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Submission + - Torvalds: I Made A "Metric Sh--load" Of Mistakes With The Linux Community (readwrite.com)

Submitted by electronic convict
electronic convict writes: In a Q&A at LinuxCon Europe, Linux creator Linus Torvalds — no stranger to strong language and blunt opinions — acknowledged a "metric shitload" of interpersonal mistakes that unnecessarily antagonized others within the Linux community. In response to Intel's Dirk Hohndel, who asked him which decision he regretted most over the past 23 years, Torvalds replied:

From a technical standpoint, no single decision has ever been that important... The problems tend to be around alienating users or developers and I'm pretty good at that. I use strong language. But again there's not a single instance I'd like to fix. There's a metric shitload of those.

It's probably not a coincidence that Torvalds said this just a few weeks after critics like Lennart Poettering started drawing attention to the abusive nature of some commentary within the open-source community. Poettering explicitly called out Torvalds for some of his most intemperate remarks and described open source as "quite a sick place to be in." Still, Torvalds doesn't sound like he's about to start making an apology tour. "One of the reasons we have this culture of strong language, that admittedly many people find off-putting, is that when it comes to technical people with strong opinions and with a strong drive to do something technically superior, you end up having these opinions show up as sometimes pretty strong language," he said. "On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle."

Submission + - Anonabox Software Found Disturbingly Insecure by Security Researchers 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: While the Anonabox project was experiencing a surge of negative publicity this week as its Kickstarter campaign far exceeded its original funding goals, some security researchers scrutinized its open source software and found it disturbingly insecure for a device touted as a means to online anonymity. First, there's the Anonabox source code. The router itself is actually run on OpenWRT, and the only Anonabox source code available for download are Anonabox configuration files with one hardcoded root password that someone has already cracked. Second, researchers found that Anonabox by default does not password-protect its wireless network. Third, the Anonabox configuration files indicate that "every device would have the same SSHD host key, a kind of secure shell key used to remotely run commands on the router". So, anyone with an Anonabox can extract that key and use it to alter the settings of other Anonaboxes. Anonabox developer August Germar says that "he regrets not better explaining his intentions for the project" and asserts that he thought that the project would only be a starting point from which other developers would bring the final intended product to fruition.

Submission + - The Guardian reveals that Whisper app tracks 'anonymous' users (theguardian.com)

Submitted by qqod
qqod writes: After visiting the offices of Whisper to discuss future journalistic collaborations, from the article:

"The practice of monitoring the whereabouts of Whisper users â" including those who have expressly opted out of geolocation services â" will alarm users, who are encouraged to disclose intimate details about their private and professional lives.

Whisper is also sharing information with the US Department of Defense gleaned from smartphones it knows are used from military bases, and developing a version of its app to conform with Chinese censorship laws."

Submission + - 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Awarded To Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay (nobelpeaceprize.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been given to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay for fighting to protect the rights of children and further their education. Yousafzay, at the age of 17, is the youngest recipient of the Peace Prize. She's a teenager from Pakistan who campaigned for girls' rights to education. In 2012, the Taliban shot her in the head, but she survived and continued her struggle. Satyarthi, a 60-year-old from India, has led many peaceful protests to fight against child slavery and illiteracy. "Satyarthi estimates that 60 million children in India, or 6 percent of the population, are forced into work. This, he believes, has nothing to do with parental poverty, illiteracy or ignorance. Above all, children are enslaved because employers benefit by getting their labour for free or for a pittance." This year's Nobel Peace Prize awards are also notable for bringing together an Indian and a Pakistani while their respective governments sustain a military conflict along a stretch of border between their countries.

Submission + - Telsa Motors Unveils Model D Sedan (wired.com) 1

Submitted by SchrodingerZ
SchrodingerZ writes: Nine days after Elon Musk hinted about a new project, the P85D Sedan has been unveiled by Tesla Motors. The Model D is Tesla's latest car design, capable of feats not yet seen in electric vehicles. The four door luxury car is able to go from zero to 60 miles per hour in a mere 3.2 seconds, an acceleration similar to the McLaren F1 super car. While the exterior remains the same build as the Model S, the interior will have a second motor in the front of the car, to complement the rear motor. The D models will also have a slightly larger range of 275 miles on a single charge, 10 miles more than the 85 and P85 cars. The safety features have also been enhanced, adding "adaptive cruise control and the ability to read speed limit signs, stop itself if a crash is imminent, stay in its lane, and even park itself in a street spot or in your garage." Musk explains at the inaugural event, "this car is nuts. It’s like taking off from a carrier deck. It’s just bananas." The Model D is available for the 60kWh, 80kWh, and P85 cars, and are expected to start shipping in December of this year.

Submission + - Romans Used Nanotechnology to Turn Lycurgus Cup From Green to Red 1,600 Years Ag (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Cambridge University researchers have succeeded in mimicking nanotechnology used by ancient Romans to make a 4th century AD glass cage chalice change colour in different lights. Using the same process, they have made a breakthrough that could greatly increase the storage capabilities of today's optical devices.

In order to produce the dichroic effect on the Lycurgus Cup, Roman artisans are believed to have ground down particles of gold and silver to 50 nanometres in diameter, which is less than one-thousandth the size of a grain of table salt, and then laid these nanoparticles within the glass before it set. No one has been able to replicate the effect, until now.

The researchers created nanoscale metallic nanoparticle arrays from a thin layer of silver that mimic the dichroic colour effect of the Roman chalice to create multicoloured holograms containing 16 million nanoparticles per square millimetre.

Each nanoparticle scatters light into numerous colours depending on its size and shape, and the light, when put together, produces an image.

Submission + - The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Markus Krajewski reports that today, with many countries phasing out incandescent lighting in favor of more-efficient and pricier LEDs, it’s worth revisiting the history of the Phoebus cartel—not simply as a quirky anecdote from the annals of technology but as a cautionary tale about the strange and unexpected pitfalls that can arise when a new technology vanquishes an old one. Prior to the Phoebus cartel’s formation in 1924, household light bulbs typically burned for a total of 1,500 to 2,500 hours; cartel members agreed to shorten that life span to a standard 1,000 hours. Each factory regularly sent lightbulb samples to the cartel’s central laboratory in Switzerland for verification. If any factory submitted bulbs lasting longer or shorter than the regulated life span for its type, the factory was obliged to pay a fine.

Though long gone, the Phoebus cartel still casts a shadow today because it reduced competition in the light bulb industry for almost twenty years, and has been accused of preventing technological advances that would have produced longer-lasting light bulbs. Will history repeat itself as the lighting industry is now going through its most tumultuous period of technological change since the invention of the incandescent bulb. "Consumers are expected to pay more money for bulbs that are up to 10 times as efficient and that are touted to last a fantastically long time—up to 50,000 hours in the case of LED lights. In normal usage, these lamps will last so long that their owners will probably sell the house they’re in before having to change the bulbs," writes Krajewski. "Whether or not these pricier bulbs will actually last that long is still an open question, and not one that the average consumer is likely to investigate." There are already reports of CFLs and LED lamps burning out long before their rated lifetimes are reached. "Such incidents may well have resulted from nothing more sinister than careless manufacturing. But there is no denying that these far more technologically sophisticated products offer tempting opportunities for the inclusion of purposefully engineered life-shortening defects."

Submission + - 2015 Corvette Valet Mode Recorder illegal in some states (corvetteblogger.com)

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb
innocent_white_lamb writes: The 2015 Corvette has a Valet Mode that records audio and video when someone other than the owner is driving the car. Activating the Valet Mode allows you to record front-facing video as well as capture audio from within the car so you can help keep your Corvette safe when itâ(TM)s in the hands of others.

Well it turns out that recording audio from within the car may be considered a felony in some states that require notice and consent to individuals that they are being recorded and now GM is sending notices out to dealerships and customers alerting them to this fact as well as promising a future update to the PDR system.

Submission + - Farmers Carry Multidrug-Resistant Staph for Weeks Into Local Communities (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Fresh research out of the UNC Gillings and JHU Bloomberg schools of public health shows industrial farm workers are carrying livestock-associated, multidrug-resistant staph into local communities for weeks at a time. This problem has grown since its last mention on Slashdot. Unfortunately, massive industrial lobbying continues to neuter government action.

Submission + - What to Expect With Windows 9

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: Two weeks before the its official unveiling, Woody Leonhard provides a roundup of what to expect and the open questions around Windows 9, given Build 9834 leaks and confirmations springing up all over the Web. The desktop's Start Menu, Metro apps running in resizable windows on the desktop, virtual desktops, Notification Center, and Storage Sense, are among the presumed features in store for Windows 9. Chief among the open questions are the fates of Internet Explorer, Cortana, and the Metro Start Screen. Changes to Windows 9 will provide an inkling of where Nadella will lead Microsoft in the years ahead. What's your litmus test on Windows 9?

Submission + - beta still sucks, still getting pushed (slashdot.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Guys.

Beta has become toxic. It is not better than what you had, the fads aren't that interesting, the changes are if anything shinily counterproductive, you've pushed it so incessantly that you've made it hated, and it's reflecting back to you. You're *still* doggedly flogging this dead horse. Whadayawant, keep on it until your readership will lap it up while mumbling "braaaains"?

There are things you could be doing to improve slashdot, like making it less dependent on javascript to function, like making it function well also when javascript is unavailable and without requiring logging in for punishment, and things like that. Oh, and people with basic grasp of English for editors would be nice too. But beta, beta is not those things.

Let. It. Go.

Submission + - NVIDIA Is Better For Closed-Source Linux GPU Drivers, AMD Wins For Open-Source (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Phoronix last week tested 65 graphics cards on open source drivers under Linux and the best result was generally with the open source AMD Radeon drivers. This week they put out a 35 graphics card comparison using the proprietary AMD/NVIDIA drivers (with the other 30 cards being too old for the latest main drivers) under Ubuntu 14.04. The winner for proprietary GPU driver support on Linux was NVIDIA, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise given that Valve and other Linux game developers are frequently recommending NVIDIA graphics for their game titles while AMD Catalyst support doesn't usually come to games until later. The Radeon OpenGL performance with Catalyst had some problems, but at least its performance per Watt was respectable. Open-source fans are encouraged to use AMD hardware on Linux while those just wanting the best performance and overall experience should see NVIDIA with their binary driver.

Submission + - Patching a running Linux kernel: kGraft v kpatch (itwire.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Patching a Linux kernel without any downtime is likely to become a common practice over the next few years; two patches released earlier this year are likely to make what is a task requiring downtime something that can be done on the fly. Technical staff from Red Hat and SUSE speak on the pluses of their patches and the differences

Submission + - Sony to Make Movie of Edward Snowden Story (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired the rights to the new book by journalist Glenn Greenwald about fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, the studio said Wednesday. James Bond franchise producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli will make the movie version of "No Place to Hide," described as "a political film that will resonate with today's moviegoers."

The book, subtitled "Edward Snowden, the NSA and the US Surveillance State," was just recently published in Britain by Hamish Hamilton and in the United States by Metropolitan Books.

Submission + - Researchers create jet fuel from water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: Chemistry World reported on Friday that a group of European researchers have made a giant step toward inventing a process that will create jet fuel from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. If and when the process can be brought to an industrial scale it could make greenhouse gasses, considered a dire problem by some, into a valuable resource. It might even make jet plane travel carbon neutral.

The idea is that at high temperatures, water and carbon dioxide break apart into hydrogen, carbon monoxide and oxygen. Then hydrogen and carbon monoxide combines to become syngas. Then using the well-known Fischer-Tropsch process can be converted into kerosene or gasoline.

The trick has always been to remove the excess oxygen, which tends to make the syngas more explosive and therefore dangerous. The European researchers have hit upon the idea of using cerium oxide. When heated with concentrated sunlight the cerium oxide released oxygen which is piped out. When the syngas is created, the cerium reacts with carbon dioxide and water to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide, absorbing the excess oxygen. Then the cerium oxide is blasted again with sunlight repeating the cycle.

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