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gewg_ writes:

The Linux Foundation reports

We've focused a lot of attention in recent years on making Linux learning materials more accessible to more people. This year, for example, together with our partner edX, we were able to offer our Intro to Linux course for free to nearly 300,000 people from all over the world.

While the United States ranks first in the number of students taking Intro to Linux, it only represents about 30 percent of all class participants. The top geographies include the U.S., India, United Kingdom, Brazil, and Spain. Linux attracted more people with this one course than the number of people who attended all seven games of the recent World Series combined.

What's even more overwhelming is that our Intro to Linux course saw one of the highest enrollments of any class offered on edx.org this year. It's also worth noting that while MOOCs have a reputation for low completion rates among registrants, the Linux course is ranking well above the industry average. This enthusiasm and participation bodes well for the future of Linux and the many individuals getting involved.

Related:
Free Intro to Linux Course

Ryuugami writes:

Under the recent controversial "right to be forgotten" EU ruling, the search engines (well, mostly Google) are required to remove the links that point to old, inaccurate or irrelevant information from the search results if the person involved requests it. This is only applied when the search terms include the person's name — the links can still be found by using different search terms. In case of Google, delisting has been limited to the European sub-domains, but the EU wants Google to expand it to it's core .com domain, as reported by the BBC:

At present, visitors are diverted to localised editions of the US company's search tool - such as Google.co.uk and Google.fr - when they initially try to visit the Google.com site.

However, a link is provided at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen offering an option to switch to the international .com version. This link does not appear if the users attempted to go to a regional version in the first place.

Even so, it means it is possible for people in Europe to easily opt out of the censored lists.

The data watchdogs said[pdf] this "cannot be considered a sufficient means to guarantee the rights" of citizens living in the union's 28 member countries.

gewg_ writes:

Common Dreams reports:

The U.S. government's so-called "pinpoint"(NYT paywall) drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen are, in fact, leaving wide perimeters of death, as people on the Kill List are targeted--and even reported dead--again and again, according to a report published Monday by the UK-based charity Reprieve.

While drone attacks and their victims are kept secret by the U.S. military and government, Reprieve compiled public information available, most of it from media reports and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, to determine who actually died when the U.S. went after individuals in Yemen and Pakistan between November 2002 and November 2014.

The study examines the cases of 41 people included on a Kill List--a classified U.S. assassination program personally approved by President Obama with no judicial or public oversight. According to the report's findings, up to 1,147 unnamed people were killed in pursuit of these 41 known individuals.

Furthermore, each of these 41 men was reported killed multiple times.

"This raises a stark question," states the study. "With each failed attempt to assassinate a man on the Kill List, who filled the body bag in his place?

tonyPick writes:

phys.org has a report on reusing Blu-Ray disks as nanoimprinting templates for solar cells, improving performance.

Using the pattern from the Blu-Ray, the compressed data sequences:

...resulted in a quasi-random array of islands and pits (0s and 1s) with feature sizes between 150 and 525 nanometers. And this range, it turns out, works quite well for light-trapping applications over the entire solar spectrum.

The overall broadband absorption enhancement of a Blu-ray patterned solar cell was measured to be 21.8 percent, the researchers report.

Also covered at IEEE Spectrum, and from the Spectrum article:

While it’s certainly appealing to think about recycling our Blu-ray discs directly into more efficient solar panels, a more realistic approach might be to use the mass-production infrastructure that’s already in place to create optical media that’s adapted to improving solar cell performance.

babywombat writes:

Estonia will become the first country in the world to offer “e-residency” for foreigners. So what does this mean and how does it work?

Basically e-residency means a state-sanctioned authentication process. According to the article, “The card is an opportunity for people whose country of residence does not offer them a strong digital identity." It is especially useful for entrepreneurs and others who already have some relationship to Estonia. The e-residency project builds on top of the existing Estonian national ID card infrastructure, which is already widely used in Estonia. Each e-resident will get an electronic card similar to the Estonian ID card, though without a photo or fingerprints as these cards are meant for electronic use only. The card can be used for accessing a multitude of public and private electronic services which require authentication, like online banking or founding a company in Estonia. Some services extend the borders of Estonia, for example digital signatures will be legally valid in the whole European Union.

The card can be used from all over the world, but the applicant must be physically present in Estonia at least once, to verify his or her identity. There are also background checks involved and the authorities can cancel the e-residency at any moment without explanations if there is a suspicion of fraud. This seems reasonable as carrying out any investigations in foreign countries would be next to impossible.

Issuing the e-resident digital identity will start by the end of 2014.

sigma writes:

A ZDNet story explains that Niagarafiles, renamed as NiFi, will be released under the Apache license. The tool, which is conceptually derived from flow-based programming, is used for automating data flows across multiple networks, even where data formats and protocols differ.

The project's lead developer, Joseph Witt, said the NSA took great pains to develop the tool in a way that would eventually allow the agency to release its source code.

"From its inception, NiFi was developed with an open source philosophy in mind and with the hopes of eventually being truly open sourced," Witt explained.

gewg_ writes:

El Reg reports

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has issued its annual "Measuring the Information Society" report and found that Denmark is the world's most technologically-developed nation.

South Korea scored the win in the last version of the report, but is now in second. Results for other big Reg-reading nations include:

• The UK climbing from seventh to fifth;
• The USA remaining steady in twelfth spot;
• Australia retaining its fourteenth rank;
• Canada climbing two spots to rank twenty-third;
• India staying in 129th place;
• Germany climbing one spot to seventeenth;
• China jumping two spots to 89th, while Hong Kong sits in fourth and Macao sits in twenty-fifth place.

[more after the break]

mendax writes:

NBC News is reporting in an article, with photos:

After a series of calibration tests, the first 3-D printer to fly to outer space has manufactured its first potentially useful object on the International Space Station: a replacement faceplate for its print head casing. [...]

The 9.5-inch-wide contraption was delivered to the space station by a robotic SpaceX Dragon cargo ship in September, and NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore set it up inside the station's experimental glovebox a week ago.

Since then, the crew has been printing out plastic test patterns, or "coupons," to check how the machine works in zero gravity. "Everything worked exactly as planned, maybe a little better than planned," Kemmer told NBC News. He said only two calibration passes were needed in advance of the first honest-to-goodness print job, which finished up at 4:28 p.m. ET Monday and was pulled out of the box early Tuesday.

The article points out the real value of a 3-D printer in space:

In space, astronauts may someday count on 3-D printers to make tools or spare parts from standard-issue feedstock, rather than having to rely on a stockpile of hardware flown up from Earth at a cost of $10,000 a pound. That capability will be particularly important for trips to Mars — because in deep space, it's hard to find a hardware store.

I take exception to the claim, however, that this first 3-D printed part is "it's really the first object truly manufactured off planet Earth" as claimed in the article. Would not the jury-rigged CO₂ scrubbers made by the Apollo 13 astronauts be the first?

bootsy writes:

Reuters has another one of those new battery technology stories (and, yes, it does contain the word nano.)

What makes this more interesting is the Israeli firm in question has a number of high profile investors including an "Asian Phone manufacturer" and the owner of Chelsea football club. They are also talking about a product in 2016 rather than the usual 5 years' time.

I am not convinced by the extrapolation up to car batteries as you'd need a very thick cable.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

- Dan Ackroyd, Weekend Update "Point/Counterpoint" on Saturday Night Live

The journalist and author Nicholas Carr has turned pessimistic on technology, and artificial intelligence in particular. This time, it isn't so much that IT doesn't matter, which is what he concluded over a decade ago. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, in which Carr continues to explore themes covered in his most recent books, he argues that mankind has begun to delegate to machines more and more activities that once required thought, judgement, and practice. Carr acknowledges this isn't a new phenomenon — the erosion of craftsmanship occurred throughout the Industrial Revolution. But the trend has been accelerated by computers, both overt and embedded, which has led to atrophying of expert skills in such diverse professions as airline pilots, physicians, and building architects. Skilled professionals need to practice every day to maintain their edge, and the computers are taking that practice away from them and us, Carr says.

The Scottish novelist Andrew O'Hagan sounds a more positive note about information technology. O'Hagan dismisses the idea that ours is a world where we have hundreds of "friends", but nobody to talk to. Back in the late '70s and '80s, when he was first making his way into the adult world, life was no more soulful or intimate than it is today, says O'Hagan; the main difference was the amount of tedious legwork and days of waiting that is completely unnecessary in today's world where information, music, literature, shopping, and booking of services can be found or accomplished with a few clicks of a mouse and keypad. By analogy, O'Hagan says his mother was perfectly happy to use the invention of the refrigerator to avoid having to negotiate bottles with the milkman each morning; she didn't regret the "loss" of the clunkier way of doing things.

q.kontinuum writes:

The Guardian features a story about e-cigarettes carrying some malware, infecting computers used to charge them. Though not entirely surprising when you actually think about it, personally I'd not have expected non-computerized devices which just happen to have micro-usb charger socket to pose a threat to IT security.

From the article:

“The made in China e-cigarette had malware hardcoded into the charger, and when plugged into a computer’s USB port the malware phoned home and infected the system.”

Later the article references some low-level attacks might be used to reprogram USB chips on devices, letting them act as USB keyboards issuing commands on the behalf of the logged in user, etc.

tonyPick writes:

There's a press release from last week on NASA's website publicising the opportunities to participate in the Asteroid Grand Challenge.

This particular release is an announcement about the 10 projects developed with technical partner SpaceGAMBIT, a "US-government funded open-source space program", and the SpaceGAMBIT website describes the ten grand challenge projects.

The NASA Asteroid initiative page has additional background.

q.kontinuum writes:

Sony was targeted by an attack to their infrastructure. Apparently, large parts of their internal network was infiltrated.
According to This story

the threat is enough that Sony has shut down its electronics on a global scale as the company investigates the breach. An unnamed source spoke to Deadline and said, “We are down, completely paralyzed.” [...]
Another unnamed source [...] went on to say that [...] the situation will take anywhere from one day to three weeks to be resolved.

I have a feeling computer security is a very lucrative business to work in for the foreseeable future...

lhsi writes:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-11/caos-ssr112114.php
Abstract: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790314003819

A new genetic sequencing technique has found that turtles are not as closely related to lizards and snakes as previously thought; and instead have a closer relationship with birds, crocodiles and dinosaurs.

We've gotten several submissions about the unrest here today of various sorts, but I couldn't bring myself to publish any of them. I live in St. Louis, not particularly near to the conflict zones, but not so far that they're foreign territory. I have close friends who posted pictures of the StL Metropolitain Police Department's "Civil Disobedience Squad" from their apartment windows and others who got gassed while taking shelter in a coffee shop. My first steady-girlfriend from way back when now lives in Ferguson itself where she and her husband have spent months putting their children back to sleep when circling choppers wake them in the night. I have been to the Canfield Green Apartments, spoken with parents there, and played with their children.

The mood here today is uneasy, as we get the gamut of reactions from our friends, family, and co-workers: head-in-the-sand, outrage, fear, reactionary griping, sadness, hope, and exhaustion. Some want things to go back to normal, for others that is an intolerable proposition. No one knows what will happen next.

So, why talk about this here? What angle does SoylentNews have to offer? For one, feel free to take this as an ask-me-anything about St. Louis and its history. I've lived here most of my life, and have worked jobs from tech to broadcasting to music to cab driving. I know this town and its people. For another, I want to hear what folks far afield have to say about this; especially observations from folk from other regions and countries. Finally, we are uniquely suited to dig into the tech-side of this, streaming, KKK vs Anonymous, drones, etc. than many traditional reporting sources.

-LaminatorX