Inside social media’s fake fan industry

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Even the already famous seem to have enjoyed an artificial boost. In August, UK social media management firm StatusPeople scanned several massively popular Twitter accounts using a service it developed called Fake Follower Check. According to StatusPeople, more than 70 percent of President Barack Obama’s 19 million Twitter followers were either fake or inactive accounts. Fake Follower Check returns roughly similar results for Mitt Romney, Lady Gaga, and Justin Bieber.

via Almost Famous: Inside social media’s fake fan industry | ITworld.

“It used to be the main metric of social media success for many companies was how many Likes or fans they had,” says Mike Nail, vice president of operations for the company. “But what really matters is engagement, and when you’re buying Likes to pad that number, your engagement rate actually goes down. You can’t have engagement with people who don’t exist. The real reason to use social media is to get leads, and you can’t get leads from fake people.”

DRM be damned: how to protect your Amazon e-books from being deleted

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If you buy e-books from Amazon, and want to engage in a bit of digital civil disobedience—by stripping the files’ DRM and making sure that Amazon can’t deny you access—we’re about to show you how. Yes, many parts of the Internet have known about this technique for some time now, but we feel that it bears mentioning again here..

via DRM be damned: how to protect your Amazon e-books from being deleted | Ars Technica.

Now, as West himself noted, these files are for your personal use only—they’re not meant to be distributed anywhere. Enjoy!

Using eBox As Windows Primary Domain Controller

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eBox Platform is an open source small business server that allows you to manage all your services like firewall, DHCP, DNS, VPN, proxy, IDS, mail, file and printer sharing, VoIP, IM and much more. These functionalities are tightly integrated, automating most tasks, avoiding mistakes and saving time for system administrators.

This tutorial shows you step by step how to use eBox as Windows Primary Domain Controller. At the end of it you will be using eBox Platform 1.2 for users and shared resources management on your Windows domain.

via Using eBox As Windows Primary Domain Controller | HowtoForge – Linux Howtos and Tutorials.

Open Compute Project Driving Open-Source Hardware Development

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Facebook launched the Open Compute Project in April 2011 with the intention of sharing the designs of the social networking giant’s data center in Prineville, Oregon, as well as custom designs for servers, power supplies and UPS units. Since then, the project has been growing, adding new partners and introducing new technologies designed specifically for use in webscale data centers.

via Open Compute Project Driving Open-Source Hardware Development.

The Open Compute v2 machines were unveiled at the third Open Compute Summit in May. The new OCP v2 servers are double-stuffed machines that can fit two two-socket x86 servers, their power supplies, and fans into a 1.5U Open Computer chassis.

AMD and Intel have contributed motherboard designs used in OCP v1 and v2. The new motherboards stripped out many features found in traditional motherboards to optimize power and reduce costs.

A Bandwidth Breakthrough

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Testing the system on Wi-Fi networks at MIT, where 2 percent of packets are typically lost, Medard’s group found that a normal bandwidth of one megabit per second was boosted to 16 megabits per second. In a circumstance where losses were 5 percent—common on a fast-moving train—the method boosted bandwidth from 0.5 megabits per second to 13.5 megabits per second. In a situation with zero losses, there was little if any benefit, but loss-free wireless scenarios are rare.

via A Bandwidth Breakthrough – Technology Review.

The technology transforms the way packets of data are sent. Instead of sending packets, it sends algebraic equations that describe series of packets. So if a packet goes missing, instead of asking the network to resend it, the receiving device can solve for the missing one itself. Since the equations involved are simple and linear, the processing load on a phone, router, or base station is negligible, Medard says.

Huawei offers access to source code and equipment

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“Huawei has done a very poor job of communicating about ourselves and we must take full responsibility for that,” said John Lord, chairman of Huawei’s Australian arm.

He added that the company needed to be more open and would give the Australian authorities “complete and unrestricted access” to its software source code and equipment.

via BBC News – Huawei offers access to source code and equipment.

Argonne’s Superstar Supercomputer

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Q. When do you expect Mira to be up and running?
A. Our hope is that we will receive the machine sometime in the third quarter of 2012 or early in 2013. Then it will take us three or four months to stand it up. It’s made up of 48 racks that weigh 2 tons each, so it takes a while to wheel it in, put it in place and wire it up.

via Science Connections: Argonne’s Superstar Supercomputer — Evanston news, photos and events — TribLocal.com.

Q. What are some cool projects being run on the supercomputer right now?
A. There is a current study on concrete that is pretty exciting. Concrete production is a $100 billion a year industry in the U.S. and generates a lot of carbon dioxide. A researcher from the National Institute of Standards and Technology is using the computer to figure out how to design better concrete that produces less out-gassing.

Phoenix NAP’s Response to Kasim Reed Shows Its Unreliability as a Data Center

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Instead of blowing off the letter as patently contradicted by section 230, Phoenix NAP took the entire Lipstick Alley web site off line without any notice. In response to a strong protest, Phoenix NAP acknowledged that its failure to give notice was a mistake in process, but it had no sympathy for Lipstick Alley’s legal rights; PhoenixNAP told me that it takes claims of defamation seriously and, without regard to the merits of the dispute, its customers must “resolve the issue with the complaining party.”

via Phoenix NAP’s Response to Kasim Reed Shows Its Unreliability as a Data Center (CL&P Blog).

EXT4 Data Corruption Bug Hits Stable Linux Kernels

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As a warning for those who are normally quick to upgrade to the latest stable vanilla kernel releases, a serious EXT4 data corruption bug worked its way into the stable Linux 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6 kernel series.

via [Phoronix] EXT4 Data Corruption Bug Hits Stable Linux Kernels.

The reason why the problem happens rarely is that the effect of the buggy commit is that if the journal’s starting block is zero, we fail to truncate the journal when we unmount the file system. This can happen if we mount and then unmount the file system fairly quickly, before the log has a chance to wrap. After the first time this has happened, it’s not a disaster, since when we replay the journal, we’ll just replay some extra transactions. But if this happens twice, the oldest valid transaction will still not have gotten updated, but some of the newer transactions from the last mount session will have gotten written by the very latest transacitons, and when we then try to do the extra transaction replays, the metadata blocks can end up getting very scrambled indeed.

PlayStation 3: The Final Hack?

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The release of the new custom firmware – and the LV0 decryption keys in particular – poses serious issues. While Sony will almost certainly change the PSN passphrase once again in the upcoming 4.30 update, the reveal of the LV0 key basically means that any system update released by Sony going forward can be decrypted with little or no effort whatsoever. Options Sony has in battling this leak are limited – every PS3 out there needs to be able to decrypt any firmware download package in order for the console to be updated (a 2006 launch PS3 can still update directly to the latest software). The release of the LV0 key allows for that to be achieved on PC, with the CoreOS and XMB files then re-encrypted using the existing 3.55 keys in order to be run on hacked consoles.

via PlayStation 3: The Final Hack? • Blogs • Eurogamer.net.