Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Unofficial devolper preview of Haiku Beta1 has been released (tunetrackersystems.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An unofficial preview version of the Haiku Operatating System has been released. The release demonstrates the considerable changes that have been made since the last official release back in November of 2012.

The preview includes a number of bundled open source software, as well as a few preparatory applcations which are owned by the publisher of the unofficial preview. The unofficial preview is being published by TuneTracker Systems and not by Haiku Inc (www.haiku-inc.org), who are the publishers of the offical Haiku releases.

Haiku Inc is planing to officially release Beta1 later this year and the preview will allow the user to upgrade to the official beta1 when the release is finished.


Blurb from publishers website: (http://www.tunetrackersystems.com/discoverhaiku.html)

Most people are are aware of Windows, Mac, maybe even Linux. But did you know there's another operating system, every bit as exciting, called HAIKU? HAIKU is a fun, easy-to-use operating system that lets you accomplish the same sorts of things as the others, but without the wait."

"Discover HAIKU" is your gateway to the world of HAIKU. Delivered to you on a high-capacity USB stick, you can boot to it directly, or install it to an empty hard drive volume on your computer. It comes with a new, up-to-date version of HAIKU, introductory videos, and a mile-long list of tested, proven programs and tools that will make your adventure exciting.

Submission + - Australian researchers create world's first 3D-printed aircraft engines

Submitted by stephendavion
stephendavion writes: Researchers from the Monash University, CSIRO and Deakin University in Australia have created two 3D-printed aircraft engines. One of the 3D-printed engines is being showcased at the ongoing International Air Show in Avalon, while the other is at Microturbo (Safran) in Toulouse, France. Monash and its subsidiary Amaero Engineering attracted interests from tier one aerospace companies to produce components at the Monash Centre for Additive Manufacturing (MCAM) in Melbourne. Researchers used an old gas turbine engine from Microturbo to scan components and print two versions. The engine is an auxiliary power unit equipped in aircraft such as the Falcon 20 business jet.

Submission + - Alaska allows recreational marijuana as campaign spreads (reuters.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Smoking, growing and owning small amounts of marijuana became legal in Alaska on Tuesday, as a growing decriminalization movement reached the United States' wild northwest frontier.

Alaska narrowly passed the measure in November. It followed Colorado and Washington state in allowing recreational use, reflecting a rapidly shifting legal landscape for the drug, which remains illegal under federal law.

Anyone aged 21 or older can now possess up to an ounce of marijuana in Alaska and can grow up to six marijuana plants, three of which can be flowering.

Smoking in public and buying and selling the drug remains illegal — though private exchanges are allowed if money is not involved.

I wonder how or if this affects the dry counties in Alaska.

Submission + - Germans protest that new data centre emissions will cook local trout (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Local trout farmers in the Bavarian town of Eching, north of Munich, have taken the developer group e-shelter to court over a proposed data center which is to be cooled using surrounding groundwater. The local groundwater will be used to cool the center, before the heated water is returned back into the ground. A pretty ecological-sounding solution one would think, but perhaps not when the tampered water will filter directly into a fish farm’s fresh springs, located just a few kilometers east of the proposed site. The farmers at the ‘Forellenhof Nadler’ farm are highly concerned that the environmental impact of the data center will harm the health of their fish and threaten their economic livelihood, with even a temperature increase of two degrees inducing a higher risk of disease.
Cellphones

Pakistanis Must Provide Fingerprints Or Give Up Cellphone 134

Posted by Soulskill from the must-donate-kidney-to-keep-tablet dept.
schwit1 sends this report from the Washington Post: Cellphones didn't just arrive in Pakistan. But someone could be fooled into thinking otherwise, considering the tens of millions of Pakistanis pouring into mobile phone stores these days. In one of the world's largest — and fastest — efforts to collect biometric information, Pakistan has ordered cellphone users to verify their identities through fingerprints for a national database being compiled to curb terrorism. If they don't, their service will be shut off, an unthinkable option for many after a dozen years of explosive growth in cellphone usage here.

Prompted by concerns about a proliferation of illegal and untraceable SIM cards, the directive is the most visible step so far in Pakistan's efforts to restore law and order after Taliban militants killed 150 students and teachers at a school in December. Officials said the six terrorists who stormed the school in Peshawar were using cellphones registered to one woman who had no obvious connection to the attackers.

Submission + - Gemalto Hack Could Compromise Contactless And ID Cards 1

Submitted by dkatana
dkatana writes: A recent article published by The Intercept reports that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) stole millions of encryption keys used in SIM cards manufactured by Gemalto. While the article focuses on the possibility that those keys could be used by the agencies to monitor communications and possibly hack mobile devices using the SIM cards, it also gives some room to the possibility that other IC security modules based on Gemalto technology could be compromised.

Gemalto not only manufacturers Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM) cards for cellular providers, it is also the world’s largest manufacturer of contactless credit card ICs and a leading provider of identity modules used in government documents such as passports, driving licenses and ID cards.

Submission + - ACLU-Obtained Documents Reveal Breadth of Secretive Stingray Use in Florida (aclu.org)

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: The results should be troubling for anyone who cares about privacy rights, judicial oversight of police activities, and the rule of law. The documents paint a detailed picture of police using an invasive technology — one that can follow you inside your house — in many hundreds of cases and almost entirely in secret. The secrecy is not just from the public, but often from judges who are supposed to ensure that police are not abusing their authority. Partly relying on that secrecy, police have been getting authorization to use Stingrays based on the low standard of “relevance,” not a warrant based on probable cause as required by the Fourth Amendment.

Submission + - Meet Babar, a New Malware Almost Certainly Created by France (vice.com)

Submitted by sarahnaomi
sarahnaomi writes: The NSA, GCHQ, and their allies in the Five Eyes are not the only government agencies using malware for surveillance. French intelligence is almost certainly hacking its targets too—and now security researchers believe they have proof.

On Wednesday, the researchers will reveal new details about a powerful piece of malware known as “Babar,” which is capable of eavesdropping on online conversations held via Skype, MSN and Yahoo messenger, as well as logging keystrokes and monitoring which websites an infected user has visited.

Babar is “a fully blown espionage tool, built to excessively spy” on its victims, according to the research, and which Motherboard reviewed in advance. The researchers are publishing two separate but complementary reports that analyze samples of the malware, and all but confirm that France’s spying agency the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) was responsible for its creation.
Graphics

Wayland 1.7.0 Marks an Important Release 189

Posted by Soulskill from the onward-and-upward dept.
jones_supa writes: The 1.7.0 release of Wayland is now available for download. The project thanks all who have contributed, and especially the desktop environments and client applications that now converse using Wayland. In an official announcement from Bryce Harrington of Samsung, he says the Wayland protocol may be considered 'done' but that doesn't mean there's not work to be done. A bigger importance is now given to testing, documentation, and bugfixing. As Wayland is maturing, we are also getting closer to the point where the big Linux distros will eventually start integrating it to their operating system.

Submission + - Russia seeking to ban Tor, VPNs and other anonymising tools (thestack.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Three separate Russian authorities have spoken out in favour of banning online anonymising tools since February 5th, with particular emphasis on Tor, which — despite its popularity with whistle-blowers such as Edward Snowden and with online activists — Russia's Safe Internet League describes as an 'Anonymous network used primarily to commit crimes'. The three authorities involved are the Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, powerful Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor and the Safe Internet League, comprising the country's top three network providers, including state telecoms provider Rostelecom. Roskomnadzor's press secretary Vadim Roskomnadzora Ampelonsky describes the obstacles to identifying and blocking Tor and VPN traffic as 'difficult, but solvable'.

Submission + - Firefox to mandate extension signing (mozilla.org)

Submitted by x0ra
x0ra writes: In a recent blog post, Mozilla announced its intention to require extension to be signed in Firefox, without any possible user override. Only Nightly, Developer Edition, and unbranded build will be able to run unsigned add-on.

With this move, Mozilla is joining Apple and Google in the realm of walled-garden ecosystem.
NASA

NASA Releases Details of Titan Submarine Concept 119

Posted by Soulskill from the star-trek-and-seaquest-crossover dept.
Zothecula writes: Now that NASA has got the hang of planetary rovers, the space agency is looking at sending submarines into space around the year 2040. At the recent 2015 NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts Symposium, NASA scientists and engineers presented a study of the Titan Submarine Phase I Conceptual Design (PDF), which outlines a possible mission to Saturn's largest moon, Titan, where the unmanned submersible would explore the seas of liquid hydrocarbons at the Titanian poles.

"At its heart, the submarine would use a 1 kW radiothermal Stirling generator. This would not only provide power to propel the craft, but it would also keep the electronics from freezing. Unfortunately, Titan is so cold that it's almost a cryogenic environment, so the waste heat from the generator would cause the liquids around it to boil and this would need be taken into account when designing the sub to minimize interference. However, NASA estimates that the boat could do about one meter per second (3.6 km/h, 2.2 mph)."

Slashdot Top Deals

8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss

Close