Posterous integration test
+1 Axe of Protein Folding: distributed computing using gamers’ brains
To disable M-PMV’s protease, we need to know exactly what it looks like. Like real scissors, the proteases come in two halves that need to lock together in order to work. If we knew where the halves joined together, we could create drugs that prevent them from uniting. But until now, scientists have only been able to discern the structure of the two halves together. They have spent more than ten years trying to solve structure of a single isolated half, without any success.
The Foldit players had no such problems. They came up with several answers, one of which was almost close to perfect. In a few days, Khatib had refined their solution to deduce the protein’s final structure, and he has already spotted features that could make attractive targets for new drugs.
Over ten years trying to solve part of a problem. Turn it into a game, give it to the Internet, use mathematical magic on the large number of varied solutions to come up with the answer.
That answer - to the whole problem, not just part of it - came after a few days.
(A full discussion and explanation of this will appear on Geekosaur in the next few days)
Disasters happen when you implement good cryptography, badly.
Link: Top-grade, SHA1 Encryption - The Daily WTF
And then came the “data breach” email — everyone’s personal data (which, for Paul, was just his throw-away email) was now in the hands of some hackers.
Great post from the Daily WTF - shows off how it’s very easy to end up in a bad situation when you have good crypto, implemented badly. Implementation is everything, and if you don’t understand how to use it then you might end up completely negating any security that you’d hoped to gain.
If you’re having trouble working out what’s going on in the code snippet, drop me a comment and I’ll explain.
The banking industry is ludicrous.
could afford at that point? Maybe up to two grand, maybe less. I’ve
certainly been in situations myself where the loss of twenty quid
would have meant that I couldn’t afford food for a period of time. For
a huge chunk of the world, two quid is a massively significant - quite
feasibly life-saving - amount of money. UBS lost two billion dollars. That’s two with nine zeros after it if
we’re being generous and assuming an American billion. The vast
majority of us won’t even approach that figure if every income
throughout their lives were to be totalled up. It’s an absurd amount
of money. Large companies are wiped off the map for losses of a
fraction of that figure. UBS lost two billion dollars and they’re concerned that it might - not
‘will’, ‘might’ - mean that they report a loss this quarter rather
than a profit. My sympathy is rather limited. Sorry, UBS, you can’t have a new
private island this quarter, you’ll have to settle for the ones that
you already have. Here’s an idea: once, just once, at the end of a financial year, the
banks agree that they’ll all break even. Profits in excess of
break-even are used to build housing, provide clean water and food,
and put an end to want across the globe. There’d be enough to do it
many times over. Since all banks do it unilaterally, no one
institution makes any gain or loss over another, and the money ends up
with the banks anyway - who do you think will get the contracts to fix
everything up? Except it won’t happen, because capitalism relies on not a division of
labour, but a division of quality of life. Otherwise, nobody would
spend money and enter debt to try and have a decent place to live, or
clean water and food, or education for their kids. Bollocks.
