If you’re a PC gamer, you know that upgrading your computer’s video card will give you the best gaming performance boost . PCWorld argues, however, that a discrete graphics card belongs in most people’s desktop PCs—not just gamers. Read more…
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The Performance Benefits of Discrete Video Cards (Even for Non-Gamers)
By now you’ve probably heard about the massive Heartbleed security bug that may have compromised the majority of the world’s web sites. Everyone should change their passwords on the affected sites—but only after those sites have patched the issue. Mashable is maintaining and updating a list of the most popular sites you should change your passwords for ASAP. Read more…
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This List Reveals the Heartbleed-Affected Passwords to Change Now
If you’re not the type to tiptoe around the truth with your kids, Rachel Ciavarella’s incredibly-detailed plush anglerfish ‘toy’ called Morris is the perfect way to give your children a somewhat disturbing crash course in anatomy. Read more…
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Teach Kids Frank Lessons About Anatomy With This Inside-Out Anglerfish
cold fjord sends news that Iran’s breach of a computer network belonging to the U.S. Navy was more serious than originally thought. According to a Wall Street Journal report (paywalled, but summarized at The Verge), it took the Navy four months to secure its network after the breach, and the repair cost was approximately $10 million. From the article: “The hackers targeted the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the unclassified network used by the Department of the Navy to host websites, store nonsensitive information and handle voice, video and data communications. The network has 800, 000 users at 2, 500 locations, according to the Navy. … The intrusion into the Navy’s system was the most recent in a series of Iranian cyberoffensives that have taken U.S. military and intelligence officials by surprise. In early 2012, top intelligence officials held the view that Iran wanted to execute a cyberattack but had little capability. Not long after, Iranian hackers began a series of major “denial-of-service” attacks on a growing number of U.S. bank websites, and they launched a virus on a Saudi oil company that immobilized 30, 000 computers. … Defense officials were surprised at the skills of the Iranian hackers. Previously, their tactics had been far cruder, usually involving so-called denial of service attacks that disrupt network operations but usually don’t involve a penetration of network security.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Iran’s Hacking of US Navy ‘Extensive,’ Repairs Took $10M and 4 Months
sciencehabit writes “Hidden ruins are customary in the wild jungles of South America or on the white shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Now, researchers have uncovered a long-lost culture closer to Western civilization — in New England. Using aerial surveys created by LiDAR, a laser-guided mapping technique, the team detected the barely perceptible remnants of a former ‘agropolis’ around three rural New England towns (abstract). Near Ashford, Connecticut, a vast network of roads offset by stone walls came to light underneath a canopy of oak and spruce trees. More than half of the town has become reforested since 1870, according to historical documents, exemplifying the extent of the rural flight that marked the late 1800s. Some structures were less than 2 feet high and buried in inaccessible portions of the forest, making them essentially invisible to on-the-ground cartography.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
MojoKid writes “A leaked Intel roadmap for solid state storage technology suggests the company is pushing ahead with its plans to introduce new high-end drives based on cutting-edge NAND flash. It’s significant for Intel to be adopting 20nm NAND in its highest-end data center products, because of the challenges smaller NAND nodes present in terms of data retention and reliability. Intel introduced 20nm NAND lower in the product stack over a year ago, but apparently has waited till now to bring 20nm to the highest end. Reportedly, next year, Intel will debut three new drive families — the SSD Pro 2500 Series (codenamed Temple Star), the DC P3500 Series (Pleasantdale) and the DC P3700 Series (Fultondale). The Temple Star family uses the M.2 and M.25 form factors, which are meant to replace the older mSATA form factor for ultrabooks and tablets. The M.2 standard allows more space on PCBs for actual NAND storage and can interface with PCIe, SATA, and USB 3.0-attached storage in the same design. The new high-end enterprise drives, meanwhile, will hit 2TB (up from 800GB), ship in 2.5″ and add-in card form factors, and offer vastly improved performance. The current DC S3700 series offers 500MBps writes and 460MBps reads. The DC P3700 will increase this to 2800MBps read and 1700MBps writes. The primary difference between the DC P3500 and DC P3700 families appears to be that the P3700 family will use Intel’s High Endurance Technology (HET) MLC, while the DC P3500 family sticks with traditional MLC.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Intel SSD Roadmap Points To 2TB Drives Arriving In 2014
An anonymous reader writes “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control have announced that measles cases in the U.S. spiked this year, rising to three times their recent average rate. It’s partly due to a greater number of people traveling to the U.S. when they’re infectious, but also because a frustrating number of people are either failing to have their children vaccinated, or are failing to do so in a timely manner. Dr. Thomas Friedman said, ‘Around 90 percent of the people who have had measles in this country were not vaccinated either because they refused, or were not vaccinated on time.’ Phil Plait adds, ‘In all three of these outbreaks, someone who had not been vaccinated traveled overseas and brought the disease back with them, which then spread due to low vaccination rates in their communities. It’s unclear how much religious beliefs themselves were behind the outbreaks in Brooklyn and North Carolina; it may have been due to widespread secular anti-vax beliefs in those tight-knit groups. But either way, a large proportion of the people in those areas were unvaccinated.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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
sciencehabit writes “Marlene Thielecke came to Madagascar to study the sand flea, an insect that spends part of its life cycle burrowed into the human foot — but she wound up getting more intimate with the critter than she cared for. Months into her project, Thieleckewas bitten by a flea herself. She decided to make the best of it, by taking regular photographs and videos and keeping track of her observations. ‘I thought it might be interesting’ to watch what happened, she says. As it turns out, her experience may help resolve an question entomologists have debated foor decades: Where, exactly, does the sand flea have sex?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Researcher Allows Sand Flea To Grow Inside Her Foot To Study It
When most people hear the word “drone, ” they probably picture a cockpit-free plane zipping over the Iraqi desert. But there’s more to it than that. The Army is in the process of adopting a whole new generation of unmanned vehicles that will assist soldiers on the battlefield—and they’re by far the scariest remote-controlled cars you’ll ever see. Read more…
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These Next Generation Drones Carry Gear and Machine Guns into Battle