YouTube hits 4 billion views per day, deals with 60 hours of uploaded content every minute

By Mat Smith  posted Jan 23rd 2012 7:45AM

It looks like that redesign was worth it. The Google-owned video site has recently revealed that it's now streaming 4 billion videos every day, up 25 percent on daily views from eight months earlier. According to Reuter's report, the site now has to deal with around 60 hours of uploaded video every minute. As long as those education videos are kept separate and the cat content keeps coming, we'll be happy.

Russian Scientist Claims Signs of Life Spotted On Venus

Posted by samzenpus on Monday January 23, @10:16AM 

from the we-are-not-alone dept.

flergum writes"Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an astronomer based at the Space Research Institute of Russia's Academy of Sciences, analyzed photographs taken by a Russian landing probe during 1982 and claims to have found signs of life. Ksanfomaliti says the Russian photographs depict objects resembling a 'disk,' a 'black flap' and a 'scorpion.'"

Nano-Scale Terahertz Antenna May Make Tricorders Real

Posted by samzenpus on Monday January 23, @09:36AM 

from the welcome-to-the-future dept.

MrSeb writes"Researchers from Imperial College London and A*STAR in Singapore have shown off a terahertz antenna that's just 100 nanometers across — about 30,000 times smaller than existing terahertz antennae — and two orders of magnitude stronger than other T-ray beam-forming techniques. T-rays are a lot like EHF (extremely high frequency), which is used by millimeter wave scanners in airports, medical imaging, and emerging wireless networking standards like WiGig — but stronger, faster, and more detailed. Where EHF radiation can see through your clothes, T-rays can penetrate a few millimeters of skin. Furthermore, because atoms and molecules have a unique terahertz-range signature, T-ray scanners can detect toxic substances, bombs, drugs — or even cancerous tumors under your skin. Most importantly, though, due to the nano scale of these antennae, it's possible to create huge antennae arrays on a single silicon chip, meaning hand-held T-ray scanners are now a possibility. In the not so distant future, every household might have a Star Trek-like tricorder capable of detecting cancer or other diseases."

What Happens To Your Files When a Cloud Service Shuts Down?

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 20, @01:07PM 

from the apocalypse-and-doom dept.

MrSeb writes"Megaupload's shutdown poses an interesting question: What happens toall the files that were stored on the servers? XDA-Developers, for example, has more than 200,000 links to Megaupload — and this morning, they're all broken, with very little hope of them returning. What happens if a similar service, like Dropbox, gets shut down — either through bankruptcy, or federal take-down? Will you be given a chance to download your files, or helped to migrate them to another similar service? What about data stored on enterprise services like Azure or AWS — are they more safe?"And if you're interested, the full indictment against Megaupload is now available.

CEOs of RIM Step Down

Posted by samzenpus on Monday January 23, @02:43AM 

from the so-long-farewell-aufwiedersehn-goodbye dept.

An anonymous reader writes"After two decades of leading the BlackBerry maker, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balisillie are stepping downfrom their roles as Co-CEOs at Canada's Research In Motion Limited. Thorsten Heins, will now lead the BlackBerry maker as it attempts to beat the likes of Apple and Google."

Town Turns Off the Lights To See the Stars

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 19, @08:05AM 

from the we're-going-dark dept.

Hugh Pickens writes"Stargazing skies all over the world are disappearing, as the sky above New York City is Class 9 on the Bortle ranking and American suburban skies are typically Class 5, 6, or 7. But some places are making an effort to preserve their skywatching heritage as Exmoor National Park was granted International Dark-Sky Reserve status in November and people in the Exmoor town of Dulverton were challenged to switch off their lights as part of the BBC's Stargazing Live, demonstrating that you don't need special equipment to see the stars more clearly, if you have a decent pair of binoculars. 'The whole idea is to show that even a small town, which is still quite dark, can give off quite a lot of light,' says astronomer Mark Thompson. The event in Dulverton gained a lot of support from local residents and businesses. 'It needed a bit of organization to get everyone to say yes,' says town mayor Chris Nelder. 'We want people to just enjoy the night sky, to treasure the fact we have them and to look after them,' adds Claire O'Connor from Exmoor National Park Authority."

Jet Lag: What's Causing One of the Driest, Warmest Winters in History? The jet stream controls winter weather, but strange forces are controlling the jet stream this season

A little snow and rain are falling in a few states today, but the 2011–12 winter has been extremely warm and dry across the continental U.S. Meteorologists think they have figured out why.

US Finally Backs International Space "Code of Conduct"

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 19, @05:54AM 

from the space-rules dept.

coondoggie writes"Perhaps it was the concern that the nearly 14 ton Russian Mars probe would land smack-dab on the White House or maybe they just come to their senses, but the U.S. State Department today said it would indeed work with the European Union and other countries to develop a formal space code of conduct. Of particular concern is the growing amount of space trash and how the world can go about eliminating or controlling the problem. There is also the desire to keep space free of military weaponry."

Supercomputer Cools Off Using Groundwater

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 19, @03:41AM 

from the refreshing-drink dept.

gManZboy writes"The Department of Energy is no stranger to supercomputers, and its Pacific Northwest National Lab has proven that it can continue to be an innovator in the field by using what the lab calls a unique groundwater-fed cooling system in the lab's newest supercomputer, Olympus. The novel cooling system translates normal groundwater into big savings for the new 162 teraflop supercomputer, which is being used in energy, chemical, and fluid dynamics research. The setup translates into 70% less energy use than traditionally cooled systems."

Spider Silk Cape Goes On Display

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 19, @04:00AM 

from the 1-million-thread-count dept.

fangmcgee writes"Before anyone asks, no, it's not bulletproof. But that doesn't mean that the glistening yellow cape—the world's largest garment made entirely from spider silk—isn't a massive feat of engineering to be marveled. Now on public display for the first time at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the textile gets its unearthly gleam from the undyed filaments of the golden orb spider, a species of arachnid commonly found in Madagascar."

Multicellular Life Evolves In Months, In a Lab

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 17, @09:56PM 

from the selecting-for-extroverted-cells dept.

ananyo writes"The origin of multicellular life, one of the most important developments in Earth's history, could have occurred with surprising speed, U.S. researchers have shown. In the lab, a single-celled yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) took less than 60 days to evolve into many-celled clusters that behaved as individuals. The clusters even developed a primitive division of labor, with some cells dying so that others could grow and reproduce. Multicellular life has evolved independently at least 25 times, but these transitions are so ancient that they have been hard to study. The researchers wanted to see if they could evolve multicellularity in a single-celled organism, using gravity as the selective pressure. In a tube of liquid, clusters of yeast cells settle at the bottom more quickly than single cells. By culturing only the cells that sank, they selected for those that stick together. After many rounds of selection over 60 days, the yeast had evolved into 'snowflakes' comprising dozens of cells."

New Mexico Is Stretching, GPS Reveals

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 17, @08:45PM 

from the too-many-tacos dept.

Velcroman1 writes"New Mexico's borders are gradually gaining girth, according to the Albuquerque Journal. It's not much, and it's not happening very fast — the state is getting about an inch wider every 40 years — but the state is unquestionably expanding, according to University of Colorado geophysicist Henry Berglund and his colleagues. Using a collection of 25 extra-precise GPS receivers planted across New Mexico and Colorado, Berglund determined that the cities of Albuquerque and Santa Fe are creeping away from each other. The rate of change seems ever so slow to the untrained ear, described as approximately 1.2 'nanostrains' per year."

Research In Motion To Be Sold, Possibly To Samsung

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 18, @08:13AM 

from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

New submitter ve6ay writes"The talk of the tech world over the past day is that RIM, struggling mightilyin these last months, was in talks to be bought either partially or wholly by Samsung. Sources at the Boy Genius Report indicate that while RIM may be trying to sell, it is asking way too much for itself."

California demands manufacturers ditch inefficient vampire chargers

By Terrence O'Brien  posted Jan 17th 2012 6:56AM

You've probably had it drilled into your head that your gadgets are doing terrible, terrible things to the environment -- and not just 'cause they end up as toxic landfill in poorer countries. Many of your chargers and electronics continue todraw power even when they're off or your device is disconnected. We've seen some ingenious solutions to the problem but, perhaps it would be best to avoid the issue all together. Starting next year California will require manufacturers to ship efficient chargers with their products, potentially saving $306 million in energy costs and cutting power usage by up to 13 percent in the state. The new rules are set to go into effect on February 1st, 2013, but we wouldn't be surprised if the law faced some road blocks before then.

Quick-Cooking Nanomaterials in Microwave to Make Tomorrow's Air Conditioners

ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2012) — Engineering researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new method for creating advanced nanomaterials that could lead to highly efficient refrigerators and cooling systems requiring no refrigerants and no moving parts. The key ingredients for this innovation are a dash of nanoscale sulfur and a normal, everyday microwave oven.

Almost 1 In 3 US Warplanes Is a Drone

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday January 10, @09:28AM 

from the skynet-approved dept.

parallel_prankster writes"A recent Congressional Research Service report,titled U.S. Unmanned Aerial Systems, looks at the more-prominent role being played by drones. In 2005, drones made up just 5 percent of the military's aircraft. Today one in three American military aircraft is a drone. The upsides of drones being they are cheaper and safer — the military spent 92% of the aircraft procurement money on manned aircraft. The downside — they're bandwidth hogs: a single Global Hawk drone requires 500 megabytes per second worth of bandwidth, the report finds, which is 500 percent of the total bandwidth of the entire U.S. military used during the 1991 Gulf War."

Cambridge Scientists Create Huge Quantum Particles

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Monday January 09, @10:30PM 

from the quantum-mechanics-never-looked-so-good dept.

judgecorp writes"Researchers at Cambridge University have produced a quantum fluid thousands of times larger than previously, leading to the possibility ofpolaritons produced at lower power and at a broader temperature range. This could lead to quantum circuits, as well as applications such as more sensitive gyroscopes."

Too cute not to share...

What Does Sunset On an Alien World Look Like?

Posted by Soulskill on Monday January 09, @03:12PM 

from the forgot-my-camera dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes"Using real data from Hubble Space Telescope of a planet orbiting another star, exoplanetary scientist Frédéric Pont created a lovely imageof what sunset would look like from HD209458b, nicknamed Osiris, a planet 150 light years away. The Hubble data gave information on the atmospheric absorption of this hot Jupiter planet, and, coupled with models of how the atmosphere was layered, Pont was able to create a realistic looking sunset on the planet. The big surprise: the star looks green as it sets! Sodium absorption sucks out the red colors and blue is scattered away, leaving just the green hues to get through. It's a lovely application of hard scientific knowledge."

Carbon Emissions 'Will Defer Ice Age'

Posted by Soulskill on Monday January 09, @03:34PM 

from the not-cool dept.

Sven-Erik writes"Due to subtle variations in the Earth's orbit, researchers have calculated that the next Ice Age is due within 1,500 years. However, a new study suggests greenhouse gas emissions mean it will not happen that soon(abstract). 'Dr Skinner's group ... calculates that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would have to fall below about 240 parts per million (ppm) before the glaciation could begin. The current level is around 390ppm. Other research groups have shown that even if emissions were shut off instantly, concentrations would remain elevated for at least 1,000 years, with enough heat stored in the oceans potentially to cause significant melting of polar ice and sea level rise.'"