management – Page 30 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Hitachi Developing Reactor That Burns Nuclear Waste

Zothecula writes The problem with nuclear waste is that it needs to be stored for many thousands of years before it’s safe, which is a tricky commitment for even the most stable civilization. To make this situation a bit more manageable, Hitachi, in partnership with MIT, the University of Michigan, and the University of California, Berkeley, is working on new reactor designs that use transuranic nuclear waste for fuel; leaving behind only short-lived radioactive elements. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hitachi Developing Reactor That Burns Nuclear Waste

Google Serves Old Search Page To Old Browsers

Rambo Tribble writes: In an apparent move to push those using older browsers to update, Google is reported to be serving outdated search pages to said browsers. The older pages lack features available on the newer versions, and this policy compounds with the limits announced in 2011 on Gmail support for older web clients. As a Google engineer put it, “We’re continually making improvements to Search, so we can only provide limited support for some outdated browsers.” The BBC offers a fairly comprehensive analysis. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Serves Old Search Page To Old Browsers

Hackers Behind Biggest-Ever Password Theft Begin Attacks

An anonymous reader writes “Back in August, groups of Russian hackers assembled the biggest list of compromised login credentials ever seen: 1.2 billion accounts. Now, domain registrar Namecheap reports the hackers have begun using the list to try and access accounts. “Overnight, our intrusion detection systems alerted us to a much higher than normal load against our login systems. … The group behind this is using the stored usernames and passwords to simulate a web browser login through fake browser software. This software simulates the actual login process a user would use if they are using Firefox/Safari/Chrome to access their Namecheap account. The hackers are going through their username/password list and trying each and every one to try and get into Namecheap user accounts.” They report that most login attempts are failing, but some are succeeding. Now is a good time to check that none of your important accounts share passwords.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Grand Ayatollah Says High Speed Internet Is "Against Moral Standards"

An anonymous reader writes A Grand Ayatollah in Iran has determined that access to high-speed and 3G Internet is “against Sharia” and “against moral standards.” However, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, plans to renew licenses and expand the country’s 3G cellular phone network. A radical MP associated with the conservative Resistance Front, warned: “If the minister continues to go ahead with increasing bandwidth and Internet speed, then we will push for his impeachment and removal from the cabinet.” “We will vigorously prevent all attempts by the [communication] minister to expand 3G technology, and if our warnings are not heeded, then the necessary course of action will be taken, ” he added. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Grand Ayatollah Says High Speed Internet Is "Against Moral Standards"

Scientists Found the Origin of the Ebola Outbreak

Taco Cowboy sends this report from Vox: One of the big mysteries in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is where the virus came from in the first place — and whether it’s changed in any significant ways. … In a new paper in Science (abstract), researchers reveal that they have sequenced the genomes of Ebola from 78 patients in Sierra Leone who contracted the disease in May and June. Those sequences revealed some 300 mutations specific to this outbreak. Among their findings, the researchers discovered that the current viral strains come from a related strain that left Central Africa within the past ten years. … Using genetic sequences from current and previous outbreaks, the researchers mapped out a family tree that puts a common ancestor of the recent West African outbreak some place in Central Africa roughly around 2004. This contradicts an earlier hypothesis that the virus had been hanging around West Africa for much longer than that. Researchers are also planning to study the mutations to see if any of them are affecting Ebola’s recent behavior. For example, this outbreak has had a higher transmission rate and lower death rate than others, and researchers are curious if any of these mutations are related to that. … The scientific paper on Ebola is also a sad reminder of the toll that the virus has taken on those working on the front lines. Five of the authors died of Ebola before it was published. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientists Found the Origin of the Ebola Outbreak

Reformatting a Machine 125 Million Miles Away

An anonymous reader writes: NASA’s Opportunity rover has been rolling around the surface of Mars for over 10 years. It’s still performing scientific observations, but the mission team has been dealing with a problem: the rover keeps rebooting. It’s happened a dozen times this month, and the process is a bit more involved than rebooting a typical computer. It takes a day or two to get back into operation every time. To try and fix this, the Opportunity team is planning a tricky operation: reformatting the flash memory from 125 million miles away. “Preparations include downloading to Earth all useful data remaining in the flash memory and switching the rover to an operating mode that does not use flash memory. Also, the team is restructuring the rover’s communication sessions to use a slower data rate, which may add resilience in case of a reset during these preparations.” The team suspects some of the flash memory cells are simply wearing out. The reformat operation is scheduled for some time in September. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Reformatting a Machine 125 Million Miles Away

Coffee Naps Better For Alertness Than Coffee Or Naps Alone

An anonymous reader writes: Caffeine is a staple of most workplaces — it’s rare to find an office without a coffee pot or a fridge full of soda. It’s necessary (or at least feels like it’s necessary) because many workers have a hard time staying awake while sitting at a desk for hours at a time, and the alternative — naps — aren’t usually allowed. But new research shows it might be more efficient for employers to encourage brief “coffee naps, ” which are more effective at returning people to an alert state than either caffeine or naps alone. A “coffee nap” is when you drink a cup of coffee, and then take a sub-20-minute nap immediately afterward. This works because caffeine takes about 20 minutes to get into your bloodstream, and a 20-minute nap clears adenosine from your brain without putting you into deeper stages of sleep. In multiple studies, tired participants who took coffee naps made fewer mistakes in a driving simulator after they awoke than the people who drank coffee without a nap or slept without ingesting caffeine. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Coffee Naps Better For Alertness Than Coffee Or Naps Alone

Astronomers Find What May Be the Closest Exoplanet So Far

The Bad Astronomer writes: Astronomers have found a 5.4 Earth-mass planet orbiting the star Gliese 15A, a red dwarf in a binary system just 11.7 light years away (PDF). Other exoplanets candidates have been found that are closer, but they are as yet unconfirmed. This is more evidence that alien planets are common in the galaxy. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Astronomers Find What May Be the Closest Exoplanet So Far

Indiana University Researchers Get $1 Million Grant To Study Memes

An anonymous reader writes with news that the NSF has just awarded a group of researchers a grant to study the life cycle of memes. “Indiana University is receiving nearly $1 million in federal grant money to investigate the genesis, spread, and demise of Internet memes. The grant from the National Science Foundation awards four Indiana researchers $919, 917 to for a project called Truthy that will, as the grant’s abstract explains, “explore why some ideas cause viral explosions while others are quickly forgotten.” (And yes, in case you’re wondering, the name was inspired by Stephen Colbert’s neologism “truthiness.”) The government-funded research is aimed at identifying which memes are organic and which ones are mere astroturf. “While the vast majority of memes arise in a perfectly organic manner, driven by the complex mechanisms of life on the Web, some are engineered by the shady machinery of high-profile congressional campaigns, ” Truthy’s About page explains.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Indiana University Researchers Get $1 Million Grant To Study Memes

The Ultra-Laborious Way the FBI Matched Fingerprints to Paper Files

The FBI just switched over to Next-Generation Identification, a new digital system for keeping track of the 83 million fingerprint cards the bureau maintains. That means dismantling thousands of filing cabinets that were once hand-searched by Bureau employees, twenty-four hours a day. Here’s how they did it. Read more…