sciencehabit writes: In a gleaming research lab in Germany's northeastern corner, researchers are preparing to switch on a fusion device called a stellarator, the largest ever built. The €1-billion machine, known as Wendelstein 7-X looks a bit like Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, towed in for repairs after a run-in with the Imperial fleet. Stellarators have long been dark horses in fusion energy research but the Dali-esque devices have many attributes that could make them much better prospects for a commercial fusion power plant than the more popular tokamaks: Once started, stellarators naturally purr along in a steady state and they are not prone to the potentially metal-bending magnetic disruptions that plague tokamaks. Unfortunately they are devilishly hard to build.

Vigile writes: Samsung just released its first non-OEM, consumer level NVMe enabled SSD, the 950 Pro series. This drive will ship in an M.2 form factor rather than a 2.5-in drive size that is the standard for users today, allowing installation into notebooks, small form factor PCs and desktop PCs that have at least one M.2 slot on-board. It peaks at 512GB capacity today but Samsung promises a 1TB version using 48-layer VNAND in 2016. The NVMe protocol allows much better performance directly over the PCIe bus without the overhead of the AHCI protocol used in hard drives and previous SSDs. PC Perspective's review has performance breaking the 2.5GB/s read speed level while also introducing an entirely new type of performance evaluation for SSDs centered around latency distribution of IOs. By measuring how long each IO takes, rather than reporting only an average, the performance of an SSD can be determined on a per-workflow basis and drives can be compared in an entirely new light. There is a lot of detail on to be read over and digested but again the new NVMe Samsung 950 Pro impresses. Hot Hardware takes a similarly data-dump-heavy look at the same drive.

alexvoica writes: After interviewing the NASA New Horizons team (if you've missed the original story on Slashdot, you can find it here), it's time to get the views of another famous space agency (JAXA) on spacecraft hardware and software. This interview focuses mainly on Hayabusa-2, the world's first round-trip mission to a C-type asteroid. The main goal of the Hayabusa-2 mission is to visit the near-Earth asteroid 1999 JU3, conduct on site science experiments, collect soil samples from the asteroid, and return them back to Earth. 1999 JU3 is a near-Earth C-type asteroid, and is believed to contain organic and hydrated minerals. The contact at JAXA replying to these questions is Associate Professor Yuichi Tsuda, Ph.D the project manager for Hayabusa-2. Dr. Tsuda works for the Department of Space Flight Systems at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) and at JAXA.

1sockchuck writes: This week's case in which a Paris data center lost its license isn't an isolated incident, but the latest in a series of disputes in which community groups have fought data center projects, citing objections to generators or power lines. Data center site selection is often a secretive process, with cloud builders using codenames to cloak their identity. Community groups are using social media, blogs, research and media outreach to bring public attention to the process and voice their concerns. Protests from a Delaware group led to the cancellation of a data center project that planned to build a cogeneration plant. In Virginia, a coalition has organized to oppose a power line for an Amazon Web Services data center. Everyone wants their Internet, just not in their backyard.

An anonymous reader writes: A research group in the Netherlands has developed a new plastic resin that can destroy most dental bacteria when used for the creation of dental appliances via 3D-printing. The process involves embedding antimicrobial quaternary ammonium salts inside extant dental resin polymers. Since the salts are positively charged, these disrupt negatively-charged bacterial membranes. The process is also being mooted for use in the creation of knee arthroplasties, and in the manufacture of children's toys and food packaging.

MojoKid writes: Samsung decided to show off their latest SSD wares at Dell World 2015 with two storage products that are sure to impress data center folks. Up and running on display, Samsung showcased their PM1725 drive, which is a half-height, half-length (HHHL) NVMe SSD that will be one of the fastest on the market when it ships later this year. It sports transfer speeds of 5500MB/sec for sequential reads and 1800MB/s for writes. Samsung had the drive running in a server with Iometer fired up and pushing in excess of 5.6GB/sec. The PM1725 also is rated for random reads up to 1,000,000 IOPS and random writes of 120,000 IOPS. The top of the line 6.4TB SSD is rated to handle 32TB of writes per day with a 5-year warranty.

Lasrick writes: Seth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Japan should restart more of its nuclear reactors (the Sendai nuclear plant was restarted in August). The reason is simple, writes Baum: "Japan is now building 45 new coal power plants, but if it turned its nuclear power plants back on... it could cut coal consumption in half. And coal poses more health and climate change dangers than nuclear power."

An anonymous reader writes: Anandtech posted reviews of the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and the Microsoft Surface Book today. They write: "After launching Surface Pro 3 with Haswell in 2014, Microsoft — like so many manufacturers — opted to skip the short-lived Broadwell generation of Intel CPUs in favor of making the larger jump to Skylake. Skylake brings with it notable increases in both CPU and GPU performance, particularly in the mobile space thanks to a series of optimizations and the use of Intel's leading 14nm manufacturing node," about the Pro 4 and with regards to the Book, "The basis of the Surface Book is that it is designed to be used as a laptop most of the time, but the display can be removed as a Clipboard for use with the pen. The Surface Book is certainly not the first device to do this, but it does some things in new ways that are pretty interesting."

judgecorp writes: Data center firm Interxion has been ordered to close a data center in Paris over protests from residents. The local group complained about noise and large quantities of stored diesel fuel at the site, saying that the consultation which allowed it to open in 2012 was flawed. Now Interxion's license has been revoked and it has two months to appeal

An anonymous reader writes: Reuters reports that Western Digital will buy SanDisk in a deal worth roughly $19 billion. In a press release, WD said, "The combination is the next step in the transformation of Western Digital into a storage solutions company with global scale, extensive product and technology assets, and deep expertise in non-volatile memory (NVM)." SanDisk has been in business since 1988, and primarily "manufactures flash memory chips and other digital storage for personal computers, data centers and consumer electronics, including smartphones and tablets." They have over 8,000 employees, compared to WD's ~76,000. This follows another major transaction in the storage market, when Dell bought EMC last week.

theodp writes: The curious case of Ahmed Mohamed, the 9th grader who was cuffed for scaring school officials with what turned out to be a repackaged digital clock, has taken yet another twist with news on Tuesday that the 'Clock Kid' and his family will move to Qatar. Less than 24 hours after Ahmed met President Obama at the White House, the family issued a news release saying, "After careful consideration of all the generous offers received, we would like to announce that we have accepted a kind offer from Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) for Ahmed to join the prestigious QF Young Innovators Program, which reflects the organization's on-going dedication to empowering young people and fostering a culture of innovation and creativity." Prior to the announcement, some in the press sensed something was amiss when the President seemed to give Ahmed the cold shoulder on Monday after personally inviting Ahmed to the White House for "Astronomy Night." Last month, Ahmed enjoyed a decidedly warmer welcome at Google, where he was literally put front and center before the Google Science Fair winners (including Grand Prize winner Olivia Hallisey, who came up with a novel way to detect Ebola), and enjoyed a meet-and-greet with Sergey Brin.

New submitter lesincompetent writes: Security researchers have found severe flaws in the encryption methods used in certain hard drives from Western Digital. Quoting the abstract should be enough to show how dire the situation is: "We will describe the security model of these devices and show several security weaknesses like RAM leakage, weak key attacks and even backdoors on some of these devices, resulting in decrypted user data, without the knowledge of any user credentials." The paper by Alendal, Kison and modg is available here in PDF format.

szczys writes: Transmitting power through the air using sound above the range of human hearing: that's the gist of ultrasonic power transfer. The promise is that you can sit in a coffee shop and use your phone like normal while it's recharged by invisible waves of energy. That's a future we all want — and one that uBeam has been promoting, but hasn't backed it up with proof. Physics is a cruel mistress, and this is no exception. Using the data found in uBeam's patent filings you can see that ultrasonic power transfer is a brutal engineering challenge. It's probably not impossible, but looking at what it would take for a widespread rollout of the tech makes it highly improbable.

The last time we spoke with Evan Koblentz it was about a vintage computer festival. This time we talked about a book he's written written titled Abacus to smartphone: The evolution of mobile and portable computing. Yes, he's obsessed with computer history. But somebody has to be, and we're glad it's Evan because he is eminently suited for this task.

citadrianne writes with an excerpt from Motherboard about some of the factors behind the long-decried security problems that surround medical hardware, and that will only become more pressing as some long-term treatments become both more portable (in the form of drug pumps, muscle stimulators, etc), more connected to sensors and controllers, and more dependent on software. There is a growing body of research that shows just how defenseless many critical medical devices are to cyberattack. Research over the last couple of years has revealed that hundreds of medical devices use hard-coded passwords. Other devices use default admin passwords, then warn hospitals in the documentation not to change them. A big part of the problem is there are no regulations requiring medical devices to meet minimum cybersecurity standards before going to market. The FDA has issued formal guidelines, but these guidelines "do not establish legally enforceable responsibilities." "In theory you could sell a bunch of medical devices without ever having gone through a security review," the well-known independent medical device security researcher Billy Rios told Motherboard.

turkeydance writes: Using a combination of 3D printing and widely available components, David Wirth built a functioning handheld railgun that houses six capacitors and delivers more than 1,800 joules of energy per shot. So far he has tested the gun using metal rods made of graphite, aluminum and copper-coated tungsten. David has shot projectiles at over 250 meters per second in tests.

Lasrick writes: "I have been involved in government at the state and federal level for a long time and have had my share of political and legal run-ins with government agencies, but rarely in more than 50 years in politics have I encountered a government agency more committed to secrecy—perhaps even deception—than the US Department of Energy." So writes former governor of Idaho Cecil D. Andrus in this account of the U.S. government's plan to ship commercial spent fuel to the Idaho National Lab for what the feds call "research" but what the Andrus (and his predecessor) feel is an attempt to store high level nuclear waste in Idaho. According to him, despite Freedom of Information Act requests, the federal government is not sharing its plan for the waste once it gets to Idaho. This is a disturbing tale of government secrecy and stonewalling, and the problem with nuclear waste: no one wants it in their backyard.

szczys writes: Carbon Nanotubes and Graphene breakthroughs pop up in the news often enough for them to be considered buzzwords. Most of the time it's the superconducting properties of graphene that are touted, but molecule-scale structures also hold the promise of building mechanical computing devices that are unimaginably small. The reason we don't have these things yet comes down to the manufacturing process. Building machines out of carbon molecules is commonly called Rod Logic — a topic many know from the seminal novel The Diamond Age. Al Williams discusses how Rod Logic works and highlights some of the places we're already seeing these materials like to help cool LED light bulbs, and to strengthen composites.

Ichijo writes: Several years ago, Slashdot reported that the Amiga community had developed a way to restore old, yellowed ABS plastic to like-new condition, and they put the recipe for the gel, dubbed Retr0bright, into the public domain. Since then, it was discovered that the effect of the gel is only temporary, and plastic treated with the gel soon reverts to its original yellowed state even when efforts are made to block it from additional UV light.

Now, Amiga enthusiast Philippe Lang has created a new Kickstarter campaign to design and build new, improved molds for Amiga 1200 housings and do a licensed production run using anti-UV ASA plastic in the original color plus black, transparent, and 9 other colors. His team is also investigating the feasibility of producing new Amiga 1200 keyboards if this campaign succeeds. This follows a successful production run by Commodore 64 enthusiasts of new C64c housings using the original injection molds and new C64 motherboards designed to modern standards and production methods. And a new Amiga 1200 clone motherboard is also in the works.

theodp writes: With its sweeping vistas and narration by the late Robin Williams, Apple's 2014 'Your Verse' ad dramatically showcased the many ways iPads might help people create, from making movies to calibrating wind turbines. So it's interesting that Microsoft's first ad for its new Surface Book (YouTube) bears a striking resemblance to the earlier Apple ad (YouTubeDoubler comparison). Which is probably only fair, since Apple's soon-to-be-released iPad Pro bears more than a passing resemblance to the Microsoft Surface. Hey, good artists copy, great artists steal, right? By the way, between the release of Microsoft's Surface Pro 4, Apple's iPad Pro, and Google's Pixel C, is the keyboard+touch interface poised to be a four-decade "overnight success"?