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Submission + - International Space Station life extended (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Times reports "Instead of splashing into the Pacific Ocean in 2020 as planned, the International Space Station will continue circling Earth for at least an additional four years, NASA announced on Wednesday. The cost of operating the station, about $3 billion a year, could then be devoted to the moon program.

However, it always seemed unlikely that the station, which was built at a cost of $100 billion and completed just three years ago, would be discarded that soon, and when the Obama administration announced it wanted to cancel the moon program, it gave the first extension, stretching the life of the station to 2020."

Submission + - NSA planned to discredit radicals based on web-browsing habits (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by wired_parrot
wired_parrot writes: New documents leaked show that the NSA was not only monitoring suspected radical sympathizers, but planned to discredit them based on their web-surfing habits. This includes not only evidence of porn browsing and online sexual activity, as well as extorsion and blackmail based on innapropriate use of funds. At the same time, the document leaked notes that very few of contacts noted were associated with terrorism

Submission + - Desert Farming Experiment (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: For the past year or so, a tiny scale farming experiment in has been carried out in the desert field of Qatar, using only sunlight and seawater.

A pilot plant built by the Sahara Forest Project (SFP) produced 75 kilograms of vegetables per square meter in three crops annually (or 25 kilograms per square meter, per crop)

If the yield level can be maintained, a farm of the size of 60 hectares would be enough to supply the nation of Qatar with all the cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and egglants that it needs.

The project will proceed to the next stage with an expansion to 20 hectares, to test its viability into commercial operation.

Submission + - Sweden is closing many prisons due to lack of prisoners. (rtoz.org)

Submitted by rtoz
rtoz writes: Sweden is taking steps to close many prisons due to lack of prisoners.

This year alone, four prisons and a detention center got closed in Sweden.

The percentage of the population in Sweden prison is significantly lower than in most other countries.

And,the Swedish prison system is not generally severe. For example, the top-of-the-line prison in Sollentuna, Sweden includes cells with comfortable mattresses and private bathrooms. After prisoners hit the weight room, they can cook up a meal in the state of the art kitchen before kicking back and watching TV on the couch. Sweden’s prison authorities are quick to point out that every square inch of the prison can be seen on a security camera.

Though the Sweden Government is taking steps to close the prisons, crime rate in sweden is not reduced. Actually Crime rate it getting increased in Sweden. It seems they are planning to take steps for preventing the crimes than focusing on sentencing the people involve in criminal activities.

Submission + - MELT, a GCC compiler plugin framework, reached 1.0 version (gcc-melt.org)

Submitted by karijes
karijes writes: MELT is a high-level domain specific language for extending, customizing and exploring the Gnu Compiler Collection. It targets advanced GCC users, giving them ability to hook on almost any GCC stage during compilation or interpretation phases. This release brings a lot of new things, described on release note. Details about the project you can find at project site.

Submission + - N-Fix Tech Could Drastically Reduce Agricultural Fertilizer Use (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Synthetic crop fertilizers are a huge source of pollution. This is particularly true when they’re washed from fields (or leach out of them) and enter our waterways. Unfortunately, most commercial crops need the fertilizer, because it provides the nitrogen that they require to survive. Now, however, a scientist at the University of Nottingham has developed what he claims is an environmentally-friendly process, that allows virtually any type of plant to obtain naturally-occurring nitrogen directly from the atmosphere.

Submission + - 22nd IOCCC starts Thursday 1 Aug 2013

Submitted by achowe
achowe writes: The 22nd International Obfuscated C Code Contest opens 2013-Aug-01 03:14:15 UTC through to 2013-Oct-03 09:26:53 UTC.

The rules have been updated, in particular Rule 2 (size rule) has changed. The draft rules and guidelines are available online. In addition there is now an IOCCC Size Rule Tool to aid with counting the secondary size rule.

Questions and comments for the Judges can be emailed to "q.2013@ioccc.org" and must include "IOCCC 2013" in the subject. Or contact them via Twitter @IOCCC.

Submission + - 55,000 Sign Twitter Abuse Petition After Jane Austen Campaigner Rape Threats (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by AlistairCharlton
AlistairCharlton writes: A petition campaigning for Twitter to improve its measures against online abuse has received more than 55,000 signatures in two days.

The petition was set up in support of feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who faced a torrent of abusive tweets, including threats to rape and kill her, after successfully campaigning for a woman's picture to appear on a banknote; Jane Austen will appear on £10 notes from 2017.

Submission + - Github Finally Agrees Public Repos Should Have Open Source Licenses (infoworld.com) 2

Submitted by WebMink
WebMink writes: After strong criticism last year, Github has finally accepted the view that public repositories with no open source license are a bad thing. Self-described as the "world's largest open source community," a significant number of GitHub projects come with no rights whatsoever for you to use their code in an open source project.

But from now on, creators of new repositories will have to pick from a small selection of OSI-approved licenses or explicitly opt for "no license". In Github's words, "please note that opting out of open source licenses doesn't mean you're opting out of copyright law."

Submission + - UK government backs three-person IVF (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Dupple
Dupple writes: The UK looks set to become the first country to allow the creation of babies using DNA from three people, after the government backed the IVF technique.

It will produce draft regulations later this year and the procedure could be offered within two years.

Experts say three-person IVF could eliminate debilitating and potentially fatal mitochondrial diseases that are passed on from mother to child.

Opponents say it is unethical and could set the UK on a "slippery slope".

They also argue that affected couples could adopt or use egg donors instead.

Mitochondria are the tiny, biological "power stations" that give the body energy. They are passed from a mother, through the egg, to her child.

Defective mitochondria affect one in every 6,500 babies. This can leave them starved of energy, resulting in muscle weakness, blindness, heart failure and death in the most extreme cases.

Submission + - Bitcoin's Success With Investors Alienates Earliest Adopters (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: Digital currency Bitcoin is gaining acceptance with mainstream venture capitalists, reports Technology Review, but at the price of its famed anonymity and ability to operate without central authority. Technology investors have now ploughed millions of dollars into a handful of Bitcoin-based payments and financial companies that are careful to follow financial regulations and don't offer anonymity. That's causing tensions in the community of Bitcoin enthusiasts, some of whom feel their currency's success has involved abandoning its most important features.
Crime

Submission + - DOJ, MIT, JSTOR Seek Anonymity in Swartz Case

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Responding to an earlier request by the estate of Aaron Swartz to disclose the names of those involved in the events leading to Aaron's suicide, counsel for MIT snippily told the Court, "The Swartz Estate was not a party to the criminal case, and therefore it is unclear how it has standing, or any legally cognizable interest, to petition for the modification of the Protective Order concerning others' documents." In motions filed on slow-news-day Good Friday (MIT's on spring break), the DOJ, MIT, and JSTOR all insisted on anonymity for those involved in the Swartz case, arguing that redacting of names was a must, citing threats posed by Anonymous and LulzSec, a badly-photoshopped postcard sent to Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann and another sent to his Harvard Prof father, cake frosting, a gun hoax, and e-mail sent to MIT. From the DOJ filing: 'I also informed him [Swartz estate lawyer] that whatever additional public benefit might exist by disclosing certain names was, in this case, outweighed by the risk to those individuals of becoming targets of threats, harassment and abuse.' From the MIT filing: 'The publication of MIT's documents in unredacted form could lead to further, more targeted, and more dangerous threats and attacks...The death of Mr. Swartz has created a very volatile atmosphere.' From the JSTOR filing: 'The supercharged nature of the public debate about this case, including hacking incidents, gun hoaxes and threatening messages, gives JSTOR and its employees legitimate concern for their safety and privacy.'

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Best way to archive (and access) ancient emails?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I started using email in the early 90s and have lost most of that first decade due to ignorance, botched backups, and so on. But since about 2000, I've got most — if not all — of my email in some form or other. I run Linux, so this has mainly been in a mix of various programs: Kmail, Evolution, Thunderbird. The past 2-3 years are still on the IMAP servers. My problem is that I only rarely NEED to look back to email of 5 years ago. But sometimes it's nice. Or I just want to reminisce about something...or find an old attachment that I was sent. But I do not want to be clogging my current email client of choice with vast backups and even more, I don't know if it will even easily convert. The file structures are different, some are mbox, others maildir, etc., and I would ideally like a way to 1) store and archive these emails, 2) access them, and 3) search by Sender, Subject, Date, Attachments. Is there anything I can do or do I just have to keep legacy applications on hand for this? Should I keep trying to upgrade and pull old files into the new applications? Any help or suggestions about what YOU do would be great.
Linux

Submission + - Longest running Linux distribution Slackware switching to the MariaDB database (slackware.com)

Submitted by
Gerardo Zamudio
Gerardo Zamudio writes: "The big news here is the removal of MySQL in favor of MariaDB. This shouldn't really be a surprise on any level. The poll on LQ showed a large majority of our users were in favor of the change. It's my belief that the MariaDB Foundation will do a better job with the code, be more responsive to security concerns, and be more willing to work with the open source community. And while I don't think there is currently any issue with MySQL's licensing of the community edition for commercial uses, several threads on LQ showed that there is confusion about this, whereas with MariaDB the freedom to use the software is quite clear. Thanks are due to Heinz Wiesinger for his work on transitioning the build script, testing, and getting us all behind this move. He's been working with MariaDB (and their developers) for several years now. Vincent Batts also had a hand in the early discussions here — he met Daniel Bartholomew of MariaDB on a train last year and got a copy of the source to play with to pass the time on the journey (ah, the miracle of thumbdrives :), and was impressed with not only MariaDB itself, but also with the welcome that Slackware was getting. We expect they'll be responsive to any concerns we have. In the vast majority of situations, MariaDB is entirely compatible with existing MySQL databases and will drop right in with no changes required. There's an article available outlining the areas in which MariaDB differs from MySQL that I'd recommend reading:
https://kb.askmonty.org/v/mariadb-versus-mysql-compatibility/
Thanks to the MariaDB Foundation! We look forward to working with you.

For more information about MariaDB, visit their website: http://mariadb.org/"
The Internet

Submission + - The Internet is a surveillance state (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Schneier write in an opion piece for CNN.

The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period.

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