production – Page 23

New DNA construct can set off a “mutagenic chain reaction”

A technique for editing genes while they reside in intact chromosomes has been a real breakthrough. Literally . In 2013, Science magazine named it the runner-up for breakthrough-of-the-year, and its developers won the 2015 Breakthrough Prize . The system being honored is called CRISPR/Cas9, and it evolved as a way for bacteria to destroy viruses using RNA that matched the virus’ DNA sequence. But it’s turned out to be remarkably flexible, and the technique can be retargeted to any gene simply by modifying the RNA. Researchers are still figuring out new uses for the system, which means there are papers coming out nearly every week, many of them difficult to distinguish. That may be precisely why the significance of a paper published last week wasn’t immediately obvious. In it, the authors described a way of ensuring that if one copy of a gene was modified by CRISPR/Cas9, the second copy would be—useful, but not revolutionary. What may have been missed was that this process doesn’t stop once those two copies are modified. Instead, it happens in the next generation as well, and then the generation after that. In fact, the modified genes could spread throughout an entire species in a chain reaction, a fact that has raised ethical and safety concerns about the work. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New DNA construct can set off a “mutagenic chain reaction”

Islamic State doxes US soldiers, airmen, calls on supporters to kill them

Middle East terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS) has called on its followers take the fight to 100 members of the United States military residing in the US. A group calling itself the “Islamic State Hacking Division” has posted names, addresses, and photographs of soldiers, sailors, and airmen online, asking its “brothers residing in America” to murder them, according to Reuters . Although the posting purports to come from the “Hacking Division,” US Department of Defense officials say that none of their systems appear to have been breached by the group. Instead, the personal data was almost certainly culled from publicly available sources, a DoD official told the New York Times on the condition of anonymity. Those appearing on the list include crew members from the 2d Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot AFB in North Dakota, even though they have played no part in the US air campaign against ISIS. Other military members doxed have either been identified in media reports on the campaign or were cited by name in official DoD reports, officials told the Times. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Islamic State doxes US soldiers, airmen, calls on supporters to kill them

Classic FPS Descent to be rebooted by Star Citizen alums

The last time we checked in with Eric “Wingman” Peterson was August of 2014, where he was running Cloud Imperium Games’ Austin office and overseeing development on Star Citizen’s persistent universe. However, just a few months after that, Peterson left Cloud Imperium to develop his own game: a reboot of the mid-’90s first-person shooter game Descent. Peterson has formed Descendent Studios , hired a development staff, and is currently overseeing a Kickstarter to pull together a minimum of $600,000 to finance development of the game, which is titled Descent Underground . Critically, Descent Underground has something that previous attempts to resurrect the Descent franchise have lacked: a licensing agreement with IP-holder Interplay. Kickstarter teaser for Descent Underground , formerly code-named “Ships That Fight Underground.” Old name, new presentation Descent was published by Interplay more than 20 years ago, in 1994. The first-person shooter developed by Parallax Software had players zipping around underground in a series of cavernous (and sometimes claustrophobic) mines filled with mad killer robots. Players navigated the underground environment in a Pyro GX spacecraft, which led to the game’s main selling point: it wasn’t just a regular FPS, but one which offered “six degrees of freedom.” In other words, you could move in any direction (X, Y, and Z) and turn in any direction (roll, pitch, yaw). Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Classic FPS Descent to be rebooted by Star Citizen alums

Epic Google snafu leaks hidden whois data for 280,000 domains

Google leaked the complete hidden whois data attached to more than 282,000 domains registered through the company’s Google Apps for Work service, a breach that could bite good and bad guys alike. The 282,867 domains counted by Cisco Systems’ researchers account for 94 percent of the addresses Google Apps has registered through a partnership with registrar eNom. Among the services is one to shield from public view all personal information included in domain name whois records. Starting in mid 2013, a software defect in Google Apps started leaking the data, including names, phone numbers, physical addresses, e-mail addresses. The bug caused the data to become public once a registration was renewed. Cisco’s Talos Security Intelligence and Research Group discovered on February 19 and five days later the leak was plugged, slightly shy of two years after it first sprung. Whois data is notoriously unreliable, as is clear from all the obviously fake names, addresses and other data that’s contained in public whois records. Still, it’s reasonable to assume that some people might be more forthcoming when signing up using a privacy-enhancing service that promises to hide such data. Even in cases where people falsified records, the records might provide important clues about the identities of the people who made them. Often when data isn’t pseudo-randomized, it follows patterns that can link a person to a particular group or other Internet record. As Cisco researchers Nick Biasini, Alex Chiu, Jaeson Schultz, Craig Williams, and William McVey wrote: Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Epic Google snafu leaks hidden whois data for 280,000 domains

Consumer SSDs benchmarked to death—and last far longer than rated

We last checked in with TechReport’s grand SSD torture test back in June , when the first drives in the six-drive roundup had failed. The drives to first fall victim to the unending barrage of data writes were the Intel 335, one of two Kingston HyperX 3Ks (the one tasked with an non-compressible workload to stymie its compression-happy Sandforce controller), and the Samsung 840. All three failed short of 1PB of writes, but it’s also important to note that all of them—even the TLC-equipped Samsung 840—far exceeded their manufacturers’ stated write lifetimes. But now the experiment has come to its grand conclusion : all the drives have finally gone silent, their controllers unresponsive, their NAND cells heavy with extra electrons . The TechReport’s post-mortem is glorious in its depth and detail, with tons of data points and charts describing the course of the experiment and the fate of each of the drives. Tech-savvy buyers who might be worried about SSD lifetime decreasing even as SSD capacity skyrockets should have their fears assuaged by the ridiculous number of writes the tested drives endured; the drive that survived the longest survived more than 2.4 petabytes worth of sustained writes. That’s probably about 240x as much writing as a typical consumer SSD would need to endure over its lifetime. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Consumer SSDs benchmarked to death—and last far longer than rated

Microsoft to step up the pace of delivering Windows 10 builds

Though the plan was to give Windows 10 preview a series of regular updates, there hasn’t been a new build since January. Windows 10 has two public release channels. The fast channel is meant to get more regular updates, and so get new features sooner, while the slow channel is meant to be more thoroughly tested and a little more stable. Both channels have been quiet lately. While there’s no immediate change on that front—a new public candidate build is in testing but it’s not done yet—testers of the new operating system should take note: the fast channel is due to get faster. Gabe Aul, a General Manager in Microsoft’s Operating Systems Group tweeted today the fast channel is going to go faster , and if you want a more stable situation, you should switch to the slow channel . Further, Aul says that the company may introduce additional channels, perhaps to offer even more cutting edge builds. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft to step up the pace of delivering Windows 10 builds

Internet providers ordered to stop hiding the true size of monthly bills

New rules for home Internet providers and wireless carriers require them to be truthful about how much their service actually costs. As part of the transparency requirements in the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality order , Internet providers have to clearly detail all charges, such as modem rental and installation fees, and disclose the full monthly price that will go into effect after any promotional pricing expires. The new disclosure rule is more specific than a previous one, the FCC said. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

reddit CEO Ellen Pao: harassment complaints fell on deaf ears at Kleiner Perkins

SAN FRANCISCO—Interim reddit CEO Ellen Pao, a former junior partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, finally took the stand today in the high-profile gender discrimination case that she brought against the firm three years ago. Pao maintained a firm tone throughout the day, even looking at the jury occasionally while answering questions from her lawyer about her early days at Kleiner. It’s the first opportunity that Pao has taken to elaborate on the gender discrimination claims she made in 2012. And the questioning started by going all the way back to the day Pao was hired at Kleiner Perkins. Pao, a Mandarin-speaking, Princeton-educated engineer with law and business degrees from Harvard, applied to Kleiner Perkins in 2005. At the time, the firm was looking to expand its investments in China. She seemed like a perfect fit, her lawyer Therese Lawless said. In addition to Pao’s language skills, she had years of experience working with 90’s startups like WebTV, Tell Me Networks, and Danger Research (whose team went on to join the team that created Android). She also spent time with bigger companies like Microsoft and BEA Systems. Read 35 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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reddit CEO Ellen Pao: harassment complaints fell on deaf ears at Kleiner Perkins

Apple releases iOS 8.2 today with Apple Watch support and plenty of bug fixes

SAN FRANCISCO—iOS 8.2 has been in development for several months now, and today Apple is formally releasing the update to the public. It’s available as an over-the-air update or through iTunes for any device running iOS 8, including the iPhone 4S, 5, 5C, 5S, 6, and 6 Plus; all iPads except the first-generation model; and the fifth-generation iPod Touch. The biggest feature update is support for the Apple Watch. The device will work with the iPhone 5 and newer models, but it will not work with iPads or iPods. Once you’ve tethered a watch to your phone, a new companion app will allow you to change the watch’s settings, organize its Home screen, and make other changes. We’ll take a longer look at this companion app when the time comes to review the Apple Watch itself. For those of you with other iDevices and/or no particular interest in the Apple Watch, there are still plenty of reasons to install the update. HomeKit will allow users to control devices at home Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple releases iOS 8.2 today with Apple Watch support and plenty of bug fixes

Apple becomes part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, AT&T gets the boot

Dow Jones has issued a press release this morning announcing that as of March 19, there will be a change to the list of companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average: AT&T is out, and Apple is in. According to the press release, the change is due in part to Visa’s upcoming 4:1 stock split, which will effectively lower Visa’s stock price and its effect on the index. To balance this reduction in Visa’s price—which the press release says can have “a material impact on sector representation”—Apple is being added to the index. The DJIA membership is fixed at thirty stocks , and so in order to add a company to it, one must be removed. The Dow has chosen to drop AT&T, leaving telecommunications to be represented on the index by AT&T’s rival Verizon—which, the release explains, is very similar to AT&T but has a higher market capitalization. The last time any membership changes were made to the DJIA was in September 2013, when Goldman Sachs, Nike, and Visa were added. AT&T has been a member of the DJIA since November 1999. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple becomes part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, AT&T gets the boot

Ken May

Tag: production