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SnapChat Turns Down $3 Billion Offer From Facebook

Dr Herbert West writes about a reported $3 billion offer from Facebook that Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel turned down. “Snapchat, a rapidly growing messaging service, recently spurned an all-cash acquisition offer from Facebook for close to $3 billion or more, according to people briefed on the matter. The offer, and rebuff, came as Snapchat is being wooed by other investors and potential acquirers. Chinese e-commerce giant Tencent Holdings had offered to lead an investment that would value two-year-old Snapchat at $4 billion. Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s 23-year-old co-founder and CEO, will not likely consider an acquisition or an investment at least until early next year, the people briefed on the matter said. They said Spiegel is hoping Snapchat’s numbers – of users and messages – will grow enough by then to justify an even larger valuation, the people said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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SnapChat Turns Down $3 Billion Offer From Facebook

Facebook’s Giant New Data Center Will Be Powered By Wind Alone

In a post today on Facebook, the company’s Data Center Energy Manager Vincent Van Son announced that its new data center in Iowa will be powered solely by wind energy . That’s right: Our insatiable hunger for online validation is indirectly helping to develop sustainable energy. Read more…

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Facebook’s Giant New Data Center Will Be Powered By Wind Alone

These Autonomous Dump Trucks Let Mines Operate Around the Clock

As the pace of robotic integration into the modern workforce continues to increase, automatons are finding their way into an ever wider variety of industries. Already making an impact in the agricultural sector , automatons are now poised to perform the task of driving massive, house-sized mining trucks—a job once held only by highly-skilled and highly-paid human drivers. Read more…

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These Autonomous Dump Trucks Let Mines Operate Around the Clock

This Is What a 2,000-Pound Satellite Falling to Earth Looks Like

At the start of this week, the European Space Agency’s Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer satellite (GOCE) fell to Earth . This is what it looked like as it happened. Read more…

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This Is What a 2,000-Pound Satellite Falling to Earth Looks Like

The Smithsonian Is Uploading Its Lost Treasures to the Internet

With over 137 million artifacts, works of art, and specimens in its collections, the Smithsonian can’t display even one percent of that at any given time. Many historically significant pieces won’t go on display in our lifetimes and other likely won’t ever see the light of day again. But their replicants will. Read more…

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The Smithsonian Is Uploading Its Lost Treasures to the Internet

The Second Operating System Hiding In Every Mobile Phone

Jah-Wren Ryel writes “Every smartphone or other device with mobile communications capability (e.g. 3G or LTE) actually runs not one, but two operating systems. Aside from the operating system that we as end-users see (Android, iOS, PalmOS), it also runs a small operating system that manages everything related to radio. So, we have a complete operating system, running on an ARM processor, without any exploit mitigation (or only very little of it), which automatically trusts every instruction, piece of code, or data it receives from the base station you’re connected to. What could possibly go wrong?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese Bitcoin Exchange Vanishes, Taking £2.5m of Coins With It

An anonymous reader writes “A Chinese Bitcoin exchange has vanished without trace, taking more than $4 million of the virtual currency with it and leaving profit-hungry investors out of pocket. GBL, the Chinese Bitcoin exchange was launched in May 2013 and putatively based in Hong Kong, despite its servers being registered in Beijing. However GBL’s Hong Kong offices do not exist. GBL mysteriously disappeared in early November taking an estimated $4.1m (£2.6m) of Bitcoins with it.” (Beware the auto-playing ads, with sound.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Chinese Bitcoin Exchange Vanishes, Taking £2.5m of Coins With It

25,000-Drive Study Gives Insight On How Long Hard Drives Actually Last

MrSeb writes with this excerpt, linking to several pretty graphs: “For more than 30 years, the realm of computing has been intrinsically linked to the humble hard drive. It has been a complex and sometimes torturous relationship, but there’s no denying the huge role that hard drives have played in the growth and popularization of PCs, and more recently in the rapid expansion of online and cloud storage. Given our exceedingly heavy reliance on hard drives, it’s very, very weird that one piece of vital information still eludes us: How long does a hard drive last? According to some new data, gathered from 25, 000 hard drives that have been spinning for four years, it turns out that hard drives actually have a surprisingly low failure rate.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Music Industry Issues Take Down Notices to 50 Major Lyrics Sites

alphadogg writes “A music industry group is warning some 50 website that post song lyrics that they need to be licensed or face the music, possibly in the form of a lawsuit. The National Music Publishers Association said Monday that it sent take-down notices to what it claims are 50 websites that post lyrics to songs and generate ad revenue but may not be licensed to do so. The allegedly infringing sites were identified based on a complicated algorithm developed by a researcher at the University of Georgia.” The “complicated algorithm” (basis statistics using Excel and Google) is described in the NMPA’s “Undesirable Lyric Website List.” Anyone remember lyrics.ch? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Music Industry Issues Take Down Notices to 50 Major Lyrics Sites

Netflix, Youtube Surpass 50% Mark of Internet Traffic

First time accepted submitter sqorbit writes “Netflix and Youtube are gaining ground not only on the competition, such as Amazon, but also over peer-to-peer file sharing. Netflix claims more than 30 million customers and believes it could double that number in the future. Traffic from Netflix and Youtube amounted to over 50% of Internet traffic in September. Meanwhile Bittorrent traffic is down slightly (7.4% from 10%) in Internet traffic compared to last year. Could more people be satisfied with current video offerings or are less people finding useful things to download via file sharing?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Netflix, Youtube Surpass 50% Mark of Internet Traffic

Ken May

Tag: advertising