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Submission + - The sudden policy change in Truecrypt explained (ath0.com)

Submitted by X10
X10 writes: I use Truecrypt, but recently someone pointed me to the sourceforge page of Truecrypt that says it's out of business. I found the message weird, but now there's an explanation: Truecrypt has received a letter from the NSA.

Submission + - Lavabit Founder Explains Why He Was Forced To Shut It Down (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ladar Levison, founder of the encrypted email service Lavabit that shut down last year because of friction with U.S. government data requests, has an article at The Guardian where he explains the whole story. He writes, 'My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment on my company's network. ... I had no choice but to consent to the installation of their device, which would hand the U.S. government access to all of the messages – to and from all of my customers – as they travelled between their email accounts other providers on the Internet. But that wasn't enough. The federal agents then claimed that their court order required me to surrender my company's private encryption keys, and I balked. What they said they needed were customer passwords – which were sent securely – so that they could access the plain-text versions of messages from customers using my company's encrypted storage feature. (The government would later claim they only made this demand because of my "noncompliance".) ... What ensued was a flurry of legal proceedings that would last 38 days, ending not only my startup but also destroying, bit by bit, the very principle upon which I founded it – that we all have a right to personal privacy.'

Submission + - iOS Apps on Android (natively!)

Submitted by Schranz
Schranz writes: Columbia University PhD students managed to run iOS apps natively on Android:
http://systems.cs.columbia.edu...
They built a compatibility layer (iOS-"kernel" XNU is open source) on top of Androids kernel that lets you run unmodified (no legal issues) iOS libraries and therefore iOS apps.
Apps have only little overhead, it's pretty efficient.
Paper was released in march '14 and it didn't get the attention it deserves.

Submission + - The upcoming Windows 8.1 apocalypse 2

Submitted by arglebargle_xiv
arglebargle_xiv writes: As most people will have heard, Microsoft will end support for anyone who hasn't upgraded to Win8.1 Update 1 on May 8. What fewer people have heard is that large numbers of users can't install the 8.1 Update, with over a thousand messages in this one thread alone, and that's for tech geeks rather than home users who won't find out about this until their PC becomes orphaned on May 8. Check your Windows Update log, if you've got a "Failed" entry next to KB2919355 then your PC will also become orphaned after May 8.

Submission + - How Programming Is Hard (stilldrinking.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Those of us who spend our days sitting in front of a screen trying to make computers do our bidding know how difficult programming can be. But from an outside perspective, there's not much to indicate difficulty. Most of us have heard somebody compare our job to digging ditches, or some other manual labor, meant to contrast easy (sitting around and typing) versus hard (muscle-wearying work). Now, Peter Welch has written an amusing essay to help combat that point of view, titled Programming Sucks. He compares bridge building to a big software project. Here's a small part of it: 'You start by meeting Mary, project leader for a bridge in a major metropolitan area. Mary introduces you to Fred, after you get through the fifteen security checks installed by Dave because Dave had his sweater stolen off his desk once and Never Again. Fred only works with wood, so you ask why he's involved because this bridge is supposed to allow rush-hour traffic full of cars full of mortal humans to cross a 200-foot drop over rapids. Don't worry, says Mary, Fred's going to handle the walkways. What walkways? Well Fred made a good case for walkways and they're going to add to the bridge's appeal. Of course, they'll have to be built without railings, because there's a strict no railings rule enforced by Phil, who's not an engineer. ... Would you drive across this bridge? No. If it somehow got built, everybody involved would be executed. Yet some version of this dynamic wrote every single program you have ever used, banking software, websites, and a ubiquitously used program that was supposed to protect information on the internet but didn't.' Welch goes on to gripe about all the ways in which programming is almost awesome, but ends up being annoying.

Submission + - Band Releases Album As Linux Kernel Module (networkworld.com)

Submitted by netbuzz
netbuzz writes: A band called netcat is generating buzz in software circles by releasing its debut album as a Linux kernel module (among other more typical formats.) Why? “Are you ever listening to an album, and thinking ‘man, this sounds good, but I wish it crossed from user-space to kernel-space more often!’ We got you covered,” the band says on its Facebook page. “Our album is now fully playable as a loadable Linux kernel module.”

Submission + - This 1981 BYTE magazine cover explains why we're so bad at tech predictions (time.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: If you remember the golden age of BYTE magazine, you remember Robert Tinney's wonderful cover paintings. BYTE's April 1981 cover featured an amazing Tinney image of a smartwatch with a tiny text-oriented interface, QWERTY keyboard, and floppy drive. It's hilarious--but 33 years later, it's also a smart visual explanation of why the future of technology so often bears so little resemblance to anyone's predictions. I wrote about this over at TIME.com.

Submission + - Blender Foundation's Sintel video taken down on Youtube for copyright violation (youtube.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As if the automated take downs on Youtube weren't already bad enough, today fans of the popular open source 3D software Blender were greeted by a copyright take down notice for their third open movie, Sintel, despite it being released under a creative commons license: "This video contains content from Sony Pictures Movies & Shows, who has blocked it on copyright grounds." It is believed that the take down was a result of Sony Electronics adding Sintel to their official 4k demo pool.

Submission + - New York Public Library Releases Over 20,000 Hi-Res Maps (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Finally, you don't have to raise your voice over a group of whisperers in the New York Public Library to get a better view of its map collection. Actually, you don't even need to visit the place at all. Over 20,000 maps and cartographic works from the NYPL's Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division have been uploaded and made downloadable for the public.

"We believe these maps have no known US copyright restrictions," explains a blog post announcing the wholesale release of the library's map collection. "It means you can have the maps, all of them if you want, for free, in high resolution. We’ve scanned them to enable their use in the broadest possible ways by the largest number of people." The NYPL is distributing the maps under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, which means you can do whatever you want with the maps.

Submission + - Why Can't Fish Swim Deeper than 8000 Meters? Their Brains Explode

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Ocean-going fish can’t live any deeper than 8200 meters, according to a new study. A team of biologists say the threshold is set by two competing effects of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), a chemical in fish cells that prevents proteins from collapsing under high pressure. While fish should need more and more TMAO to survive ever greater depths, higher concentrations of the compound also draw in more and more seawater through osmosis, the process by which cells regulate their water content. In the deepest waters, high TMAO levels reverse osmosis pressure, swelling brain cells to the point that they stop working and, in principle, bursting red blood cells open.

Submission + - Dogs' Brains Have Human-like "Voice Area" (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: When you hear a friend’s voice, you immediately picture her, even if you can’t see her. And from the tone of her speech, you quickly gauge if she’s happy or sad. You can do all of this because your human brain has a “voice area.” Now, scientists using brain scanners and a crew of eager dogs have discovered that dog brains, too, have dedicated voice areas. The finding helps explain how canines can be so attuned to their owners’ feelings.

Submission + - Slashdot's new interface could kill what keeps Slashdot relevant (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Technology Lab / Information Technology
Slashdot’s new interface could kill what keeps Slashdot relevant
Flashy revamp seeks to draw new faces to the community—at the cost of the old.

by Lee Hutchinson — Feb 12 2014, 6:55pm E

        Web Culture

131

In the modern responsive Web Three Point Oh Internet, Slashdot stands like a thing frozen in time—it's a coelacanth stuck incongruously in an aquarium full of more colorful fish. The technology news aggregator site has been around since 1997, making it positively ancient as websites are reckoned. More importantly, Slashdot's long focus on open source technology news and topics has caused it to accrete a user base that tends to be extremely technical, extremely skilled, and extremely opinionated.

That user base is itself the main reason why Slashdot continues to thrive, even as its throwback interface makes it look to untrained eyes like a dated relic. Though the site is frequently a source of deep and rich commentary on topics, the barrier for new users to engage in the site's discussions is relatively high—certainly higher than, say, reddit (or even Ars). This doesn't cause much concern to the average Slashdot user, but tech job listing site Dice.com (which bought Slashdot in September 2012, along with Sourceforge and a number of other digital properties) appears to have decided it's time to drag Slashdot's interface into the 21st century in order to make things comfortable for everyone—old and new users alike.

Comment Re:Why not a different discussion (Score 1) 2

by fireman sam (#46178039) Attached to: Unofficial front page discussion of why /. BETA is bad

The new site can be improved by rolling back to the existing site - or even previous versions.

IMO, the best layout is the firehose layout where all I see are titles. I get to see a lot in a little amount of space. The new site is so full of wasted space (eg: Sony is selling Viao - do we really need a large picture of a viao netbook? This is supposed to be news for nerds, surely we would know that Viao is a laptop)

Crap for the sake of crap is nothing more than crap.

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"More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined." -- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_

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