2-Pack Mophie Powerstation + Charging Accessory Bundle | $19 | Meh
Source: io9 – Charge All the Things With This Mophie Powerstation and Accessory Bundle
Monthly Archives: January 2021
New study: A zero-emissions US is now pretty cheap
Enlarge (credit: Picture Alliance / Getty Images)
In many areas of the United States, installing a wind or solar farm is now cheaper than simply buying fuel for an existing fossil fuel-based generator. And that’s dramatically changing the electricity market in the US and requiring a lot of people to update prior predictions. That’s motivated a group of researchers to take a new look at the costs and challenges of getting the entire US to carbon neutrality.
By building a model of the energy market for the entire US, the researchers explored what it will take to get the country to the point where its energy use had no net emissions in 2050—and they even looked at a scenario where emissions are negative. They found that, as you’d expect, the costs drop dramatically—to less than 1 percent of the GDP, even before counting the costs avoided by preventing the worst impacts of climate change. And, as an added bonus, we would pay less for our power.
But the modeling also suggests that this end result will have some rather unusual features; we’ll need carbon capture, but it won’t be attached to power plants, for one example.
Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – New study: A zero-emissions US is now pretty cheap
CXL 2.0 Support For Linux Moves Past "RFC" Phase
Immediately following the CXL 2.0 specification being made public in November, Intel developers began posting Linux enablement patches for CXL 2.0 with an initial focus on type-3 memory device support. It’s looking like that CXL 2.0 enablement work is now closer to being mainlined in the Linux kernel…
Source: Phoronix – CXL 2.0 Support For Linux Moves Past “RFC” Phase
Firefox 85 Isolated Supercookies, But Dropped Progressive Web App Support
Tech blogger Paul Thurrott writes:
Firefox 85 now protects users against supercookies, which Mozilla says is “a type of tracker that can stay hidden in your browser and track you online, even after you clear cookies. By isolating supercookies, Firefox prevents them from tracking your web browsing from one site to the next.” It also includes small improvements to bookmarks and password management.
Unfortunately, Mozilla has separately — and much more quietly — stopped work on Site Specific Browser (SSB) functionality… This feature allowed users to use Firefox to create apps on the local PC from Progressive Web Apps and other web apps, similar to the functionality provided in Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and other Chromium-based web browsers. “The SSB feature has only ever been available through a hidden [preference] and has multiple known bugs,” Mozilla’s Dave Townsend explains in a Bugzilla issue tracker. “Additionally, user research found little to no perceived user benefit to the feature and so there is no intent to continue development on it at this time. As the feature is costing us time in terms of bug triage and keeping it around is sending the wrong signal that this is a supported feature, we are going to remove the feature from Firefox.”
Thurrott’s conclusion? “Mozilla is walking away from a key tenet of modern web apps and, in doing so, they are making themselves irrelevant.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Firefox 85 Isolated Supercookies, But Dropped Progressive Web App Support
The Open Infrastructure Foundation announces its first board
When the OpenStack Foundation shifted its focus from just OpenStack to a variety of open-source cloud technologies, it also changed its organization, and now, the Open Infrastructure Foundation has named its first board of directors.
Source: LXer – The Open Infrastructure Foundation announces its first board
Why kids matter in the quest to stamp out COVID-19
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Last December, when Caleb Chung, a 12-year-old in Durham, North Carolina, first heard from his dad that he might be eligible for a local clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine, his reaction was a little muted. He was “interested,” he tells me over Zoom. Not excited, exactly, not jumping for joy at the thought of joining the rarefied ranks of the immune. Interested. He had heard about side effects, for one thing, while watching the news with his parents. But mostly he just wasn’t sure what to make of the idea.
So Caleb and his dad, a pediatrician who works with adolescents, started talking. They covered the science of creating vaccines and testing them and how trials had helped bring vaccines to vulnerable people in the past. Plus, Caleb missed seeing his friends indoors, and seventh-grade Zoom school was slow. Getting shots to more people would bring a quicker end to the tedium. So he signed up. In late December, he got his first shot of what was either the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or a placebo. Then, three weeks later, he received his second. Both times, he kept a daily log of how he was feeling, recording a slight fever and soreness in his arm on day two. He took it in stride. “I hope this means I got the vaccine,” he says.
At the moment, two COVID-19 vaccines have been greenlit for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration, but both are only available to people older than Caleb. The Moderna vaccine is authorized for people over 18, while Pfizer’s is allowed for people as young as 16 because people that age were included earlier in its trials. But that could be changing. Last week, Pfizer officials announced they had finished enrolling more than 2,200 people in an expanded vaccine trial that includes kids as young as 12, and Moderna is currently in the process of signing up teens. That likely sets the stage for the companies to include teens in their requests for FDA approval, expected later this spring.
Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Why kids matter in the quest to stamp out COVID-19
Make Your Dog's Day With 30% off a BarkBox Monthly Subscription Box
BarkBox Monthly Subscription Box | $25 | Amazon Gold Box
Source: Gizmodo – Make Your Dog’s Day With 30% off a BarkBox Monthly Subscription Box
Mesa Continues With More Optimizations For Workstation OpenGL Performance
Well known AMD open-source driver developer Marek Olšák continues squeezing Mesa for every bit of possible performance, which in recent months has been with a seemingly workstation focus…
Source: Phoronix – Mesa Continues With More Optimizations For Workstation OpenGL Performance
Wine-Staging 6.1 Released With Nearly 800 Patches Blended Into Wine
Building off Friday’s release of Wine 6.1 as the first development snapshot of the new series, Wine-Staging is out this morning with an updated release…
Source: Phoronix – Wine-Staging 6.1 Released With Nearly 800 Patches Blended Into Wine
RISC-V based SoC is 5G basestaton on a chip
EdgeQ is prepping an AI-enabled 5G “basestation on a chip” built on RISC-V cores and OpenRAN standards that claims to greatly reduce power, cost, and complexity for 5G basestations. Santa Clara based 5G chip startup EdgeV announced a highly integrated and programmable 5G modem processor based on a RISC-V reference design. The EdgeV system-on-chip is […]
Source: LXer – RISC-V based SoC is 5G basestaton on a chip
Perl.com Domain Stolen, Now Using IP Address of Past Malware Campaigns
“The domain name perl.com was stolen and now points to an IP address associated with malware campaigns,” reports Bleeping Computer:
Perl.com is a site owned by Tom Christiansen and has been used since 1997 to post news and articles about the Perl programming language. On January 27th, Perl programming author and Perl.com editor brian d foy tweeted that the perl.com domain was suddenly registered under another person. Intellectual property lawyer John Berryhill later replied to the tweet that the domain was stolen in September 2020 while at Network Solutions, transferred to a registrar in China on Christmas Day, and finally moved to the Key-Systems registrar on January 27th, 2020.
It wasn’t until the last transfer that the IP addresses assigned to the domain were changed from 151.101.2.132 to the Google Cloud IP address 35.186.238[.]101…
On the 28th, d foy tweeted that they have set up perl.com temporarily at http://perldotcom.perl.org for users who wish to access the site until the domain is recovered…
d foy has told BleepingComputer that it is not believed that the domain owner’s account was hacked and that they are currently working with Network solutions and Key-Systems to resolve the issue. “I do know from direct communication with the Network Solutions and Key Systems that they are working on this and that the perl.com domain is locked. Tom Christiansen, the rightful owner, is going through the recovery process with those registrars.”
“Both registrars, along with a few others, reached out to me personally to offer help and guidance. We are confident that we will be able to recover the domain, but I do not have a timetable for that,” d foy told BleepingComputer.
The IP address that perl.com is now hosted has a long history of being used in older malware campaigns and more recent ones.
“Anyone using a perl.com host for their CPAN mirror should use www.cpan.org instead,” advises an announcement page today at Perl.org, which d foy tweeted “is now going to be the source for the latest http://Perl.com info.”
On Thursday d foy tweeted that “There’s no news on the recovery progress. Everyone who needs to be talking is talking to each other and it’s just a process now.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Perl.com Domain Stolen, Now Using IP Address of Past Malware Campaigns
How to Remove Bloatware From Your Samsung Android Mobile Phone
Bloatware is a type of software which is installed by the product vendor (like Samsung) on top of the Android operating system in your mobile phone. The name clarifies; it makes your mobile bloated. Much of the utilities and services installed on your phone are simply not required, and at times may be annoying or consuming a fair bit of battery. Uninstalling a lot of these may buy you an extra day or two of battery power.
Source: LXer – How to Remove Bloatware From Your Samsung Android Mobile Phone
Sensyn Robotics
Foundation: 2015
Headquarters: Shibuya Ward, Tokyo
President: Takuya Kitamura
Sensyn Robotics is a Japanese startup focused on development, application, and deployment of industrial drone services. Its annual income is undisclosed.
News Timeline
2021
January
-Sensyn Robotics unveil “Sensyn Explorer,” a small drone about the size of the palm of one’s hand, which is designed to operate within tight indoor spaces.
The post Sensyn Robotics appeared first on Akihabara News.
Source: Akihabara News – Sensyn Robotics
Sumitomo Corporation
Foundation: 1919
Headquarters: Chiyoda Ward, Osaka
President and CEO: Kuniharu Nakamura
Sumitomo Corporation is one of the largest Japanese general trading companies, with roots reaching back to the 17th century establishment of a book and medicine shop in Kyoto by Masatomo Sumitomo. Its annual income is in the range of US$30 billion.
News Timeline
2021
January
-Sumitomo signs a front end engineering and design contract with JGC Holdings, aiming to produce green hydrogen in the city of Gladstone in Australia’s state of Queensland.
2020
May
-Sumitomo Corporation concludes an agreement with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government on the preliminary trial installation and verification of smart poles.
The post Sumitomo Corporation appeared first on Akihabara News.
Source: Akihabara News – Sumitomo Corporation
Google's Pandemic-Minded GSoC Will Be A Lot Less Interesting This Year
While it’s sign-up time for open-source organizations hoping to participate in this year’s Google Summer of Code, GSoC 2021 changes in the name of the pandemic are leading some organizations to debate whether it’s still being involved with this student coding effort…
Source: Phoronix – Google’s Pandemic-Minded GSoC Will Be A Lot Less Interesting This Year
First Look at MX Linux Fluxbox on the Raspberry Pi 4
The MX Linux community recently announced their first respin for the Raspberry Pi computer, MX Linux Fluxbox-RaspberryPi Respin, so I thought to give you guys a first look at it to tell you what works, what doesn’t work, and what needs to be improved.
Source: LXer – First Look at MX Linux Fluxbox on the Raspberry Pi 4
Will Mark Zuckerberg Retire From Facebook in 2022?
Among tech pundit Robert Cringley’s predictions for 2021? “This year is going to be a tough one for Mark Zuckerberg.”
[W]hile I don’t expect Zuckerberg to abandon his CEO job this year, he eventually will, simply because it isn’t as much fun as it used to be and there will come a point (maybe in 2022) when leaving the top job will help Facebook’s stock…
Zuckerberg no longer has any who have faced what he is facing today. He has outgrown his own psychological support system… Zuckerberg’s primary role models have been Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Larry Page. Each modeled different ways to manage through dominance. Steve was a brilliant tyrant (“I know I’m an asshole,” he told me more than once); Bill tried to technically dominate by claiming to identify bad code from across a room (he really can’t); Larry taught by example to hide behind the algorithm, blaming it for, well, everything from nonexistent customer service to employee income inequality. The only unique truly self-actualized character in this mentor group was Steve Jobs and Steve is dead…
But none of those guys faced what Zuckerberg faces today, calling all the shots and making all the hard calls by himself. That has to be exhausting… [T]he social media market is in transition and none of my kids have Facebook accounts, which I think is telling… And so 2021 will see Facebook poked and prodded and taxed and regulated and possibly even torn apart. Google will be, too, but Facebook is frankly less essential and more vulnerable. How Zuckerberg responds will be where he blazes his own managerial trail. However it goes will take a toll, though, and even Zuck will eventually decide it’s better to become a philanthropist and find some new way to change the world. Though probably not until 2022.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Will Mark Zuckerberg Retire From Facebook in 2022?
How to Get Install Docker On Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Docker is an Open source technology that allows you to install an run application on several containers (machine) without Interfering with the host or other containers.
Source: LXer – How to Get Install Docker On Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
WhatsApp Is Now Using Its Version of Stories to Convince Users It’s Committed to Their Privacy
As many of you probably already know, WhatsApp’s announcement on the changes to its privacy policy confused and angered a lot of people, who were given the impression that the messaging app would begin sharing their personal data with its parent company, Facebook. Since then, WhatsApp has been running up and down…
Source: Gizmodo – WhatsApp Is Now Using Its Version of Stories to Convince Users It’s Committed to Their Privacy
With New User-Defined Functions, Microsoft Excel is Now Turing Complete
Visual Studio Magazine reports:
Microsoft, which calls its Excel spreadsheet a programming language, reports that an effort called LAMBDA to make it even more of a programming language is paying off, recently being deemed Turing complete. Being Turing complete is the litmus test of a full-fledged programming language, marking the ability to imitate a Turing machine. According to one definition, that means, “A programming language is Turing complete if you can implement any possible algorithm with it.”
And that’s exactly what LAMBDA can now do. “You can now, in principle, write any computation in the Excel formula language,” said Microsoft researchers in a Jan. 25 blog post.
To get there, researchers at the Calc Intelligence project addressed two shortcomings to the LAMBDA project, which is conducted in coordination with the Excel team and which was first announced early last month. They are:
– The Excel formula language supported only scalar values like numbers, strings and Booleans
– It didn’t let users define new functions….
“Moreover, even if it takes greater skill and knowledge to author a lambda, it takes no extra skill to call it,” researchers said. “LAMBDA allows skilled authors to extend Excel with application-domain-specific functions that appear seamlessly part of Excel to their colleagues, who simply call them.
“It will be interesting to see how users continue to experiment with and apply not only LAMBDA but also data types and dynamic arrays. We believe these new functional programming features will transform how people make decisions with Excel.”
And there is certainly a large audience of both programmers and coders, as Microsoft claims “Excel formulas are written by an order of magnitude more users than all the C, C++, C#, Java, and Python programmers in the world combined.”
Towards the end the article points out that right now to actually use the new feature, “you have to be a member of the Insiders: Beta program.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – With New User-Defined Functions, Microsoft Excel is Now Turing Complete