China says it has successfully landed a craft carrying a robotic rover on the surface of the Moon, the first soft landing there for 37 years.
On Saturday afternoon (GMT), a landing module used thrusters to touch down, marking the latest step in China’s ambitious space exploration programme.
Massive surge in Litecoin mining leads to graphics card shortage
Litecoin confirms transactions faster (every 2.5 minutes, rather than every 10 minutes for Bitcoin) and it contains more coins — 84 million coins will be found in total under the LTC protocol, as opposed to 21 million for BTC. Bitcoin and Litecoin prices tend to move together; Bitcoins stratospheric leap over the past month (it’s down from a high of $1200 but trading at $873 as of this writing) has created an odd situation where it’s easier to mine Litecoin and then convert LTC to BTC then it is to just mine BTC to start with.
via Massive surge in Litecoin mining leads to graphics card shortage | ExtremeTech.
Cloud infrastructure pricing is absurd
The top key finding of the 451 Research report: “Cloud computing once promised simple, usage-based charging for resources, similar to other utilities such as electricity; unfortunately, the current reality is far from this ideal.”
The vendors further muddy the water by not being out front about their pricing; 451 Research found that only 64 percent of providers publish their pricing online.
via Confirmed: Cloud infrastructure pricing is absurd | ITworld.
Google now proxies images sent to Gmail users
It’s simple for senders to do this. Embed in each message a viewable image—or if you’re feeling sneaky, a nearly invisible image—that contains a long, random-looking string in the URL that’s unique to each receiver or e-mail. When Google proxy servers request the image, the sender knows the user or message corresponding to the unique URL is active or has been viewed. In Moore’s tests, the proxy servers requested the image each subsequent time the Gmail message was opened, at least when he cleared the temporary Internet cache of his browser. That behavior could allow marketers—or possibly lawyers, stalkers, or other senders with questionable motives—to glean details many receivers would prefer to keep to themselves. For instance, a sender could track how often or at what times a Gmail user opened a particular message.
via Dear Gmailer: I know what you read last summer (and last night and today) | Ars Technica.
The key to this issue is that Gmail now defaults to images on in email which should always be off. In order to fix this Google must cache all images upon receipt of every email. Doing it when a user requests an email defeats the entire purpose. It’s always good practice to view with images off on all email no matter what the provider claims.
Munich open source switch ‘completed successfully’
In one of the premier open source software deployments in Europe, the city migrated from Windows NT to LiMux, its own Linux distribution. LiMux incorporates a fully open source desktop infrastructure. The city also decided to use the Open Document Format (ODF) as a standard, instead of proprietary options.
Ten years after the decision to switch, the LiMux project will now go into regular operation, the Munich City council said in a document published
ownCloud.org
ownCloud Documents is collaborative editing of rich-text documents. The documents can be created from within the web-interface or existing documents can be uploaded. Sharing and editing can be done securely in the browser and be shared inside ownCloud or via a public link. User that have an account on the same server can be invited or public invitations can also be sent be email. The editing works on top of normal ODF files that are stored in ownCloud. ownCloud Documents is built in cooperation with KO GmbH
I haven’t tried this solution out yet.
City may change rules to allow Google to attach fiber to…
Tracy King, AT&T’s vice president for public affairs, said in a written statement that Google “appears to be demanding concessions never provided any other entity before.”
“Google has the right to attach to our poles, under federal law, as long as it qualifies as a telecom or cable provider, as they themselves acknowledge. We will work with Google when they become qualified, as we do with all such qualified providers,” she said.
via City may change rules to allow Google to attach fiber to… | www.statesman.com.
Google qualifies as an Internet Service Provier (ISP) and not a telecom or cable provider. AT&T’s poles reside in public rights of ways.
The UK Government Is Already Censoring The Global Internet
There is one group of people that can stop this madness before it’s too late – the domain name registrars themselves. In the middle of October, Mark Jeftovic, CEO of the Canadian hosting company EasyDNS, vocally refused to comply with a request from PIPCU. Has he suffered the wrath of the British authorities? Nope. Was EasyDNS’s accreditation revoked? No. Is the company still in business? Oh yes.
via The UK Government Is Already Censoring The Global Internet.
New superconductor theory may revolutionize electrical engineering
Heat makes atoms move and can shake Cooper pairs apart, so the holy grail is to design a material where the pairs are bound together so strongly that superconductivity can happen even up to room temperature. It might be possible to describe a Fermi surface that would create that condition, and perhaps then imagine what crystal structure it would require. “Ideally we would like to be able to tell the materials scientist to put elements X, Y and Z together,” Lee said. “Unfortunately we can’t do that yet.”
via New superconductor theory may revolutionize electrical engineering.
How the Bitcoin protocol actually works
It may seem surprising that Bitcoin’s basis is cryptography. Isn’t Bitcoin a currency, not a way of sending secret messages? In fact, the problems Bitcoin needs to solve are largely about securing transactions — making sure people can’t steal from one another, or impersonate one another, and so on. In the world of atoms we achieve security with devices such as locks, safes, signatures, and bank vaults. In the world of bits we achieve this kind of security with cryptography. And that’s why Bitcoin is at heart a cryptographic protocol.