soulskill on Friday April 09, 2010 @04:20PM from the brown-dwarf-rogue-lurks-in-ironforge dept.

astroengine writes "The UK Infrared Telescope in Hawaii has discovered a lone, cool brown dwarf called UGPSJ0722-05. As far as sub-stellar objects go, this is a strange one. For starters, it's the coolest brown dwarf ever discovered (and astronomers using the UKIRT should know; they are making a habit of finding cool brown dwarfs). Secondly, it's close. In fact, it's the closest brown dwarf to Earth, at a distance of only 10 light years. And thirdly, it has an odd spectroscopic signature, leading astronomers to think that this might be the discovery of a whole new class of brown dwarf."

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday November 22, 2009 @11:59AM from the take-your-pick dept.

igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."

Proton Beams Sent Around the LHC 115

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 20, 2009 @05:40PM from the going-in-circles dept.

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."

David Pogue Wants to Take Back the Beep 383

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 30, 2009 @04:18PM from the pogue-mahone-jerks dept.

David Pogue has distilled into useful form a long-standing complaint I have (and one reason I have long had a voice mail greeting that asked people not to leave me voicemail): cell phone companies set up the greeting, caller instructions, and playback system prompts in large part to maximize their revenue per user; by his calculations, the "mandatory 15-second voicmail instructions" from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and others is earning those companies something near a billion dollars a year in charges. Pogue suggests that users should "take back the beep," and to that end provides contact information for the largest cell carriers in order to register a complaint — and, more helpful in the short run, suggests ways in which to make better use of paid-for phone minutes by alerting callers how to bypass the annoying instructions.

Computers Emulate Neanderthal Speech 220

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday April 16, 2008 @06:34PM from the borrow-a-cup-of-evolution dept.

Clarence writes "After some 30,000 years of silence, the Neanderthal race is once again speaking thanks to some advanced computer simulation. A Florida Atlantic University professor is using software vocal tract reconstructions to emulate the speech of our long-dead distant relatives. 'He says the ancient human's speech lacked the "quantal vowel" sounds that underlie modern speech. Quantal vowels provide cues that help speakers with different size vocal tracts understand one another, says Robert McCarthy, who was talking at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio, on April 11. In the 1970s, linguist Phil Lieberman, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, inferred the dimensions of the larynx of a Neanderthal based on its skull. His team concluded that Neanderthal speech did not have the subtlety of modern human speech.'"

The Milky Way's Black Hole Is Not So Quiescent 152

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @03:03PM from the long-ago-in-a-galaxy-right-nearby dept.

esocid writes in with a followup to the recent discussion about the possibility that our galaxy's central black hole could reignite. "Using NASA, Japanese, and European X-ray satellites, a team of Japanese astronomers has discovered that Sagittarius A* let loose a powerful flare three centuries before the time at which we are observing it (i.e., 26,000 years in the past). X-ray pulses emanating from just outside the black hole take 300 years to traverse the distance between the central black hole and a large cloud known as Sagittarius B2, so the cloud responds to events that occurred 300 years earlier. 'By observing how this cloud lit up and faded over 10 years, we could trace back the black hole's activity 300 years ago,' says team member Katsuji Koyama of Kyoto University. 'The black hole was a million times brighter three centuries ago.'"

Brain Study Calls Free Will Into Question 733

Posted by kdawson on Sunday April 13, 2008 @09:49PM from the choose-wisely-young-jedi dept.

siddster notes an account up at Wired of research indicating that brain scanners can see your decisions before you make them. "In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them... Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will... The experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more complicated decisions... Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision."

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