linux – Page 155 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

UK Town To Get Driverless ‘Pods’ Mixing With Pedestrians

Bruce66423 writes “Milton Keynes is the most successful new town in the U.K., being built on a green field site from the ’60s onward. Initially famous for concrete cows, it is the home of the Open University, which offers college-level courses at home. Now, the U.K. Business Secretary has announced plans to have small driverless cars shuttle people around parts of the town starting in 2015. There will be about 20 of the pod-like vehicles to start, each capable of holding two people. They will have their own pathways and move at about 12mph. The plan is to continue developing and testing the vehicles, and by 2017, 100 of them will share walkways with pedestrians.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More:
UK Town To Get Driverless ‘Pods’ Mixing With Pedestrians

"War Room" Notes Describe IT Chaos At Healthcare.gov

dcblogs writes “U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has released 175 pages of “War Room” notes — a collection of notes by federal officials dealing with the problems at Healthcare.gov. They start Oct. 1, the launch day. The War Room notes catalog IT problems — dashboards weren’t showing data, servers didn’t have the right production data, third party systems weren’t connecting to verify data, a key contractor had trouble logging on, and there wasn’t enough server capacity to handle the traffic, or enough people on the help desks to answer calls. To top it off, some personnel needed for the effort were furloughed because of the shutdown. Volunteers were needed to work weekends, but there were bureaucratic complications.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Visit site:
"War Room" Notes Describe IT Chaos At Healthcare.gov

TrueCrypt To Go Through a Crowdfunded, Public Security Audit

An anonymous reader writes “After all the revelations about NSA’s spying efforts, and especially after the disclosure of details about its Bullrun program aimed at subverting encryption standards and efforts around the world, the question has been raised of whether any encryption software can be trusted. Security experts have repeatedly said that it you want to trust this type of software, your best bet is to choose software that is open source. But, in order to be entirely sure, a security audit of the code by independent experts sounds like a definitive answer to that issue. And that it exactly what Matthew Green, cryptographer and research professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Kenneth White, co-founder of hosted healthcare services provider BAO Systems, have set out to do. The software that will be audited is the famous file and disk encryption software package TrueCrypt. Green and White have started fundraising at FundFill and IndieGoGo, and have so far raised over $50, 000 in total.” (Mentioned earlier on Slashdot; the now-funded endeavor is also covered at Slash DataCenter.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More:
TrueCrypt To Go Through a Crowdfunded, Public Security Audit

HP’s NonStop Servers Go x86, Countdown To Itanium Extinction Begins

An anonymous reader writes “HP has been the sole holdout on the Itanium, mostly because so much of the PA-RISC architecture lives on in that chip. However, the company recently began migration of Integrity Superdome servers from Itanium to Xeon, and now it has announced that the top of its server line, the NonStop series, will migrate to x86 as well, presumably the 15-core E7 V2 Intel will release next year. So while no one has said it, this likely seems the end of the Itanium experiment, one that went on a lot longer than it should have, given its failure out of the gate.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More:
HP’s NonStop Servers Go x86, Countdown To Itanium Extinction Begins

6TB Helium-Filled Hard Drives Take Flight

An anonymous reader writes in with some exciting news if you are a storage array manufacturer with a lot of money to spend on hard drives.”HGST Monday announced that it’s now shipping a helium-filled, 3.5-in hard disk drive with 50% more capacity than the current industry leading 4TB drives. The new drive uses 23% less power and is 38% lighter than the 4TB drives. Without changing the height, the new 6TB Ultrastar He6 enterprise-class hard drive crams seven disk platters into what was a five disk-platter, 4TB Ultrastar drive.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See more here:
6TB Helium-Filled Hard Drives Take Flight

Intel Open-Sources Broadwell GPU Driver & Indicates Major Silicon Changes

An anonymous reader writes “Intel shipped open-source Broadwell graphics driver support for Linux this weekend. While building upon the existing Intel Linux GPU driver, the kernel driver changes are significant in size for Broadwell. Code comments from Intel indicate that these processors shipping in 2014 will have “some of the biggest changes we’ve seen on the execution and memory management side of the GPU” and “dwarf any other silicon iteration during my tenure, and certainly can compete with the likes of the gen3-> gen4 changes.” Come next year, Intel may now be able to better take on AMD and NVIDIA discrete graphics solutions.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See the article here:
Intel Open-Sources Broadwell GPU Driver & Indicates Major Silicon Changes

Linux 3.12 Released, Linus Proposes Bug Fix-Only 4.0

An anonymous reader writes “Linus Torvalds announced the Linux 3.12 kernel release with a large number of improvements through many subsystems including new EXT4 file-system features, AMD Berlin APU support, a major CPUfreq governor improvement yielding impressive performance boosts for certain hardware/workloads, new drivers, and continued bug-fixing. Linus also took the opportunity to share possible plans for Linux 4.0. He’s thinking of tagging Linux 4.0 following the Linux 3.19 release in about one year and is also considering the idea of Linux 4.0 being a release cycle with nothing but bug-fixes. Does Linux really need an entire two-month release cycle with nothing but bug-fixing? It’s still to be decided by the kernel developers.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Surface Pro 2 Gets Significant Battery Boost

SmartAboutThings writes “The original Surface Pro didn’t have quite a good battery life and that’s why Microsoft tried to fix this with the Surface Pro. After the Surface Pro 2 has hit general availability, Microsoft has silently pushed out a firmware update which, according to some new battery benchmarks run by Anandtech, made significant improvements to the battery life of the Surface Pro 2. After the new web browsing battery life test it was discovered that the Surface Pro 2 now manages better battery life than the ARM Surface 2, which is pretty impressive. With the firmware update, Microsoft was targeting over 8 hours, and AnadTech’s benchmarks show Microsoft has succeeded, registering a 25% increase in battery life over the no-firmware version. The unpatched Surface Pro 2 lasted for 6.68 hours while with the firmware update installed, its battery life increased to 8.33 hours. The video playback test involved playing a movie until the battery died, and here, albeit smaller, improvements with the battery life have also been noticed: 7.73 hours compared to 6.65 hours.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Visit link:
Surface Pro 2 Gets Significant Battery Boost

The Case Against Gmail

stry_cat writes “Ed Bot makes the case against Gmail: ‘Gmail was a breath of fresh air when it debuted. But this onetime alternative is showing signs that it’s past its prime, especially if you want to use the service with a third-party client. That’s the way Google wants it, which is why I’ve given up on Gmail after almost a decade.’ Personally, I’ve always thought it odd that no other email provider ever adopted Gmails “search not sort” mentality. I’ve been a Gmail user since you needed an invitation to get an account. However Gmail has been steadily moving towards a more traditional email experience. Plus there’s the iGoogle disaster that got me looking into alternatives to everything Google.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Infosys Fined $35M For Illegally Bringing Programmers Into US On Visitor Visas

McGruber writes “The U.S. government fined Infosys $35 million after an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department found that the Indian company used inexpensive, easy-to-obtain B-1 visas meant to cover short business visits — instead of harder-to-get H-1B work visas — to bring an unknown number of its employees for long-term stays. The alleged practice enabled Infosys to undercut competitors in bids for programming, accounting and other work performed for clients, according to people close to the investigation. Infosys clients have included Goldman Sachs Group, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. Infosys said in an email that it is talking with the U.S. Attorney’s office, ‘regarding a civil resolution of the government’s investigation into the company’s compliance’ with employment-record ‘I-9 form’ requirements and past use of the B-1 visa. A company spokesman, who confirmed a resolution will be announced Wednesday, said Infosys had set aside $35 million to settle the case and cover legal costs. He said the sum was ‘a good indication’ of the amount involved.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the article:
Infosys Fined $35M For Illegally Bringing Programmers Into US On Visitor Visas