Tag: polls

Samsung Unveils V-NAND High Performance SSDs, Fast NVMe Card At 5.5GB Per Second

MojoKid writes: Sometimes it’s the enterprise sector that gets dibs on the coolest technology, and so it goes with a trio of TCO-optimized, high-performance solid state drives from Samsung that were just announced, all three of which are based on three-dimensional (3D) Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory technology. The fastest of bunch can read data at up to 5, 500 megabytes per second. That’s the rated sequential read speed of Samsung’s PM1725, a half-height, half-length (HHHL) PCIe card-type NVMe SSD. Other rated specs include a random read speed of up to 1, 000, 000 IOPS, random write performance of up to 120, 000 IOPS, and sequential writes topping out at 1, 800MB/s. The PM1725 comes in just two beastly storage capacities, 3.2TB and 6.4TB, the latter of which is rated to handle five drive writes per day (32TB) for five years. Samsung also introduced two other 3D V-NAND products, the PM1633 and PM953. The PM1633 is a 2.5-inch 12Gb/s SAS SSD that will be offered in 480GB, 960GB, 1.92TB, and 3.84TB capacities. As for the PM953, it’s an update to the SM951 and is available in M.2 and 2.5-inch form factors at capacities up to 1.92TB. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samsung Unveils V-NAND High Performance SSDs, Fast NVMe Card At 5.5GB Per Second

Continued Cord Cutting Hits the Pay TV Business Hard

An anonymous reader writes: Cord cutting is not a new concern for the pay TV business but a recent massive sell-off in media stocks has many in the industry worried. Cable, satellite and TV companies suffered their worst-ever quarterly subscriber declines losing more than half a million accounts, sending stocks tumbling. Researchers say this may be the beginning of the end for the pay TV business. According to analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson: “A year ago, the Pay TV sector was shrinking at an annual rate of 0.1 percent. A year later, the rate at which the Pay TV sector is declining has quickened to 0.7 percent year-over-year. That may not seem like a mass exodus, but it is a big change in a short period of time. And the rate of decline is still accelerating.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Continued Cord Cutting Hits the Pay TV Business Hard

Study: Ad Blocker Use Jumps 41 Percent

Mickeycaskill writes: A report from Adobe and anti-ad blocking startup PageFair says the number of ad block users worldwide has increased by 41 percent in the past 12 months to 198 million monthly active users. The study suggests the growing popularity of ad blocking software is set to cost online publishers $21.8 billion in 2015 and could reach $41.4 billion by 2016. “About 45 million of them are in the United States, with almost 15 percent of people in states like New York and California relying on these services. The figures are even higher in Europe, where 77 million people use versions of the software. In Poland, more than a third of people regularly block online ads.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Study: Ad Blocker Use Jumps 41 Percent

Hacker Shows How To Fabricate Death Records

wiredmikey writes: Hackers the Def Con gathering in Las Vegas on Friday got schooled in how to be online “killers.” A rush to go digital with the process of registering deaths has made it simple for maliciously minded folks to have someone who is alive declared dead by the authorities. The process of having someone officially stamped dead by getting a death certificate issued typically involves a doctor filling out one form and a funeral home filling out another, according to Rock’s research. Once forms are submitted online, certificates declaring the listed person legally dead are generated. A fatal flaw in the system is that people can easily pose as real doctors and funeral directors. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hacker Shows How To Fabricate Death Records

North Korea Is Switching To a New Time Zone

jones_supa writes: North Korea has announced that it is winding its clocks back by half a hour to create a new “Pyongyang Time” — breaking from a time standard imposed by what it called “wicked Japanese imperialists” more than a century ago. The change will put the standard time in North Korea at UTC +8:30. North Korea said that the time change, approved on Wednesday by its rubber-stamp parliament and officially announced on Friday, would come into effect from August 15, which this year marks the 70th anniversary of the Korean peninsula’s liberation from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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North Korea Is Switching To a New Time Zone

An Epic View of the Moon In Earth’s Orbital Embrace

astroengine writes: As a suitably impressive follow-up to the new “blue marble” image of our world released in July, NASA shared a gorgeous animation created from pictures captured by NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft positioned nearly a million miles (1.5 million km) away — over four times farther than the moon. In a series of images acquired between 3:50 and 8:45 p.m. EDT on July 16, 2015, the moon can be seen passing in front of a rotating Earth, the warm gray face of its far side framed by the swirling-cloud-covered blue water of the eastern Pacific Ocean. The north pole is at the 11 o’clock position, illustrating our planet’s 23.5-degree axial tilt. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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An Epic View of the Moon In Earth’s Orbital Embrace

Spyware Demo Shows How Spooks Hack Mobile Phones

An anonymous reader writes: Joe Greenwood, of cybersecurity firm 4Armed, recently gave a live demonstration of some of Hacking Team’s leaked spyware to the BBC. Tracking Bitcoin payments, recording audio from the microphone of a locked device, and secretly gaining control of an infected phone’s camera are just a few of the software’s capabilities. The BBC reports: “Both Mr Greenwood and 4Armed’s technical director, Marc Wickenden, said they were surprised by the sleekness of the interface. Both point out, though, that customers could be paying upwards of £1m for the software and would expect it to be user-friendly, especially if it was intended for use by law enforcers on the beat. For the tracked user, though, there are very few ways of finding out that they are being watched. One red flag, according to Mr Greenwood, is a sudden spike in network data usage, indicating that information is being sent somewhere in the background. Experienced spies, however, would be careful to minimize this in order to remain incognito.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Spyware Demo Shows How Spooks Hack Mobile Phones

Epson Is Trying To Kill the Printer Ink Cartridge

An anonymous reader writes: Inkjet printer cartridges have been the bane of many small businesses and home offices for decades. It’s interesting, then, that Epson is trying something new: next month, they’re launching a new line of printers that come with small tanks of ink, instead of cartridges. The tanks will be refilled using bottles of ink. They’re reversing the economics, here: the printer itself will be more expensive, but the refills will be much cheaper. Early reports claim you’ll be spending a tenth as much on ink as you were before, but we’ll see how that shakes out. The Bloomberg article makes a good point: it’s never been easier to not print things. The printer industry needs to innovate if it wants us to keep churning out printed documents, and this may be the first big step. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Epson Is Trying To Kill the Printer Ink Cartridge

Giving Up Alternating Current

An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday we discussed Soylent, the artificial food substitute created by Rob Rhinehart and his team. As it turns out, this isn’t Rhinehart’s only unusual sustainability project. In a new post, he explains how he gave up on alternating current — a tough proposition for anyone living in the U.S. and still interested in using all sorts of modern technology. Rhinehart says, “Most power in the US is generated by burning coal, immediately squandering 67% of its energy, then run through a steam turbine, losing another 50%, then sent across transmission lines, losing another 5%, then to charge a DC device like a cell phone another 50% is lost in conversion. This means for 100 watts of coal or oil burned my phone gets a mere 16.” The biggest hindrance was the kitchen. As you might expect for the creator of Soylent, he doesn’t cook, and was able to get rid of almost all kitchen appliances because of that. He uses a butane stove for hot beverages. He powers a small computer off batteries, which get their energy from solar panels. For intensive tasks, he remotes to more powerful machines. He re-wired his apartment’s LED lighting to run off direct current. Have any of you made similar changes? How much of an effect does this really have? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Giving Up Alternating Current

Non-Invasive Spinal Cord Stimulation Gets Paralyzed Legs Moving Again

schwit1 writes: A new technique called transcutaneous stimulation has allowed five men with complete motor paralysis regain the ability to move their legs voluntarily and produce step-like movements. The treatment requires no surgery and adds to prior work to help paralyzed people gain voluntary movement through electrical stimulation (one completed in 2011, the other in 2014). Gizmag reports: “The new treatment uses a technique called transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, which involves strategically placing electrodes on the skin of the lower back. While receiving stimulation, the men’s legs were supported by braces that hung from the ceiling. At first their legs only moved involuntarily, if at all. But they soon found they could voluntarily extend the distance their legs moved during stimulation. They doubled their range of voluntary motion after four treatment sessions.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Non-Invasive Spinal Cord Stimulation Gets Paralyzed Legs Moving Again