183722030
submission
kxra writes:
The tradeoff between potentially less-safe "chemical" sunscreens (which break down after a couple of hours) versus "physical" sunscreens which leave a pasty white cast on the skin (and potentially produce free radicals), make proper sun protection an exercise reserved for the dermatology-obsessed. But, a preclinical trial has finally shown a solution to the main difficulty standing in the way of cerium oxide filling this void: "Its antioxidant activity improves when the surface contains oxygen vacancies[...]. Yet many methods used to increase them, including harsh reduction, heat treatment, irradiation, or doping, can also make nanoparticles aggregate. Once particles clump, much of the active surface becomes harder to reach."
I've been impatiently following the past couple of decades of research showing “doped (i.e., in combination with certain other chemicals) cerium oxide provides excellent protection [...and] was found to look 'more natural' and 'less visible' to wearers." Plus, as noted in Chemistry World, “Unlike zinc oxide and titanium dioxide [...] these could actually scavenge the UVA-induced free radicals from skin cells."
155118357
submission
kxra writes:
Penpot is a free-software, web-based vector design platform using .svg as a first-class filetype used as the underlying storage for all designs. As more design teams around the world move to the convenience of multi-device synchronized and collaborative web apps, this is a welcome respite from proprietary vendor lock-in by the likes of Figma and Canva. Penpot has finally launched as Beta, with competitive features such as a template library that all creators can pull from. They are the same team behind the project management tool for Agile teams which is taking on the likes of JIRA and Confluence with FLOSS.
66397851
submission
kxra writes:
With the latest developments, Pitivi is proving to truly be a promising libre video editor for GNU distributions as well as a serious contender for bringing libre video production up to par with its proprietary counterparts. Since launching a beautifully well-organized crowdfunding campaign (as covered here previously), the team has raised over half of their 35,000 € goal to pay for full-time development and has entered "beta" status for version 1.0. They've released two versions, 0.94 (release notes) being the most recent, which have brought full MPEG-TS/AVCHD support, porting to Python 3, lots of UX improvements, and—of course—lots and lots of bug fixes. The next release (0.95) will run on top of Non Linear Engine, a refined and incredibly more robust backend Pitivi developers have produced to replace GNonLin and bring Pitivi closer to the rock-solid stability needed for the final 1.0 release.
45812995
submission
kxra writes:
The Free Culture Fondation has posted a thorough response to the most common and misinformed defenses of the W3C's Extended Media Extensions (EME) proposal to inject DRM into HTML5. They join the EFF and FSF in a call to send a strong message to the W3C that DRM in HTML5 undermines the W3C’s self-stated mission to make the benefits of the Web “available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.” The FCF counters the three most common myths by unpacking some quotes which explain that 1. DRM is not about protecting copyright. That is a straw man. DRM is about limiting the functionality of devices and selling features back in the form of services. Second, that DRM in HTML5 doesn’t obsolete proprietary, platform-specefic browser plug-ins; it encourages them. And third, that the Web doesn’t need big media; big media needs the Web.
44165527
submission
kxra writes:
Do you have a federated jabber instant messaging account that never gets responses from Google accounts anymore? Or do you have a Gmail account that a friend has been unable to invite from their 3rd party Jabber account? The Free Software Foundation reports, "Google users can still send subscription requests to contacts whose accounts are hosted elsewhere. But they cannot accept incoming requests. This change is akin to Google no longer accepting incoming e-mail for @gmail.com addresses from non-Google domains." This sounds like something Facebook would try in order to gain even tighter control over the network, but they never even federated their Jabber service to begin with. According to a public mailing list conversation, Google is doing this as a lazy way to handle a spam problem.
