It’s not simply the case that Zuckerberg is sneaky in his promotion of sharing and creepy in his ambivalence about privacy. Rather, he is a true believer. Privacy lowers the value of the social graph. If one sincerely believes in the merits of the graph, then one should be suspicious of privacy, because privacy is selfish.
Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions
The Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated – incorporating water molecules into its structure – and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.
via Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions « Berkeley Lab News Center.
This seems like an amazing discovery.
Their analyses showed that the Roman recipe needed less than 10 percent lime by weight, made at two-thirds or less the temperature required by Portland cement. Lime reacting with aluminum-rich pozzolan ash and seawater formed highly stable C‑A-S-H and Al-tobermorite, insuring strength and longevity. Both the materials and the way the Romans used them hold lessons for the future.
Attacks on Package Managers
To provide an example of the sorts of attacks an attacker can launch on package managers, this page describes an example attack called a replay attack. Other attacks are described on a separate page.
via Attacks on Package Managers.
Here’s a piece of advice I always adhere to for any kind of upgrade.
Manually update your systems (and local mirror caches). Know when package updates become available and what the versions should be. Manually verify and install the updated packages (or add them to your local mirror cache that your systems update from) rather than relying on automated updates. We have observed mirrors many months out of date for some distributions, so you should check periodically that your mirror is being updated.
Facebook Saves Datacenter Costs with Frigid Arctic Wind
The constant, biting wind may have stunted the growth of Lulea’s tourism industry, but it has proven a big factor in luring big IT facilities into the area. Datacenters in Lulea are just as difficult to power and cool as any other concentrated mass of IT equipment, but their owners can slash the cost of cooling all those servers and storage units simply by opening a window: the temperature in Lulea hasn’t stayed at or above 86 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours since 1961 (PDF), and the average temperature is a bracing 29.6 Fahrenheit.
via Facebook Saves Datacenter Costs with Frigid Arctic Wind.
TreeSheets
It’s like a spreadsheet, immediately familiar, but much more suitable for complex data because it’s hierarchical.
It’s like a mind mapper, but more organized and compact.
It’s like an outliner, but in more than one dimension.
It’s like a text editor, but with structure.
Have a quick look at what the application looks like on the screenshots page, see how easy it is to use in the tutorial (out of date, the live in-app tutorial works much better!), then give it a download (above).
via TreeSheets.
Open WhisperSystems
Encrypted calls for Android
RedPhone provides end-to-end encryption for your calls, securing your conversations so that nobody can listen in.
Computer memory can be read with a flash of light
In 2009, researchers at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, demonstrated2 that the material has a photovoltaic response to visible light — meaning that when it is hit by light, a voltage is created. The size of the voltage depends on which polarization state the material is in, and can be read out using electrodes or transistors. Crucially, shining light on the material doesn’t change its polarization, and so does not erase the data stored in it.
via Computer memory can be read with a flash of light : Nature News & Comment.
It takes less than 10 nanoseconds to write to and read the cells, and recording the data requires about 3 volts. The leading nonvolatile RAM technology, flash, takes about 10,000 times longer to read and write, and needs 15 volts to record.
Data Center Owners Doubt SDN
While touring the facility, Tony Hiller, VP of engineering and operations at Peerless, admitted he was skeptical about the hype surrounding SDN and noted that, while Peerless was testing it, no operator was doing it yet at scale.
via Light Reading – Data Center Owners Doubt SDN.
The title might be a bit melodramatic.
VCs Get Their Pick Of Hungry Start-ups
But there is a dark side because VC’s often only make safe bets, backing companies which can show they have enough valuable intellectual property (IP) to reassure the funders that they can salvage a large part of their money through IP asset-stripping, if the business doesn’t thrive.
Perhaps the slogan for the session should have been: “No IP, no VC”.
University of Michigan study links social media and narcissism
The gist of the study: Narcissists “like” Facebook and Twitter. A lot. And social media in general both “reflect and amplify” our culture’s deepening narcissism.
The study, by University of Michigan researchers Elliot Panek, Yioryos Nardis and Sara Konrath, was published online in Computers in Human Behavior.
via University of Michigan study links social media and narcissism – chicagotribune.com.