Where Facebook Stores 900 Million New Photos Per Day

1sockchuck writes: Facebook faces unique storage challenges. Its users upload 900 million new images daily, most of which are only viewed for a couple of days. The social network has built specialized cold storage facilities to manage these rarely-accessed photos. Data Center Frontier goes inside this facility, providing a closer look at Facebook’s newest strategy: Using thousands of Blu-Ray disks to store images, complete with a robotic retrieval system (see video demo). Others are interested as well. Sony recently acquired a Blu-Ray storage startup founded by Open Compute chairman Frank Frankovsky, which hopes to drive enterprise adoption of optical data storage. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Where Facebook Stores 900 Million New Photos Per Day

Is Safari the New Internet Explorer?

An anonymous reader writes: Software developer Nolan Lawson says Apple’s Safari has taken the place of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as the major browser that lags behind all the others. This comes shortly after the Edge Conference, where major players in web technologies got together to discuss the state of the industry and what’s ahead. Lawson says Mozilla, Google, Opera, and Microsoft were all in attendance and willing to talk — but not Apple. “It’s hard to get insight into why Apple is behaving this way. They never send anyone to web conferences, their Surfin’ Safari blog is a shadow of its former self, and nobody knows what the next version of Safari will contain until that year’s WWDC. In a sense, Apple is like Santa Claus, descending yearly to give us some much-anticipated presents, with no forewarning about which of our wishes he’ll grant this year. And frankly, the presents have been getting smaller and smaller lately.” He argues, “At this point, we in the web community need to come to terms with the fact that Safari has become the new IE. Microsoft is repentant these days, Google is pushing the web as far as it can go, and Mozilla is still being Mozilla. Apple is really the one singer in that barbershop quartet hitting all the sour notes, and it’s time we start talking about it openly instead of tiptoeing around it like we’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Is Safari the New Internet Explorer?

8 Yelp Reviewers Hit With $1.2 Million Defamation Suits

New submitter goodboi writes: A Silicon Valley building contractor is suing 8 of its critics over the reviews they posted on Yelp. The negative reviews were filtered out by Yelp’s secretive ranking system, but in court documents filed earlier this month, Link Corporation claims that the bad publicity cost over $165, 000 in lost business. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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8 Yelp Reviewers Hit With $1.2 Million Defamation Suits

iPhone 6S New Feature: Force Touch

New submitter WarJolt writes: Apple is adding Force Touch to their iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus. I’m not sure if Force Touch enough to convince an Android user like myself to switch, but there are definitely some interesting possibilities for app developers. A challenge for App developers will be to make apps compatible with both Force Touch iPhones and non-force touch iPhones. (Here’s the Bloomberg report Forbes draws from.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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iPhone 6S New Feature: Force Touch

AMD’s Project Quantum Gaming PC Contains Intel CPU

nateman1352 links to an article at Tom’s Hardware which makes the interesting point that chip-maker AMD will offer Intel — rather than AMD — CPUs in their upcoming high-end gaming PC. (High-end for being based on integrated components, at least.) From the article: Recently, AMD showed off its plans for its Fiji based graphics products, among which was Project Quantum – a small form factor PC that packs not one, but two Fiji graphics processors. Since the announcement, KitGuru picked up on something, noticing that the system packs an Intel Core i7-4790K “Devil’s Canyon” CPU. We hardly need to point out that it is rather intriguing to see AMD use its largest competitor’s CPU in its own product, when AMD is a CPU maker itself. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AMD’s Project Quantum Gaming PC Contains Intel CPU

New Manufacturing Technique Halves Cost of Lithium-Ion Batteries

An anonymous reader writes: Experts in materials science at MIT have developed a new process for creating lithium-ion batteries that will drop the associated production costs by half. The researchers say fundamental battery construction techniques have been refined over the past two decades, but not re-thought. “The new battery design is a hybrid between flow batteries and conventional solid ones: In this version, while the electrode material does not flow, it is composed of a similar semisolid, colloidal suspension of particles. Chiang and Carter refer to this as a ‘semisolid battery.’ This approach greatly simplifies manufacturing, and also makes batteries that are flexible and resistant to damage, says Chiang. … Instead of the standard method of applying liquid coatings to a roll of backing material, and then having to wait for that material to dry before it can move to the next manufacturing step, the new process keeps the electrode material in a liquid state and requires no drying stage at all. Using fewer, thicker electrodes, the system reduces the conventional battery architecture’s number of distinct layers, as well as the amount of nonfunctional material in the structure, by 80 percent.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Manufacturing Technique Halves Cost of Lithium-Ion Batteries

The US Navy’s Warfare Systems Command Just Paid Millions To Stay On Windows XP

itwbennett writes: The Navy relies on a number of legacy applications and programs that are reliant on legacy Windows products, ‘ said Steven Davis, a spokesman for the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in San Diego. And that reliance on obsolete technology is costing taxpayers a pretty penny. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, which runs the Navy’s communications and information networks, signed a $9.1 million contract earlier this month for continued access to security patches for Windows XP, Office 2003, Exchange 2003 and Windows Server 2003. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The US Navy’s Warfare Systems Command Just Paid Millions To Stay On Windows XP

General Mills To Drop Artificial Ingredients In Cereal

schwit1 writes: General Mills announced Monday that it will be removing artificial colors and flavoring from its cereal products over the next two to three years. The company said that Trix and Reese’s Puffs will be some of the first cereals to undergo the changes adding that cereals like Lucky Charms that have marshmallows may take longer to reformulate. They say 90 percent of their cereals will have no artificial ingredients by the end of 2016. “We’ve continued to listen to consumers who want to see more recognizable and familiar ingredients on the labels and challenged ourselves to remove barriers that prevent adults and children from enjoying our cereals, ” said Jim Murphy, president of General Mills cereal division, in a statement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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General Mills To Drop Artificial Ingredients In Cereal

Linux 4.1 Kernel Released With EXT4 Encryption, Performance Improvements

An anonymous reader writes: The Linux 4.1 kernel has been announced and its release brings expanded features for the Linux kernel including EXT4 file-system encryption, open-source GeForce GTX 750 support, performance improvements for Intel Atom / Bay Trail hardware, RAID 5/6 improvements, and other additions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux 4.1 Kernel Released With EXT4 Encryption, Performance Improvements

Facebook’s Absurd Pseudonym Purgatory

An anonymous reader sends a story from a writer whose Facebook account was locked because somebody reported it as using a pseudonym. It doesn’t, but Facebook demands a look at identification documents before releasing control over the account. Anyone whose name doesn’t sound “real” to Facebook is at risk for this, and the social network doesn’t even have a consistent stance on what an “authentic” name is. “Aside from the complexity of identity, the policy is haphazardly enforced at best. At worst, it’s dangerous and discriminatory, and has demonstrably and repeatedly been used to target people who often already are marginalized and vulnerable.” Matt Cagle, attorney for the ACLU, says, “By controlling the identity of the speaker with this policy, Facebook has the effect of both reducing speech and eliminating speakers from the platform altogether. This is a particularly concerning move to the ACLU because forums like Facebook serve as the modern-day equivalent of the public square for a lot of communities. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Facebook’s Absurd Pseudonym Purgatory