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Comment Re:Anything happen when he was gone? (Score 2) 395

by IPFreely (#57516761) Attached to: Linus Torvalds is Back in Charge of Linux
The conduct issue aside, the other question of how Linux survives without Linus is certainly important.

Over the years, he has set up a highly hierarchical power structure based on trust and loyalty with him at the top. Sort of dictatorial. That is not necessarily a bad thing as long as he manages it with the right goals in mind, and he seems to have done that fairly well.
(It was often said the best leadership is a benevolent monarchy.)
I think this speaks to strong focused goals and the ability to exclude trying to manage things that are not part of his focus. This would include trying to manage culture as part of the development community. He said as much in his letter. When the single leader tries to manage culture, it will invariably go wrong somewhere.There are too many opinions and to much incompatibility to succeed in this alone. Some amount of exclusion is almost inevitable. But avoiding managing it can also lead to some level of chaos and the culture we see now.

Going forward, we probably should consider two paths for Linux development without Linus.
The first is to maintain the hierarchical structure by putting someone else in that place. It could work for a while, if you can find someone who is properly focused like Linus was. If you find someone focused on software first and culture second (or not at all) you probably will end up with a quality OS and similar environment. If you end up with someone who is not quite as well focused as Linus and who does end up trying to manage culture, then it is highly likely the quality of the software will go down.

The other option is to change the leadership structure completely to something more community based and/or democratic. This could be able to handle both software quality and culture, but will very likely lower efficiency. Many distributions have done this with varying degrees of success.

Managing culture is hard enough under any circumstances. There will always be differences in opinion, incompatibility and preferences, and usually some conflict about what the priorities should be. If there is a single leader, then there will be a single point for focusing conflict. If there is a broader community and some democracy, then at least the blame for certain priorities can be spread out and excused with "majority rules". It is more about defusing incompatibility than curing it. A single person simply cannot do that by the design of the hierarchy, even if they have the support of the majority. And we don't really know if Linus had that.

Submission + - Stealthy, tricky to remove rootkit targets Linux systems on ARM and x86 (pcworld.com)

Submitted by Kinwolf
Kinwolf writes: Security researchers have identified a new family of Linux rootkits that, despite running from user mode, can be hard to detect and remove. Called Umbreon, after a Pokémon character that hides in the darkness, the rootkit has been in development since early 2015, runs from user mode but hijacks libc system calls. According to malware researchers from antivirus firm Trend Micro, Umbreon is a so-called ring 3 rootkit, meaning that it runs from user mode and doesn't need kernel privileges. Despite this apparent limitation, it is quite capable of hiding itself and persisting on the system.

Submission + - Publishers must let online readers pay for news anonymously (theguardian.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: The Guardian has an opinion piece by Richard Stallman which argues that we should be able to pay for news anonymously.
From the article:
"Online newspapers and magazines have come to depend, for their income, on a system of advertising and surveillance, which is both annoying and unjust.
Readers are rebelling by installing ad blockers, which cut into the publisher’s surveillance-based income. And in response, some sites are cutting off access to readers unless they accept being surveilled. What they ought to do instead is give us a truly anonymous way to pay."
He also (probably not coincidentally) has developed a method to do just that.
"For the GNU operating system, which was created by the free software movement and is typically used with the kernel Linux, we are developing a suitable payment system called GNU Taler that will allow publishers to accept anonymous payments from readers for individual articles. "

Submission + - How stingray is zapping the fourth amendment

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: How Militarized Cops Use the Intrusive Technology Stingray, and Much More, to Intrude on Our Rights — Police nationwide are secretly exploiting intrusive technologies with the feds' complicity.

Thanks to this call-and-response process, the Stingray knows both what cell phones are in the area and where they are. In other words, it gathers information not only about a specific suspect, but any bystanders in the area as well. While the police may indeed use this technology to pinpoint a suspect’s location, by casting such a wide net there is also the potential for many kinds of constitutional abuses—for instance, sweeping up the identities of every person attending a demonstration or a political meeting. Some Stingrays are capable of collecting not only cell phone ID numbers but also numbers those phones have dialed and even phone conversations. In other words, the Stingray is a technology that potentially opens the door for law enforcement to sweep up information that not so long ago wouldn’t have been available to them.

This is why it matters who wins the mayor and city council races. Localities do not have to accept this technology.

Power

Scientists: Electric Vehicles Produce As Many Toxins As Dirty Diesels (dailymail.co.uk) 555

Posted by BeauHD from the contrary-to-popular-belief dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Thanks to ongoing efforts to reduce engine emissions, nowadays only 10% to 15% of particulate emissions from traffic are coming from vehicles' tailpipes. The remainder originates in tire, road surface and brake wear. A study by Victor Timmers and Peter Achten published in Atmospheric Environment has now found that the extra weight of electric vehicles causes non-tailpipe emissions to increase by about as much as the omission of the internal combustion engine saves. Atmospheric particulates have been shown to cause cancer, cardiovascular disease and respiratory diseases and are widely considered as the most harmful form of air pollution. Achten said, "We found that non-exhaust emissions, from brakes, tires and the road, are far larger than exhaust emissions in all modern cars. These are more toxic than emissions from modern engines so they are likely to be key factors in the extra heart attacks, strokes and asthma attacks seen when air pollution levels surge." The study shows that non-exhaust emissions a vehicle produces is directly related to its weight. Scientists found that electric and eco-friendly vehicles weighed around 24 percent more than conventional vehicles, which in turn contributes to more wear on the tires.

Submission + - Sci-hub domain been shut down by Elsevier (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Several ‘backup’ domain names are still in play, including Sci-Hub.bz and Sci-Hub.cc

In addition to the alternative domain names users can access the site directly through the IP-address 31.184.194.81

Its TOR domain is also still working — http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion/

Authorized or not, there is definitely plenty of interest in Sci-Hub’s service. The site currently hosts more than 51 million academic papers and receives millions of visitors per month

Many visits come from countries where access to academic journals is limited, such as Iran, Russia or China. But even in countries where access is more common, many researchers visit the site, an analysis from Science magazine revealed last week
NASA

New NASA Launch Control Software Late, Millions Over Budget (go.com) 205

Posted by BeauHD from the three-two-one-delayed dept.
schwit1 writes: The launch control software NASA is writing from scratch for its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is way behind schedule and way over budget. According to ABC News, "Development of this new launch control software is now projected to exceed $207 million, 77 percent above 2012 projections. The software won't be ready until fall 2017, instead of this summer as planned, and important capabilities like automatic failure detection, are being deferred, the audit noted. The system is vital, needed to control pumps, motors, valves and other ground equipment during countdowns and launches, and to monitor data before and during liftoff. NASA decided to write its own computer code to "glue together" existing software products a decade ago -- while space shuttles still were flying and commercial shippers had yet to service the space station. Both delivery companies, SpaceX and Orbital ATK, rely on commercial software, the audit noted."

In other words, even though NASA could have simply purchased already available software that other launch companies were using successfully, the agency decided to write its own. And that decision really didn't come before the arrival of these commercial companies, because when it was made a decade ago that was exactly the time that SpaceX was beginning to build its rocket. This is simply more proof that SLS is nothing more than a pork-laden waste of money designed not to explore space but to generate non-productive jobs in congressional districts.

Submission + - Mass surveillance silences minority opinions, according to study

Submitted by sittingnut
sittingnut writes: According to a study(pdf) by Elizabeth Stoycheff, from Wayne State University, published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, and referred to in Washington Post, "knowing one is subject to surveillance and accepting such surveillance as necessary, act as moderating agents in the relationship between one’s perceived climate of opinion and willingness to voice opinions online." In other words, "knowledge of government surveillance causes people to self-censor their dissenting opinions online". This study adds to the well-researched phenomenon, known as “spiral of silence”, of people suppressing unpopular opinions to fit in, by explicitly examining how government surveillance affects self-censorship. Participants who claimed, they don't break any laws and don't have anything to hide, and tended to support mass surveillance as necessary for national security, were the most likely to silence their minority opinions.

Comment Here's how (Score 1) 234

by IPFreely (#47939031) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Pick Up Astronomy and Physics As an Adult?
I've gone through this. Here's how you do it.

Start gathering a few popular science books on subjects directly on and also near to your goal. Some people reject popular science books as too light weight, but it does have value. This exposes you to the variety of subjects in and around your interest. You might not have been aware of some aspects of your topic and you are introduced to them here without too much effort. You also learn to associate detailed technical topics to the wider areas where they are used.

Read the whole book. Books are better than random google searches and videos because they will guide you into areas you might not have considered relevant. Broadening your base knowledge will allow you to make a more informed decision about your favorite topics. Once you have a broader and more informed understanding of the topics and areas involved, you are better able to identify your interests, or even switch interests.

That is when you start going into a more detailed dive into your target topic. Follow through and read the whole thing. Again, pick one or more text books or deeper science books. The purpose again is to guide you into areas you might not have considered before.

This time, you will hit lots of technical subjects that you might not know. That is when you go searching for online information, wikipedia, online course videos, Youtube content or other textbooks. For these, you will only need to cover enough to support your primary interest, and you will have a fairly good idea how much that is.

You are not going to go professional with this, but it will be more than enough to keep your interest up and curiosity satisfied.

Submission + - India forged Google SSL certificates

Submitted by NotInHere
NotInHere writes: As Google writes on its Online Security Blog, the National Informatics Centre of India (NIC) used its intermediate CA certificate issued by Indian CCA, to issue several unauthorized certificates for Google domains, allowing to do Man in the middle attacks. Possible impact however is limited, as, according to Google, the root certificates for the CA were only installed on Windows, which Firefox doesn't use, and for the Chrom{e,ium} browser, the CA for important Google domains is pinned to the Google CA.
According to its website, the NIC CA has suspended certificate issuance, and according to Google, its root certificates were revoked by Indian CCA.

Submission + - How Vacuum Tubes, New Technology Might Save Moore's Law (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The transistor is one of the most profound innovations in all of human existence. First discovered in 1947, it has scaled like no advance in human history; we can pack billions of transistors into complicated processors smaller than your thumbnail. After decades of innovation, however, the transistor has faltered. Clock speeds stalled in 2005 and the 20nm process node is set to be more expensive than the 28nm node was for the first time ever. Now, researchers at NASA believe they may have discovered a way to kickstart transistors again — by using technology from the earliest days of computing: The vacuum tube. It turns out that when you shrink a Vacuum transistor to absolutely tiny dimensions, you can recover some of the benefits of a vacuum tube and dodge the negatives that characterized their usage. According to a report, vacuum transistors can draw electrons across the gate without needing a physical connection between them. Make the vacuum area small enough, and reduce the voltage sufficiently, and the field emission effect allows the transistor to fire electrons across the gap without containing enough energy to energize the helium inside the nominal "vacuum" transistor. According to researchers, they've managed to build a successful transistor operating at 460GHz — well into the so-called Terahertz Gap, which sits between microwaves and infrared energy.

Submission + - Mt. Gox CEO Returns to Twitter, Enrages Burned Investors

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mark Karpeles doesn't seem to understand how much anger and trouble the $400 million Mt. Gox fiasco caused his customers. According to Wired: "After a long absence, the Mt Gox CEO has returned to Twitter with a bizarre string of tone-deaf tweets that were either written by a Turing test chat bot, or by a man completely oblivious to the economic chaos he has wrought. His first message after losing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins? 'What would we do without busybox?'—a reference to a slimmed-down Linux operating system used on devices such as routers. He’s also Tweeted about a noodle dish called yakisoba and Japanese transportation systems." Andreas Antonopoulos, the CSO with Blockchain says, "He continues to be oblivious about his own failure and the pain he has caused others. He is confirming that he is a self-absorbed narcissist with an inflated sense of self-confidence who has no remorse.”

Submission + - German Intel Agency Helps NSA Tap Fiber Optic Cables in Germany 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Der Spiegel has written a piece on the extent of collaboration between Germany's intelligence agency, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and the U.S.'s National Security Agency (NSA). The sources cited in the piece do reveal BND's enthusiastic collusion in enabling the NSA to tap fiber optic cables in Germany, but they seem inconclusive as to how much information from the NSA's collection activity in the country is actually shared between the NSA and BND. Of note is evidence that the NSA's collection methods do not automatically exclude German companies and organizations from their data sweep; intelligence personnel have to rectro-actively do so on an individual basis when they realize that they are surveilling German targets. Germany's constitution protects against un-warranted surveillance of correspondence, either by post or telecommunications, of German citizens in Germany or abroad and foreigners on German soil.

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