Plate tectonics different on early Earth?

Plate tectonics is the great unifying theory of geology, which makes it all the more amazing that it has only been accepted for about 50 years. If you think we’ve got it all figured out by now, a paper published this week in Science may surprise you. And you’d be wrong if you were expecting to read about some dusty rock cores. The new information comes from a much shinier source: diamonds.

Contrary to popular culture, diamonds are not formed from the metamorphosis of coal under tremendous heat and pressure. It makes for nice poetry, but it’s not true. The real story is actually a bit more interesting than that.

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Plate tectonics different on early Earth?

IBM rig doesn’t look like much, scans 10 billion files in 43 minutes

Someone ought to gift these IBM researchers a better camera, because their latest General Parallel File System is a back-slapping 37 times faster than their last effort back in 2007. The rig combines ten IBM System xSeries servers with Violin Memory SSDs that hold 6.5 terabytes of metadata relating to 10 billion separate files. Every single one of those files can be analyzed and managed using policy-guided rules in under three quarters of an hour. That kind of performance might seem like overkill, but it’s only just barely in step with what IBM’s Doug Balog describes as a “rapidly growing, multi-zettabyte world.” No prizes for guessing who their top customer is likely to be. Full details in the PR after the break.

Continue reading IBM rig doesn’t look like much, scans 10 billion files in 43 minutes

IBM rig doesn’t look like much, scans 10 billion files in 43 minutes originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jokes from the G+hole

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pic: via tonx

I started an open “jokes” thread on Google+ today, and a lot of people contributed some very funny jokes I hadn’t heard before. I thought I’d share some of them here on Boing Boing. I might post more later.

• An AT&T cell tower walks into a bar and says, “I wo…enj…blac…nin…ou……….”—Shane Sargent

• How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A fish.—Craig Glassner

• How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? None, that's a hardware problem.—Dr. Elementary

• Hear the one about the programmer that got stuck in the shower?
The directions on the shampoo said “Lather, Rinse, Repeat”—Tony Gonzales

• How did the hipster burn his mouth? He started eating the pizza long before it was cool. —Mark McCorkell

• Werner Heisenberg is pulled over for speeding. When the state trooper asks “Do you have ANY idea how fast you were going?”, Heisenberg just smiles and says, “No, but I know where I was!”—Laconia Laconia

• Q. How many designers does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Does it have to be a light bulb?—Joe McMahon

• Q: What do you get when you cross your grandmother with an octopus?

A: A whoooooole lot of cookies.—Jeff Deason

• What does it mean when the drummer is drooling out of both sides of his mouth?
The floor is level. —Karl Hakkarainen

• Q: How many screenwriters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: But the light bulb is the best part!—Brian Doom

• Two cannibals are having dinner, and one of them says to the other, “Man, I really don't like my mother-in-law.” The other sighs and says, “Well then just eat the noodles.”—Katie Mussman

• Rene Descartes walks into a bar – a sleazy woman walks up to him and says “Hey handsome, buy me a drink?” He sneers at her and says, “Madam I think not” and disappears.—Genevieve Perdue

• How many Freudians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two. One to turn the bulb and one to hold the penis–I mean ladder!—James Cash

• A woman walks in a bar in Montana, middle of nowhere. She sits down next to an old weather beaten man in a ten gallon hat, spurs, the whole nine yards. She says “Are you a real cowboy?” He pauses, tips back his hat, looks at her and says “Yep, I reckon I am”. She replies “I'm a lesbian. All day long I do nothing but think about women, from the moment I get up in the morning to the moment I fall asleep at night.” She finishes her drink and leaves. A few minutes later a husband and wife, obviously tourists, walk in and sit down next to the cowboy. The husband says “Are you a real cowboy?” He pauses, takes a sip of whiskey and replies, “Well I always thought I was but it turns out all this time I've been a lesbian.”—breck witte

•
Q: How many hipsters does it take to pay the electric bill?
A: Mom —Spyro Poulos

• How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? None, they just redefine darkness to be the industry standard.—Andrew Bulhak

• How do you tell an extroverted physicist from an introverted physicist? An extroverted physicist looks at your shoes.—Kate Greene

• My favorite joke is about Jonestown but I had to quit telling it because the punchline was too long.—Jeremy Sullivan

• Q: How many Alzheimer's patients does it take to change a light bulb? A: To get to the other side!—Ian Ledbetter

• Did you hear about the man who cooled himself to absolute zero? He's 0K.—Michael Dyrud

• Why aren't math jokes funny in Octal? Because 7 10 11—Ranjan Bagchi

• “Hey, know any good jokes about sodium?” “Na.” —Rodrigo Jimenez

•
Knock Knock!
Who’s there?
Interrupting coefficient of Friction!
Interrupting coeffici…..
MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

—Sandra Karasiewicz

• Hi… I am afraid I am unable to answer my mobile phone at the moment but if you leave me a message, The News of the World will email it to me later—Dave Saunders

“G+hole” is a registered trademark of Doctor Popular.


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Swartz supporter dumps 18,592 JSTOR docs on the Pirate Bay

A 31-year-old American who says his name is Gregory Maxwell has posted a 32GB file containing 18,592 scientific articles to BitTorrent. In a lengthy statement posted to the Pirate Bay, he says that Tuesday’s arrest of onetime Reddit co-owner Aaron Swartz inspired the document release.

“All too often journals, galleries, and museums are becoming not disseminators of knowledge—as their lofty mission statements suggest—but censors of knowledge, because censoring is the one thing they do better than the Internet does,” he wrote.

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Facebook Comments Can Now Display Photos, Play Videos, and Preview Websites

Facebook yesterday announced that when users post a URL in a comment, a preview of content from that page will be shown in-line. Similar to when users post URLs into the Facebook publisher for sharing to the news feed, comment reels can now show photos, play videos, and display blurbs and images from websites. Unlike wall and news feed posts, the content preview won’t appear until after the URL is published, but comment authors are then given the option to remove the preview.

The ability to show content previews of URLs in comments should make comment reels more engaging, keep users from having to click links blindly, and allow them to compellingly reference off-site content in conversations. It should increase referral traffic driven to third-party site by Facebook. However, it could be used to spam the comment reels of posts by popular Pages, showing their fans off-site content without consent.

Facebook has been adding new functionality to comments over the past few months. In March users gained the ability to tag comments with friends as well as Pages, Groups, Events, and apps they’re connected to. In April, it began allowing users to edit comments they’ve posted if they click the ‘x’ on a comment within a few seconds of posting it.

Previously, if users wanted to share a URL in a comment, the link would appear as simple text. Without some kind of image to attract eye balls, these links weren’t clicked as often as the quality of their content warranted. It also meant other users couldn’t tell where the link led by for clicking it, decreasing trust and increasing worry about being scammed such that users might not click through.

A Wide Variety of Rich Content

Now if a user posts a URL into a comment field and publishes, a preview of the URL’s content will appear in-line. The author can then click “Remove preview” if they wish to strip the rich content from the comment. Unfortunately, because the preview doesn’t appear while users are still composing their comment, they can’t choose the delete the URL but keep the preview as they can with wall and news feed posts. This means that a redundant instance of the URL will appear in the comment’s text, making the accompanying commentary by the author more difficult to read.

Photos can be posted in comments by publishing a link leading directly to an image file. If users post the URL of a Facebook photo, the preview will include a link to the photo’s owner and the album it is in. Videos from a variety of sites, including YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, and Hulu can be played in-line within comments. Users can share music by posting links directly to MP3s or to streaming sites such as Soundcloud, Grooveshark, and BandCamp.

URLs of websites without rich content will generate a preview that includes a blurb and a thumbnail image if available. Websites can control which images and text are included by marking up their pages with Facebook’s Open Graph tags. Unlike wall and news feed posts, users can’t edit the text of a preview’s headline or blurb caption.

Comment previews should help users find more interesting off-site content to consumer and allow them to click links more