Genius often goes unappreciated in its time. Van Gogh died penniless. Galileo lived his final years under house arrest. And several of my (otherwise talented) colleagues rejected the very blog post you’re currently reading: a blog post about hot dog salad.
Source: Gizmodo – No One Wants My Hot Dog Salad
Mike Masnick, reporting for TechDirt: Last week, the Solicitor General of the White House weighed in on Google’s request for the Supreme Court to overturn the Federal Circuit’s ridiculously confused ruling in the Oracle/Google case concerning the copyrightability of APIs (and whether or not repurposing them is fair use). Not surprisingly, as the Solicitor General has been siding with Oracle all along, it suggests that the Supreme Court not hear the case. Of course, it does so by completely misrepresenting what’s at stake in the case — pretending that this is about whether or not software source code is copyright-eligible:”This case concerns the copyrightability of computer code. To induce a computer to perform a function, a person must give the computer written instructions. Typically, those instructions are written in ‘source code,’ which consists of words, numbers, and symbols in a particular ‘programming language,’ which has its own syntax and semantics. The source code is then converted into binary ‘object code’ — ones and zeros — that is readable by the computer.
It is both ‘firmly established’ and undisputed in this case that computer code can be copyrightable as a ‘literary work[].’ 1 Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright & 2A.10[B] (2019). Section 101 defines a ‘computer program’ as ‘a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result.’ 17 U.S.C. 101. And various Copyright Act provisions recognize that a person may own a copyright in a ‘computer program.'”
Masnick adds: Except… that’s not what this case is about. Even remotely. Literally no one denies that software source code is subject to copyright. The question is whether or not an Application Programming Interface — an API — is subject to copyright.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Top Oracle Lawyer Attempting To Gaslight Entire Software Community: Insists APIs Are Executable
The thing about toddlers is that they’re mind-numbingly irrational. It’s not their fault, of course. It’s going to be a solid two decades before those brains are fully developed and able to offer up true logical reasoning to the world, but still. It’s frustrating.
Source: LifeHacker – Help Kids Calm Down With a ‘Brain Game’
Today, the US Treasury sanctioned two Russian nationals accused of working for the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and attempting to meddle in the 2018 US midterm elections. The US has already sanction the IRA and a handful of its members. Now, Igor N…
Source: Engadget – US sanctions two Russians for meddling in 2018 midterm elections
Martians invade Earth in The War of the Worlds, a new BBC adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel.
The BBC dropped the first trailer for its upcoming adaptation of the classic H.G. Wells science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. The three-part miniseries is set in Edwardian England—just a few years after Wells published his novel—and it looks like it will be a fairly faithful treatment of the source material, as the people of Earth fight to survive in the face of a Martian invasion.
(Spoilers for the 1897 novel below.)
First serialized in 1897, The War of the Worlds was published as a book the following year and has remained in print ever since. Told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator, the story opens with astronomers on Earth observing what appear to be explosions on the surface of Mars through their telescopes. Soon after, a meteor falls to Earth, which turns out to be a capsule housing large, tentacled aliens. The creatures do not come in peace; instead, they use their tripod fighting machines to destroy much of the town of Woking and its surroundings with their heat rays and poisonous black smoke.
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Source: Ars Technica – BBC drops first trailer for new adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds
The 2019 North American Airport Satisfaction Study was released last week and along with it a ranking of airports in the United States.
Source: LifeHacker – These Are the Best Airports to Get Stuck In
Enlarge / The iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max running iOS 13. (credit: Samuel Axon)
Today, Apple released iOS and iPadOS 13.1.2, as well as watchOS 6.0.1. All of the updates are focused on bug fixes.
The iOS release fixes an issue that prevented Bluetooth connectivity, plus others that stopped the Camera app and the flashlight from functioning in certain situations. Both the iOS and iPadOS updates fixed a bug that left a progress bar still visible after iCloud Backup completed its task. The updates also righted another issue affecting shortcuts on HomePods.
Here are Apple’s update notes for iOS 13.1.2:
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Source: Ars Technica – iOS 13.1.1 and iOS 13.1.2: Apple takes an aggressive update cadence to clean up iOS 13
Reading that there’s a dense, impressive new Star Wars pop-up book coming out is one thing. Actually seeing that book in action is something completely different. And so we present to you an exclusive look at Insight Edition’s Star Wars: A Pop-Up Galaxy.
Source: io9 – Jakku Is Poppin’ in Our Exclusive Reveal From Star Wars: A Pop-Up Galaxy
Planet Zoo, a new PC game from Frontier, the makers of Planet Coaster, is currently in a beta available to players that pre-ordered the deluxe version of the game. It’s about running a zoo. In order to do that, you have to build enclosures, outfit habitats with the proper flora for the species—species from the african…
Source: Kotaku – I Just Want To Cuddle Every Damn Animal In This Zoo
Hand washing is an essential and important part of not getting sick, or making others sick. And most of us suck at it. If you only wash your hands for a few seconds, or if you sort of wave them under the faucet and then dry your hands on a grubby towel, it’s time to step up your game.
Source: LifeHacker – How to Actually Wash Germs Off Your Hands
Audi’s premium rental service, Silvercar, just launched a customer loyalty program. All Silvercar customers will be automatically enrolled in the Premium Rewards Program. They’ll earn one point for every dollar spent — excluding those spent on taxes…
Source: Engadget – Audi’s Silvercar rental service adds a customer loyalty program
Enlarge / Bobby Braun, seen in Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion, will move to the lab in early 2020. (credit: Bobby Braun)
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has found a new leader for its Solar System exploration program, and the choice of Bobby Braun signals a willingness to adapt to the changing world of aerospace.
Braun, an engineer who specializes in cutting-edge technology, will join the NASA laboratory from the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he served as dean. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (or JPL) has led NASA’s efforts to explore the Solar System with uncrewed spacecraft from the beginning.
“JPL has always been a special place to me,” Braun said in an interview. “It is the center of our nation’s planetary exploration efforts, with flagship missions that have rewritten our textbooks.” Those missions have included the Voyager excursions through and beyond the Solar System, dedicated probes to Jupiter and Saturn, and multiple landings on Mars.
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Source: Ars Technica – NASA signals openness to change with new Solar System exploration hire
Elon Musk has laid out an ambitious future for his spaceship project, the effort to deliver people to the moon and Mars. Marina Koren, writing for The Atlantic: The whole thing felt like an Apple event. The weeks of anticipation and breathless guesses from fans and critics. Onstage, the greatest-hits reel highlighting the company’s beloved products over the years. A grand walk-through of the next product’s features: the sleek design, the impressive specs, simulations of how it’s going to work. A man with a mic, both salesman and visionary, looking out at the crowd. It is strange to compare the unveiling of a spaceship to the annual release of a smartphone, but this is the reality Elon Musk has conjured with SpaceX, and in a relatively short amount of time.
Musk gave a talk about SpaceX’s prototype spaceship, Starship, on Saturday night in Boca Chica, Texas, a small coastal town not far from the U.S.-Mexico border, which SpaceX picked to house this ambitious project just a few years ago. The vessel, roomy enough to fit 100 passengers, will be shot into orbit by a massive, reusable rocket, which the company is also building and which could be as powerful as the Saturn V rocket that launched Apollo astronauts. Starship has multiple missions; it is supposed to shuttle people on swift journeys to different cities on Earth, as well as carry them on long-haul flights to the moon and Mars.
The event came 11 years after SpaceX reached orbit for the first time with the earliest version of its Falcon rockets. Since then, the company has flown rockets to orbit over and over again, then landed the accompanying boosters upright on the ground and reused them, an industry first for orbital missions. The company has launched commercial satellites, government spy missions, and cargo to the International Space Station. It shot a Tesla toward Mars and sprinkled internet satellites around Earth. Musk founded SpaceX to someday send people to Mars, and he has said for years that he will make space travel as easy as hopping on a plane. As he stood in front of a gleaming steel spaceship, it was tempting to start believing him. “It’s really gonna be pretty epic to see that thing take off and come back,” Musk said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – SpaceX Has Starry-Eyed Ambitions for Its Starship
The San Francisco Shock, led by Season MVP Sinatraa and Finals MVP ChoiHyoBin, trounced their rivals the Vancouver Titans in a shockingly fast 4-0 match to win the 2019 Overwatch League Championship.
Source: Kotaku – Overwatch’s League Championship Merch Just Went Up For Sale (With Free Shipping)
It’s coming one day late due to the last minute entropy/RNG patches to improve the random behavior during boot time (among other late patches), but Linus Torvalds has just tagged Linux 5.4-rc1 as what will be the last major stable kernel release of 2019…
Source: Phoronix – Linux 5.4-rc1 Kernel Steps Forward With Next-Gen GPU Bits, Arm Laptop Support & exFAT
Instagram is full of fashion-forward users, so it’s no surprise that clothing, footwear and luxury brands are more than happy to use the platform as a marketing and sales channel. Select companies can now test an even easier way for consumers to shop…
Source: Engadget – Instagram reminders make sure you don’t forget the latest fashion drops
A report that surfaced over the weekend claims the House Judiciary Committee is investigating Google’s plan to add DNS over TLS to the Chrome browser. DNS is the service that takes an easier to remember and type a domain name, such as Google.com, and translates that into a site’s physical IP addresses. TLS, in turn, refers to transportation
Source: Hot Hardware – Congressional Investigators Probe Google’s Plan To Add DNS Encryption To Chrome
Note: Keep your volume in check, high wind.
This is a video from November 2018 of the largest Hawaiian volcanic eruption in over 300 years causing a massive river of lava to flow from a fissure to the ocean. It’s really moving.
Some more info while I take my shoes and socks off and just wiggle my around toes in it trying to get a nibble from a lavacarp:
“1,300,000,000 m³ of lava erupted out of the lower east river zone in about two months. As it stabilized into channelized river flows, from the main vent known as fissure eight, massive rivers of lava such as this would run down the land 24 hours a day to the ocean where violent explosions would occur as it met the sea. This river was estimated at 30 feet deep in places and over 100 m wide in certain places as well.”
Whoa — a river of lava 30 feet deep and 100 meters wide?! That…is some serious mixing of measurement systems. Call me oldschool, but I’m a firm believer there’s only one proper system for measuring distances. “Metric.” What? No — snakes. “And how long is a snake?” Depends on the snake. “So….” So mine is more than enough to please, thank you very much.
Keep going for the video.
Source: Geekologie – Let’s Go For A Dip: Massive River Of Lava Flowing On Hawaii
While Titans has gotten properly back into the swing of things from a pacing standpoint, there are still moments where the show slips up a little as it’s trying to give each member of its sprawling cast of heroes and villains enough screen time to make their subplots compelling. This week, Titans did it with a…
Source: io9 – Titans Got Surprisingly Wet, Wild, and Depressing
Some of the best creations in Super Mario Maker 2 often have extremely little to do with the experience of playing a Mario level. Consider the level “Music Maker – write a tune” by user knil (ID: 4MW-PJW-3JF). It isn’t a Mario course at all, but a really clever player piano of sorts that you can program simply by…
Source: Kotaku – Mario Maker Level Lets You Compose Music And Play It Back
