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Comment Crash? More like correction. (Score 4, Insightful) 709

It seems more like a correction to me. The idea that a BTC was worth $20 or more seemed too good to be true, probably because it was.

I think BitCoin is a great concept, but it needs more of a real economy and less currency speculation. I suspect that will come once the hype dies down. Maybe now that the value has gone down, that'll happen soon.

Medicine

Diabetic Men May Be Able To Grow Their Own Insulin-Producing Cells 148

An anonymous reader writes "Men with type 1 diabetes may be able to grow their own insulin-producing cells from their testicular tissue, say Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) researchers who presented their findings today at the American Society of Cell Biology 50th annual meeting in Philadelphia. Their laboratory and animal study is a proof of principle that human spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) extracted from testicular tissue can morph into insulin-secreting beta islet cells normally found in the pancreas. And the researchers say they accomplished this feat without use of any of the extra genes now employed in most labs to turn adult stem cells into a tissue of choice."
Businesses

Which Shipping Company Is Kindest To Your Packages? 480

Ant writes "Popular Mechanics mailed a bunch of sensors on an epic journey to find out which American shipping company is the most careful with your packages. From the article: 'One disheartening result was that our package received more abuse when marked "Fragile" or "This Side Up." The carriers flipped the package more, and it registered above-average acceleration spikes during trips for which we requested careful treatment.' Here's what they found."
The Media

Google's New Meta-Tags For News Story Authors 71

EreIamJH writes "Google News is experimenting with meta-tags in an effort to ensure that the correct news source is credited with an article. The original-source meta-tag will identify the newspaper that breaks a story, while syndication-source is for everyone who repeats the story. Both meta-tags can appear multiple times — for instance an article that sources information from other articles would include an original-source tag for each article used in preparing the new article. While the intention is worthy, I look forward to lots of snarky blogger fights as journalists vent their hurt feelings for having been omitted as an original source."
Microsoft

Microsoft To Offer Free Anti-Virus Software 448

Dynamoo writes "The good news is that Microsoft have announced free anti-virus software for consumers, dubbed Morro, available late next year. The bad news is ... well, exactly the same. Although Microsoft's anti-malware products are pretty good, this move could drive many competitors out of business and create a dangerous security monoculture; major rivals will be lawyering up already. On the other hand, many malware infections could be prevented even by basic software. So is this going to be a good or bad thing overall?"
Science

Science's Alternative To an Intelligent Creator 683

Hugh Pickens writes "Discover magazine has an interesting article on the multiverse theory — a synthesis of string theory and the anthropic principle that explains why our universe seems perfectly tailored for life without invoking an intelligent creator. Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. While most of those universes are barren, some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life. The idea that the universe was made just for us — known as the anthropic principle — debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter proposed that a purely random assortment of laws would have left the universe dead and dark, and that life limits the values that physical constants can have. The anthropic principle languished on the fringes of science for years, but in 2000, new theoretical work threatened to unravel string theory when researchers calculated that the basic equations of string theory have an astronomical number of different possible solutions, perhaps as many as 101,000, with each solution representing a unique way to describe the universe. The latest iteration of string theory provides a natural explanation for the anthropic principle. If there are vast numbers of other universes, all with different properties, at least one of them ought to have the right combination of conditions to bring forth stars, planets, and living things." So far xkcd is simulating just one single universe.
Security

DNS Inventor Tackles Flaw 101

nk497 writes "Dr Paul Mockapetris is looking to fix the flaws in the Domain Name System he helped invent. 'It was never meant to be the only security mechanism for naming data on the internet, but was intended for additional security measures to be added to it later.' The flaws, first uncovered by security researcher Dan Kaminsky over the summer, lets attackers redirect genuine URLs to malicious ones — a problem Mockapetris believes could be solved using digital signatures."
Power

Daylight Savings Time Increases Energy Use In Indiana 388

enbody writes "The Freakonomics Blog at NYTimes.com reports on a study of Indiana energy use for daylight savings time showing an increase in energy use of 1%. 'The dataset consists of more than 7 million observations on monthly billing data for the vast majority of households in southern Indiana for three years. Our main finding is that — contrary to the policy's intent — D.S.T. increases residential electricity demand.'" Maybe that's just from millions of coffee makers being pressed into extra duty.
Hardware Hacking

Inventor Open Sources "TV-B-Gone," and Why 340

ptorrone writes "Inventor Mitch Altman explains why he open-sourced his TV-B-Gone kit, the original stealth keychain fob for defeating TVs in public places. The title of the article is 'Patent-B-Gone' and perhaps the most interesting fact is that Mitch's brother is a patent attorney, but he still decided to release an open source hardware version of the TV-B-Gone, with pretty impressive results."
The Internet

US ISPs Announce Anti-Child-Porn Agreement 613

An anonymous reader writes "It seems that ISPs have gathered together with 45 attorney generals and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to form an agreement to crush child pornography. What does that mean? Probably the same as it meant for RoadRunner, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon customers — the end of the newsgroups." Here's the back-patting press-release from the various parties who signed on (the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the National Association of Attorneys General), though the actual text of the agreement does not seem to have been made public.

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