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Seagate has hit a new storage milestone with its recently unveiled 8TB hard drive disk, the first of its kind to start shipping. The company calls this an "important step forward", saying its new offering meets the increasing data-heavy demands of our modern cloud-centric world. The new 8TB offering is a 3.5-inch drive, and the maker is hawking it at cloud providers and others revolving around bulk data storage. Said IDC's John Rydning, "Public and private data centers are grappling with efficiently storing massive amounts of unstructured digital content." He points towards the 8TB drive as a solution for addressing...

Windowless planes could be the future of cheaper air travel as a government technology centre develops a proposal to help airlines save on fuel. In place of windows, plastic display screens projecting the sky outside could line the cabin of an aircraft. It is hoped the technology will significantly reduce aircraft weight and cut fuel costs without worrying nervous passengers. The display screens will function using a technique called printable electronics, which involves the use of conductive inks to carry electric current in cardboard and plastic for just a few pence per unit. The technology could be rolled out in...

Many institutions have their archives stored on CDs — but the discs aren't as stable as once thought. There is no average life span for a CD, says preservationist Michele Youket, "because there is no average disc." --- Back in the 1990s, historical societies, museums and symphonies across the country began transferring all kinds of information onto what was thought to be a very durable medium: the compact disc. Now, preservationists are worried that a lot of key information stored on CDs — from sound recordings to public records — is going to disappear. Some of those little silver discs...

A scuffle at a Connecticut opera reveals the bleak future of the orchestra pit This August's production of Richard Wagner's four-opera Ring cycle in Hartford, Conn., has been postponed. Rather than hiring pit musicians, producer Charles M. Goldstein had intended to accompany the singers with sampled instrument sounds, played by a computer. Not a CD, not a synthesizer; the computer triggers the playback of individual notes (“samples”) originally recorded from real instruments. The reaction of professional musicians—and, of course, the musicians' union—was swift and furious. New York City's Local 802 president called it operatic karaoke. Hate mail poured in. In...

RoboBrain marks the dawn of cloud robotics Posted by: Emily Smith August 25, 2014 in Tech RoboBrain is the new attempt of artificial intelligence researchers to create a cloud-based database that would help out existing and future robots. In theory, RoboBrain is supposed to be a massive database of all the information robots have been taught so far and offers the possibility of increasing that knowledge as well. The main idea behind RoboBrain is that the cumulative knowledge robots have been able to gather should be collected in the same place, namely cloud storage, and made available to every robot...

Origins: Like previous death hoaxes involving actors (including Jackie Chan), the Sylvester Stallone death hoax circulating on social media sites appears to stem from common culprit mediafetcher.com, a "fake news" generator. Several such sites exist, allowing Facebook and Twitter users to plug a celebrity's name into the generator and produce a "news story" reporting the star's recent death. While these death hoaxes appear on Facebook and Twitter with relative frequency, the most recent iteration of the Sylvester Stallone death hoax looks to be slightly different. Most links point back to a specific domain that appears to be a "clickjack"...

A difficult math question. One would hope that these two did not finish high school. If they did, public education needs to refund our money. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10202517290999274

The Linux project has just turned 23 and it's now the biggest collaborative endeavor in the world, with thousands of people working on it. Back in 1991, a young programmer called Linus Torvalds wanted to make a free operating system that wasn't going to be as big as the GNU project and that was just a hobby. He started something that would turn out to be the most successful operating system on the planet, but no one would have been able to guess it back then. Linus Torvalds sent an email on August 25, 1991, asking for help in testing...

At the end of her seventh grade year a few months ago, my daughter was of the opinion that she had not received the education that she should have, so she determined to find courses online that she could take over the summer. What she found (completely on her own) turned out to be a full time public school- online! She starts tomorrow at Connections Academy Texas. With her mother and I both working, she'll be attending school at her Grandmother's house for the time being. I'm very excited about this- my child is *very* intelligent, and with self-paced courses...

The investigation that led federal and state authorities to arrest a Seymour woman on child pornography charges started when an undercover Washington, D.C., police officer arrested a man earlier this month who had images the woman allegedly had taken of her own children. Naomi Jean Justice, 21, was charged with production and distribution of child pornography, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation news release.

I just received an interesting phone call from "Credit Card Services". It wasn't the call that was interesting it was that they used my OWN phone number as the identifying number on the Caller ID. I'm not sure where this falls in the "legality' scale but from my own point of view if this company can use my own phone number on the caller ID to identify themselves then they or anyone else can use it also to conduct business that is truly illegal. Try explaining to the authorities that you didn't order that kilogram of 'drugs' when your home...

Never used this program before, but I am trying to learn it for a project and have been watching tutorials on youtube. My problem is that the preview screen on the left side of my screen doesn't work, either for individual images on the right side of the screen, or when I try to run the images as a movie. All I get is a black screen, although I can hear the soundtrack. I have searched online and learned that this has not been an uncommon problem for WLMM 2011 (or 2012, apparently), as there are many discussions about it...

Bad, Bad Michael Brown Well the north side of St Louie’ Is the baddest part of town And if you go down there You better just beware Of a man name of Michael Brown Now Michael more than trouble You see he stand ‘bout six foot four All those downtown ladies call him "Treetop Lover" All the men just call him "Sir" And he's bad, bad Michael Brown The baddest man in the whole damn town Badder than old King Kong And meaner than a junkyard dog Now Michael he a gambler And he like his fancy clothes And he...

A UCLA researcher is accused of making a death threat to a writer about an opinion article he wrote for the Harvard Crimson entitled “Troubles with Thai Studies.” “I swear that if I saw this (expletive) on the street I’d elbow his middle meningeal artery and leave him dead from epidural hematoma,” UCLA microbiologist Peera Hemarajata allegedly posted on Facebook. The bizarre threat was aimed at writer Ilya Garger who is in Hong Kong. Rachel Kim spoke with Garger Thursday via Skype. It’s a story that is Only On KCAL9. Garger said the point of his article was not to...

The problem arises because, due to limited resources, running applications must share some memory with other running applications so that they can all operate efficiently. Truly sensitive data is compartmentalized, but mundane tasks are often carried out in shared memory — and there's no task more mundane than running the nuts and bolts of the device's graphical user interface (GUI). However, each change an app makes to the GUI requires a specific amount of memory, an amount that often directly and instantly affects the total amount of shared memory used on a given device. As the app's GUI changes, the...

In order to debate with compassion, empathy and humility you first must have compassion, empathy and humility. It’s becoming increasingly clear Dawkins possesses none of these qualities.

The EU’s justice commissioner has accused internet giant Google of leading a campaign to shoot down data protection reforms. Speaking in Lyon, France on Monday (18 August), the commissioner, Martine Reicherts, said: “Google and other affected companies who complain loudly” about a recent EU court verdict on personal data are “detractors … attempting to throw a new spanner in the works”. The Luxembourg-based EU court in May ruled that Google must remove links to any content that is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” or face a fine.The ruling was based on the bloc’s 1995 data protection law, which are...

Overtly sexual and explicit music videos distributed online are to carry advisory age ratings in the United Kingdom from October as part of a pilot scheme 'to help parents protect their children from graphic content,' British Prime Minister David Cameron announced Monday (Aug. 18). Cameron has previously attempted to crack down on pornography. The scheme commences Oct. 1 and will be implemented by YouTube and Vevo, working in association with the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). The U.K. arms of Sony, Universal and Warner Music have all given their support to the initiative, which will see will see record...

What does it mean when someone on YouTube adds you to their circle? I'm not familiar with this person. I don't participate in circles and am unclear how they work. Social media is creepy to me, so I don't participate in any of it. I hate GooglePlus, but I had to sign onto it in order to continue to participate on YouTube. Now I'm creeped out when some stranger puts me in their circle. Am I justified in my paranoia or is it harmless when someone does that? Does my YouTube name show up somewhere where I have no control...

All textbooks on iPad at my child's high school, computers for all from K-12 in the school district where I live. This even though most kids already have one and some have more than one computer of their own, the schools private and public have purchased from Apple zillions of MacBook Airs and iPad Airs to bestow upon their students. Students are to use a program called Noteability to write on the screens with the stylus that came with the "device" and use Google connect to send in to their teachers. Did anyone ask the parents for input on any...