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Space

Fuel Free Spacecrafts Using Graphene 265

William Robinson writes: While using a laser to cut a sponge made of crumpled sheets of Graphene oxide, researchers accidentally discovered that it can turn light into motion. As the laser cut into the material, it mysteriously propelled forward. Baffled, researchers investigated further. The Graphene material was put in a vacuum and again shot with a laser. Incredibly, the laser still pushed the sponge forward, and by as much as 40 centimeters. Researchers even got the Graphene to move by focusing ordinary sunlight on it with a lens. Though scientists are not sure why this happens, they are excited with new possibilities such as light propelled spacecraft that does not need fuel.

Submission + - SourceForge MITM Projects (github.io) 2

lister king of smeg writes: What happened?

SourceForge, once a trustworthy source code hosting site, started to place misleading ads (like fake download buttons) a few years ago. They are also bundling third-party adware/malware directly with their Windows installer.

Some project managers decided to leave SourceForge – partly because of this, partly just because there are better options today. SF staff hijacked some of these abandoned accounts, partly to bundle the crapware with their installers. It has become just another sleazy garbage site with downloads of fake antivirus programs and such.

How can I help?

If you agree that SourceForge is in fact distributing malicious software under the guise of open source projects, report them to google. Ideally this will help remove them from search results, prevent others from suffering their malware and provide them with incentive to change their behavior.

As this story has been submitted several times in the past several days, by various submitter and is going around various other tech forums( https://news.ycombinator.com/i... , https://soylentnews.org/articl... , https://www.reddit.com/r/progr... ,) this submitter wonders has our shared "glorious Dice Corporate overloads" been shooting this story down?

Comment Re:Embedded and dynamic memory (Score 2) 366

Today, though, dynamic memory allocation is a reasonable thing. Granted you want to make sure it can't fail, and that "out of memory" is handled appropriately.

I don't completely disagree but you might watch the CPPCON 2014 presentation on the Curiosity rover for some insights into how the industry actually does things. One thing I noticed right off; rad hardened hardware is way behind the latest thing from Intel.

Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 1) 366

It's basic security practice to never count on something like this, what if something is configured in a way that the only access an attacker has is to the place you drop this file and read it back; do you really want to have a system where someone can slip in, remove a recently dropped file, and kill the system? Perhaps they didn't think they had to consider security but this is also, as you point out, just basic robustness. Also as others state, watchdogs, Our PC software product has a watchdog, and it's sure as heck not controlling a satellite.

Comment Re: Just another arrogant CEO (Score 3, Informative) 49

So, just another systemd rant.

RedHat has contributed a lot of very cool things to Linux. They have acquired software and opensourced it (e.g. Sistina, Qumranet, Sun/iPlanet LDAP server). They work not only to make a good distro, but also try to solve the bigger problems. For example, they have put together an awesome set of tools that brings Active Directory-like functions to Linux (easy to deploy Kerberos, LDAP, certificate server). They are working on OpenLMI which provides Linux with WBEM management functions. Their Atomic host project is also very interesting. Again, all opensource.

As far as systemd goes. So far I like it. It hasn't burned me at all. Quite the opposite, it has made it easier to write init scripts for our in-house software.

Oh, and BTW, you did hear that the FreeBSD is considering replacing their init system, right? Maybe even something like systemd or launchd (see http://www.slideshare.net/iXsystems/jordan-hubbard-free-bsd-the-next-10-years

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