Recent Comments

Yeah, I'm zafiro17 over there too. I was following that conversation, and noted your post there coincided with an uptick in activity here. Difficult times for news-for-nerds sites, maybe. Anyway, you've added some interesting stuff to the pipe; thanks for that. And I don't see "Athiesm and Captain Kirk" in the pipe, so I wouldn't worry about it getting posted here :)

I'm not a fan of the political flamebait articles here or anywhere else. I come here for tech and science and as volunteer editor that's what I'm trying to keep on the front page. Anyone who wants that other stuff can go to the HuffingtonPost, I'd say. Or CNN. Or a lot of other places, too.

It occurs to me this would be a pretty good plot/subject for a science fiction movie - some kind of obligatorily-worn mood changer. The risk of abuse is obvious too: imagine a totalitarian society that has dealt with the problem of pedophilia/etc by making anyone convicted of it wear the helmet that dulls that urge by electrically stimulating some nerve center in the brain. What would those helmet wearers do? What would that say about society? Repeat for other crimes - thought crime, etc.

That's a great story; I think I'll write it.

Pretty interesting browser, actually! I'm still hoping to hear about some other obscure browsers during this poll. Got to me some other interesting, niche things out there.

Yeah, worse than that - i even USE Seamonkey. Oh well, that's what I get for doing this during my day job :)

for the record me neither, doesn't fit with the kind of articles we got here ... plus it's a duplicate from SN ;-)

There are aspects of Android which are crap for which there is currently no decent fix with the exception of cymeg.

EVERYTHING I've submitted has already been on Soylent... I submitted them there, first. That didn't stop several of them making the front-page of |. just fine, and getting positive comments. And I certainly wouldn't like |. just to be an "overflow" site, of topics Soylent didn't find interesting enough to cover.

What's the point of trying to run Linux on tablets? I don't get it. It's not like Linux is a successful desktop OS. It's broken and held together solely by the willpower of distributors. I don't use GNOME on my desktop and I wouldn't want it on a tablet either. I don't want to carry some gigabytes of brokenness around..

Is there some awesome application which runs only on Linux? I'm really curious, please tell me if you know of any.

If not, we already have some browsers, PDF viewers etc. Is this the kind of thing where the opensource guys try to write the 5000th tetris game "just because they can" and "the tile colors aren't perfect in any of the others"?

Open hardware doesn't mean project boards, it means stuff like the Nexus 7... You might notice the Nexus 7 has sold pretty well.

It can still come with Android, it just needs to have documentation so a non-proprietary Linux kernel can be bootstrapped, and drivers for video/wifi/etc. can be written.

Nothing about Android forces OEMs to be "open", they're allowed to keep the specs secret, and depending on binary-blob drivers, but as long as there are manufacturers of open hardware, the community can unite behind their devices as a platform, and provide Linux and perhaps other OSes for it.

The Nexus 7 absolutely already exists, and it is a nice place to start...

Yeah, that's basically the argument I just had over at SoylentNews.

Specifically, they're posting lots of political flamebait and other crap stories, and clearly have no interest in sticking to sci/tech. While my comment did (eventually) get modded-up to +5, it seems apparent that my plea fell on completely deaf ears:

http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=3912&cid=93644

Examples such as paulej72 saying science stories just don't get enough (whatever that is) comments:

http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=3912&cid=93940

That, plus my repeated reasoned and fully-cited pleas for the same, from back to the start of the site, clearly having no positive effect:

http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=188&cid=3808

As well as incidents, such as them asking for community input, such as the poll asking how frequently stories should be posted to the front-page, then stating that they reached a different answer internally, and blatantly disregarding the community input.

In short (too late!), I sincerely hope pipedot doesn't post a story about "Science, Atheism, and Captain Kirk" like Slashdot and SoylentNews both did, which essentially caused me to abandon all hope for them both, and come here...

Because "open hardware" means ZIPPO and won't EXIST for long if not enough of it is sold to keep the company in business.

And unless you get very lucky as to right place / right time / right niche (Raspberry Pi) you end up like Maemo/Meego/blabla or Tizen.

The rest of us hope that a successful commercialized platform will still allow enough freedom for the tinkerers among us to continue doing their thing. This is why, despite its decline into evil, Google and Android are still so, so, so much preferable to Apple or Microsoft. And of course your Nexus 7 example proves that point.

There is very little incentive for manufacturers to make their "tablet hardware open" except that they want to take advantage of Google's ecosystem and market, and the cost of rolling their own is too high / doomed. It's a lucky and convenient accident that we're not more locked up than we already are.

So if a platform were commercialized that WERE entirely open by design and in practice, it would be a really nice place to start and to maintain.

I don't understand the pessimism in the summary. It even mentioned that the Nexus 7 can be re-purposed by anyone who wants to. Just buy one, and install Linux on it.

http://liliputing.com/2013/02/how-to-install-ubuntu-touch-on-a-nexus-7-with-windows-mac-or-linux.html

http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-to-Install-Ubuntu-on-Nexus-7-323489.shtml

As long as the tablet hardware is open, those who are interested in Linux will be able to install and use it. And supporting open hardware is a far more important goal than (locked-down) Linux preloaded on a tablet.

In addition, there are convertible x86 laptops that can look and work an awful lot like a tablet.

Personally, I'm happy to skip the fad... I always get my phone with a hardware keyboard, and I'm hardly going to be interested in a bigger and more expensive device without one. Chromebooks look like a good source of cheap laptop hardware for Linux aficionados to me.

but I am too depresser to so so

Most fascinating is the energy source different from anything else believed to exist. Life was first thought to depend entirely on sunlight, then creatures living near submarine volcanic vents were discovered, and those were thought to be the only two sources.

Now we've got a 3rd completely new form... Living off of minerals floating in the water, with no sources of geothermal heat nor sunlight at all. And not just a few hardy bacteria struggling to survive, but an extensive ecosystem as densely populated as tropical waterways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Uses

Batteries are the big ones... Increasing numbers of hybrid and electric cars will drive an astronomical spike in demand for the element, exhausting current sources.

That kind of hypothetical is always nonsense. If the current population of the US all built log-cabins like the first settlers, there wouldn't be enough trees on the Earth...

The market takes care of such thing. You can hardly fault people for eating tasty steaks when they cost about an hour of labor... When there's 2 billion more people demanding steaks, and the price shoots up through the roof, Americans will eat far fewer of them, and maybe a lot more rice.

But in the mean-time, trying to shame Americans into changing their habits today, to match some distant future hypothetical scenario is silly and futile, and also completely unnecessary.

And here I thought she was just a character in Girl Genius.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/16/6209759/apple-has-an-embarassing-bulge

Oh damn Bryan, I thought you were talking hypothetically or something. You're right, Jobs would have slapped the crap out of his team for this nonsense.

Australia does not spy on neighbours! And vice versa of course.

I feel bad commenting on this article because I'm totally unqualified. But it's a reminder I like to be exposed to sciences I don't normally pay attention to because it breaks me out of my rut. There's so many interesting things going on out there, and the size of apple's new iphone isn't one of them.

The same math shows that if the Chinese consumed at a level equivalent to the United States, the earth wouldn't produce enough food/energy/etc. to sustain it. Point being the USA consumption level is not sustainable across a larger swath of human population.

Well, it's a move straight out of the Dictator's Handbook (http://www.dictatorshandbook.net). See the chapter on Press, Media, and Communications (http://dictatorshandbook.net/book/node236.html).

I think the irony here is learning that everyone does it, and everyone is *shocked, shocked I say* to find out that others are doing it too.

that this isn't remotely surprising. But hey, spying on reporters is probably for national security reasons, right? Right guys??

What do we even use lithium for?

It also has various uses in nuclear power.

Barring any revolutionary advances in the field, lithium batteries are our current best energy storage technology for mobile applications (i.e. phones, laptops, electric cars) and will be our best bet for the foreseeable future. If we are ever to wain ourselves off of fossil fuels, we must implement, in large scale, renewable energy storage.

Simply put, if everyone in the U.S. decided to junk their gas guzzler and buy an electric vehicle, there simply wouldn't be enough known lithium deposits on this planet to handle the demand. In fact, according to the popular Do the Math blog, not even known lead deposits (for the older lead-acid batteries) would be enough.

It's about a computer game - one that reminds us a lot of Rollercoaster Tycoon / Theme Park.
And the article was posted at a time when this game was not making any headlines (first I heard of it: here).
I'd say that news on upcoming video games - especially ones that link to "games of our youth" - can definitely be posted here.
And yes, that's a vague definition. Which is why we have editors. It's the editors' job to pick the stories that make the site better/more interesting. And I think Zafiro did a good job with this story.

You make good points. Yes, I do console work from Android all the time, and iOS as well - it's great. Maybe it's just geek attachment to certain apps that aren't available on iOS or Android. In my case, that would be console apps (SLRN, Mutt, IRSSI, alpine, kismet). No android equivalent, though I can shell into a server where I have those things running. It's made my Nexus 7 the best weapon in my toolbox.

One good aspect of this technique: whatever the waste byproducts of the process are, if you just throw them back in the ocean you haven't contributed any pollution to it.

a team of 20 year olds

These are called seniors in open software development nowadays.

Hmm, you're right about Seamonkey - should've thought of that one. The number of derivatives of Firefox is kind of overwhelming. I did get iceweasel though!

Yeah, I was a bit surprised you listed iceweasel which is basically just a rebranding of firefox and forgot seamonkey, which is much more different since it is a suite (with an email agent and newsreader, a composer and probably one or two more things). Even if at the moment I only use it as a browser, my folks use it for mail too. I don't know if it is still the case, but at some point, seamonkey mail+web browser were lighter (RAM-wise) than firefox (let alone firefox + thunderbird).

The Plasma Active project didn't die with that hardware project, did it? According to the project site you can get it running on a nifty new Nexus tablet. That should be more than enough of a modern slate experience, no?

http://plasma-active.org/

Also, as to your last point, you could certain run console/ssh sessions on any ordinary tablet already, as I'm sure you know. For a name brand, the HP models are dirt cheap (rebranded clones).

You headed us off at the pass on the Android issue, but by the time one rewrites the interface and applications for tablet operation ("oh here's my favorite application running but gee you know I'd really like it to be optimized for this interface"), as KDE and Microsoft and others have done, perhaps in the end you really are better off just saving the effort and using Android / AOSP anyway?

You can look into XBMC and VLC in the future. I live in Germany and own Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs. Both programs seem to play most of my DVDs in my Windows computer despite region locks. I usually hook up my computer to watch movies. We don't even own a "real" DVD player anymore. I keep an external DVD player around for the rare DVD that won't play. Be aware that XBMC is changing their name very soon to Kodi.

1) Yay for humanity! I'm amazed we were able to pull this one off, and who knows, maybe we haven't quite yet pulled it off. I've spent most of my life working in 3rd world shitholes and my sense of optimism for humanity as gradually sunk as a result. From human rights to solid waste to water pollution to economic development to meeting basic human needs for food - this species is a clusterfuck.

2) I'm not hugely impressed that the UN is running studies like this. They are better positioned as a political, not a scientific organization. I read:

The conclusion was made in the assessment published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

I'm hoping that means the WMO did the study and the UNEP oversaw it, or funded it, or something. Because the bureaucratic numbnuts at the UN don't belong in science and research.

I was reminded to write this piece by the article on Bodhi Linux earlier. I got thinking about how sweet it would be to have Bodhi running on a tablet because the tablet profile configuration looked so interesting. There's no easy win here - you get the distro working on the hardware and you've still got a mess of apps to fix up. Most Linux apps were written for keyboards and mice or even for consoles. But I love the idea of it, and if I could run my favorite Linux apps on tablet hardware I'd have hit nerd-vana. Even a tablet from which I could do some console/ssh work would be sweetness itself.

Sadly, it doesn't look like we're headed there quite yet. That leaves me with ChromeOS and Android - not bad, but not quite nerd-vana, either.

I'd be surprised if *most* of them weren't already VMs. I mean, this revolution is coming on the tails of the previous one, right?

... which a team of 20 year olds then throws out so they can reimplement it in Ruby and the latest OO framework ...

You are missing a step. A lot of our software routers are VMs.. now think about that for a moment..

I live in hope that Android for tablet / TV can one day be fixed so it works far better than it does today. Please don't crush my hopes :( Linux will make it! Can we do it! Yes! We can!

Oh come now, sharepoint can't be that bad. Right now we are in the middle of throwing out our existing wiki to move to sharepoint. Surely the fountain of knowledge power goodwill and everlasting sunshine happiness swirl that is microsoft must have a better product. After all our existing wiki costs next to nothing and requires one administrator. Sharepoint must be better. Why would we make our current happy users go to something else if it was worse. We wouldn't. No. Never. Sharepoint must be the pinnacle of the wiki mountain.

Please. Help. I am stuck in a building with these nuts called "management" who think they know best who throw out our free tools. Sob. Please. Help. You are my only hope.

I can't wait for the next step: all this re-implemented in Javascript over a Python engine:-)

There can be no confusion possible if you call it by the right name: GNU/Linux. :)

Well, the other thing is it wasn't a very complex or complete submission. Odds are the other guys hadn't heard of it and decided they don't care about the article. Here at Pipedot, the article crossed the desk of a volunteer editor who uses and really likes Bodhi. That makes a difference. I was actually thinking of doing it for Distro Friday. Guess after doing this article, that won't be necessary anymore. Look for a different distro this week then.

I think I agree with you. I like some hardware staying hardware. I've gotten used to virtual servers though and that seems like a good idea. The thing is, if the 'hardware' is just software and an abstraction layer running on hardware that would've been similar to the other hardware, then what's the point? You save money but you lose time in the abstraction. Maybe I'm not being clear:

Router: silicon chips, transistors, resistors, copper wiring.
Server: silicon chips, transistors, resistors, copper wiring.
Virtual router: a server and some software. Doesn't seem like you come out ahead here?

What do we even use lithium for? Other than horrid pscyhological meds, and batteries, anyway. As for the psych meds I understand they do almost as much harm as they do good. As for batteries, I'll be happy when we find an alternative battery technology. Lithium is better than NiCd and similar, but it sure does come with a lot of downsides, and the explosive fires are just one of them. Time for new tech?

Hmm, you're right about Seamonkey - should've thought of that one. The number of derivatives of Firefox is kind of overwhelming. I did get iceweasel though! As for IE, I have to use it at work too, at the godawful Sharepoint server which chokes up bile if you try to use any other browser. But I hate every moment of it and wash my hands after using that browser and server suite.

It's hard for me to differentiate between my hatred of IE and my hatred of Sharepoint. It's like they're combined into this huge load of demon vomit. Anyway, it's not on the list because I figured no one would actually admit to using it!

Never heard of it, so thanks for the mention! Maybe we'll do a review of alternative browsers here - that would be interesting.

For me at least, this is a big deal, but maybe that's because I'm sweating like a cow over here, and the idea of going for a splash in a dark, subterranean lake of glacial water seems pretty darned refreshing.

I remember the extraordinary measures being taken to avoid 'infecting' the pool water with contaminated drill bits and similar, and it seems this is revolutionary science at its best. We might not be any closer to solving our own species' problems, but this at least gives us into the ever-more extraordinary ways life can occur and opening our minds to what 'inhabitable places' really look like.

That's a whole lot of bacteria. Hope they enjoyed their moment of solitude, because it's over. I wouldn't be surprised if we find they have some extremely peculiar adaptations for life in that environment.

Kudos to the science team, anyway. This is good stuff.

Many of our routers are switches are now virtual servers acting as switches. Lots of problems. Hardware rarely crashes or slows down.

Still waiting for someone to realise that cheap quadcopters plus explosives equals ultimate suicide bomberoffensive assault vehicle.

Take the boku haram problem for a start. They already use drones to spot their camps and monitor their movements. Just one little step further is to add an explosives charge to the copter fly it right into the camp as closeto a soldier as possible and away from hostages then boom.

Next tech advancement is not to waste a whole copter to take out a small number. Equip the copter with chargers or grenades. Fly above the camp. Drop the bombs. Move copter out of sight. Rearm. Send it back. Continue until they surrender.

Escalation. No army moves without anti mini aircraft detect and destroy units. The units are a small Iron Shield varient. Spot flying hostile craft sound an alert take them down. This will not stop suicide bomber copter tactics unless defence mechanisms can blow them up.

Only a matter of time.

It's still in the submission queue at SN. The submission wasn't very good, just a couple links without text, which greatly slows-down how long it takes to get published, but I expect it'll get there.