23045164
submission
bluefoxlucid writes:
Apparently cancer has been cured, by injecting people with HIV. From the article, "As the white cells killed the cancer cells, the patients experienced the fevers and aches and pains that one would expect when the body is fighting off an infection, but beyond that the side effects have been minimal." Nifty. Poorly edited run-on sentence, but nifty.
813495
submission
bluefoxlucid writes:
According to The Register, several banks are forcing users to opt-in to the Verified by Visa optional service by locking their cards if and when they encounter a Verified by Visa participating site and fail to opt-in. Register reader Steve says, "This seems like a strange way to implement a voluntary system. On most of the retailers' websites there is no clue that you are about to be challenged by Verified by Visa until you attempt to complete the transaction. This means that you trigger the 'fraud protection' unintentionally. And when you have located a retailer who doesn't require Verified by Visa to complete a purchase, you can't because your account is on hold." Further, "[I]n some cases resetting the password is all too easy. Fraudsters know this and go after these credentials which, once obtained, make it harder for consumers to deny responsibility for a fraudulent transaction. Phishing scams posing as Verified by Visa sites have sprung up targeting these login credentials."
66216
submission
bluefoxlucid writes:
With Apple having now switched to x86 CPUs, I've been wondering for a while why we use the x86 architecture at all. The Power architecture was known for its better performance per clock; and still other RISC architectures such as the various ARM models provide very high performance per clock as well as reduced power usage, opening some potential for low-power laptops. Compilers can also deal with optimization in RISC architectures more easily, since the instruction set is smaller and the possible scheduling arrangements are thus reduced greatly. With Just-in-Time compilation, legacy x86 programs could be painlessly run on ARM/PPC by translating them dynamically at run time, similar to how CIL and Java work. So really, what do you all think about our choice of primary CPU architecture? Are x86 and x86_64 a good choice; or should we have shot for PPC64 or a 64-bit ARM solution?
