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EnerJ power-saving system prioritizes CPU voltage, may reduce energy consumption by 90 percent

It takes a lot of energy for computing systems or data centers to patch up critical errors, but what if we devoted less power to fixing less urgent issues? That's the basic idea behind EnerJ -- a new power-saving system that could cut a chip's energy consumption by 90 percent, simply by prioritizing critical problems over those that are less threatening. Unlike, say, liquid cooling techniques, the University of Washington's framework focuses exclusively on the programming side of the equation and revolves around two interlocking pieces of code: one that handles crucial, precision-based tasks (e.g., password encryption), and another designed to deal with processes that can continue to function, even when facing small errors. The system's software would separate the two codes, meaning that energy from one section of the chip would never be used to fix a major problem that the other should address, while allowing engineers to more efficiently allocate voltage to each regi...

Google I/O 2011 T-shirt puzzle solved, reveals the droid you've been looking for

If unsolved Google puzzles keep you up at night, you now have one less reason to go sleepless: theGoogle I/O T-shirt enigma has been unraveled. The picture above contains a series of dots and dashes, which our friends at  MobileCrunch  recognized as Morse code. Using the line breaks as spaces (new characters), the code then reads: .... - - .--. --. --- --- .-.-.- --. .-.. .- ....- -.-. -.... ...-- ----. That translates to a URL, which we've linked to below. We won't spoil where it leads, in case you're feeling noble enough to try decoding it for yourself. Android Community MobileCrunch ,  Google

WebGL flaw leaves GPU exposed to hackers

Google spent a lot of time yesterday talking up WebGL, but UK security firm Context seems to think users should disable the feature because it poses a serious security threat, and the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) is encouraging people to heed that advice. According to Context, a malicious site could pass code directly to a computer's GPU and trigger a denial of service attack or simply crash the machine. Ne'er-do-wells could also use WebGL and the Canvas element to pull image data from another domain, which could then be used as part of a more elaborate attack. Khronos, the group that organizes the standard, responded by pointing out that there is an extension available to graphics card manufacturers that can detect and protect against DoS attacks, but it did little to satisfy Context -- the firm argues that inherent flaws in the design of WebGL make it very difficult to secure. Now, we're far from experts on the intricacies of low-level hardware securit...

Algorithm places September 11th victims next to friends at 9/11 Memorial

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. The brilliant memorial (partially shown above) to be unveiled that day is radical not only as a result of on-site electronics, but also thanks to a computer algorithm, responsible for resting fallen victims next to each other based on affiliation, not the alphabet. Victims will be grouped by employer, but also by their friendships -- before the towers fell, and now for generations to come. Fast Company