×
Open Source

Submission + - DIY Web-Controlled Robot that takes 1 hour to build (pinocc.io)

Submitted by
fixpert
fixpert writes: "We hooked up Pinoccio (an Open Source, wireless Arduino-compatible microcontroller) to a Pololu 3pi Robot to create an unmanned rover that can be driven via the Web. We posted a quick video where you can see us driving our Web Rover in Nevada all the way from Brazil. We used the iPhone's built-in accelerometer as a super-intuitive interface for driving the bot. You can read all about the project — how we built it, what you need to make your own (including source code), and a simulator of the accelerometer interface that you can play with. We're hoping to make Pinoccio the perfect platform for Software Developers to learn how to hack on DIY hardware."
Google

Submission + - More details on Google Pixels found in ChromeOS source (myce.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Details on the Google Pixel have been found in the ChromeOS source code. The device will have a 2056x1700 touchscreen, an Intel IvyBridge Celeron CPU, LTE support and a back-lit keyboard. It's also interesting to note that Sergey Brin has posted a picture of a jellyfish that's similar (colorwise) to the jellyfish in the Google Pixel video. The Pixel is codenamed Link in the ChromeOS source code which contains many references to the device.
Censorship

Submission + - Philippine cybercrime law put on indefinite hold (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Supreme Court of the Philippines has put an indefinite hold on a controversial law that would, among other things, ban cybersex and porn.

A host of groups, particularly journalists, had resoundingly criticized the law, the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, as broad and out of touch with how the Internet works. The Philippines’ National Union of Journalists, for example, called its definition of libel “a threat not only against the media and other communicators but anyone in the general public who has access to a computer and the Internet.”
Earth

Submission + - North Dakota Proposes Ban on Natural Gas Flaring after One Year (bismarcktribune.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: A North Dakota lawmaker has proposed a bill that would ban flaring at oil and natural gas sites after one year of that site's operation. ISS footage has revealed that now large swaths of North Dakota are illuminated at night due simply to flaring from Bakken oil and natural gas drilling. Democratic Sen. Tim Mathern, proposer of the bill, said "It’s bringing a higher quality of life to western North Dakota, it’s putting an end to waste (and) it’s addressing the issue of climate change" and "This is taking a, what I’d call, a step-wise approach in addressing health and waste." In 2011, waste from global flaring equivocated to a fourth of the United State's natural gas consumption. The major difference between this bill and current law is that no exemptions whatsoever will be made. Mathern claimed that 30 percent of natural gas is flared in western North Dakota compared to the national average which is in single digits.
Chrome

Submission + - Has the local browser cache become useless? 1

Submitted by lesincompetent
lesincompetent writes: Think about it. In this age of high end hardware and relatively high bandwidth, storing things on a device many orders of magnitude slower than any other is something we should get rid of. Even for static content: is it really worth the disk I\O effort? How much page loading time am i saving? Not to mention the fact that browser caches are among the first causes of system littering. It's been many years now since the last time i had a browser with disk caching enabled on any of my systems (besides chrome, unfortunately, because you can't deactivate it.)
Android

Submission + - Android phones are connecting without carrier networks (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: While the cellphone network in Haiti survived the devastating earthquake in 2010, the added load of international aid workers who arrived in the aftermath caused it to crash. Josh Thomas and Jeff Robble, both working at Mitre, saw this problem and created a working prototype backup network using only the Wi-Fi chips on Android smartphones. This capability won’t be shipped on new mobile phones anytime soon, but it is a really interesting open innovation project to understand and follow, and for some an Android project to which they might contribute.

The Smart Phone Ad-Hoc Networks (SPAN) project reconfigures the onboard Wi-Fi chip of a smartphone to act as a Wi-Fi router with other nearby similarly configured smartphones, creating an ad-hoc mesh network. These smartphones can then communicate with one another without an operational carrier network. SPAN intercepts all communications at the Global Handset Proxy so applications such as VoIP, Twitter, email etc., work normally.
Programming

Submission + - Can You Do The Regular Expression Crossword? (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Programmers often say that regular expressions are fun ... but now they can be a whole lot of fun in a completely new way. Want to try your hand at a regular expression crossword?
The idea is simple enough — create a crossword style puzzle with regular expressions are the "clues". In case you don't know what a regular expression is — it is a way of specifying what characters are allowed using wild-card characters and more. For example a dot matches any single character, an * any number of characters and so on.
The regular expression crossword is more a sort of Sudoku style puzzle than crossword however because the clues determine the pattern the the entries in a row have to satisfy. It also has to use a hexagonal grid to provide three regular expressions to control each entry.
This particular regular expression crossword was part of this year's MIT Mystery Hunt, and if you don't know anything about it then good — because it could waste a lot of time. This annual event is crammed with a collection of very difficult problems and the regular expression crossword, created by Dan Gulotta from an idea by Palmer Mebane, was just a small part of the whole — and yes there is a solution.
http://www.coinheist.com/rubik/a_regular_crossword/grid.pdf
Programming

Submission + - Learn COBOL, Because It Will Outlive Us All (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Here's an old computer science joke: What's the difference between hardware and software? If you use hardware long enough, it breaks. If you use software long enough, it works. The truth behind that is the reason that so much decades-old COBOL code is out there still driving crucial applications and banks and other huge companies. Many attempts to replace COBOL applications flopped in the 1980s and '90s, and we're stuck with them for the foreseeable future — but the Baby Boomers who wrote all that code are now retiring en masse. So if you want a successful IT career, you should probably learn COBOL."

Submission + - Adobe bows to pressure and cuts Australian prices (afr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Software giant Adobe has bowed to public pressure and slashed the price of some of its products for Australian customers a day after being ordered to front a parliamentary committee hearing to explain its excessive charges.

Submission + - North Korea Conducts Third Nuclear Test (cnn.com)

Submitted by WolfeCanada
WolfeCanada writes: North Korea apparently conducted a widely anticipated nuclear test Tuesday, strongly indicated by an "explosion-like" earthquake that monitoring agencies around the globe said appeared to be unnatural.
Science

Submission + - Drug Testing in Mice May Be A Waste of Time, Researchers Warn 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A group of researchers including Dr. H. Shaw Warren of Mass. General Hospital and Stanford genomics researcher Ronald W. Davis have published a paper challenging the effectiveness of the "mouse model" as a basis for medical research, based on a decade-long study involving 39 doctors and scientists across the country. In clincal studies of sepsis (a severe inflammatatory disorder caused by the immune system's abnormal response to a pathogen), trauma, and burns, the researchers found that certain drugs triggered completely different genetic responses in mice compared with humans. The Warren-Davis paper was rejected by both Science and Nature before its acceptance by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, perhaps suggesting the degree to which the "mouse model" has become entrenched within the medical research community. Ninety five percent of the laboratory animals used in research are mice or rats. Mice in particular are ideal subjects for research: they are cheap to obtain and house, easy to handle, and share at least 80 percent of their genes with humans (by some reckoning, closer to 99 percent). Over the past twenty five years, powerful methods of genetically engineering mice by "knocking out" individual genes have become widely adopted, so that use of mice for drug testing prior to human clinical trials has become standard procedure.
Piracy

Submission + - Indie Game Dev Delights Pirate Bay (torrentfreak.com) 1

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Over the weekend a torrent of the game Anodyne was uploaded to The Pirate Bay and to the delight of observers was greeted with a positive attitude from its creators. 'It’s neat that Anodyne’s here and I’m glad that means more people can play it, though of course we’d love it if you bought the game,' the author Sean Hogan commented. Adding to the fun, Hogan posted up some codes so people could download the game for free from Desura. In an interesting turn, the torrent has later disappeared. The Pirate Bay is well-known for not removing torrents to any content — maybe the uploader started to feel bad about his act later?
DRM

Submission + - W3C declare DRM in scope for HTML, big business supports Web DRM - Schism looms (w3.org) 1

Submitted by FredAndrews
FredAndrews writes: The W3C has ruled DRM in-scope for their HTML standard. A lot of big businesses have supported advancing the Encrypted Media Extension (EME), including Google, Microsoft, and Netfix. The BBC calls for a solution with legal sanstions. The EME could well be used to implement a DRM HTML engine. A DRM enabled web would break a long tradition of the web browser being the User's Agent, and would restrict user choice and control over their security and privacy. There are other applications that can serve the purpose of viewing DRM video content, and I appeal to people to not taint the web standards with DRM but to please use other applications when necessary.

Submission + - Judge hints at jail time for porn troll Prenda Law (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by rudy_wayne
rudy_wayne writes: A federal judge in Los Angeles has suggested serious penalties for Brett Gibbs, an attorney at porn copyright trolling firm Prenda Law. Facing allegations of fraud and identity theft, Gibbs will be required to explain himself at a March 11 hearing. And if Judge Otis Wright isn't satisfied with his answers, he may face fines and even jail time.

The identity theft allegations emerged late last year, when a Minnesota man named Alan Cooper told a Minnesota court he suspected Prenda Law named him as the CEO of two litigious offshore holding companies without his permission. Worried about exposing himself to potential liability for the firms' misconduct, Cooper asked the court to investigate the situation. Cooper's letter was spotted by Morgan Pietz, an attorney who represents "John Doe" defendants in California. He notified Judge Wright of the allegations.

Slashdot Top Deals