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NASA

3-D Printable Food Gets Funding From NASA 241

Posted by Soulskill
from the enjoy-a-tasty-extrudel dept.
cervesaebraciator writes "According to Quartz, '[Anjan Contractor's] Systems & Materials Research Corporation just got a six month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype of his universal food synthesizer. But Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3-D printing, envisions a much more mundane — and ultimately more important — use for the technology. He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3-D printer, and the earth's 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store. Contractor's vision would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store.' No word yet on whether anyone other than the guy trying to sell the technology thinks it'll make palatable food."
Government

Former Microsoft Managers Now In Charge of Washington State's Budget 126

Posted by Soulskill
from the with-special-advisor-Clippy dept.
reifman writes "The Seattle Times reports, 'For the first time in state history, the Washington state budget is being written by Microsofties,' Representative Ross Hunter has 'tamed his Microsoft-style head-butting with a politician's trust-building.' Senator Andy Hill is 'the first Senate budget chair ever to request Excel files instead of paper spreadsheets.' 'The two must find $1 billion in new money for the state's K-12 system.' Unfortunately, The Times neglects to mention that Hunter and Microsoft are among those behind the deficit and cutbacks in the first place. Hunter helped pass the amnesty bill for Microsoft's $1.5 billion Nevada tax dodge ($4.37 billion if you include impacts from its lobbying to reduce tax rates) that contributed to $4 billion in cuts to K-12 and higher education since 2008. The state has resorted to using Yelp to tax dancing to try to make up the shortfall (for real)."
Spam

Suspect Arrested In Spamhaus DDoS Attack 95

Posted by Soulskill
from the distributed-denial-of-liberty-attack dept.
New submitter apenzott writes "According to the BBC, a Dutch citizen has been arrested by Spanish police who suspect he was behind the recent Spamhaus DDOS attack, one of the biggest such attacks ever. 'The man arrested is believed to be Sven Kamphuis, the owner and manager of Dutch hosting firm Cyberbunker that has been implicated in the attack.' According to a press release from the Dutch Public Prosecutor (Google translation of Dutch original), the 35-year-old man's computers and other devices have been seized as evidence. The man will be transferred from Spain to the Netherlands shortly. 'Spamhaus is delighted at the news that an individual has been arrested and is grateful to the Dutch police for the resources they have made available and the way they have worked with us,' said a Spamhaus spokesman."
Crime

Crowdsourcing Failed In Boston Bombing Aftermath 270

Posted by timothy
from the well-not-entirely dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "With emotions high in the hours and days following the Boston Marathon bombing, hundreds of people took to Reddit's user-generated forums to pick over images from the crime scene. Could a crowd of sharp-eyed citizens uncover evidence of the perpetrators? No, but they could definitely focus attention on the wrong people. 'Though started with noble intentions, some of the activity on reddit fueled online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties,' read an April 22 posting on Reddit's official blog. 'The reddit staff and the millions of people on reddit around the world deeply regret that this happened.'"
GNU is Not Unix

Rare Photos: Gnu Crashing a Windows 8 Launch Event 313

Posted by Soulskill
from the somebody-call-attenborough dept.
New submitter Atticus Rex writes "Reporters and security guards at the Windows 8 launch event weren't sure how to react when they were greeted by a real, live gnu. The gnu — which, on closer inspection, was an activist in a gnu suit — had come for some early trick-or-treating. But instead of candy, she had free software for the eager journalists. The gnu and the Free Software Foundation campaigns team handed out dozens of copies of Trisquel, a fully free GNU/Linux distribution, along with press releases and stickers. Once they got over their confusion, the reporters were happy to see us and hear our message — that Windows 8 is a downgrade, not an upgrade, because it steals users' freedom, security and privacy."
Power

Dominion Announces Plans To Close Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station In 2013 217

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the natural-gas-is-forever dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Due to low electricity prices in the Midwest, and an inability to find a buyer for the power station, Dominion will be shutting down and decomissioning Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station. One of two operating nuclear power stations in Wisconsin, Kewaunee's license from the NRC was not due to expire until the end of 2033."

Comment: Re:Getting tired of Apple lawsuits (Score 3, Interesting) 738

by beuges (#40970275) Attached to: Why Apple Is Suing Every Android Manufacturer In Sight

Except MS has already been held responsible for their actions (from over 10 years ago), and all indications are that the company has changed drastically for the better in the past few years - stability- and security-wise.

Meanwhile, Apple is trying to drive all their competitors out of business not by putting out better products and competing on merit, but by abusing the legal system due to their vast cash reserves with ridiculous "rounded corner rectangle" design patents.

MS did some bad stuff a long time ago. They have paid for it (literally), and they are no longer the same company they were back then. Apple is doing bad stuff right now, yet all indications are that for the next 20 years we'll still be constantly reminded of Microsoft's already-paid-for behaviour from the 90s, but Apple will still be lauded as a magical untouchable company despite their unpaid-for behaviour from today.

Your analogies are quite ridiculous, and have nothing to do with the topic at hand.

GUI

You Can't Bypass the UI Formerly Known As Metro On Windows 8 444

Posted by timothy
from the should-you-choose-to-accept-it dept.
colinneagle writes with this excerpt from Network World: "The final build of Windows 8 has already leaked to torrent sites, which is giving the propellerheads a chance to dig through the code. One revelation will probably not sit well with enterprise customers: you can't bypass the don't-call-it-Metro UI. Normally, you have to boot Windows 8 and when the tiled desktop UI (formerly known as Metro) came up, you had to click on one of the boxes to launch Explorer. Prior builds of Windows 8 allowed the user to create a shortcut so you bypass Metro and go straight to the Explorer desktop. Rafael Rivera, co-author of the forthcoming Windows 8 Secrets, confirmed to Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet that Microsoft does indeed block the boot bypass routine from prior builds. He also believes that Microsoft has blocked the ability for administrators to use Group Policy to allow users to bypass the tiled startup screen. There had been hope that Microsoft would at least relent and let corporate users have a bypass, if only for compatibility's sake."

Comment: Re:Approach #4 (Score 1) 521

by beuges (#40875807) Attached to: UEFI Secure Boot and Linux: Where Things Stand

That's one of the points of requiring that ARM win8 tablets are not allowed to disable secure boot. If MS subsidizes ARM tablets to drive sales, they don't want people buying cheap tablets in order to install another OS at their (literal) expense.
The implementation allows for the installation of other operating systems but only if they've been signed by a MS key (well, any key, but the only ones that will be installed on a win8 ARM tablet will be MS's). They'll be able to charge for that signing process, and recover their subsidy in that way.
The other point is that since the only way to put new software on an ARM win8 tablet is via the app store, they want to ensure that intercepting the boot sequence to install an exploit that bypasses or interferes with the app store is blocked by requiring that the entire boot chain is trusted.
Whether they get it right is yet to be seen, but those are the reasons.

Microsoft

Microsoft Surface Release Date Confirmed 175

Posted by samzenpus
from the coming-to-a-store-near-you dept.
twoheadedboy writes "Microsoft is going to release its Surface tablet on the same day Windows 8 goes on general availability, Oct. 26. The news was disclosed in a filing made with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which also revealed that the company expects launch and the accompanying marketing to harm its profits. We'll soon find out whether Microsoft has what it takes to take on the seemingly indomitable iPad."
Chrome

Chrome Hacked In 5 Minutes At Pwn2Own 169

Posted by samzenpus
from the what-took-so-long? dept.
Skuto writes "After offering a total prize fund of up to $1M for a successful Chrome hack, it seems Google got what it wanted (or not!). No more than 5 minutes into the Pwn2Own cracking contest team Vupen exploited 2 Chrome bugs to demonstrate a total break of Google's browser. They will win at least 60k USD out of Google's prize fund, as well as taking a strong option on winning the overall Pwn2Own prize. It also illustrates that Chrome's much lauded sandboxing is not a silver bullet for browser security."
Hardware

NVIDIA Is Joining the Linux Foundation 113

Posted by samzenpus
from the welcome-to-the-team dept.
Norsefire writes "NVIDIA is joining the Linux Foundation, along with three other to-be-announced companies. From the article: 'As one of the three big makers of graphics chips for PCs--the other two are Intel and AMD, both of which are longtime Linux Foundation members--Nvidia's increased participation in Linux could be big news for users of the free and open source operating system. Nvidia has long taken a closed approach to Linux drivers for its graphics cards, offering only a proprietary one and declining to participate in the open source Nouveau driver project, which has depended instead on reverse engineering.'"

Comment: Re:Well (Score 1) 372

by beuges (#38995771) Attached to: Microsoft Details Windows 8 for ARM

Except that Metro on WOA will run the exact same binaries that Metro on Win8 x86/x64 will (except for those few that use native code).

Windows, as a platform, probably has a larger base of developers than both iOS and Android, and anyone publishing a Metro app to the new Windows App Store will have it available to WOA users automatically.

So, assuming that developers start making use of the beta that's coming out end of this month and start writing apps to target Win8's new Metro interface, without even knowing or caring about WOA, this will mean that WOA will have a decent enough supply of software at launch.

Books

What Could Have Been In the Public Domain Today, But Isn't 412

Posted by timothy
from the happy-new-year dept.
SgtChaireBourne writes "Many works published in 1955 would have entered the public domain this year. Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has an overview of the movies, books, songs and historical works that are kept out of the public domain by changes to copyright law since 1978. Instead of seeing these enter the public domain in 2012, we will have to wait until 2051 before being able to use these works without restriction."

Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse. -- Oscar Wilde Most UNIX programmers are great masters of style. -- The Unnamed Usenetter

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