Tag: science

Great Firewall of China Blocks Edgecast CDN, Thousands of Websites Affected

An anonymous reader writes: Starting about a week ago, The Great Firewall of China began blocking the Edgecast CDN. This was spurred by Great Fire’s Collateral Freedom project, which used CDNs to get around censorship of individual domains. It left China with either letting go of censorship, or breaking significant chunks of the Internet for their population. China chose to do the latter, and now many websites are no longer functional for Chinese users. I just helped a friend diagnose this problem with his company’s site, so it’s likely many people are still just starting to discover what’s happened and the economic impact is yet to be fully realized. Hopefully pressure on China will reverse the decision. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Great Firewall of China Blocks Edgecast CDN, Thousands of Websites Affected

Doubling Saturated Fat In Diet Does Not Increase It In Blood

An anonymous reader writes: A new study by researchers at Ohio State University found that dramatically increasing the amount of saturated fat in a person’s diet did not increase the amount of saturated fat found in their blood. Professor Jeff Volek, the study’s senior author, said it “challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat and extends our knowledge of why dietary saturated fat doesn’t correlate with disease.” The study also showed that increasing carbohydrates in the diet led to an increase in a particular fatty acid previous studies have linked to heart disease. Volek continued, “People believe ‘you are what you eat, ‘ but in reality, you are what you save from what you eat. The point is you don’t necessarily save the saturated fat that you eat. And the primary regulator of what you save in terms of fat is the carbohydrate in your diet. Since more than half of Americans show some signs of carb intolerance, it makes more sense to focus on carb restriction than fat restriction.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Doubling Saturated Fat In Diet Does Not Increase It In Blood

Google’s Project Loon Can Now Launch Up To 20 Balloons Per Day, Fly 10x Longer

An anonymous reader writes Google [Thursday] shared an update from Project Loon, the company’s initiative to bring high-speed Internet access to remote areas of the world via hot air balloons. Google says it now has the ability to launch up to 20 of these balloons per day. This is in part possible because the company has improved its autofill equipment to a point where it can fill a balloon in under five minutes. This is a major achievement, given that Google says filling a Project Loon balloon with enough air so that it is ready for flight is the equivalent of inflating 7, 000 party balloons. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google’s Project Loon Can Now Launch Up To 20 Balloons Per Day, Fly 10x Longer

Windows Kernel Version Bumped To 10.0

jones_supa writes: In Windows, the kernel version number is once again in sync with the product version. Build 9888 of Windows 10 Technical Preview is making the rounds in a private channel and the kernel version has indeed been bumped from 6.4 to 10.0. Version 6.x has been in use since Windows Vista. Neowin speculates that this large jump in version number is likely related to the massive overhaul of the underlying components of the OS to make it the core for all of Microsoft’s products. The company is working to consolidate all of its platforms into what’s called OneCore, which, as the name implies, will be the one core for all of Microsoft’s operating systems. It will be interesting to see if this causes any software comparability issues with legacy applications. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Windows Kernel Version Bumped To 10.0

BitTorrent Unveils Sync 2.0

An anonymous reader writes BitTorrent today outlined the company’s plans for its file synchronization tool Sync. Next year, the company will launch Sync 2.0, finally taking the product out of beta, as well as three new paid Sync products. Ever since its debut, Sync has provided a wide variety of solutions to various problems, BitTorrent says, from distributing files across remote servers to sharing vacation photos. BitTorrent thus believes it needs to build three distinct products for each of these separate audiences, including a Pro version for $40 per year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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BitTorrent Unveils Sync 2.0

Inside the lab that makes the instant blood stopping gel of the future

Something that seems ripped from the future is being developed right now inside a lab in Brooklyn. It’s the VetiGel which is also known as the borderline magical band-aid of the future. It’s a gel that when applied on a wound, almost immediately stops the bleeding. Here’s the lab where they make the future. Read more…

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Inside the lab that makes the instant blood stopping gel of the future

Microsoft Releases Out-of-Band Security Patch For Windows

mrspoonsi writes Microsoft has announced today that they will be pushing an out-of-band security patch today. The patch, which affects nearly all of the company’s major platforms, is rated ‘critical’ and it is recommended that you install the patch immediately. The patch is rated ‘critical’ because it allows for elevation of privileges and will require a restart. The platforms that are affected include: Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8 and 8.1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows RT and Windows RT 8.1 and Windows 10 Technical Preview customers are affected, too. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Releases Out-of-Band Security Patch For Windows

US DOE Sets Sights On 300 Petaflop Supercomputer

dcblogs writes U.S. officials Friday announced plans to spend $325 million on two new supercomputers, one of which may eventually be built to support speeds of up to 300 petaflops. The U.S. Department of Energy, the major funder of supercomputers used for scientific research, wants to have the two systems – each with a base speed of 150 petaflops – possibly running by 2017. Going beyond the base speed to reach 300 petaflops will take additional government approvals. If the world stands still, the U.S. may conceivably regain the lead in supercomputing speed from China with these new systems. How adequate this planned investment will look three years from now is a question. Lawmakers weren’t reading from the same script as U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz when it came to assessing the U.S.’s place in the supercomputing world. Moniz said the awards “will ensure the United States retains global leadership in supercomputing.” But Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) put U.S. leadership in the past tense. “Supercomputing is one of those things that we can step up and lead the world again, ” he said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US DOE Sets Sights On 300 Petaflop Supercomputer

81% of Tor Users Can Be De-anonymized By Analysing Router Information

An anonymous reader writes A former researcher at Columbia University’s Network Security Lab has conducted research since 2008 indicating that traffic flow software included in network routers, notably Cisco’s ‘Netflow’ package, can be exploited to deanonymize 81.4% of Tor clients. Professor Sambuddho Chakravarty, currently researching Network Anonymity and Privacy at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, uses a technique which injects a repeating traffic pattern into the TCP connection associated with an exit node, and then compares subsequent aberrations in network timing with the traffic flow records generated by Netflow (or equivalent packages from other router manufacturers) to individuate the ‘victim’ client. In laboratory conditions the success rate of this traffic analysis attack is 100%, with network noise and variations reducing efficiency to 81% in a live Tor environment. Chakravarty says: ‘it is not even essential to be a global adversary to launch such traffic analysis attacks. A powerful, yet non- global adversary could use traffic analysis methods [] to determine the various relays participating in a Tor circuit and directly monitor the traffic entering the entry node of the victim connection.’ Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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81% of Tor Users Can Be De-anonymized By Analysing Router Information