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Firefox

Firefox 16 Released: More HTML5 Support 133

Today Mozilla released the final version of Firefox 16, which includes a number of new tools for developers. "A number of HTML5 code has been 'unprefixed,' which means that Mozilla has decided it has matured enough to run in the browser without causing instability. The newly unshackled HTML5 includes CSS3 Animations, Transforms, Transitions, Image Values, Values and Units, and IndexedDB. Two Web APIs that Mozilla helped to create, Battery API and Vibration API, are also now unprefixed. These changes help keep Firefox competitive, but it also sends a signal to developers that Mozilla thinks these are good enough to begin baking into their sites. It's a strong endorsement of the 'future-Web' tech." Here's the complete change list and the download page.
Wireless Networking

Russian Officials Consider Ban On Wi-Fi Use For Kids 110

dsinc writes that Russia's "Communications and Press Ministry has proposed banning children from using Wi-Fi networks in public, potentially making cafes, restaurants and other locations providing the service responsible for enforcing the law. An official with the ministry's Federal Mass Media Inspection Service, known as Roskomnadzor, said the ban should apply to people under 18 years old. Locations providing Wi-Fi access would be held legally responsible for implementing the rule, and failing to meet the proposed measure would result in a fine ranging from 20,000 rubles to 50,000 rubles ($640 to $1,600), Vedomosti reported Thursday." The law, ostensibly to "shield" children, would apply to a fairly broad definition of child — anyone under 18.
Operating Systems

OS Upgrades Powered By Git 92

JamieKitson writes "The latest Webconverger 15 release is the first Linux distribution to be automagically updatable from a Github repository. The chroot of the OS is kept natively in git's format and fuse mounted with git-fs. Webconverger fulfills the Web kiosk use case, using Firefox and competes indirectly with Google Chrome OS. Chrome OS also has an autoupdate feature, however not as powerful, unified & transparent as when simply using git."
Debian

Submission + - Steam for Linux to Arrive 'In a Few Days' (omgubuntu.co.uk)

sharksfan98 writes: "Steam’s arrival on Linux isn’t a secret – and even when it was it was a poorly kept one.

The company have been internally testing the Linux client for a while, and recently announced that an ‘external’ beta Linux users would be coming out ‘sometime in October’. No specific date was given.

But, today, a request from Canonical’s Bryce H. to Ubuntu developers has offered up a more definite time-frame – one that seems to be happening this week

He wrote in his request:

“Could an archive or SRU admin accept nvidia-common and jockey from the upload queue?

  These are needed for the Valve Steam release that happens in a few days.”

The bad-ish news is that only 1000 people will have access to the external beta to begin with. So as close as its release is it won’t be landing in the laps of everyone quite yet.

But it’s still exciting, no?"

China

Foxconn Workers On Strike Over iPhone 5 Production 184

itwbennett writes "That army of robotic assembly line workers we mentioned yesterday apparently can't get started soon enough. As many as 3,000-4,000 workers are on strike at Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory, upset at stricter quality control requirements with the iPhone 5 and having to work through a national holiday this week. 'According to workers, multiple iPhone 5 production lines from various factory buildings were in a state of paralysis for the entire day,' China Labor Watch said. Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo are both blocking searches in Chinese for 'Foxconn strikes.'"
Data Storage

Most SSDs Now Under a Dollar Per Gigabyte 187

crookedvulture writes "SSD prices continue plummeting. In just the past quarter, street prices have fallen by double-digit percentages for most models, with some slashed by 30% or more. We've reached the point where the majority of drives cost less than a dollar per gigabyte, and that's without the special coupon codes and mail-in rebates usually attached to weekly deals. Lower-capacity drives seem more resistant to deep price cuts, making 120-256GB offerings the best values right now. It's nice to see a new class of devices go from prohibitively expensive to eminently affordable in such a relatively short amount of time."
Networking

The Coming Internet Video Crash 419

snydeq writes "First, it was data caps on cellular, and now caps on wired broadband — welcome to the end of the rich Internet, writes Galen Gruman. 'People are still getting used to the notion that unlimited data plans are dead and gone for their smartphones. The option wasn't even offered for tablets. Now, we're beginning to see the eradication of the unlimited data plan in our broadband lines, such as cable and DSL connections. It's a dangerous trend that will threaten the budding Internet-based video business — whether from Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Windows Store, or Google Play — then jeopardize Internet services of all sorts. It's a complex issue, and though the villains are obvious — the telecom carriers and cable providers — the solutions are not. The result will be a metered Internet that discourages use of the services so valuable for work and play.'"
Open Source

Open Source Raspberry Pi WebIDE Alpha Released 26

ptorrone writes "Adafruit, the NYC based open-source hardware company led by Ladyada released their open-source Raspberry Pi WebIDE alpha today. Its goal is to be 'The easiest way to develop code on your Raspberry Pi.' To get up and running head on over to learn.adafruit.com/webide and follow the installation and setup instructions. It uses Bitbucket, and any code changes you make will be synced to your Bitbucket account. Adafruit chose Bitbucket over GitHub because they offer free secure accounts, which is very important for a Web-based IDE."

Submission + - Hiring Smokers – Banned In South Florida City (huffingtonpost.com) 3

Penurious Penguin writes: On October 2, City Commissioners of Delray Beach finalized a policy which prohibits agencies from hiring employees who use tobacco products. Delray Beach isn't alone though; other Florida cities such as Hollywood and Hallandale Beach, require prospective employees to sign affidavits declaring themselves tobacco-free for 12 months prior to the date of application. Throughout the states, both government and businesses are moving to ban tobacco-use beyond working hours. Many medical facilities, e.g. hospitals, have already, or intend to implement similar policy. In some more-aggressive environments referred to as nicotine-free, employee urine-samples can be taken and tested for any presence of nicotine, not excluding that from gum or patches. Employees testing positive can be terminated.

The primary rationale behind these policies has been frugality, citing greater insurance-costs for smokers, and the savings implied by eliminating them from the workforce. In some less aggressive situations, persistent smokers are imposed a "Tobacco User Surcharge" of $20 per paycheck and offered waived co-payments for smoking-cessation drugs.

Efforts to cut expenses and encourage better health seem perfectly normal. Policy prohibiting activities otherwise legal, but unbefitting a workplace environment also seem normal. However, employers or government defining employee's domestic lifestyles is a relatively new concept, especially when nothing illegal is involved. It would be difficult, if not impossible to argue that smoking is without consequences; but is breeching the boundaries of the household inconsequential?

Times do change, and adaptation is often a necessary burden. But have they changed so much that we'd now postpone the Manhattan project for 12 months because Oppenheimer had toked his pipe? Would we confine our vision to the Milky Way or snub the 1373 Cincinnati because Hubble smoked his? Would we shun relativity, or shelve the works of Tolkien because he and C. S. Lewis had done the same? If so, then where will it stop? Will we soon scan employees for signs of excessive sugar, trans-fats and cholesterol? Will we have authenticated and logged aerobics classes? I, for one, welcome answers from our new salubrious overlords.

Wireless Networking

Submission + - Don't sweat 802.11ac Wi-Fi - because 802.11ad will knock your socks off (networkworld.com)

alphadogg writes: While the Wi-Fi world is rightly abuzz over the rapidly approaching large-scale deployment of the new 802.11ac standard, experts at an Interop NY panel said this week that the 802.11ad standard is likely to be even more transformative. "802.11ac is an extension for pure mainstream Wi-Fi," said Sean Coffey, Realtek's director of standards and business development. "It's evolutionary. ... You're not going to see dramatically new use cases." By contrast, 802.11ad adds 60GHz connectivity to the previously used 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, potentially providing multi-gigabit connection speeds and dramatically broadening the number of applications for which wireless can be used.
Data Storage

Samsung Creates New File System F2Fs For Linux & Android 140

sfcrazy writes "Samsung has created a new Linux file system called F2FS. Jaegeuk Kim of Samsung writes on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: F2FS is a new file system carefully designed for the NAND flash memory-based storage devices. We chose a log structure file system approach, but we tried to adapt it to the new form of storage. Also we remedy some known issues of the very old log structured file system, such as snowball effect of wandering tree and high cleaning overhead."
Iphone

Submission + - Mainstream Media reviewer reveals how he was banned by Apple, reviews iPhone 5 (afr.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The folks at Apple really do believe in the Apple mantra, “It just works.” They believe in it so fiercely, they’ll punish journalists who suggest that Apple products don’t always just work, as I did in several reviews of the previous iPhone. When the iPhone 4S came out last year, I tested its voice response system Siri, and published some of Siri’s more absurd misinterpretations of my Australian accent. Apple officials accused me of fabricating the reviews because there was just no way that Siri, which just works, would make absurd responses like that.
For that and for other blasphemies against the Apple mantra – I once wrote about jailbreaking an iPad, which no one in their right mind would do, given the way iPads just work – I’m now on Apple’s unofficial but very real blacklist: I don’t get devices to review, and I don’t get invited to Apple briefings.

Apple

Submission + - Wozniak likes NBN so much, he's applying for Australian citizenship (afr.com)

An anonymous reader writes: It's a well known fact that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is a fan of Australia and now we know why. He supports a national broadband network — a scheme being rolled out by the Australian government to provide fibre "for everyone" — so much he's applying for citizenship, the Australian Financial Review reports. You can be assured that he's not giving up his American citizenship though, he told Brisbane radio.
Space

Milky Way Is Surrounded By Halo of Hot Gas 121

New submitter kelk1 writes "If the size and mass of this gas halo is confirmed, it also could be an explanation for what is known as the 'missing baryon' problem for the galaxy [...] a census of the baryons present in stars and gas in our galaxy and nearby galaxies shows at least half the baryons are unaccounted for [...] Although there are uncertainties, the work by Gupta and colleagues provides the best evidence yet that the galaxy's missing baryons have been hiding in a halo of million-kelvin gas that envelopes the galaxy."
Open Source

Submission + - iControlPad 2 - The Open Source Controller (kickstarter.com)

YokimaSun writes: "Over on Kickstarter a new project has been announced by the people who brought out the OpenPandora Console. The iControlPad 2 is an open source controller with support for the likes of iPhone, Android Phones, Ouya, Raspberry Pi and anything that has bluetooth or USB Connections and features 55 key Qwerty keyboard, Shoulder buttons, Twin analogue nubs, Dpad. The Kickstarter campaign is now halfway to their $150,000 goal with 18 days to go."

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