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Hardware

Submission + - 17-yo builds fusion reactor, keynotes Berlin's EHSM

Submitted by lekernel
lekernel writes: Will Jack is a 17 year old high school student from the US who enjoys nothing more than building nuclear fusion reactors in his basement. He will be the keynote speaker later this month at Berlin's Exceptionally Hard and Soft Meeting, a conference on the frontiers of open source and DIY. Other topics covered by the conference are the CERN open hardware initiative, microchip reverse-engineering, DIY vacuum tubes, and more.
Iphone

Submission + - Brazilian company launches IPHONE that runs on Android (engadget.com)

Submitted by rodmm
rodmm writes: Gradiente, a consumer electronics brazilian company filed for trademark registration in Brazil in 2000, years ahead of Apple's product. This week they launched Gradiente iphone Neo One, already available at company's website. Although we can imagine that there will be some legal fight around it, first impression is that, legally speaking, the brazilian company has a right in this issue.
Privacy

Submission + - Cookie consent banners draw complaints (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
nk497
nk497 writes: "Earlier this year, the UK's data watchdog the ICO started enforcing an EU rule that means websites must ask visitors before dropping cookies onto their computers. However, it was willing to accept "implied consent" — telling visitors that cookies are used on the site, and assuming they were fine with that if they keep using the site. That led to banners popping up on every major website, including the ICO's site, warning users about cookies.

Now, the ICO has revealed that many of the cookie-related complaints it's received in the past six months are actually about those banners — and the law itself. The ICO said people "are unhappy with implied consent mechanisms, especially where cookies are placed immediately on entry to the site", adding "a significant number of people also raised concerns about the new rules themselves and the effect of usability of websites.""
Privacy

Submission + - Newest Gov't Tracking Threat: Cell-Site Data Without a Warrant (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this year, the Supreme Court put an end to warrantless GPS tracking. Now, federal prosecutors are trying to get similar data from a different source. A U.S. District Judge has ruled that getting locational data from cell towers in order to track suspects is just fine. 'But Huvelle sidestepped the Fourth Amendment argument and declined to analyze whether the Supreme Court’s ruling in Jones’ case has any bearing on whether cell-site data can be used without a warrant. Instead, she focused on a doctrine called the "good-faith exemption," in which evidence is not suppressed if the authorities were following the law at the time. The data in Jones’ case was coughed up in 2005, well before the Supreme Court’s ruling on GPS. "The court, however, need not resolve this vexing question of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, since it concludes that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies," (.PDF) she wrote.'
Science

Submission + - Let the White Tiger Go Extinct

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Many people are under the impression that the white tiger is a variety of Siberian tiger, camouflaged for a snowy climate. Others applaud zoos with white tigers for supporting conservation of white tigers while lamenting a lag in reintroduction efforts. But Jackson Landers writes that almost no one knows that white tigers are not a subspecies at all but rather the result of a mutant gene that has been artificially selected through massive inbreeding to produce oddball animals for human entertainment. "Many of the venues that display white tigers have a long history of shading the truth about their mutants," writes Landers. "The Cincinnati Zoo, an otherwise respectable institution, labels their white tigers as a “species at risk!” Nowhere on the zoo’s website or at its tiger enclosures does it point out that this species at risk is in fact an ecologically useless hybrid of Bengal and Siberian strains, inbred at the zoo’s own facility for big money." One of the Cincinnati Zoo’s biggest sales was to the illusionists Siegfried and Roy who bought three white tigers from the zoo in the early 1980s and quickly set up their own breeding program referring to the cats as “royal white tigers” and giving the public the impression that this was an endangered species that they were helping to protect. "Humanity has a collective responsibility to care for the two-headed calves and white tigers that we create for our own entertainment, but do we really need to be creating more of the genetic disasters that pull resources away from truly endangered species," concludes Landers. "We can choose a future in which white tigers disappear into memory and hopefully one in which truly endangered subspecies of tigers maintain enough genetic diversity to be successfully reintroduced into a wild that can sustain them.""
Space

Submission + - BREAKING NEWS: Possible Habitable Planet Just 12 Light Years Away (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Astronomers have discovered what may be five planets orbiting Tau Ceti, the closest single star beyond our solar system whose temperature and luminosity nearly match the sun's. If the planets are there, one of them is about the right distance from the star to sport mild temperatures, oceans of liquid water, and even life.
Programming

Submission + - Whose bug is this anyway? (codeofhonor.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Patrick Wyatt, one of the developers behind the original Warcraft and StarCraft games, has a post about some of the bug hunting he's done throughout his career. He covers familiar topics: crunch time leading to stupid mistakes, bugs in compilers rather than game code, and shares a story about finding a way to diagnose hardware failure for players of Guild Wars. Quoting: '[Mike O'Brien] wrote a module (“OsStress”) which would allocate a block of memory, perform calculations in that memory block, and then compare the results of the calculation to a table of known answers. He encoded this stress-test into the main game loop so that the computer would perform this verification step about 30-50 times per second. On a properly functioning computer this stress test should never fail, but surprisingly we discovered that on about 1% of the computers being used to play Guild Wars it did fail! One percent might not sound like a big deal, but when one million gamers play the game on any given day that means 10,000 would have at least one crash bug. Our programming team could spend weeks researching the bugs for just one day at that rate!'
Education

Submission + - How Much Are You Worth To An Online Lead-Gen Site? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "You may remember the tale of the blogger who found that an infographic he'd put on his site was the front end of an SEO spam job. Well, he's since followed the money to figure out just who's behind this maneuver: the for-profit college industry. He discovered that the contact info of someone who expresses interest in online degree programs can be worth up to $250 to an industry with a particularly sleazy reputation."
Privacy

Submission + - Instagram responds to press around it's new Privacy Policy (instagram.com)

Submitted by
hugheseyau
hugheseyau writes: "Yesterday Instagram introduced a new version of their Privacy Policy and Terms of Service that will take effect in thirty days. Since making these changes, many users were confused and upset about what the changes mean.

Instagram now says that "it is not our intention to sell your photos" and that "users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos". This is good news for Instagram users."
Linux

Submission + - Tell me about your workstation's desktop

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I want to hear from people who have extensively customized things like their window manager and editor.

Background:

I've been writing C++ in QtCreator for a while now. I've started working on Python projects and I'm using Sublime Text for my Python. I would like to move to one editor for both C++ and Python (preferably something that can support the handful of vi key combinations I have in my muscle memory), but I don't want to lose the IDE-like features I have grown accustomed to in QtCreator.

I have looked at coaxing Emacs, Vim, and Sublime Text into supporting things like auto-complete, refactoring tools, jump to definition, switch header/source, etc. and it looks like a lot of work. Some of what I have read suggests that if I want an IDE, I should use an IDE, not a text editor. However, I only want one tool for the job of text editing.

Furthermore, I have been experimenting with tiling window managers since buying one of those Korean 27" IPS displays on eBay. I've also been playing with plugins for Chrome and Firefox that enable keyboard-only web browsing. I know that people can become incredibly productive using a tiling wm, browser, handful of xterms, and a text editor, driving everything primarily from the keyboard. I would like to hear from people who have a setup like what I have described. What I am describing is the reason people use things like Emacs, right? What works for you, what does not? What WM do you use? Editor? Terminal? Browser? Do you have commented rc files on github documenting your favorite tweaks? What tweaks do you recommend, to increase your productivity? How much time do you have to spend fucking with something like Emacs or Vim or Wmii or Xmonad to get it to the point where you can do work with it?

P.S. I'm looking for wisdom here, not a debate about the relative merits of using different software packages.
Security

Submission + - SANS NetWars tests cybersecurity pros against peers (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Organizers played "Eye of the Tiger" and "We are the Champions" over the loudspeakers as participants in the SANS Institute's NetWars Tournament of Champions sat down at their laptops and prepared for action. About 200 cybersecurity professionals, and about 30 high school students, gathered last week in Washington, D.C., for two nights of NetWars, a realistic cybersecurity competition, with prizes including an Apple iPad, Star Wars chop sticks and gift cards. But many participants were playing as much for pride as they were for the prizes.
Open Source

Submission + - Open-source hardware hacker Ladyada awarded Entrepreneur of the Year (entrepreneur.com)

Submitted by
ptorrone
ptorrone writes: "Limor "Ladyada" Fried of open-source hardware company Adafruit Industries was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur Magazine. From the article — "Recognizable by her signature vivid-pink locks, Fried (or Ladyada, as she is known on the internet) is one of the dominant forces behind the maker movement--a legion of do-it-yourself-minded folks who create cool things by tweaking everyday technology. Last year New York City-based Adafruit did a booming $10 million trade in sales of DIY open-source electronic hardware kits"."
Iphone

Submission + - Every Apple-Made App On Your iPhone Can Be Replaced By A Better App (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by
Andy Prough
Andy Prough writes: "Business Insider's Steve Kovach writes that he has now replaced all of Apple's built-in iPhone apps with those made by 3rd-party developers: Gmail for Mail, Google Maps for Apple Maps, Fantastical for Calendar, Chrome for Safari, Camera+ for Camera, Clear for Reminders, Evernote for Note, Adappt for Contacts, and others. Kovach states, "And now, all of the Apple-made apps are now in a folder labeled with an Emoji of a smiling pile of poop." While Kovach believes this is a good thing for iPhone users to have access to superior software, the San Francisco Chronicle posits that "it's becoming conventional wisdom that Apple isn't particularly good at making software for the iPhone"."
Google

Submission + - Google brings the Dead Sea scrolls to the digital age (blogspot.com) 5

Submitted by skade88
skade88 writes: Google has been working to bring many old manuscripts to the internet in high resolutions for all to see.

From the Google Press Release:
'A little over a year ago, we helped put online five manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls—ancient documents that include the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence. Written more than 2,000 years ago on pieces of parchment and papyrus, they were preserved by the hot, dry desert climate and the darkness of the caves in which they were hidden. The Scrolls are possibly the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century.

Today, we’re helping put more of these ancient treasures online. The Israel Antiquities Authority is launching the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, an online collection of some 5,000 images of scroll fragments, at a quality never seen before. The texts include one of the earliest known copies of the Book of Deuteronomy, which includes the Ten Commandments; part of Chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis, which describes the creation of the world; and hundreds more 2,000-year-old texts, shedding light on the time when Jesus lived and preached, and on the history of Judaism.'
Science

Submission + - Spider that Builds It's Own Spider Decoys Discovered (wired.com)

Submitted by
OakDragon
OakDragon writes: "A newly discovered species of spider — apparently of the genus Cyclosa — has been discovered in the Peruvian Amazon. The spider builds an elaborate decoy out of web, twigs, and other scraps, that appears to be a much larger spider. The spider will even cause the decoy to move, marionette-style, by shaking the web."
Space

Submission + - Cassini's Christmas Gift: In the Shadow of Saturn (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "As the Cassini mission continues to orbit the ringed gas giant Saturn, it's hard to imagine what magnificent view the NASA spacecraft will show us next. Today, however, is one for the history books. As a very special Christmas holiday treat, the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) team have processed a magnificent view of Saturn that is rarely seen — a portrait from the dark side of the planet."
Facebook

Submission + - Ayatollah's Granddaughter Bypasses Censors to Join Facebook and Criticize Iran (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Censorship doesn't work too well in Iran since millions of people use VPNs, including Ayatollah Khomeini's own granddaughter, who has 5,000 Facebook friends and says Iran "should stop fearing the transfer of new communications technology."
http://www.ibtimes.com/khomeinis-granddaughter-knows-how-win-facebook-friends-influence-ayatollahs-946776
Science

Submission + - Researchers Create Ultrastretchable Wires Using Liquid Metal (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Researchers, by using liquid metal, have created wires that can stretch up to eight times their original length while retaining its conduction properties. Boffins over at North Carolina State University made the stretchable wires by filling in a tube made out of extremely elastic polymer with gallium and indium liquid metal alloy.

Submission + - blekko donates search data to Comomn Crawl (blekko.com)

Submitted by Greg Lindahl
Greg Lindahl writes: blekko is donating search engine ranking data for 140 million domains and 22 billion urls to the Common Crawl Foundation. Common Crawl is a non-profit dedicated to making the greatest (yet messiest) dataset of our time, the web, available to everyone, including tinkerers, hackers, activists, and new companies. blekko's ranking data will initially be used to improve the quality of Common Crawl's 8 billion webpage public crawl of the web, and eventually will be directly available to the public.
Businesses

Submission + - ISP Data Caps Just a 'Cash Cow' (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ars summarizes a new report into the common practice of ISPs implementing data caps, ostensibly to keep their network traffic under control. The report found a much simpler reason: money. Quoting: 'The truly curious thing about the entire debate has been the way in which caps have mostly remained steady for years, even as the price of delivering data has plunged. For example, paying for transit capacity at a New York Internet exchange costs 50 percent less now than it did just one year ago, and many major ISPs aren't paying at all to exchange data thanks to peering. So why don't prices seem to fall? ... The authors of the new paper contend that all explanations are more or less hand-waving designed to disguise the fact that Internet providers are now raking in huge—in some cases, record—profit margins, without even the expense of building new networks. ...While Internet users have to endure a ceaseless litany of complaints about a "spectrum crunch" and an "exaflood" of data from which ISPs are suffering, most wireline ISPs are actually investing less money in their network as a percentage of revenue, and wireless operators like AT&T and Verizon are seeing huge growth in their average revenue per user (ARPU) numbers after phasing out unlimited data plans—which means money out of your pocket. In the view of the New America authors, this revenue growth is precisely the point of data caps.'

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