Scientists Have Finally Sampled the Most Abundant Material On Earth

rossgneumann writes: The most abundant material on Earth didn’t have a name, and, in fact, hadn’t been seen — until now. For the first time ever, scientists have gotten their hands on a sample of bridgmanite, a mineral that is believed to make up more than a third of the volume of the Earth. In a new paper published in Science late last week, Oliver Tschauner of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and his team describe bridgmanite for the first time. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientists Have Finally Sampled the Most Abundant Material On Earth

How to Set Up Trusted Locations in Android Lollipop

Having a PIN code or pattern to protect your device makes a lot of sense, but it’s also annoying. Thankfully, the new version of Android lets you automatically turn off this security layer when you’re at home or the office or anywhere else you regularly go. Here’s how to set it up. Read more…

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How to Set Up Trusted Locations in Android Lollipop

First Star War Episode 7 Trailer Released

Midnight Thunder writes: The first trailer for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens has been released. (YouTube link.) This is the first real opportunity to get a feeling for whether childhood dreams will be crushed or Disney, with the help of JJ Abrams, will be able to breath new life into the story without making it feel like a merchandising excuse. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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First Star War Episode 7 Trailer Released

The DOJ Used 225-Year-Old Law to Bypass a Phone’s Password

When it comes to encryption, some of the Department of Justice’s views are… interesting . Now, it transpires that it’s been using laws that date back 225 years to get phones unlocked, too. Read more…

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The DOJ Used 225-Year-Old Law to Bypass a Phone’s Password

Consortium Roadmap Shows 100TB Hard Drives Possible By 2025

Lucas123 writes An industry consortium made up by leading hard disk drive manufacturers shows they expect the areal density of platters to reach 10 terabits per square inch by 2025, which is more than 10 times what it is today. At that density, hard disk drives could conceivably hold up to 100TB of data. Key to achieving greater bit density is Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and Bit Patterned Media Recording (BPMR). While both HAMR and BPMR will increase density, the combination of both technologies in 2021 will drive it to the 10Tbpsi level, according to the Advanced Storage Technology Consortium (ASTC). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Consortium Roadmap Shows 100TB Hard Drives Possible By 2025

How Intel and Micron May Finally Kill the Hard Disk Drive

itwbennett writes: For too long, it looked like SSD capacity would always lag well behind hard disk drives, which were pushing into the 6TB and 8TB territory while SSDs were primarily 256GB to 512GB. That seems to be ending. In September, Samsung announced a 3.2TB SSD drive. And during an investor webcast last week, Intel announced it will begin offering 3D NAND drives in the second half of next year as part of its joint flash venture with Micron. Meanwhile, hard drive technology has hit the wall in many ways. They can’t really spin the drives faster than 7, 200 RPM without increasing heat and the rate of failure. All hard drives have now is the capacity argument; speed is all gone. Oh, and price. We’ll have to wait and see on that. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How Intel and Micron May Finally Kill the Hard Disk Drive

The Bizarre Story Behind Last Night’s Craigslist Hack

If you tried to visit Craigslist late Sunday night, you probably had a very weird experience. Instead of arriving at that sultry sea of classifieds, you were probably sent to DigitalGangster.com . Then, you were likely redirected to YouTube, where a very strange animated rap video filled your ears with lyrics about freedom, privacy, and net neutrality. Read more…

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The Bizarre Story Behind Last Night’s Craigslist Hack

Bidding In Government Auction of Airwaves Reaches $34 Billion

An anonymous reader sends word that the 2014 wireless spectrum license auction has surpassed $34 billion. “A government auction of airwaves for use in mobile broadband has blown through presale estimates, becoming the biggest auction in the Federal Communications Commission’s history and signaling that wireless companies expect demand for Internet access by smartphones to continue to soar. And it’s not over yet. Companies bid more than $34 billion as of Friday afternoon for six blocks of airwaves, totaling 65 megahertz of the electromagnetic spectrum, being sold by the F.C.C. That total is more than three times the $10.5 billion reserve price that the commission put on the sale, the first offering of previously unavailable airwaves in six years.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bidding In Government Auction of Airwaves Reaches $34 Billion

Highly Advanced Backdoor Trojan Cased High-Profile Targets For Years

An anonymous reader points out this story at Ars about a new trojan on the scene. Researchers have unearthed highly advanced malware they believe was developed by a wealthy nation-state to spy on a wide range of international targets in diverse industries, including hospitality, energy, airline, and research. Backdoor Regin, as researchers at security firm Symantec are referring to the trojan, bears some resemblance to previously discovered state-sponsored malware, including the espionage trojans known as Flame and Duqu, as well as Stuxnet, the computer worm and trojan that was programmed to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. Regin likely required months or years to be completed and contains dozens of individual modules that allowed its operators to tailor the malware to individual targets. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Highly Advanced Backdoor Trojan Cased High-Profile Targets For Years

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