In 1993 a Stratus server was booted up by an IT application architect — and it’s still running. An anonymous reader writes: “It never shut down on its own because of a fault it couldn’t handle, ” says Phil Hogan, who’s maintained the server for 24 years. That’s what happens when you include redundant components. “Over the years, disk drives, power supplies and some other components have been replaced but Hogan estimates that close to 80% of the system is original, ” according to Computerworld. There’s no service contract — he maintains the server with third-party vendors rather than going back to the manufacturer, who says they “probably” still have the parts in stock. And while he believes the server’s proprietary operating system hasn’t been updated in 15 years, Hogan says “It’s been extremely stable.” The server will finally be retired in April, and while the manufacturer says there’s some more Stratus servers that have been running for at least 20 years — this one seems to be the oldest. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Server Runs Continuously For 24 Years
An anonymous reader writes: Rolls-Royce has unveiled its first driverless vehicle dubbed The Vision Next 100. It is an autonomous vehicle aimed at “the most discerning and powerful patrons in the world.” There’s no steering wheel but there is a silk “throne” where passengers can sit and stare out the window. Rolls-Royce said the zero-emission model, codenamed 103EX, showed the company “rejects the notion of anonymous, utilitarian and bland future modes of mobility.” The owner will be “encircled by the most modern handcrafted fine-line Macassar wood panelling” as they gaze at a “generous” high-definition television display. In addition to the “finest one-off deep-pile ivory wool carpet, ” the vehicle features a virtual assistant named Eleanor, inspired after the actor Eleanor Thornton. It will be able to remind users about meetings; it will even bring the car around to the front of the owner’s house at the start of a journey. “As the Rolls-Royce Vision Next 100 gracefully comes to a halt, something magnificent occurs, ” the company said. The glass roof rises to allow the occupant to stand, while a step emerges from below the running board and a red light is projected, “carpet-like” to announce their arrival. Rolls-Royce did not say how the vehicle would be powered or how much it costs, but it did say it’s due to hit the streets in the 2040s. You can watch a 360-degree video of the 103EX the company posted on YouTube. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
overThruster writes: The Wall Street Journal reports: “The rare sight of a giant squid swimming inside a marina was captured on video on the coast of the Sea of Japan. According to a manager at the Mizuhashi Fisherina in Toyama prefecture, about 250 kilometers northwest of Tokyo, one fisherman found a 3.7-meter (12.1-foot) giant squid swimming beneath fishing boats docked at the marina on the morning of Dec. 24.” The extraordinary close up video taken by divers shows the giant squid’s natural coloration as well as the action of its siphon propelling it through the water. Additional footage here. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Ever since Nintendo made its surprise announcement that Mario Kart 8 was getting a new high-speed difficulty level, excited fans have had one question: what would it do to Mario Kart? Read more… 
journovampire sends this report: New record company figures out of France suggest that artists are being paid just 68 cents from every €9.99 monthly music streaming subscription – as major labels keep hold of 73% of payouts from the likes of Spotify. They’re followed by writers/publishers with a 16% share, and then artists – mostly paid by their labels – who get 11%. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader writes During his second expedition to Antarctica, British explorer Robert Scott—and most of his team—died from overexposure to the elements. Over 100 years after their deaths, an artifact from his journey has surfaced. New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust reports that they have found a notebook which tracked Scott’s last Terra Nova Expedition. According to the Antarctic Heritage Trust, the notebook belonged to a surgeon, photographer and zoologist named George Murray Levick, who accompanied Scott at the unfortunate Terra Nova expedition. Executive Director Nigel Watson said, “It’s an exciting find. The notebook is a missing part of the official expedition record. After spending seven years conserving Scott’s last expedition building and collection, we are delighted to still be finding new artifacts.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Lucas123 writes: Micron’s newest client flash drive line, the M600, uses its first 16nm process technology and dynamic write acceleration firmware that allows the flash to be programmed as SLC or MLC instead of using overprovisioning or reserving a permanent pool of flash cache to accelerate writes. The ability to dynamically program the flash reduces power use and improves write performance as much as 2.8 times over models without the feature, according to Jon Tanguy, Micron’s senior technical marketing engineer. The new lithography process technology also allowed Micron to reduce the price of the flash drive to 45 cents a gigabyte. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
jfruh writes “Remember how social networks were going to transform the advertising industry because they’d tailor ads not to context or to your web browsing history, but to the innate preferences you express through interactions and relationships with friends? Well, that didn’t work with Facebook, and it turns out it’s not working with Twitter either. The microblogging site has announced that it’s getting into the ad retargeting game: you’ll soon start seeing promoted tweets that are chosen based on websites you’ve visited in the past. The innovation, if you can call it that, is that the retargeting will work across devices, so you can be looking at a website on your phone and see promoted tweets on your laptop’s browser, or vice versa.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
hypnosec writes “The Linux 3.11 merge window is about to close, most probably this Sunday, and most of the pull requests have been merged, including feature additions and improvements to disk & file system, CPU, graphics and other hardware. Some notable merges are: LZ4 compression; Zswap for compressed swap caching; inclusion of a Lustre file-system client for the first time; Dynamic Power Management (DPM) support for R600 GPUs; KVM and Xen virtualization on 64-bit hardware (AArch64); and a new DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) driver for the Renesas R-Car SoC.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.