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From the eat-shit-has-a-new-meaning dept.

In a randomized, controlled clinical trial starting this year, researchers will test out such a fecal formula for the treatment of obesity. They’ll also try to glean critical details about the human microbiome and its role in our health and metabolism. The trial, led by Elaine Yu, an assistant professor and clinical researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, will involve taking fecal samples from lean, healthy donors then freeze-drying the stool, putting a gram or two into capsules, and giving them to 20 obese patients.

Such poop-packed pills, which are designed to replace a person’s intestinal microbes with those from a donor via their feces, have proven effective at treating tenacious gut infections. This has led researchers to ponder whether the transplants could remedy other health problems, including obesity and metabolic disorders. A few animal studies and some anecdotal data in humans suggests the answer is yes—and Yu hopes to get a final answer with the upcoming trial.

A few years ago, researchers took the gut microbes from a set of twins—one lean, one obese—and transplanted them into two sets of microbe-free mice. Even though all the mice were on the same diet, the rodents that received the obese twin’s microbes became chubby. The mice that got the lean twin’s mix stayed slim, suggesting that the microbes were calling the shots when it came to the animals’ weight.

In line with those results, another study on lean and obese twins’ microbes suggested that obesity is linked to having altered mixes and lower diversity of gut microbes.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/freeze-dried-poop-pills-being-tested-for-obesity-treatment/

Put articles here, edit, publish stories later. Comment if you like something.

Hate

Is CES getting too big for its own good?

Lenovo

Lenovo Refreshes ThinkPad Lineup at CES
Lenovo Launches The Modular ThinkPad X1 Tablet at CES
Lenovo Launches ThinkVision Displays With USB-C Docking At CES
Lenovo Launches ThinkPad X1 Yoga At CES With OLED Display
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lenovo-thinkpad-13-windows10-chromebook,30879.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9889/lenovo-refreshes-thinkpad-lineup-at-ces
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9887/lenovo-launches-thinkpad-x1-yoga-at-ces-with-oled-display
Lenovo Announces The Vibe S1 Lite
Lenovo Debuts New ThinkVision Displays At CES 2016
These Are Lenovo's idea And Yoga Products For CES
Lenovo Shows Off (Razer) Gaming Systems And Peripherals at CES

Acer

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/acer-ultra-thin-curved-monitors,30873.html#xtor=RSS-181
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/acer-h7-monitors-usb-type-c,30866.html#xtor=RSS-181
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/acer-ces-notebooks-chrome-tablet,30874.html#xtor=RSS-181
Acer Aspire Unveils Switch 12 S 2-in-1 Notebook

NVIDIA

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-vr-ready-qualification-program,30880.html
NVIDIA Announces DRIVE PX 2 - Pascal Power For Self-Driving Cars
NVIDIA Discloses Next-Generation Tegra SoC; Parker Inbound?
Nvidia Shield TV Update 3.0 Offers Marshmallow, Additional Storage Options And Customizations

MediaTek

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/mediatek-soc-wearables-smarthome-bluray,30833.html

Samsung

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-portable-ssd-t3,30875.html
Samsung Adds Lightweight Models To ATIV Book 9 Notebook Series
Samsung Unveils The Galaxy TabPro S
Samsung Announces New Gear S2 Models And iOS Support
Samsung Announces The Ultra-Light Notebook 9 Series Laptops At CES 2016

ASUS

ASUS Announces February Launch For The ZenFone Zoom

Huawei

Huawei's Mate 8 6-inch Phablet Coming To North America, We Go Hands On
The Huawei Mate 8 Review
Huawei Announces The MediaPad M2 10
Huawei Launches Huawei Watch Elegant and Huawei Watch Jewel
Hands On With the Huawei Honor 5X

PCs, Laptops, Tablets

MAINGEAR Rolls-Out 34” All-in-One PC with 18-Core Xeon, GeForce GTX Titan X
Endless On A Mission To Bring Information Age To All With $79 PC
Gigabyte Updates Aorus X5 Gaming Notebook With Skylake And Fusion Keyboard
Origin PC Goes Custom With Chronos SFF Case, Omni AIO Gaming PC
Toshiba’s DynaPad Tablet to Hit Stores in Late January
ASRock To Deliver Mini-PC Using Intel's New STX Form Factor
Razer Launches The Razer Blade Stealth Ultrabook And Razer Core At CES 2016
Samsung Announces Budget 'Chromebook 3' For Early 2016
Android-Based Remix OS 2.0 Coming As Free Download For PC And Mac
Intel’s Skull Canyon Mystery PC Confirmed And Detailed
First Benchmarks On Intel's New Atom-Based Compute Stick
Intel Brings Skylake To Its NUC PCs
AMD Reveals Single Socket For Zen CPU, APU
AMD Announces A10-7890K APU and Upgrades Desktop Platforms
Intel Expands Compute Stick Family with Cherry Trail and Core M Models
Compulab Rolls-Out Passively-Cooled Airtop Systems
CES 2016: MSI’s 27-inch 4K Gaming AIO with Full Sized Discrete GPU, the 27XT 6QE
CES 2016: 34-inch 3440x1440 AIO Hands-On at GIGABYTE
Home>desktops
CES 2016: MSI’s Vortex Gaming PC on Display and It Looks Almost Like a Mac Pro
CES 2016: MSI Gaming Notebooks and Mobile Workstations
ECS Goes Skylake with LIVA One

Smartphones

Gold Nexus 6P Comes To The US
Intel’s Smartphone: RealSense/Project Tango Dev Kit Shipping Q1
Lenovo, Intel Have Duelling Project Tango Smartphones
Intel and Google Equip Smartphones with 3D Cameras and Computer Vision
Acer Liquid Jade Primo Dock, Quick Look
Marshall's 'London' Smartphone Is Built For Music Creators
Macate 'Cyberphones' Promise Unspoofable Face Recognition, Other Security Measures

Wearables

CES 2016: Fitbit Blaze smartwatch sends shares into dive
Honor Launches The Honor Band Z1
Zeiss Smart Optics: Discreet Smart Glasses

Graphics

Imagination Announces PowerVR Series7XT Plus Family - Rogue Gets Improved Compute
Imagination Demos Realtime Ray Tracing
Asus Debuts Graphics Dock That Uses PCIe Over USB-C

Storage

Seagate used shingled magnetic recording in a 2.5" portable drive for the first time in order to fit 2 terabytes within a 9.6 mm thick enclosure.

Intel 3D XPoint, Pictured: Microsoft Joins The Party
LaCie Unveils USB-C Porsche and Chrome Drives
Seagate Updates DAS Portfolio at CES 2016
SanDisk Announces X400 Client SSD for OEMs
Patriot Memory Enters PCIe Storage Market with Hellfire SSDs
Zotac Prepares Premium NVMe SSD Based On Phison's E7
Silicon Motion Has The First Multi Vendor 3D Flash Controller
Need A 512 GB USB Stick Or USB Type-C SSD Enclosure? Patriot Has You Covered
OCZ Preps Second-Gen TLC, First NVMe SSDs For 2016
Patriot Shows Hellfire And Viper SSDs At CES
QNAP at CES: A M.2 SSD NAS, Dual-Xeon ZFS NAS and More
The QNAP TBS-453A Changes The NAS Game
Kingston Readies Several New Products For 2016
Mark Your Calendar: Phison E7 Set For March Release
SanDisk Updates DAS Lineup at CES
Plextor M8Pe With Marvell Eldora Coming Soon
Mushkin Goes For The SSD Trifecta At CES
G-Technology Demonstrates G-SPEED Shuttle XL Thunderbolt 2 DAS at CES

Displays

CES 2016: Hand-on with LG's roll-up flexible screen
Samsung Introduces Curved 27-inch CF591 FreeSync-Over-HDMI Monitor
Dell Introduces World's First InfinityEdge Monitors And 30-inch OLED Monitor
Dell's Wireless Monitors Change The Way You Work
Dell Demonstrates 30-inch 4K OLED Display
Hisense at CES: Affordable and Feature-Packed 4K TVs for HTPCs
Viewsonic Debuts Eight New Monitors At CES

Virtual Reality

Oculus Rift Now Available For Pre-Order For $599, Will Ship In April
The Vive Pre, HTC’s New VR Developer Kit: First Look
HTC Unveils the Vive Pre Dev Kit
Virtuix' Potential Mini-IPO Lets General Public Invest In VR Tech
Tom's Hardware Tries The Virtuix Omni VR Treadmill
Alienware And Dell Announce Oculus Ready PC Bundles For $1,600
Oculus: The Best Way To Keep A Secret Is To Not Know Answer
Exclusive: Fove's VR HMD At CES 2016, First Look
Virtuix Proved That The Omni Vr Treadmill Is the Real Deal
QiVARI Eye Tracking Tech Taking On Tobii, Fove In AR/VR HMDs
3DRudder VR Foot Controller Steering Towards March Launch
Interview: Valve's Chet Faliszek On The HTC Vive Pre
Crytek Announces 'VR First' Academic Program

Cameras

HumanEyes' Consumer-Grade 'Vuze' 360-Degree VR Camera Package, Under $1,000
Razer Launches The Stargazer Webcam With Intel RealSense3D At CES 2016
Kodak Launches 360-Degree 4K Action Cam And Accessories

Networking and Routers

Promise Unveils Apollo Personal Cloud Product
Amped Wireless' Athena Series Gets A New Router And Range Extender
Linksys Teases New MU-MIMO Products At CES 2016
Netgear Announces Cable Modem Router To Lower Your Monthly ISP Rental Costs
Wi-Fi HaLow: Long-Range, Low-Power Wi-Fi for Internet-of-Things Devices
Four New Linksys Cable Modems Revealed During CES
Netgear's MU-MIMO EX7300 And EX6400 Range Extenders Are Available Now
TP-Link Unifies Smart Home Functionality With The SR20 Smart Home Router
Securifi's Almond 3, An All-Encompassing Smart Home Solution
Netgear Releases Nighthawk X4 Successor: The R7800 Nighthawk X4S
D-Link Offers Adaptive Roaming With New Unified Network Kit
Synology Demonstrates RT1900ac 802.11ac Router at CES
Linksys Expands Max-Stream Networking Lineup at CES
Netgear Updates Networking Lineup at CES
TRENDnet Announces AC2600 Router and AC1900 USB 3.0 WLAN Adapter at CES
Amped Wireless Launches APOLLO IP Cameras and Updates Networking Lineup at CES
D-Link Demonstrates Innovative Networking Solutions at CES
Securifi Updates Smart Home Hub Lineup with New Almond 3 Wireless Router

Cooling, Cases, PSUs, Motherboards, Accessories

Cooler Master Debuts MasterWatt 1200W, 1500W PSUs
Cooler Master Unveils MasterAir Maker 8, MasterCase Maker 5
RGB Lighting Comes To Logitech’s G502 Proteus Spectrum
CES 2016: be quiet! Doubles Revenue in 2015
Deepcool Integrates Liquid Cooling Into Genome ATX Case
be quiet! Pure Power 9 Series Unveiled
Rosewill Showcases PSUs, Cases And More At CES 2016
Seasonic Reveals Its First Titanium PSU: The Prime
DeepCool's Liquid Cooled PSU
AMD Reveals Wraith: Next-Generation Cooler for Microprocessors
EVGA Introduces Upgradable All-In-One Liquid Cooling System
Thermaltake Pacific R360 D5 Water Cooling Kit Makes A Splash At CES
SilverStone PSUs, Cases And Other Accessories At CES 2016
In Win Outs H-Frame Case And Limited Edition 1065 W PSU
Thermaltake’s Core W100 And WP100 Are Cases With Plenty Of Spaces
Thermaltake Makes A 'Green' 1250-Watt RGB LED PSU
CES 2016: Deepcool’s Gamer Storm brand Exhibits Water Cooling for a Power Supply
The Problem With Overclocking On Non-Z170 Chipsets
CES 2016: GIGABYTE’s Double Length Gaming BRIX
MSI's Four New Motherboards Includes Gold PCB Model
Super Micro Unveils Z170, H170 Boards With OC Features At CES
The Rosewill Quark Series Power Supply Review (750W, 850W, 1000W, 1200W)
CES 2016: The Race to Skylake Xeon Motherboards at GIGABYTE
CES 2016: Deepcool’s Genome is a Water Cooling Equipped Case with a Helix Reservoir
All Of Asus' New Motherboards At CES
CES 2016: MSI’s Golden Idea for Motherboards
CES 2016: Cooler Master’s MasterWatt Connected Digital PSU Almost Ready
Patriot’s Three Prototype Gaming Mice At CES

Cars

CES 2016: Faraday Future shows off its concept car
Qualcomm, Nvidia are driving us nuts – with silicon-brains-for-cars
Automakers Mark Moves Into Tech With Expanded Presence At CES
NVIDIA Pascal GPUs Coming to Automotive ‘Supercomputer’

Drones and Robots

At CES, New Robots Deliver More Coos Than Utility
Drone able to transport humans shown at Consumer Electronics Show by Chinese drone company

Misc.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ces-enthusiast-news-here,30869.html#xtor=RSS-181
CES 2016: A look at the first tech announced in Vegas
NZXT Launches Overhauled CAM 3.0 PC Monitoring Tool
CES 2016 Day Zero Wrap-Up (Video)
Ambarella CES 2016 Tour
Revisiting Keyssa: Commercial Availability, Products in Q1 2016
Tom's Hardware CES 2016 Day One Video Wrap-up
Tom's Hardware CES 2016 Final Video Roundup
Tom's Hardware's CES 2016 Top Picks
Peek Into The Future: C.E.S. 2016 Wrap-Up
CES 2016: ASUS Product Tour
CES 2016: Dell Booth Tour
CES 2016: Lenovo Booth Tour
Conexant Announces New Audio Processing Solutions At CES
Report by Robert Scoble from CES
ASUS Booth Tour at CES 2016: 10G Switches, External GPU Dock, USB-C Monitor and more
An Unexpected CES Trend: Modularity

Write:

Automotive + NVIDIA Pascal
LG rollable display
3D Xpoint
Seagate stuff
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9940/intel-and-google-equip-smartphones-with-3d-cameras-and-computer-vision

Meet sexcurity theater:

Belgium police investigate Brussels lockdown orgy claims

Police chiefs in Belgium have reportedly launched an internal investigation into claims soldiers and police officers held an orgy while colleagues hunted for terror suspects. Two policewomen and eight soldiers are said to have engaged in a sex party at a police station in the Brussels neighbourhood of Ganshoren.

The city was in lockdown over fears of a Paris-style attack at the time. Soldiers slept at the police station for two weeks during the operation.

"When they left, they organised a small party to thank the police in the area," police spokesman, Johan Berckmans, told Belgian newspaper La Derniere Heure (in French). "We have launched an investigation to find out what exactly happened."

Speaking to De Standaard (in Dutch), the spokesman said 15 to 20 soldiers had been sleeping at the Ganshoren police station during two weeks in November so they did not have to travel so far at the end of their shift.

Learning from the past: What yesterday's media can tell us about the times

If you want to get a real feel for what was happening during a certain period in history, how people really felt about the issues of the day, take a look at the media coverage.

For example, a recent study of how historically black newspapers covered the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia, found their coverage not that much different from their mainstream counterparts.

The team of researchers, including a journalism professor from Michigan State University, was surprised by the findings, as they hypothesized that black newspapers would be more sympathetic to the racially mixed couple who challenged the Virginia law.

Historically, said MSU’s Geri Alumit Zeldes, the African-American press is an advocate for civil rights.

“Just knowing how the ethnic press operates, we thought they were going to be very one-sided in favor of the Lovings,” she said. “But they followed the same pattern as the mainstream media such as the New York Times and others.”

Zeldes said one of the lessons learned from this, something that hasn’t changed since the first newspaper was printed, is that news is a cultural mirror of what is going on in society at that point in time.

“If you take a look at the newspapers at the time they were published, they will give you hints as to what the times were like,” she said. “So if we look at the black press at that time period, you can get a sense of what the black community was thinking because those reporters were part of that community.”

Zeldes said that by reviewing the newspapers’ stances on the issue, it gives us a clue to the political and cultural mood of the time.

“It indicates,” she said, “that some segments of society in the late 1960s were ready to lessen social and cultural marriage restrictions, but that other groups in the United States were still undecided.”

News as a Cultural Mirror: Historically Black Newspapers Reflecting Public Views of Loving v. Virginia (1967) (DOI: 10.1111/josi.12144)

From Futurity.

3D XPoint: Not The Point

A fun article about Intel/Micron's 3D XPoint that I was too lazy to submit.

Computing capabilities aside, the $34 billion 2020 estimate from Intel for 3XP DIMMs partially reveals the Earth-shaking nature of this technology. What most people aren't yet realizing is that 3XP is "fast enough" to replace standalone DRAM in the vast majority of use cases. Research from 2011 outlines a hybrid PCM/eDRAM chip that increases performance and dramatically reduces power versus traditional homogeneous DRAM. This was done using assumptions from the old filamentary PCM technology: nano-PCM will improve the numbers even more dramatically.

From the patent applications, we know that the announced 128Gbit 3XP part is heavily sandbagged (i.e. - they don't want it to appear too disruptive). With the expected four planes (instead of two) and four bits per cell, that works out to exactly one terabit. This blows 3D NAND out of the water. This is the part that they were really going to announce - after the ECD bankruptcy had reached closure last summer.

But my article came along in the form of a giant monkey wrench, the ECD bankruptcy closing was further delayed and the Ovonyx CEO was deposed. Microsoft scrambled to put together a stop-gap Windows phone after it became apparent that they weren't going to be able to ship their PCM/3XP phone in the near future (this phone wasn't cancelled - just delayed until PCM is fully-secured).

Where the Sidewalk Ends

There's no incremental technology planned to succeed DDR4 DRAM. The industry is going to fragment at this next step (Micron's HMC, Samsung's WIO and AMD/nVidia/Hynix HBM). This transition is going to produce few winners and many losers. Who's going to win? The US Government has already weighed in on the matter (where "HMC" is Micron's "Hybrid Memory Cube")

http://www.vice.com/read/a-brief-history-of-bizarre-christmas-crimes

Journalists are getting beheaded in Syria, it's near-impossible to get an abortion in Texas, and almost half the world lives on less than $2 a day. Even so, a bunch of assholes dress up like Santa every year, run drunkenly through the streets, and dry-hump each other through sweaty, plush suits. The only good that can come from such a grotesque public display of whimsy is a good old-fashioned bank robbery. Last year, some fucking genius dressed up like Santa during SantaCon, the seasonal Santa-themed pub crawl for people with strong opinions about football and other useless bullshit, and robbed a bank in San Francisco.

The cops never found him.

One of my best friends has a huge vinyl collection and we get together a couple times a month to listen to it, play along on guitar and piano, and generally wax nostalgic. I usually bring along a few from my collection, which is difficult because he has just about everything. I mean he even has Suzi Quatro.

Earlier this summer I was looking through his albums and found the Rolling Stones Black and Blue. Seeing it brought back a vivid childhood memory that I immediately shared w/ him.

I was 10 or 11, shopping w/ my Mom and my 2 brothers and 1 sister (all younger than me). We were at a place called Two Guys. IIRC it was like a K-Mart. For the most part I hated going shopping w/ Mom but I liked this place because they had tons of vinyl and I spent my time browsing through it while Mom shopped.

When this album came out I wanted it, and I remember bringing it up to Mom, showing it to her and asking, "Can I get this?"

She took one look at it and snapped back, "Look at their faces, they are on DRUGS!"

So that was that. My friend was in disbelief so I suggested we call her.

I called Mom, and asked if she remembered. Her memory was vague, and she commented that she had 4 young kids in tow so there were bigger fish to fry than worrying about her oldest being upset he wasn't allowed to get some obscure Stones album. But she did say it probably did happen because her thing back then was Carly Simon (I remember getting her Hotcakes for her birthday one year) and she generally didn't care for any of the music I liked.

I got a weird shaped box from Amazon in the mail the other day. It was my Christmas present from Mom, the Rolling Stones' Black and Blue. On vinyl.

Love you Mom! Merry Christmas everyone!

Cool story, bro.

Warner Bros. thought so too.

http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2015/Announcing-VLC-for-Chrome-OS
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vlc/obpdeolnggmbekmklghapmfpnfhpcndf
http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/18/vlc-chrome-os/

The app was made possible by Google's App Runtime for Chrome (ARC), which allows developers to repurpose Android apps to work on Chrome OS and other platforms. The team says it was able to "recycle 95 percent of the Android code and optimizations" it utilizes in its existing Android app. While VLC for Chrome OS has been tested on a Chromebook Pixel and an HP Chromebook 14, some users have reported issues on Samsung Chromebooks. If it doesn't work for you, VideoLAN's Jean-Baptiste Kempf says the team will work quickly to fix bugs, so be patient.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/17/europe/spanish-prime-minister-mariano-rajoy-punched/

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was dealt an eye-watering sucker punch by a teenager during a campaign event Wednesday.

The young man got up close to the Prime Minister, reportedly asking to take a photograph, before unleashing his left fist into the side of Rajoy's head.

The punch knocked Rajoy's glasses off of his face, leaving the leader of the People's Party bruised but otherwise "feeling good," he later said in a tweet.

The 17-year-old attacker was later shown being taken away in handcuffs by security guards.