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Study Estimates 100 Billion Planets In the Milky Way Galaxy

The Bad Astronomer writes “A new study finds that there may be 100 billion alien planets in the Milky Way alone, with 17 billion of them the size of Earth. Announcements like this have been made before, but this new research is more robust than previous studies, using data from the Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft over a longer period and analyzing it in a more statistically solid way. They also found that smaller planets are not as picky about their host stars, with terrestrial planets forming around stars like the Sun or as small as tiny, cool red dwarfs with equal ease.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Study Estimates 100 Billion Planets In the Milky Way Galaxy

Netflix Open-Sources “Janitor Monkey” AWS Cleanup Tool

Nerval’s Lobster writes “Netflix has released ‘Janitor Monkey,’ an open-source tool for killing old Amazon Web Services (AWS) instances that began life as an in-house product. While those hosting a private data center will have little use for this scrubbin’ simian, those enterprises with a public cloud can add Janitor Monkey to their administrative bag of tricks. The premise behind the tool is a simple one: while AWS allows for easy (and cheap) experimentation, it’s easy for even the most diligent IT pro to rack up unnecessary costs when they forget to shut off a particular instance. While Netflix’s Asgard tool—open-sourced in June, because this is how the company rolls—allows administrators to delete unused resources, Janitor Monkey takes things one step further by allowing those instances to be automatically found so that Asgard can clean them up. Over the past year, Janitor Monkey has deleted more than 5,000 resources running in the Netflix production and test environments, the company said. Janitor Monkey detects AWS instances, EBS volumes, EBS volume snapshots, and auto-scaling group.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Netflix Open-Sources “Janitor Monkey” AWS Cleanup Tool

How Web Sites Vary Prices Based on Your Information (and What You Can Do About It)

It’s likely no surprise that online retailers can change prices depending on your location, browser history, and operating system. But what’s really going on here? Let’s take a look at the tactics retailers use to dish out different prices to you, and how you can check to see if it’s happening to you. More »

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How Web Sites Vary Prices Based on Your Information (and What You Can Do About It)

A Time Warner Tie-In Just Turned Your Roku Into a Full-On Cable Box

Verge is reporting that Roku and Time Warner have announced that the cable company’s app—which offers up more than 300 channels of live TV—is coming to the little purple puck. That essentially turns the $50 streaming device into a full-on cable box. More »

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A Time Warner Tie-In Just Turned Your Roku Into a Full-On Cable Box

This classical music was created by a supercomputer in less than a second

The composition being performed in this video is entitled “Nasciturus”, and it’s one of the many pieces of contemporary classical music created by Iamus — who just so happens to be a computer cluster housed in Spain’s University of Málaga. More »

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This classical music was created by a supercomputer in less than a second

LaCie’s 5big Thunderbolt RAID Puts 20 Glorious Terabytes On Your Desk

Last year LaCie showed up to the Thunderbolt party with its 2big RAIDs that promised capacities of up to eight terabytes. A number we all foolishly oohed and awed at not realizing how pitiful it would sound compared to the company’s new 5big RAID that tops out at 20 terabytes and speeds of up to 785MB/s. More »

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LaCie’s 5big Thunderbolt RAID Puts 20 Glorious Terabytes On Your Desk

Beautiful, Fragile Nudibranchs Can Kill You

If you’re hungry while on the ocean floor, don’t chow down on these fellows, no matter how tasty they look. The Chromodoris annae, like many nudibranchs, is soft, colorful and poisonous. Wildlife photographer David Doubilet took photos of many different species. You can view more pictures at the link. Link -via It’s Okay to Be Smart | Photo: David Doubilet

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Beautiful, Fragile Nudibranchs Can Kill You

Six Hidden Windows 8 Features You Can’t Live Without

Windows 8 can take some getting used to. While the desktop app works very much like Windows 7, there are plenty of new shortcuts, options, and tricks built into the operating system. Think you know how to use it like a pro? Here are a few Windows 8 features that you probably haven’t found yet. More »

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Six Hidden Windows 8 Features You Can’t Live Without

John McAfee Explains How He Milked Information From Belize’s Elite

paysonwelch points out John McAfee’s latest blog post, which “details the complex spy network that he used to tap information from the highest echelons of the Belizean government. He might consider a new career as a movie producer — this blog post is enthralling. Here is an excerpt: ‘I purchased 75 cheap laptop computers and, with trusted help, intalled invisible keystroke logging software on all of them — the kind that calls home (to me) and disgorges the text files. I began giving these away as presents to select people — government employees, police officers, Cabinet Minister’s assistants, girlfriends of powerful men, boyfriends of powerful women.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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John McAfee Explains How He Milked Information From Belize’s Elite