Windows 8 scrubs North Korean launch

Kim Jong-un is wishing that he was still running Windows 95 like he was last year when they were able to successfully run launch tests. The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) stated that a launch test had to be put on hold due to “problems with Windows 8.” KCNA goes on to say that they are “working with Windows 8 support to resolve the issue.” There is no word what the exact nature of the problems Jong-un was experiencing, but perhaps ctrl/alt/delete might work. So what do you think was on that support ticket? I would love to know who the support staffer was so we could get a copy, but I am guessing that in the ‘description of issue’ section it went something like: “Failure to launch”

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Windows 8 scrubs North Korean launch

The Old DVD Player Sitting in Your Garage Can Test for HIV

Remember DVD players? Well, looks like they won’t be going the way of VHS tapes and cassettes (ask your parents) just yet. Because researchers have just figured out a way to turn them into affordable, blood-analyzing, cellular-imaging, laser-scanning microscopes capable of completing HIV tests in mere minutes. More »        

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The Old DVD Player Sitting in Your Garage Can Test for HIV

BitCoin Value Collapses, Possibly Due To DDoS

hydrofix writes “The Bitcoin-to-USD exchange rate had been climbing steadily since January 2013, from around 30 USD to over 250 USD only 24 hours ago. Now, the value bubble seems to have burst, at least partially. The primary trading site MtGox reported a drop in value all the way down to 140 USD today, a loss of almost half in real value. With many sites unreachable or slow, there are also news of a possible DDoS attack on MtGox: ‘Attackers wait until the price of Bitcoins reaches a certain value, sell, destabilize the exchange, wait for everybody to panic-sell their Bitcoins, wait for the price to drop to a certain amount, then stop the attack and start buying as much as they can. Repeat this two or three times like we saw over the past few days and they profit.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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BitCoin Value Collapses, Possibly Due To DDoS

3D printed synthetic tissue folds itself into shapes

University of Oxford chemists custom-built a 3D printer that fabricates “synthetic tissue,” or rather structures with tissue-like functions. Eventually, the technology could be used to crank out replacement tissue that could replace damaged human tissue or be used in new drug delivery systems. The material consist of a network of water droplets encapsulated in lipids, or fat molecules. “The droplets… form pathways through the network that mimic nerves and are able to transmit electrical signals from one side of a network to the other,” says Oxford University chemistry professor Hagan Bayley. Amazingly, the material can be chemically “programmed” to fold into various shapes as water is transferred around in the network. (Video above.) ” 3D printer can build synthetic tissues ” (Univ of Oxford, via Science News ) ” A Tissue-like Printed Material ” (Science)        

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3D printed synthetic tissue folds itself into shapes

Set Your Watches For the End of Windows XP

An anonymous reader writes “In one year today exactly, Microsoft will shut down support for Windows XP. The deadline will prove a challenge for many of Australia’s largest users of IT, all struggling to migrate to new Microsoft environments.” Net Applications’ chart of current OS market share figured shows XP only slightly behind Windows 7, even now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Set Your Watches For the End of Windows XP

Bank of America Is Adding Teller Video Chat to Its ATMs

If you regularly find yourself perplexed at ATMs, help is at hand. Bank of America has announced that it’s launching a new system that will allow you to hold a live video chat with bank staff to help guide you through your ineptitude. More »

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Bank of America Is Adding Teller Video Chat to Its ATMs

New Catalyst Allows Cheaper Hydrogen Production

First time accepted submitter CanadianRealist writes “Electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen is very inefficient without the use of a catalyst. Unfortunately catalysts are currently made of crystals containing rare, expensive toxic metals such as ruthenium and iridium. Two chemists from the University of Calgary have invented a process to make a catalyst using relatively non-toxic metal compounds such as iron oxide, for 1/1000 the cost of currently used catalysts. It is suggested this would make it more feasible to use electrolysis of water to create hydrogen as a method of storing energy from variable green power sources such as wind and solar.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Catalyst Allows Cheaper Hydrogen Production

Animation Sophistication: The Croods Required 80 Million Compute Hours

Lucas123 writes “It may be a movie about a stone age family, but DreamWorks said its latest 3D animated movie The Croods took more compute cycles to create than any other movie they’ve made. The movie required a whopping 80 million compute hours to render, 15 million more hours than DreamWorks’ last record holder, The Rise of the Guardians. The production studio said between 300 and 400 animators worked on The Croods over the past three years. The images they created, from raw sketches to stereoscopic high-definition shots, required about 250TB of data storage capacity. When the movie industry moved from producing 2D to 3D high-definition movies over the past decade, the data required to produce the films increased tremendously. For DreamWorks, the amount of data needed to create a stereoscopic film leaped by 30%.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Animation Sophistication: The Croods Required 80 Million Compute Hours