jobs – Page 370

60% of Americans Unaware of Looming Incandescent Bulb Phase Out

Lucas123 writes “Even though production of 75W and 100W incandescent lamps were phased out earlier this year, many U.S. consumers remain blissfully unaware of The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, an energy efficiency standard that requires an initial 30% reduction in energy use for screw-in bulbs. By 2020, the federal standard requires bulbs to use 65% less energy. According to a new survey, only 40% of Americans are aware that incandescent bulbs are being phased out. However, the federal regulations are about to impact the most popular bulbs of all — 40W and 60W lamps. As of Jan. 1, 2014, the bulbs will no longer be produced. A significant portion of those who are aware of the phase out have been hoarding the bulbs in anticipation of the ban.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Surprising Inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons’ Weirdest Monsters

How the heck did they come up with some of the crazy monsters in Dungeons & Dragons ? There are a lot of weird, memorable monsters that GMs can use to strike fear into the heart of players — and the inspiration behind them is way different than what you probably expect. Read more…

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The Surprising Inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons’ Weirdest Monsters

Berkeley Researchers Create Robo-Muscles 1,000 Times Stronger Than Ours

The world may be oohing and awing over all the wonderful uses we’re finding for graphene, but there’s another super-material vying for the spotlight. Vanadium dioxide might eventually become a household name because in addition to revolutionizing electronics, researchers have now discovered it can be used as an artificial muscle 1, 000 times stronger than our own. Read more…

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Berkeley Researchers Create Robo-Muscles 1,000 Times Stronger Than Ours

A US Army Base Is Running a Bunch of Illegal Windows 7 Copies

Given the United States’ intolerance for copyright infringement and the piraters that propagate it , you’d think Uncle Sam would be a little more keen on making sure that his men were playing by the book themselves. As it turns out, a whole mess of computers running unlicensed, illegal copies of Windows 7 belong to none other than the US Army itself . Read more…

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A US Army Base Is Running a Bunch of Illegal Windows 7 Copies

Overstock.com Plans To Accept Bitcoin

SonicSpike writes “Overstock plans to become the first big U.S. online retailer to accept Bitcoin, as Patrick Byrne, the company’s libertarian chief executive, warms to the virtual currency as a refuge from government control. Mr Byrne told the Financial Times that Overstock planned to start accepting Bitcoin next year – possibly by the end of the second quarter – a decision that he said was driven mainly by his own political philosophy. ‘I think a healthy monetary system at the end of the day isn’t an upside down pyramid based on the whim of a government official, but is based on something that they can’t control, ‘ Mr Byrne said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Overstock.com Plans To Accept Bitcoin

Microsoft’s Ticking Time Bomb Is Windows XP

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes “Shona Ghosh writes at PC Pro that the final deadline for Windows XP support in April 2014 will act as the starting pistol for developing new exploits as hackers reverse-engineer patches issued for Windows 7 or Windows 8 to scout for XP vulnerabilities. “The very first month that Microsoft releases security updates for supported versions of Windows, attackers will reverse-engineer those updates, find the vulnerabilities and test Windows XP to see if it shares [them], ” says Tim Rains, the director of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group. Microsoft says that XP shared 30 security holes with Windows 7 and Windows 8 between July 2012 and July 2013. Gregg Keizer says that if a major chunk of the world’s PCs remains tied to XP, as seems certain, Microsoft will face an unenviable choice: Stick to plan and put millions of customers at risk from malware infection, or backtrack from long-standing policies and proclamations.” (Read on for more.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft’s Ticking Time Bomb Is Windows XP

Big Buck Bunny In 4K, 60 Fps and 3D-stereo

An anonymous reader writes “Blender Foundation open movie projects like Sintel and Tears of Steel have been mentioned on Slashdot in the recent years. Now an old-timer, their open movie Big Buck Bunny from 2008, has been getting a make-over in a new release: The entire movie has been recreated in 3D stereo with a resolution of 4K (3840×2160) at 60fps. It took years to rework the movie because the original Big Buck Bunny was created for 2D. Most of the scenes had to be modified to work well in 3D stereo. Furthermore, the original movie was made for cinemas and was 24fps; a lot of changes to the animations had to be made to get the correct results. The creator of the reworked version explains about it on BlenderNation where he also talks about the fact that the entire movie was rendered via an online collaborative renderfarm, BURP, where volunteers provided spare CPU cycles to make it happen. If you want to see how your computer measures up to playing 4K content in 60 fps you can download the reworked movie from the official homepage — lower resolutions are also available.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Protesters Block Apple and Google Buses In California

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes “Business Insider reports that protesters have stopped a bus filled with Apple employees in San Francisco and a Google bus in Oakland. Tech companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook provide free buses that take their employees from San Francisco to their headquarters in the suburbs. Protesters are mad at the tech companies because the wealthy tech employees have driven up the price of housing in San Francisco, which is pricing out some people. The buses also use public transit stops, and some protesters think that’s wrong. Between 70 and 100 protesters gathered for the blockade of Apple private tech shuttle to protest evictions in the city of San Francisco. The activists in San Fransisco were from Eviction Free San Francisco, Our Mission No Eviction, Causa Justa /Just Cause. Protesters stood in front of a white shuttle bus holding banners and signs. Some peeked through cardboard signs fashioned in the shape of place markers on Google maps, with “Evicted” written across the front. Meanwhile violence occurred in Oakland, according to reports from IndyBay, as protesters unfurled two giant banners reading “TECHIES: Your World Is Not Welcome Here” and “Fuck off Google” and “a person appeared from behind the bus and quickly smashed the whole of the rear window, making glass rain down on the street. Cold air blew inside the bus and the blockaders with their banners departed.” Two weeks ago, protesters stopped a Google bus.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DoD Public Domain Archive To Be Privatized, Locked Up For 10 Years

Jah-Wren Ryel writes “Looks like the copyright cartel have raided the public domain yet again — the US DoD has signed an exclusive contract with T3 Media to digitize their media archive in exchange for T3 having complete licensing control for 10 years. Considering that all output from the US government is, by law, ineligible for copyright, this deal seems borderline illegal at best. To make matters worse, it appears that there is no provision to make the digitized content freely accessible after the 10 years are up — which means we risk having all that content disappear into T3.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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DoD Public Domain Archive To Be Privatized, Locked Up For 10 Years

Researchers Crack Major HIV Mystery

mrspoonsi sends this news from Scientific American: “The difference between HIV infection and full-blown AIDS is, in large part, the massive die-off of the immune system’s CD4 T-cells. But researchers have only observed the virus killing a small portion of those cells, leading to a longstanding question: What makes the other cells disappear? New research shows that the body is killing its own cells in a little-known process. What’s more, an existing, safe drug could interrupt that self-destruction, thereby offering a way to treat AIDS. The destructive process has caught scientists by surprise. ‘We thought HIV infects a cell, sets up a virus production factory and then the cell dies as a consequence of being overwhelmed by virus. But there are not enough factories to explain the massive losses, ‘ says Warner Greene, director of virology and immunology at the Gladstone Institutes, whose team published two papers today in Science and Nature describing the work. Greene estimates 95 percent of the cells that die in HIV infections are killed through pyroptosis, so the findings raise hope for a new type of treatment that could prevent HIV from progressing into AIDS. ‘Inhibiting activation of the immune system is not a new concept, but this gives us a new pathway to target, ‘ says Robert Gallo. And in fact, a drug already exists that can block pyroptosis.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Researchers Crack Major HIV Mystery

Ken May

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