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Submission + - Chipmaker Broadcom To Buy Network Gear Maker Brocade For $5.5 Billion (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Chipmaker Broadcom Ltd said it would buy Brocade Communications Systems Inc for $5.5 billion, pushing deeper into the fast-growing market for network equipment used in data centers. The deal, the latest in a consolidating chip sector, will allow Broadcom to corner a larger share of the data center products market by using Brocade's fiber channel switches that speed up data transfer between servers and storage devices. Singapore-based Broadcom, formerly Avago Technologies, is known for its connectivity chips used in products ranging from mobiles to servers, while California-based Brocade makes networking switches, software and storage products. Broadcom said it planned to sell Brocade's networking business, which makes controllers and access points that help businesses offer high-speed internet to their customers, to avoid competing with its top customers such as Cisco Systems Inc.

Submission + - CERN antimatter experiment produces first beam of antihydrogen (web.cern.ch)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Matter and antimatter annihilate immediately when they meet, so aside from creating antihydrogen, one of the key challenges for physicists is to keep antiatoms away from ordinary matter. To do so, experiments take advantage of antihydrogen’s magnetic properties (which are similar to hydrogen’s) and use very strong non-uniform magnetic fields to trap antiatoms long enough to study them. However, the strong magnetic field gradients degrade the spectroscopic properties of the (anti)atoms. To allow for clean high-resolution spectroscopy, the ASACUSA collaboration developed an innovative set-up to transfer antihydrogen atoms to a region where they can be studied in flight, far from the strong magnetic field."

Submission + - Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: After a decade of exploring the Martian surface, the scientists overseeing veteran rover Opportunity thought they’d seen it all. That was until a rock mysteriously “appeared” a few feet in front of the six wheeled rover a few days ago. News of the errant rock was announced by NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University at a special NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory “10 years of roving Mars” event at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday night. The rock, about "the size of a jelly doughnut" according to Squyres, is thought to have either come from a freak "flipping" event or a very recent meteorite impact. However, the latter isn't thought to be very likely. Although they are still working on the rock's origin, the rover team believe it was "tiddlywinked" by Opportunity's broken wheel; as the rover was turning on the spot, the rock was kicked from place under the wheel and flipped a few feet away from the rover. Neve missing a science opportunity, Squyres told Discovery News, “It obligingly turned upside down, so we’re seeing a side that hasn’t seen the Martian atmosphere in billions of years and there it is for us to investigate. It’s just a stroke of luck.”

Submission + - Blackhole Exploit Kit Successor Years Away (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: The Blackhole Exploit Kit has been out of commission since October when its alleged creator, a hacker named Paunch, was arrested in Russia. The kit was a favorite among cybercriminals who took advantage of its frequent updates and business model to distribute financial malware to great profit. Since the arrest of Paunch, however, a viable successor has yet to emerge--and experts believe one will not in the short term. This is partially the reason for the increase in outbreaks of ransomware such as CryptoLocker as hackers aggressively attempt to recover lost profits.

Submission + - Malaria Vaccine nearing reality (cnn.com)

Submitted by colin_faber
colin_faber writes: Right on the heals of Bill Gates business week article discussing the importance of disease prevention and cure over technological deployment is news from CNN that U.S. researchers may have a viable vaccine for Malaria. If true this could change the lives of up to 3.3 billion people living in Malaria danger zones and allow us to do away with this disease; which kills hundreds of thousands of people.
Science

Submission + - Quantum gas goes below absolute zero (nature.com)

Submitted by mromanuk
mromanuk writes: It may sound less likely than hell freezing over, but physicists have created an atomic gas with a sub-absolute-zero temperature for the first time. Their technique opens the door to generating negative-Kelvin materials and new quantum devices, and it could even help to solve a cosmological mystery.
Science

Thousands of Blackbirds Fall From Sky Dead 577

Posted by samzenpus from the silent-spring dept.
Dan East writes "In a fashion worthy of a King or Hitchcock novel, blackbirds began to fall from the sky dead in Arkansas yesterday. Somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 birds rained down on the small town of Beeb, Arkansas, with no visible trauma. Officials are making wild guesses as to what happened — lightning strike, high-altitude hail, or perhaps trauma from the sound of New Year's fireworks killed them."
PC Games (Games)

Witcher 2 Torrents Could Net You a Fine 724

Posted by Soulskill from the dodging-legal-threats-now-a-valid-gameplay-mechanic dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from Eurogamer: "Gamers who download upcoming PC exclusive The Witcher 2 illegally could receive a letter demanding they pay a fine or face legal action. If gamers refuse to pay the fine, which will be more than the cost of the game, they could end up in court, developer CD Projekt told Eurogamer. 'Of course we're not happy when people are pirating our games, so we are signing with legal firms and torrent sneaking companies,' CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwiski said. 'In quite a few big countries, when people are downloading it illegally they can expect a letter from a legal firm saying, "Hey, you downloaded it illegally and right now you have to pay a fine." We are totally fair, but if you decide you will not buy it legally there is a chance you'll get a letter. We are talking about it right now.' Interestingly, The Witcher 2 will be released free of digital rights management – but only through the CD Projekt-owned digital download shop GOG.com. That means owners will be able to install it as many times as they like on any number of computers – and it will not requite an internet connection to run."
Classic Games (Games)

Researchers Reprogram Voting Machine To Run Pac-man Screenshot-sm 132

Posted by samzenpus from the vote-cherry-this-year dept.
Philom writes "Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated that electronic voting machines can be reprogrammed to steal votes, so when researchers Alex Halderman and Ari Feldman got their hands on a machine called the Sequoia AVC Edge, they decided to do something different: they reprogrammed it to run Pac-Man. As states move away from insecure electronic voting, there's a risk that discarded machines will clog our landfills. Fortunately, these results show that voting machines can be recycled to provide countless hours of entertainment."
Privacy

Israel's Supreme Court Says Yes To Internet Anonymity 198

Posted by timothy from the but-probably-in-hebrew dept.
jonklinger writes "The Israeli Supreme Court ruled this week that there is no civil procedure to reveal the identity of users behind an IP address, and that until such procedure shall be legislated, all internet postings, even tortious, may remain anonymous. The 69-page decision acknowledges the right to privacy and makes internet anonymity de facto a constitutional right in Israel. Justice Rivlin noted that revealing a person behind an IP address is 'an attempt to harness, prior to a legal proceeding, the justice system and a third party in order to conduct an inquiry which will lead to the revealing of a person committing a tort so that a civil suit could be filed against him.'"
Hardware Hacking

Home-Built Turing Machine 123

Posted by Soulskill from the i'll-order-a-dozen dept.
stronghawk writes "The creator of the Nickel-O-Matic is back at it and has now built a Turing Machine from a Parallax Propeller chip-based controller, motors, a dry-erase marker and a non-infinite supply of shiny 35mm leader film. From his FAQ: 'While thinking about Turing machines I found that no one had ever actually built one, at least not one that looked like Turing's original concept (if someone does know of one, please let me know). There have been a few other physical Turing machines like the Logo of Doom, but none were immediately recognizable as Turing machines. As I am always looking for a new challenge, I set out to build what you see here.'"
Medicine

High Fructose Corn Syrup Causes Bigger Weight Gain In Rats 542

Posted by timothy from the subsidies-cause-fatter-corn-farmers dept.
krou writes "In an experiment conducted by a Princeton University team, 'Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.' Long-term consumption also 'led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides.' Psychology professor Bart Hoebel commented that 'When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight.'"

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Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. -- Bertrand Russell

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