Dropbox – What is LAN sync?

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Well, when you add a file to your computer’s Dropbox, the file is then synced with Dropbox servers. Dropbox will then initiate the syncing process as soon as it determines a change has been made to the file. All linked computers and shared folders will then download any new version of the file. With LAN syncing, Dropbox will look for the new file on your Local Area Network first, bypassing the need to download the file from Dropbox servers, thus speeding up the syncing process considerably.

via Dropbox – What is LAN sync? – Simplify your life.

I’m not quite sure if this is a good idea.

From: http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/viewAlert.x?alertId=23896

When synchronizing user data and communicating with the host service, a Dropbox client normally uses TCP port 443.  In addition, the application may also use UDP and TCP port 17500 for communication via the Dropbox LanSync Protocol.

And…

Administrators are advised to implement an intrusion prevention system (IPS) or intrusion detection system (IDS) to help detect and prevent attacks that could detect the presence of Dropbox in a network.

WIDESPREAD SOLAR: Berkeley lab develops technology to make photovoltaics out of any semiconductor

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“It’s time we put bad materials to good use,” says physicist Alex Zettl, who led the research along with colleague Feng Wang. “Our technology allows us to sidestep the difficulty in chemically tailoring many earth abundant, non-toxic semiconductors and instead tailor these materials simply by applying an electric field.”

via WIDESPREAD SOLAR: Berkeley lab develops technology to make photovoltaics out of any semiconductor.

This new technology is called “screening-engineered field-effect photovoltaics,” or SFPV, because it utilizes the electric field effect, a well understood phenomenon by which the concentration of charge-carriers in a semiconductor is altered by the application of an electric field. With the SFPV technology, a carefully designed partially screening top electrode lets the gate electric field sufficiently penetrate the electrode and more uniformly modulate the semiconductor carrier concentration and type to induce a p-n junction. This enables the creation of high quality p-n junctions in semiconductors that are difficult if not impossible to dope by conventional chemical methods.

Raising the dead: Can a regular person repair a damaged hard drive?

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This is a story of my efforts to repair the drive myself, my research into the question of whether or not users can repair modern hard drives, and the results of my efforts. If your drive is still detected in BIOS, you may be able to use software tools to retrieve your data. Here, we’re going to focus exclusively on hardware-related failures, and what your options are.

via Raising the dead: Can a regular person repair a damaged hard drive? | ExtremeTech.

Surf the internet for more than two minutes, and you’ll find people who recommend you do one of the following things:

  • Stick your hard drive in the freezer
  • Pop your hard drive into the oven
  • Give it a few taps with a hammer or rubber mallet

LOL. I have been desparate to try the freezer trick a couple of times without luck.

Oracle Linux: A better alternative to CentOS

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We firmly believe that Oracle Linux is the best Linux distribution on the market today. It’s reliable, it’s affordable, it’s 100% compatible with your existing applications, and it gives you access to some of the most cutting-edge innovations in Linux like Ksplice and dtrace.

via Oracle Linux: A better alternative to CentOS.

Hmmm.  We’ll see about that.

How is this better than CentOS?

Well, for one, you’re getting the exact same bits our paying enterprise customers are getting. So that means a few things. Importantly, it means virtually no delay between when Red Hat releases a kernel and when Oracle Linux does:

Question for TN 78th candidates: Internet access

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You can imagine the lasting economic damage that would have been incurred if similar legislation had prevented CEMC from borrowing to roll out electricity in the 1940′s. This is a textbook case of rent-seeking behavior on the part of private ISP’s and regulatory capture on the part of the legislature, and was no doubt passed based both on some mixture of ideology unrestrained by real-world results, and private ISP’s increasing their political donations that year by a factor of 100 (as Upton Sinclair bitterly mused, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”)

via Question for TN 78th candidates: Internet access | Mathew Binkley’s Blog.

He also has an interesting comment on slashdot.

Skype makes chats and user data more available to police

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Skype, the online phone service long favored by political dissidents, criminals and others eager to communicate beyond the reach of governments, has expanded its cooperation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police, said industry and government officials familiar with the changes.

via Skype makes chats and user data more available to police – The Washington Post.

Europe’s Most Powerful Supercomputer Inaugurated

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The SuperMUC, ranked fourth in the June TOP500 supercomputing listing, contains 147,456 cores using Intel Xeon 2.7-GHz, 8-core E5-2680 chips. IBM, which built the supercomputer, stated in a recent press release that the supercomputer actually includes more than 155,000 processor cores. It is located at the Leibniz-Rechenzentrum (Leibniz Supercomputing Centre) in Garching, Germany, near Munich.

via Europe’s Most Powerful Supercomputer Inaugurated.