javispedro - Slashdot User

Some Bees Are Addicted to Caffeine (albanydailystar.com) 114

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday April 03, 2016 @08:44PM from the caffeine-buzz dept.

mdsolar shares a new article about plants which produce caffeine to attract bees and encourage repeat visits to help with their pollination. "Scientists at the University of Sussex said they thought the plants produce the caffeine in their nectar to fool bees into thinking it contains more sugar than it actually does," reports the Albany Daily Star. In addition, bees communicate by "dancing" for their colleagues, and the caffeinated bees danced faster, inadvertently directing the other bees to revisit those flowers, even after nectar had run dry. "If they just had one, three-hour exposure to the caffeinated nectar on the first day," one researcher said, "they would come back for many more days, and more often within each day."

Are Some Things About the Universe Fundamentally Unknowable? (forbes.com) 225

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday January 17, 2016 @06:53PM from the we'll-never-know dept.

StartsWithABang writes: As we peel back the layers of information deeper and deeper into the Universe's history, we uncover progressively more knowledge about how everything we know today came to be. The discovery of distant galaxies and their redshifts led to expanding Universe, which led to the Big Bang and the discovery of very early phases like the cosmic microwave background and big bang nucleosynthesis. But before that, there was a period of cosmic inflation that left its mark on the Universe. What came before inflation, then? Did it always exist? Did it have a beginning? Or did it mark the rebirth of a cosmic cycle? Maddeningly, this information may forever be inaccessible to us, as the nature of inflation wipes all this information clean from our visible Universe.

Comment Re:He's got his talking points (Score 0) 478

by javispedro on Thursday November 12, 2015 @04:54AM (#50913751) Attached to: Apple CEO Tim Cook: "Microsoft Surface Book Tries Too Hard To Do Too Much"

The fun thing is that MS is not forcing you to Windows 10. My Surface Pro, for example, runs Gentoo without a problem.
On the other hand, Apple is forcing you to run their spyware, iOS.

Comment Not a backdoor (Score 5, Informative) 121

by javispedro on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @05:14AM (#50477095) Attached to: Backdoor Discovered Into Seagate NAS Drives

This is not a backdoor.

It is not undocumented. It uses Arago, an actually open GNU/Linux distribution as firmware (so it is more open source than your average android device!), and the ability to root it via telnet has been available since day 1, with a widely known password.
It is not remote, since to access it you need to join the NAS WLAN, and for that you need to passphrase created by the user. If you've managed to guess the passphrase/break that layer, then you've already crossed the airtight hatchway: at that point you can already view all the files on the disk, install adware, viruses, etc.
This was being used by plenty of people to install custom Linux distributions such as Debian or Arch on relatively inexpensive hardware. There's even a user focused distribution for the device

Basically, another group of security ``researchers'' (use of quotes intentional) manage to force a company making a relatively open embedded product to close it down for tinkerers, while not improving the security of the product at all.

I hate this world.

Samsung May Release an 18" Tablet 177

Posted by timothy on Sunday August 23, 2015 @05:27PM from the why-stop-there? dept.

A report at PC Magazine says that Samsung may soon field a tablet to satisfy people not content with the 7", 9", 12", or even slightly larger tablets that are today's normal stock in trade. Instead, the company is reported to be working on an 18.4" tablet aimed at "living rooms, offices, and schools." There's a lot of couching going on, but it sounds like an interesting idea: It's said to run Android 5.1 Lollipop and be powered by an octa-core 64-bit 1.6GHz Exynos 7580 processor. Other rumored specs include 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot with support for cards up to 128GB, and a large 5,700 mAh battery. The device also has an 8-megapixel main camera (and you thought people looked silly taking photos with their iPads) and 2.1-megapixel "secondary camera."

Ask Slashdot: What's the Harm In a Default Setting For Div By Zero? 1067

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 18, 2015 @04:03PM from the as-long-as-it's-a-big-zero dept.

New submitter CodeInspired writes: After 20 years of programming, I've decided I'm tired of checking for div by zero. Would there be any serious harm in allowing a system wide setting that said div by zero simply equals zero? Maybe it exists already, not sure. But I run into it all the time in every language I've worked with. Does anyone want their div by zero errors to result in anything other than zero?

New Jersey Removes Legal Impediment To Direct Tesla Sales 85

Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 18, 2015 @04:17PM from the beating-back-mob-rule dept.

As reported by The Verge, the rule-makers of New Jersey have relented, and will now allow a slightly freer market for cars. Almost exactly one year after it was banned from selling its cars directly in New Jersey, Tesla will be back in business in the Garden State. Governor Chris Christie signed into law a bill this afternoon that reversed last year's ban. The new legislation comes with some limits. Tesla can only open a total of four direct sale dealerships and has to operate at least one service center. But it's a major win following a heated war of words that saw Tesla CEO Elon Musk compare local dealers to a mafia protection racket subverting the democratic process.

Ask Slashdot: Resources For Kids Who Want To Make Games? 121

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 19, 2014 @05:22PM from the building-blocks-of-fun dept.

Mr. Jones writes: My 11-year-old son is fascinated by games — game mechanics in particular. He has been playing everything from Magic to WarFrame since he was 5 years old. He seems mostly interested in creating the lore and associated mechanics of the games (i.e. how a game works). If it was only programming I could help him, but I am lost when it comes to helping him learn more formal ways of developing and defining gameplay. I really see a talent for this in him and I want to support it any way I can. Can you suggest any conferences, programs, books, websites, etc. that would help him learn?

Chinese State Media Declares iPhone a Threat To National Security 143

Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 11, 2014 @05:06PM from the fruit-ninja-must-have-cause-a-lot-of-traffic-deaths dept.

MojoKid writes: "When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden came forth last year with U.S. government spying secrets, it didn't take long to realize that some of the information revealed could bring on serious repercussions — not just for the U.S. government, but also for U.S.-based companies. The latest to feel the hit? None other than Apple, and in a region the company has been working hard to increase market share: China. China, via state media, has today declared that Apple's iPhone is a threat to national security — all because of its thorough tracking capabilities. It has the ability to keep track of user locations, and to the country, this could potentially reveal "state secrets" somehow. It's being noted that the iPhone will continue to track the user to some extent even if the overall feature is disabled. China's iPhone ousting comes hot on the heels of Russia's industry and trade deeming AMD and Intel processors to be untrustworthy. The nation will instead be building its own ARM-based "Baikal" processor.

The Pentagon's $399 Billion Plane To Nowhere 364

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday July 09, 2014 @04:36PM from the flights-of-fancy dept.

schwit1 writes with an update on the U.S. government's troubled F-35 program, the cost of which keeps rising while the planes themselves are grounded. A fire in late June caused officials to halt flights for the entire fleet of $112 million vehicles last week. Despite this, Congress is still anxious to push the program forward, and Foreign Policy explains why: Part of that protection comes from the jaw-dropping amounts of money at stake. The Pentagon intends to spend roughly $399 billion to develop and buy 2,443 of the planes. However, over the course of the aircrafts' lifetimes, operating costs are expected to exceed $1 trillion. Lockheed has carefully hired suppliers and subcontractors in almost every state to ensure that virtually all senators and members of Congress have a stake in keeping the program — and the jobs it has created — in place. "An upfront question with any program now is: How many congressional districts is it in?" said Thomas Christie, a former senior Pentagon acquisitions official. Counting all of its suppliers and subcontractors, parts of the program are spread out across at least 45 states. That's why there's no doubt lawmakers will continue to fund the program even though this is the third time in 17 months that the entire fleet has been grounded due to engine problems."

After Kickstarter Record, Pebble Smartwatch Lands $15M From VCs 120

Posted by timothy on Saturday May 18, 2013 @02:19PM from the so-you're-saying-people-might-like-this dept.

LeadSongDog writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that the 'Pebble' smartwatch has matched the $15M record for Kickstarter funding after initially being panned by the VC crowd." One advantage that the Pebble has over rumored watches from big names like Google and Apple is existing.

Comment Re:Does it have a Daliclock mode? (Score 1) 140

by javispedro on Sunday April 07, 2013 @08:40PM (#43387543) Attached to: Ars Technica Goes Close Up With the Pebble Smartwatch

Np, it does not have an e-ink display.

Adobe To Australians: Fly To US For Cheaper Software 255

Posted by Soulskill on Friday March 22, 2013 @07:53AM from the sometimes-the-simplest-solution-eludes-us dept.

angry tapir writes "It's been a long-running joke that it's cheaper for Australians to get a plane ticket to the U.S. if they want to buy Adobe's Creative Suite instead of paying local prices. But appearing before a parliamentary inquiry into the disparity between IT prices in Australia and elsewhere, Adobe's local chief appeared to suggest just that." Other companies gave their responses to the inquiry as well. Microsoft said they'll simply charge what the market will bear. Apple tossed out a host of reasons for the price difference; its retail partners, digital content owners, exchange rates, taxes, import duties, and an apparent inability to alter the price set by its U.S. parent company.

The Internet Archive To Pay Salaries Partly In Bitcoin, Requests Donations 181

Posted by timothy on Saturday February 23, 2013 @01:06AM from the because-money-is-fungible dept.

hypnosec writes "Bitcoin is gaining popularity among mainstream sites lately and the latest to adopt the digital currency as a medium of donations and payments is the Internet Archive. Ready to accept donation in the form of Bitcoin, the Internet Archive announced that it wants to do so to pay some part of employees' salaries, if they choose to, in Bitcoin. The Archive, known for its storage of digital documents (especially the previous version of webpages), is looking to start part salary payments in Bitcoin by April 2013 if everything goes well."

Submission + - Richard Stallman Falls Ill At Conference (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Thursday May 10, 2012 @03:31PM

itwbennett writes: "Stallman, 59, was speaking at the North Campus of the Polytechnic University of Cataluna when he started to feel ill and called for a doctor. It was originally reported in the Spanish press that Stallman was hypertensive, but it is not yet known what his eventual health status was, just that he left the building later under his own power."

Slashdot Top Deals