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Submission + - Let Them Eat Teslas

theodp writes: If you're a bright kid who wants to prepare for the 21st century workforce (pdf) by studying engineering at Purdue, the government will help your parents pay the $100,000 or so tuition tab with a 7.9% interest loan (plus 4% fees) that's likely to be non-dischargeable in bankruptcy and paid back with after-tax money. If, on the other hand, you want to buy a tricked-out $100,000 Model S, Tesla has teamed up with the government, Wells Fargo, and U.S. Bank on what it calls a 'Revolutionary New Finance Product' that enables those who play the game right to avoid paying sales tax, get the government to pick up the first $15,000 (no down payment needed!), and also receive a 2.95% bankruptcy-dischargeable loan for the balance, the payments for which could be tax-deductible. Yep, 'Revolutionary' may be about right!

Submission + - AMD Releases UVD Engine Source Code (phoronix.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Years of desire by AMD Linux users to have open source video playback support by their graphics driver is now over. AMD has released open-source UVD support for their Linux driver so users can have hardware-accelerated video playback of H.264, VC-1, and MPEG video formats. Support for this UVD support on years old graphics cards was delayed because AMD feared open-source support could kill their Digital Rights Management abilities for other platforms.

Submission + - Nebula Debuts "Cloud Computer" Based on OpenStack (slashdot.org)

Nerval's Lobster writes: The Nebula One is being positioned as a "cloud computer" that can connect preconfigured servers to a private cloud using an OpenStack-based OS. The idea, according to former NASA CIO Chris Kemp, is to spin up a private cloud in as little as an hour. Even so, while a pitch on the company’s homepage (narrated by none other than Patrick Stewart) may sound like the company can take any old CPU, storage, and memory resources and combine them together, buyers actually have only a small selection of servers from which to choose. The company’s secret sauce is its Nebula Cosmos software, based upon the OpenStack cloud OS, which pools all compute and local storage within a system to provide a cloud-level aggregation of resources for all users. Users are presented with quotas and limits, within which they can spin up their own instances, deploy applications, and manage their own storage resources. If that sounds somewhat simple, well, that’s the whole point. Three key investors who backed Google—Andy Bechtolsheim, David Cheriton and Ram Shriram—have also put money into Nebula, and the company has operated quietly out of the spotlight for several years.

Submission + - BlackBerry 10 Can BBM Anything You're Watching, Even Porn (ibtimes.com)

redletterdave writes: The new BBM in BlackBerry 10 has the option to automatically share what music you’re listening to as one’s status update. As it turns out, this BBM feature in BlackBerry 10 can actually share anything you’re listening to with your BBM network, including videos. Therefore, any videos viewed in the BlackBerry Z10 browser or media player will be displayed for all of one’s BlackBerry contacts to see, even if you don’t want your network to know you’re watching certain videos.
Networking

Submission + - Open DNS Resolvers Center Stage in Massive DDoS Attacks (threatpost.com)

msm1267 writes: While the big traffic numbers and the spat between Spamhaus and illicit webhost Cyberbunker are grabbing big headlines, the underlying and percolating issue at play here has to do with the open DNS resolvers being used to DDoS the spam-fighters from Switzerland. Open resolvers do not authenticate a packet-sender’s IP address before a DNS reply is sent back. Therefore, an attacker that is able to spoof a victim’s IP address can have a DNS request bombard the victim with a 100-to-1 ratio of traffic coming back to them versus what was requested. DNS amplification attacks such as these have been used lately by hacktivists, extortionists and blacklisted webhosts to great success.
Google

Submission + - Google pledges not to sue open source software, unless first attacked (muktware.com)

sfcrazy writes: Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In it's pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google’s patents covered by the pledge to other technologies.
Science

Submission + - Gene Therapy Extends Mouse Lifespan (sciencedaily.com)

Grond writes: "'Researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre have demonstrated that the mouse lifespan can be extended by the application in adult life of a single treatment acting directly on the animal's genes. Mice treated at the age of one lived longer by 24% on average, and those treated at the age of two, by 13%. The therapy, furthermore, produced an appreciable improvement in the animals' health, delaying the onset of age-related diseases — like osteoporosis and insulin resistance — and achieving improved readings on aging indicators like neuromuscular coordination.' Notably, the therapy did not cause an increase in the incidence of cancer."
Android

Submission + - Octave and gnuplot coming to Android (walkingrandomly.com) 1

MathIsTasty writes: Recently, it was announced on the Octave-maintainers list that a Kickstarter campaign has been launched to bring Matlab style numerical computations and graphing to Android via a "more than" port of Octave and gnuplot. While, I doubt it will be as successful as some recent games on Kickstarter, is this a reasonable way to fund free software development? Now, we just have to worry about people working on simulating solar irradiation while driving. Here is a good blog post about the project.

Submission + - Canadian Internet Surveillance dies a quiet, lonely death. (theglobeandmail.com)

Dr Caleb writes: "The Internet surveillance legislation sponsored by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has disappeared down a dark legislative hole. For all intents and purposes, the bill is dead. If the Harper government still wants to pass a law that would make it easier for police to track people who use the web to commit crimes, it will have to start from scratch.

A follow up from the Minister of "Against Online Surveillance? You Must Be 'For' Child Porn""

Medicine

Submission + - Paralyzed Man Regains Hand Function after Breakthrough Nerve Rewiring Procedure (medicaldaily.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A 71-year-old man who became paralyzed from the waist down and lost all use of both hands in a 2008 car accident has regained motor function in his fingers after doctors rewired his nerves to bypass the damaged ones in a pioneering surgical procedure, according to a case study published on Tuesday.
Security

Submission + - Symantec: More Malware on Religious Sites Than Porn Sites (esecurityplanet.com) 1

kongshem writes: "According to Symantec's annual Internet Security Threat Report, religious and ideological websites have far more security threats per infected site than adult/pornographic sites. Why is that? Symantec's theory: "We hypothesize that this is because pornographic Web site owners already make money from the Internet and, as a result, have a vested interested in keeping their sites malware-free — it's not good for repeat business,""
Space

Submission + - Astronomers see *another* star torn apart by a black hole (discovermagazine.com)

The Bad Astronomer writes: "A star in a galaxy 2.7 billion light years away wandered too close to a supermassive black hole and suffered the ultimate fate: it was literally torn apart by the black hole's gravity. The event was seen as a flash of ultraviolet light flaring 350 times brighter than the galaxy itself, slowly fading over time. Astronomers were able to determine that some of the star's material was eaten by the black hole, and some flung off into space. Although rare, this is the second time such a thing has been seen; the other was just last year."

Submission + - Which comic books to start my 3 yr old with? 2

JeepFanatic writes: I've never been one to read comic books however I've always enjoyed superheros. My 3 yr old son is really into superheros (especially Spiderman) and I thought it would be a fun thing to do together to start reading comics to him. Any suggestions on comics that would be more appropriate to start him out with?
Technology

Submission + - Berkeley Student Fills Dorm with Home Automation (electronichouse.com)

ElectronicHouseGrant writes: "Freshman Derek Low rigged up his Berkeley dorm room with something he calls B.R.A.D., which is short for “Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm.” The room includes automated lighting, drapes, music, motion detection, and more. He can control everything through voice recognition, but a wireless remote, his iPhone and his iPad are also in on the control party. Derek started the install on February 4 and finished just a few days ago."

Submission + - Pandemic bird flu research published (wisc.edu) 1

daveschroeder writes: "After a marathon debate over a pair of studies that show how the avian H5N1 influenza virus could become transmissible in mammals, and an unprecedented recommendation by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) to block publication, and its subsequent reversal, a study by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin–Madison was finally and fully published today in the journal Nature. The full journal article: Experimental adaptation of an influenza H5 HA confers respiratory droplet transmission to a reassortant H5 HA/H1N1 virus in ferrets."

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