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Submission + - Github under js based "greatfire" DDoS attack, allegedly from chinese goverment

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: During the past two days, the popular code hosting site Github has been under a DDos attack, causing hickups in the service. As blogger Anthr@X reports from traceroute lists, the attack originated from MITM-modified javascript files for the chinese company Baidu's user tracking code, changing the unencrypted content as it passed through the great firewall of china, requesting the urls "github.com/greatfire/" and "github.com/cn-nytimes/".
People argue that the dislike of the chinese goverment of widespread VPN usage has caused it to arrange the attack, where only people accessing Baidu's services from outside the firewall would contribute to the DDoS. This wouldn't have been the first time of china doing this kind of "protest".

Comment Re:Markdown is gaining popularity again (Score 1) 204

by complex_pi (#45192231) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Do You Use Markdown and Pandoc?

"Feel like a programmer" isn't the problem. Knowing that something is technically correct, but being unable to instantly verify that it is aesthetically pleasing is a major hangup. Unless you're making a professional report, or writing a book, there's no benefit to: hand-encoding a text, rendering it, editing the code, re-rendering it, tweaking the code, re-re-rendering it, tweaking the code again, re-re-re-rendering it... ad infinitum. In order for all that work to be worth it, the project must call for absolute perfection.

For a vast majority of writings out there, "good enough" is good enough.

To me, "good enough" goes as follow: I type my text in LaTeX/org/rst/markdow depending on the context (scientific paper, random note, collaborative document, coding-related text) and that's it.

What I say when I learn LaTeX to someone is "LaTeX is there to make your life easy and save time, don't mess with the layout." The result is a nice layout and someone who didn't waste time wysiwyg-ing all the way, which takes a lot of time.
Math

Submission + - 10 ways to celebrate international Pi Day (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Welcome to March 14 (3.14) – international Pi Day — a day to pay homage to the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. To celebrate, each March 14 math-heads around the world unite to celebrate the math holiday in a variety of serious and goofy ways. Here's a collection of suggestions.

Comment What about improving scientists career paths? (Score 5, Insightful) 147

by complex_pi (#42965105) Attached to: Tech Leaders Create Most Lucrative Science Prize In History
If we want to have actual heroes doing the research that will lead to such prizes, why not give reasonable career path to scientists? Right now, heroes are first selected by "who is willing to stay in academia despite the working condition", which is not a very interesting criterion in my opinion.
Open Source

Submission + - Linux 3.8 released

Submitted by diegocg
diegocg writes: Linux kernel 3.8 has been released. This release includes support in Ext4 for embedding very small files in the inode, which greatly improves the performance for these files and saves some disk space. There is also a new Btrfs feature that allows to replace quickly a disk, a new filesystem F2FS optimized for SSDs, support of filesystem mount, UTS, IPC, PID, and network namespaces for unprivileged users, accounting of kernel memory in the memory resource controller, journal checksums in XFS, an improved NUMA policy redesign and, of course, the removal of support for 386 processors. Many small features and new drivers and fixes are also available. Here's the full list of changes.
IBM

Submission + - IBM creates first cheap, commercially viable, electronic-photonic integrated chi (extremetech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After more than a decade of research, and a proof of concept in 2010, IBM Research has finally cracked silicon nanophotonics (or CMOS-integrated nanophotonics, CINP, to give its full name). IBM has become the first company to integrate electrical and optical components on the same chip, using a standard 90nm semiconductor process. These integrated, monolithic chips will allow for cheap chip-to-chip and computer-to-computer interconnects that are thousands of times faster than current state-of-the-art copper and optical networks. Where current interconnects are generally measured in gigabits per second, IBM’s new chip is already capable of shuttling data around at terabits per second, and should scale to peta- and exabit speeds.
Graphics

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Best Laptop With Decent Linux Graphics Support? 4

Submitted by jcreus
jcreus writes: After struggling for some years with Nvidia cards (the laptop from which I am writing this has two graphic cards, an Intel one and Nvidia one, and is a holy mess [I still haven't been able to use the Nvidia card]) and, encouraged by Torvalds' middle finger speech, I've decided to ditch Nvidia for something better. I am expecting to buy another laptop and, this time, I'd like to get it right from the start. It would be interesting if it had decent graphics support and, in general, were Linux friendly. While I know Dell has released a Ubuntu laptop, it's way off-budget. My plan is to install Ubuntu, Kubuntu (or even Debian), with dual boot unfortunately required. Thanks in advance, Slashdot!
United Kingdom

Submission + - Motorola To Buy PDA-Inventor Psion For $200 Million (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "Psion, the company which made the first handheld computers in the 1980s, invented the PDA, and launched the once-unstoppable Symbiian OS,is to be bought by Motorola Solutions for $200 million. Following a merger with Teklogix ten years ago, Psion has just been making ruggedised business devices, a business where Motorola Solutions also plays — note, this is Motorola Solutions, not the phones division Motorola Mobility, which Google recently bought,."
Linux

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Best Linux laptops for elementary school

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hello fellow Slasdotians! I am in need of your sage advice, insight and wisdom. I work in the tech department of an elementary school and I am trying to show the tech director the world of Linux. I will be installing edUbuntu but I am not sure which laptop to get. I know there are companies like Sytem76 that sell laptops with Linux already installed but I wanted to ask you for your thoughts. We want something small and light weight for the kids. We do not need much horsepower as the main use will be internet/email/word processing and whatever other apps come with edUbuntu. Basically, what we really want is something MacBook Air-like but not nearly as expensive. Thoughts?
Medicine

Submission + - MIT creates glucose fuel cell to power implanted brain-computer interfaces (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Neuroengineers at MIT have created a implantable fuel cell that generates electricity from the glucose present in the cerebrospinal fluid that flows around your brain and spinal cord. The glucose-powered fuel cell is crafted out of silicon and platinum, using standard semiconductor fabrication processes. The platinum acts as a catalyst, stripping electrons from glucose molecules, similar to how aerobic animal cells (such as our own) strip electrons from glucose with enzymes and oxygen. The glucose fuel cell products hundreds of microwatts (i.e. tenths of a milliwatt), which is a surprisingly large amount — it comparable to the solar cell on a calculator, for example. This should be more than enough power to drive complex computers — or perhaps more interestingly, trigger clusters of neurons in the brain. In theory, this glucose fuel cell will actually deprive your brain of some energy, though in practice you probably won’t notice (or you might find yourself growing hungry sooner)"

Comment Registration fees, longevity ? (Score 1) 164

by complex_pi (#40158081) Attached to: All Researchers To Be Allocated Unique IDs
So we're supposed to vouch for a system that will enable unknown yet registration fees and on which we have no control ? There may be solution to the "unique ID" problem but not this one... Also, should we expect them to be around forever ? We could cope with names until now, we might keep that system for a while.

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