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Submission + - KDE's Krita gets 100% funding through Kickstarter (themukt.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: It's an interesting day for the KDE community. At one hand they announced the death of two projects — Vivaldi tablet and Improv board, on the other hand Krita (a KDE software) has reached its goal of raising Euro 15,00 on Kickstrater, which means they can now hire the developer, designer they needed to further improve the image editing software. The campaign is not over yet and there are eight more days left so the project will continue to get more money.

Submission + - Experimenting With Motivational Passwords

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: At Mauricio Estrella's workplace, the Microsoft Exchange server is configured to ask thousands of employees around the planet to change their passwords every 30 days. Mauricio often approached the situation with an angry grandpa voice in his head: "The damn password has expired." This input field with a pulsating cursor, waiting for him to type a password that he will have to re-enter for the next 30 days. Many times during the day. Then a lightbulb went on inside his head: "I'm gonna use a password to change my life." His passwords became little motivational snippets, every one being a condensed phrase for a goal or dream. He set his first motivational password to be Save4trip@thailand. Guess where he went 3 months later. Mauricio kept doing this and found the method to work surprisingly consistently for various goals, which he lists in his blog post. To summarize, this might be one way to make your passwords a bit more fun and to remind about good habits. Just for added security he recommends scrambling the passwords a bit more than in his examples.

Submission + - The Next Big Thing in FOSS, according to the author of Linux Cookbook (linux.com)

Submitted by trogdoro
trogdoro writes: Command-line lovers, allow me to introduce you to Xiki, the incredibly interactive, flexible, and revolutionary command shell. I do not use the word "revolutionary" lightly. The command shell has not advanced all that much since the ancient days of Unix. Xiki is a giant leap forward. If you're looking for the Next Big Thing in FOSS, Xiki is it.

Submission + - Exploiting Wildcards On Linux

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: DefenseCode researcher Leon Juranic found security issues related to using wildcards in Unix commands. The topic has been talked about in the past on the Full Disclosure mailing list, where some people saw this more as a feature than as a bug. There are clearly a number of potential security issues surrounding this, so Mr. Juranic provided five actual exploitation examples that stress out the risks accompanying practice of using the * wildcard with Linux/Unix commands. The issue can be manifested by using specific options in chown, tar, rsync etc. By using specially crafted filenames, an attacker can inject arbitrary arguments to shell commands run by other users — root as well.

Submission + - Visualizing Algorithms (ocks.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Many people reading this site probably have a functional understanding of how algorithms work. But whether you know algorithms down to highly mathematical abstractions or simple as a fuzzy series of steps that transform input into output, it can be helpful to visualize what's going on under the hood. That's what Mike Bostock has done in a new article. He walks through algorithms for sampling, shuffling, and maze generation, using beautiful and fascinating visualizations to show how each algorithm works and how it differs from other options. He says, "I find watching algorithms endlessly fascinating, even mesmerizing. Particularly so when randomness is involved. ... Being able to see what your code is doing can boost productivity. Visualization does not supplant the need for tests, but tests are useful primarily for detecting failure and not explaining it. Visualization can also discover unexpected behavior in your implementation, even when the output looks correct. ...Even if you just want to learn for yourself, visualization can be a great way to gain deep understanding. Teaching is one of the most effective ways of learning, and implementing a visualization is like teaching yourself.

Submission + - Sharp introduces free-form LCD screens (autoweek.com)

Submitted by BobandMax
BobandMax writes: Sharp has integrate the gate driver into individual pixels, reducing bezel size and freeing designers from shape constraints. This bodes well for folks who dislike rectangular screens in their cars.

Submission + - Grace Hopper, UNIVAC, and the First Programming Language

Submitted by M-Saunders
M-Saunders writes: It weighed 13 tons, had 5,200 vacuum tubes, and took up a whole garage, but the UNIVAC I was an incredible machine for its time. Memory was provided by tanks of liquid mercury, while the clock speed was a whopping 2.25 MHz. The UNIVAC I was one of the first commercial general-purpose computers produced, with 46 shipped, and Linux Voice has taken an in-depth look at it. Learn its fascinating instruction set, and also check out FLOW-MATIC, the first English-language data processing language created by American computing pioneer Grace Hopper.

Submission + - Supermassive Black Hole At The Centre Of Galaxy May Be Wormhole In Disguise (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: There is growing evidence that the centre of the Milky Way contains a mysterious object some 4 million times more massive than the Sun. Many astronomers believe that this object, called Sagittarius A*, is a supermassive black hole that was crucial in the galaxy's birth and formation. The thinking is that about 100 million years after the Big Bang, this supermassive object attracted the gas and dust that eventually became the Milky Way. But there is a problem with this theory--100 million years is not long enough for a black hole to grow so big. The alternative explanation is that Sagittarius A* is a wormhole that connects the Milky Way to another region of the universe or even a another multiverse. Cosmologists have long known that wormholes could have formed in the instants after the Big Bang and that these objects would have been preserved during inflation to appear today as supermassive objects hidden behind an event horizon, like black holes. It's easy to imagine that it would be impossible to tell these objects apart. But astronomers have now worked out that wormholes are smaller than black holes and so bend light from an object orbiting close to them, such as a plasma cloud, in a unique way that reveals their presence. They've even simulated what such a wormhole will look like. No telescope is yet capable of resolving images like these but that is set to change too. An infrared instrument called GRAVITY is currently being prepared for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile and should be in a position to spot the signature of a wormhole, if it is there, in the next few years.

Submission + - Why Does Fusion Energy Research need a Bake Sale? (indiegogo.com) 1

Submitted by Greykin
Greykin writes: Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (LPP) started a crowd source funding campaign at IndieGoGo. LPP researches electrical power generation from fusion energy without steam or neutrons. Anyone who believes that fusion energy can phase out carbon fuels should support this campaign. Developing fusion technology is a legacy for future generations. We must phase out the Carbon Fuel Colossus that powers our civilization and poisons our planet. It is top dog in our modern times and its fall will be tragic for some, joyous for others. Let’s hope it doesn’t take down our civilization with it.

Submission + - Horrid Ruling in Oracle v. Google: APIs Are Copyrightable (uscourts.gov)

Submitted by linuxrocks123
linuxrocks123 writes: This is an absolutely horrible ruling. If APIs are copyrightable, every Windows program could be held to infringe Microsoft's copyright. Every program written in Java needs permission from Oracle to be distributed. Video game console emulators are right out. And you can kiss things like third-party printer cartridges goodbye.

The only way it could be worse would be if they ruled that what Google did isn't fair use as a matter of law. If you read the decision, they almost did that, but didn't. I hope this is reheard en-banc or the Supreme Court takes the case. This is a nightmare.

I have very little respect for the Federal Circuit. They seem to cause many more problems than they solve. And, here, they took Ninth Circuit precedent and twisted it to say the opposite of what it meant. The Ninth Circuit gives interoperability concerns serious consideration; this decision gives them much less consideration than they deserve.

For Google's particular case, there looks to me to be an easy way out. All Google has to do is distribute its work under the GPL, since Java, including the APIs in question, is under the GPL anyway. The "Classpath exception" was Sun's explicit consent to use the APIs in Java without needing the work to be GPL as well. So, as long as Google distributes its work as a "modified version of OpenJDK", they should be good. I'm not sure why they haven't done this already, or didn't do it to begin with, actually. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I can't see what.

But this goes way beyond Android and Java. This ruling, if it's not overturned, could chill software development, promote extreme forms of vendor lock-in, and otherwise cause mayhem and misery.

Submission + - Richard Stallman Answers Your Questions

Submitted by samzenpus
samzenpus writes: A while ago you had the chance to ask GNU and Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman about GNU, copyright laws, digital restrictions management, and software patents. Below you'll find his answers to those questions.

Comment So many possible answers (Score 2) 90

by xonen (#46909607) Attached to: Can the Lix 3D Printing Pen Actually Work?

* It preheats some element or reservoir for a limited time duty cycle
* It just draws more power from USB ; powerbanks happily support 2A and the '900mA specced USB port' on their macbook might also capable of delivering much more.
* The pen includes a rechargable battery capable of delivering more peak current. The pen could easily hold a 1Ah 3.7V lithion cell.
* They provide an adapter to plug it in 2 USB ports
* *

Submission + - My experiment opting out of big data made me look like a criminal (time.com) 2

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Princeton sociologist Janet Vertesi writes about her attempt at hiding her pregnancy from “the bots, trackers, cookies and other data sniffers online that feed the databases that companies use for targeted advertising.” Big data still found her, even though she steered clear of social media, avoided baby-related credit card purchases, and downloaded Tor to browse the Internet privately.

Submission + - Wonder-Material Graphene Could Be Dangerous to Humans and the Environment (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: It’s easy to get carried away when you start talking about graphene. Its properties hold the promise of outright technological revolution in so many fields that it has been called a wonder material. Two recent studies, however, give us a less than rosy angle. In the first, a team of biologists, engineers and material scientists at Brown University examined graphene’s potential toxicity in human cells. Another study by a team from University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering examined how graphene oxide nanoparticles might interact with the environment if they found their way into surface or ground water sources.

Submission + - How Japan Plans to Build Orbital Solar Power Stations (ieee.org)

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: Solar power stations in orbit aren't exactly a new idea — Asimov set one of his stories on such a space station back in 1941. Everyone thinks it's a cool idea to collect solar power 24 hours a day and beam it down to Earth. But what with the expense and difficulty of rocketing up the parts and constructing and operating the stations in orbit, nobody's built one yet. While you probably still shouldn't hold your breath, it's interesting to learn that Japan's space agency has spec'd out such a solar power station.

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