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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 94 declined, 33 accepted (127 total, 25.98% accepted)

Submission + - The Apple curl security incident 12604

Submitted by lee1
lee1 writes: I started to sour on MacOS about 20 years ago when I discovered that they had, without notice, substituted their own, nonstandard version of the readline library for the one that the rest of the unix-like world was using. This broke gnuplot and a lot of other free software. The creator of curl, Daniel Stenberg, writes about how Apple is still breaking things, this time with serious security and privacy implications: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/20...

1 http://gnuplot.info/
2 https://curl.se/

Submission + - Julia v1.10: Performance, a new parser, and more (lwn.net)

Submitted by lee1
lee1 writes: The new year arrived bearing a new version of Julia, a general-purpose, open-source programming language with a focus on high-performance scientific computing. Some of Julia's unusual features are Lisp-inspired metaprogramming, the ability to examine compiled representations of code in the REPL or in a "reactive notebook", an advanced type and dispatch system, and a sophisticated, built-in package manager. Version 1.10 brings big increases in speed and developer convenience, especially improvements in code precompilation and loading times. It also features a new parser written in Julia.

Submission + - Gopher, Gemini, and the Rise of the Small Internet 2

Submitted by lee1
lee1 writes: The danger and irritations of the modern web have unleashed a movement dedicated to creating a safer and simpler alternative. The old Gopher network and the new Gemini protocol have emerged as building blocks for this new "small Internet."

Submission + - The PermaTab Web Browser 3

Submitted by lee1
lee1 writes: The UHI human interaction research group has been intensively studying a pervasive problem facing users of the web: the problem of tabs. How to organize them, preserve them, keep track of them. We have carefully considered the pros and cons of various approaches offered by different browsers, and by extensions: tab trees, second rows of tabs, vertical tabs, 3D tabs, musical tabs, you name it.

None of them were good enough.

Submission + - A new release for GNU Octave (lwn.net)

Submitted by lee1
lee1 writes: On November 26, version 6.1 of [GNU Octave][@GNUOctave], a language and environment for numerical computing, was released. There are several new features and enhancements in the new version, including improvements to graphics output, better communication with web services, and over 40 new functions.

We will take a look at where Octave fits into the
landscape of numerical tools for scientists and engineers, and recount some of its long history.
Science

Submission + - Reading and calculating with your unconscious (medicalnewstoday.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Using special techniques that present information to one eye while hiding the information from the conscious mind (my masking it with more distracting imagery presented to the other eye), researchers have shown two new and very unexpected things: we can read and understand short sentences, and we can perform multi-step arithmetic problems, entirely unconsciously. The results of the reading and calculating are available to and influence the conscious mind, but we remain unaware of their existence. While we have known for some time that a great deal of sensory processing occurs below the surface and affects our deliberative behavior, it was widely believed until now that the subconscious was not able to actually do arithmetic or parse sentences."
Politics

Submission + - Wikileaks stops publishing classified files (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Wikileaks has had to cease publishing classified files due to what the
organization calls a "blockade by US-based finance companies" that, according
to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has "destroyed 95% of our revenue." Assange
also opined that "A handful of US finance companies cannot be allowed to decide
how the whole world votes with its pocket." According to Assange the group was
taking "pre-litigation action" against the financial blockade in Iceland,
Denmark, the UK, Brussels, the United States and Australia. They have also
filed an anti-trust complaint with the European Commission."

Submission + - DA critiques Gizmodo emails (eff.org) 1

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "After the police broke in to a Gizmodo editor’s home and collected emails from computers found there as part of the investigation of the stolen 2010 iPhone prototype, the DA petitioned the court to withdraw the search warrant, because it violated a law intended to protect journalists. Nevertheless, the DA, rather than apologize for the illegal search and seizure, issued a critique of the seized emails, commenting that they were ‘juvenile’ and that ‘It was obvious that they were angry with the company about not being invited to [...] some big Apple event [...] this is like 15-year-old children talking [...] They talked about having Apple right where they wanted them and they were really going to show them.'"
Politics

Submission + - Prosecuted For Critical Twittering (eff.org)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to urge a
federal court to block what they claim is the
unconstitutional use of the federal anti-stalking law to
prosecute a man for posting criticism of a public figure to
Twitter. The law was orginally targeted against crossing
state lines for the purpose of stalking, but was modified in
2005 to make the 'intentional infliction of emotional
distress' by the use of 'any interactive computer service' a
crime. The prosecution’s theory in this case is that using
Twitter to criticize a public figure can be a criminal act
if the person’s feelings are hurt."
Google

Submission + - Ex-Google Engineer Blasts Google's Technology (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Dhanji R. Prasanna, an engineer who recently resigned from Google, describes Google's famous back-end infrastructure as a collection of obsolete technologies, designed 10 years ago for building search engines and crawlers. He blasts MapReduce and its closed-source friends as 'ancient, creaking dinosaurs', compared with outside open source projects like MessagePack, JSON, and Hadoop. He also criticizes Google's coding culture, which has become unfriendly to hacker types due to the company's enormous size."
Science

Submission + - The Electron is a Sphere (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "In a 10 year long experiment, scientists at Imperial College have made the most precise measurement so far of the shape of the electron. It's round. So round, in fact, that if the electron were enlarged to the size of the solar system, its shape would diverge from a perfect sphere less than the width of a human hair. The experiment continues in the search for even greater precision. There are implications for understanding processes in the early universe, namely the mysterious fate of the antimatter."

Submission + - U.S. Preserves Smallpox for Defense (nti.org)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "The U.S. is preserving the last remaining known strains of smallpox in case they are needed to develop biowarfare 'countermeasures' and as a hedge against possible outbreaks in a population with no natural immunity. 451 specimens are stored in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control, and 120 strains at the Russian Vector laboratory in Siberia. Meanwhile, the government has contracted to pay almost $3 billion to procure 14 million smallpox vaccination doses."
Cloud

Submission + - Dropbox Lied About Security (electronista.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Dropbox faces a possible FTC investigation because of misleading statements it has made about the privacy and security of its 25 million users' files. The cloud storage company previously claimed that it was impossible for its employees to access file contents, but in fact, as the encryption keys are in their possession, this is false. The complaint points out that their false security claims gave Dropbox a competitive advantage over other firms offering similar services who actually did provide secure encryption."
Politics

Submission + - Newt Gingrich's Amazon Book Reviews (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Newt Gingrich has written 156 book reviews on Amazon, at one point becoming ranked in the site's top 500 list. Most of the books are cheesy political thrillers, but the newly announced presidential candidate is also trying to learn about quantum physics, and shows good taste, 'strongly recommending' Richard Feynman’s QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter."

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