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Submission + - Crowdfunding Campaign Seeks A Libre Recording Of A Newly-Completed Bach Work

Submitted by DevNull127
DevNull127 writes: Robert Douglass's 2012 Kickstarter campaigns resulted in free fan-funded, open source recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations and the 48 pieces in his Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1. "Even Richard Stallman found these recordings, and he promptly wrote an email encouraging us to drop the word 'Open' in favor of 'Free' or 'Libre'," Douglas tells BoingBoing (adding "when RMS writes you telling you to change the name of your music project, you change the name of your music project.")

Now Douglass is crowdfunding a libre recording of Bach's last masterpiece, 20 fugues developed from a single theme called "the Art of the Fugue". "He wanted to culminate in a final fugue that literally spells his name, B-A-C-H, in musical notation," remembers Douglass, but "unfortunately, Bach died before completing that work, and it has remained a musical mystery (and tragedy) for hundreds of years." Fortunately Kimiko Ishizaka completed the work in 2016, "based on the music that Bach left us... This new composition will also be released under a Creative Commons license as part of the new OpenScore.cc project. "Kimiko is eminently grateful to her fans and supporters of free culture for allowing her to focus all of her energies on growing the public domain and bringing the music of J.S. Bach to a far broader audience than ever imagined."

Submission + - 28 Years Later, Pioneering Tech Magazine Mondo 2000 Relaunches Online (vice.com)

Submitted by DevNull127
DevNull127 writes: "It was my idea to merge psychedelics and emerging technologies, and the culture around technology," Sirius said, citing Timothy Leary, writer Robert Anton Wilson and counterculture magazine The Whole Earth Catalog among his inspirations... "I kind of found my way into that particular stream of bohemian culture. It was probably a minority, but there had always been that idea of letting robots replace human work." Soon High Frontiers evolved into a glossy magazine, Reality Hackers ("Some distributors at the time thought it was about hacking people up, and put it on the shelf next to murder mystery magazines") , and later Mondo 2000, which ran from 1989 till 1998...

"We really had to work to convince people that technology was defining the future. Nobody really got it. Doug Rushkoff wrote his book Cyberia, and his first book company cancelled its publication because they said the internet was a fad and that it would be over by the time the book came out"... While he uses Facebook and Twitter, Sirius is critical of their role in colonising what was once a more democratic and open space. "People being are being herded into little buildings — or huge ones — in what was supposed to be a wide open space in which everybody created their own sites. It's a complete corporate takeover of the net, Facebook in particular It's definitely not what we were expecting." Still, Sirius retains a certain optimism, a sense that we'll find a way through the noise... "There's the old Jefferson Starship line, from the 70s, ' Hijack the starship'. But someone has to build the starship first in order for you to hijack it..."

Submission + - Amateur drone lands on, takes off from Biritish air-carrier (bbc.com)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: The Ministry of Defence is reviewing security after a tiny drone landed on the deck of Britain's biggest warship. The Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier was docked at Invergordon in the Highlands when an amateur photographer flew the drone close to the giant ship. When the aircraft sensed a high wind risk, it landed itself on the £3bn warship.

Submission + - The 2017 Hugo Awards

Submitted by Dave Knott
Dave Knott writes: The Hugo Awards, the most prestigious awards in science fiction, had their 2017 ceremony today, at WorldCon 75 in Helsinki, Finland.
The winners are:

Best Novel: The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
Best Novella: "Every Heart a Doorway" by Seanan McGuire
Best Novelette: "The Tomato Thief" by Ursula Vernon
Best Short Story: "Seasons of Glass and Iron", by Amal El-Mohtar
Best Related Work: Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016 by Ursula K Le Guin
Best Graphic Story: Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening , written by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda
Best Dramatic Presentation: Arrival , screenplay by Eric Heisserer based on a short story by Ted Chiang, directed by Denis Villeneuve
Best Dramatic Presentation: The Expanse: Leviathan Wakes , written by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, directed by Terry McDonough
Best Series: The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Ada Palmer

Just as they did last year, female creators have dominated the awards, with women taking home awards in the major categories—including N. K. Jemisin, who became the first woman to win the Hugo for Best Novel twice in a row since Lois McMaster Bujold did in 1991 and 1992.
This year’s slate of nominees, unlike the drama surrounding the 2016 and 2015 Hugos, was less impacted by the ballot-stuffing tactics of the “Rabid Puppies”, thanks to a change in the way nominees were voted for this year (including the fact no work could appear in more than one category) in an attempt to avoid tactical slate picks.

Comment Entire BUtterfield clan supports (Score 3, Interesting) 140

  THis is interesting coincidence::
https://www.comcastroturf.com/
enter Butterfield as search term
End up at
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/searc...?

With results of 17 Butterfield surnames all reporting
exact same text . All submitted their FCC filing
on exact same date. Huh.

I"m sure there is nothing to see here so safe
to assume FCC will just accept them all as legit.

Submission + - Best Way to Mine Bitcoins - Allow Errors!

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A recent paper from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign shows that bitcoin mining profits can be increased considerably if mining hardware is allowed to produce occasional errors. The research shows that a mining hardware that allows occasional errors ("approximate mining") can run much faster and takes less area than a conventional miner. Furthermore, the errors are are produced by the miner do no corrupt the blockchain since such errors are easily detected and discarded by the bitcoin network. Mining profits can increase by over 30%.

Submission + - UK scientists designing cement to safely store nuclear waste for 100,000 years (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A team of British scientists are working on designing a form of cement which could safely withstand the harmful effects of nuclear waste for thousands of years. The team at the UK's synchrotron science facility, Diamond Light Source, said the project will be vital as Britain looks to expand on its nuclear industry.

The team believe the new material is 50% better at reducing the impact of radiation than current storage solutions. The government is set to choose a location of where to store the estimated 300,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste which is estimated to have been accumulated by the UK by 2030.

Comment parcel data that definitively unreliable (Score 4, Interesting) 117

by UziBeatle (#49011759) Attached to: Google Earth Pro Now Available Free

parcel data that definitively defines property boundaries.

  BOGUS statement.

  As soon as I downloaded this I zoomed in on the area
I live in (somewhere in N. Galveston CO. , Texas)
and saw immediately the property lines were wrong.

Not by a small margin either. All property lines along
the road I live along were shifted by offset of around 20 to 30 feet.

  A further look at neighboring streets showed similar
offsets.

  In the linked article to the story the blog clown stated
this wondrous GM Pro could cheaply solve property disputes (or words to that effect).

    Yah, right. Nope. Might cause trouble but not a tool to cheaply determine property boundaries.

Unreliable, therefor useless.

  Anyone else care to check theirs? I imagine it varies region to region how useful it is but bottom line if wrong in this area it is most likely wrong in other far flung areas.
Science

Is an Octopus Too Smart For Us To Eat? 481

Posted by Soulskill from the no-use-crying-over-spilled-ink dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The New Yorker is running a piece on the ethical dilemma we face when considering octopus intelligence alongside our willingness to eat them. "Octopus intelligence is well documented: they have been known to open jars, guard their unhatched eggs for months or even years, and demonstrate personalities. Most famously, they can blast a cloud of ink to throw off predators, but even more impressive is the masterfully complex camouflage employed by several members of Cephalopoda (a class that also includes squid and cuttlefish)." While humans eat animals ranging widely in mental faculties, the octopus remains one of the smartest ones we do consume. And unlike pigs, for example, their population is not dependent on humanity to survive. As our scientific understanding of intelligence grows, these ethical debates will only come into sharper focus. Where do we draw the line?

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