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Submission + - Big Science, Tiny Microservers: IBM Research Pushes 64-Bit Possibilities->

An anonymous reader writes: Four years ago, a friend dropped a Sheeva Plug into the hands of Ronald Luijten, a system designer at IBM Research in Zurich. At the time, neither could have realized the development cycle this simple gift would spark.
Following funding from the Square Kilometer Array Project to help come up with a solution around the exascale capabilities required in a minimal power envelope, Luitjen looked for a tiny, self-serving part with 64-bit capability and found only one chip--this one from Freescale for the embedded market--and got to work building an ecosystem, or at least starting it, by getting an OS and then (!) DB2 up and running..

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Submission + - Fruit flies, fighter jets use similar tactics when attacked->


“Although they have been described as swimming through the air, tiny flies actually roll their bodies just like aircraft in a banked turn to maneuver away from impending threats,” said Michael Dickinson, UW professor of biology and co-author of a paper on the findings in the April 11 issue of Science. “We discovered that fruit flies alter course in less than one one-hundredth of a second, 50 times faster than we blink our eyes, and which is faster than we ever imagined.”

In the midst of a banked turn, the flies can roll on their sides 90 degrees or more, almost flying upside down at times, said Florian Muijres, a UW postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper. “These flies normally flap their wings 200 times a second and, in almost a single wing beat, the animal can reorient its body to generate a force away from the threatening stimulus and then continues to accelerate,” he said.

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Submission + - What's needed for the 60TB hard drive 1

Lucas123 writes: Within the next 6 years, Seagate expects to produce a 60TB hard disk drive using HAMR technology. But WD and Seagate are currently on separate paths toward expanding capacity. Seagate with Singled Magnetic Recording (SMR) and WD with helium-filled drives. Computerworld has published a series of slides explaining what has been used up until this point and what will be needed to reach the 60TB end goal.

Submission + - What ComiXology Can Do For Amazon->

redletterdave writes: Amazon on Thursday announced it will acquire digital comics agency ComiXology for an undisclosed sum. But why does the world's biggest online retailer care so much about comic books? Well, that's because the deal—and ComiXology, as a whole—isn't just about comics. ComiXology is pioneering the art of digital storytelling, and attempting to bring these tools to the masses. With Amazon, ComiXology gets a big boost towards its goal of adding a third dimension to the two-dimensional world of books, comics and graphic novels.
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Submission + - The Effect Of The Heartbleed Bug On Open Source Projects

An anonymous reader writes: The Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL is all the information security world is talking about these days. Many are beginning to realize, its existence has opened multiple cans of worms. One aspect of the revelation is how it will affect the trust professionals and regular users have in open source software. Dr. Robin Seggelmann, the software developer that was the one who introduced the Heartbleed flaw pointed out that the main difficulty of creating open source software is attracting contributors and code reviewers, and expressed hope that this incident will spur more people to contribute to open source projects, especially when the software is relevant for security.

Submission + - Mathematical Proof That The Cosmos Could Have Formed Spontaneously From Nothing

KentuckyFC writes: One of the great theories of modern cosmology is that the universe began in a Big Bang. This is not just an idea but a scientific theory backed up by numerous lines of evidence, such as the cosmic microwave background and so on. But what caused the Big Bang itself? For many years, cosmologists have fallen back on the idea that the universe formed spontaneously; that the big bang was result of quantum fluctuations in which the universe came into existence from nothing. But is this compatible with what we know about the Big Bang itself and the theories that describe it? Now cosmologists have come up with the first rigorous proof that the Big Bang could indeed have occurred spontaneously and produced the universe we see today. The proof is developed within a mathematical framework known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle allows a small region of empty space to come into existence probabilistically due to quantum fluctuations. Most of the time, such a bubble will collapse and disappear. The question these guys address is whether a bubble could also expand exponentially to allow universe to form in an irreversible way. Their proof shows that this is indeed possible. There is an interesting corollary which is that the role of the cosmological constant is played by a property known as the quantum potential. This is a property introduced in the 20th century by the physicist David Bohm which has the effect of making quantum mechanics deterministic while reproducing all of its predictions. It’s an idea that has never caught on. Perhaps that will change now.

Comment Re:The new Hitlers (Score 4, Informative) 564

Apart from it being a Religious term (in the Bible, it mentions that marriage is between a husband and wife, being man and woman). That's part of the base scripture. Apparently the word of God.

In case you weren't aware, there have also been marriages outside of the influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition. While people in the Middle East were writing the Bible, there was still stuff going on in the entire rest of the world.

Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 562

Well, they used the line "vulnerabilities and exploits" in Violet Blue's abstract to suggest that the talk would be about how to exploit vulnerable people (Seriously? For a phrase that is THAT common in security circles?).

Even if that had been the topic of her talk, we all know that the best way to defend against an exploit is to just keep it a secret and hope that no one else knows about it.

Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 562

Except - this story in no way suggests anything that remotely resembles "sane conference policies".

This zany bitch threatened that she would be "triggered" by the lady if she spoke. "Triggered". That is an aggressive word, not a defensive word. She threatened to go postal, if she didn't get her way. She committed an assault on the freedom of speech.

Fixed. The talk was actually being given by a woman, and according to her blog, the only mention of rape was a section on avoiding date rape drugs. So really, by blocking this talk, they kept rape prevention information out of the hands of potential victims.
