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romanr writes:

"The situation in Ukraine was pretty wild yesterday. Over twenty dead protesters have been reported, and many more have been injured. One student, a supporter of peaceful demonstrations and a participant in the riots, answers questions about the current situation in Ukraine."

[ED Note: Background on the Ukraine situation from the BBC.]

DeathMonkey writes:

"Dimitris Lioudis, a 23-year-old trainee lawyer from Athens, was sued for libel last year for writing about a Greek politician, Theodore Katsanevas. Last week, the judge overseeing the case issued an order that he remove the article from the site.

That got the attention of the Wikimedia Foundation, which has now made a public vow to support Liourdis throughout the litigation.

Say what you will about the Wiki, at least they know where their content comes from."

AudioGuy writes:

"Adrian Perica is a very busy man. Over the past 18 months, the mergers and acquisitions chief at Apple has been scouring the globe looking for deals, snatching up everything from search engines and data analytics to mapping software and motion tracking chips.

A source tells The Chronicle that Perica met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Cupertino last spring at around the same time analysts suggested Apple acquire the electric car giant.

The newspaper has also learned that Apple is heavily exploring medical devices, specifically sensor technology that can help predict heart attacks. Led by Tomlinson Holman, a renowned audio engineer who invented THX and 10.2 surround sound, Apple is exploring ways to predict heart attacks by studying the sound blood makes at it flows through arteries.

Taken together, Apple's potential forays into automobiles and medical devices, two industries worlds away from consumer electronics, underscore the company's deep desire to move away from iPhones and iPads and take big risks.

Good grief. Is the 'iTesla next in the 'i' line?"

By now, you have had the chance to read the updates of both NCommander and Barrabas. Nonetheless, you may still be wondering quite a few things about the site and its staff. Here is your chance to ask us anything. These questions can be general in nature, in which case the staff will select a spokesperson to answer it, or it may be specific to an individual. If the question is for an individual, please ensure you identify that person specifically enough.

We will select the best questions from the thread and provide answers to the community. These questions may not be the highest rated, although we will probably use those first.

In keeping with tradition, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.

weeds writes:

"This has been going on for some time and the date of closest approach keeps getting pushed back. Here is the latest report from the New York Times on the approach of a gas cloud called G2 towards the Galactic Center.

Black holes, which are the ultra-dense, collapsed objects predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, are often depicted as voracious feeders whose extraordinary gravity acts like a one-way membrane: Everything is sucked in, even light, and virtually nothing leaks out.

Now, for the first time, astronomers may have a chance to watch as a giant black hole consumes a cosmic snack.

In March or April, the gas cloud G2, which has been hurtling toward the center of the Milky Way, is expected to collide with Sagittarius A*, a black hole that lies just 26,000 light-years away from Earth."

Lagg writes:

"Philips put out a press release detailing their new retail lighting system, which is designed for the purpose of saving power by tracking subjects in a room, then increasing or decreasing light intensity as needed. Philips also advertises a secondary feature for providing location based sale adverts to the customer directly on their smartphone. This will require the user to install an app to actually receive the sale alerts, but it's unclear exactly how this tracking will be done otherwise.

Any home automation types in the comments have a theory as to how this will work on a technical level? My best guess is that there are infrared LEDs paired with the lighting fixtures themselves that can be picked up by phones with IR sensors in them. Further, what advantages does this sort of system have in terms of lighting efficiency that an electric eye setup wouldn't accomplish just as well?"

Fluffeh writes:

"When the D.C. U.S. Court of Appeals struck down the FCC's Open Internet Rules, a White House Petition was put up to 'direct the FCC to classify ISPs as "common carriers"'. With over 100k signatures, there is now an official response.

Absent net neutrality, the Internet could turn into a high-priced private toll road that would be inaccessible to the next generation of visionaries. The resulting decline in the development of advanced online apps and services would dampen demand for broadband and ultimately discourage investment in broadband infrastructure. An open Internet removes barriers to investment worldwide.

The petition asked that the President direct the FCC to reclassify Internet service providers as "common carriers" which, if upheld, would give the FCC a distinct set of regulatory tools to promote net neutrality. The FCC is an independent agency. Chairman Wheeler has publicly pledged to use the full authority granted by Congress to maintain a robust, free and open Internet a principle that this White House vigorously supports."

"It used to be possible for Android apps to access any kind of storage on an android device through the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. Writing to the SD card is useful for many different kinds of apps, e.g. file managers or cloud storage synchronization. However, the latest version of Android will no longer allow apps to write anywhere on external storage media, instead apps will only be allowed to access app-specific folders on SD cards. Android Police has an excellent writeup of the changes and the implications for users."

[ED Note: This is bound to irritate power users that rely on their SD cards for additional device storage.]

Sir Garlon writes:

"According to the Associated Press, the US Navy has announced plans to actually deploy an operational laser weapon aboard the USS Ponce later this year.

The solid-state laser weapon system is designed to target what the Navy describes as 'asymmetrical threats.' Those include aerial drones, speed boats and swarm boats, all potential threats to warships in the Persian Gulf, where the Ponce, a floating staging base, is set to be deployed.

'It fundamentally changes the way we fight,' said Capt. Mike Ziv, program manager for directed energy and electric weapon systems for the Naval Sea Systems Command."

nobbis writes:

"Mihai Guiman recounts how he built an open source community, FINkers United, around an open source financial application, FinTP. He believes that an open source project cannot succeed without a powerful community to support its development, and explains how FINkers United changed as the project moved from closed to open source. The management structure evolved and he expects new hierarchies to emerge based on merit and contribution. He notes the benefits of joining such a community as sharing interests and having the ability to act on ideas according to your beliefs. He poses a pertinent questions at the end: 'Why would you join an open source community?'"

[ED Note: As most of the Open Source news we hear these days relates to decade-spanning well established projects, it's good to be reminded that this process still goes on, and to reflect on what it means to be building a community-centric news discussion site.]

"BGR reflects on recent comments by a Metro designer. 'Metro is a content consumption space,' Microsoft UX designer Jacob Miller explains, 'It is designed for casual users who only want to check Facebook, view some photos, and maybe post a selfie to Instagram. It's designed for your computer illiterate little sister, for grandpas who don't know how to use that computer dofangle thingy, and for mom who just wants to look up apple pie recipes. It's simple, clear, and does one thing (and only one thing) relatively easily. That is what Metro is. It is the antithesis of a power user.'"

mattie_p paraphrases Barrabas, who uttered these words (mostly):

(To read the full story in his words, simply go to Barrabas's Journal Entry. (internal hyperlink))

girlwhowaspluggedout writes:

"The European Commission reports that, fearing high roaming charges, many EU citizens forgo the use of their mobile phones outside their home country. According to a survey done by the Commission (pdf), when travelling to another EU country, 90% of all EU citizens limit their e-mail use, 47% do not use their mobile internet connection, 33% never place calls, 25% do not text, and a staggering 28% simply turn off their mobile phones.

Roaming charges, the Commission suggests, are hurting the fledgling EU app sector. In trying to avoid paying data premiums, travelers limit their use of data-heavy apps, like travel guides, maps, and photo applications. Frequent travelers are even more likely to turn-off their phones, perhaps due to being better informed about the costs of data roaming.

The Commission reports that data roaming use across the EU has increased by 1500% since the introduction of price caps in 2008. It suggests that by eliminating all roaming charges, mobile providers will gain a further 300 million customers. These findings give further support to regulations proposed by the Commission that will create a single mobile phone market throughout the EU, enabling all customers to enjoy domestic rates when travelling within the EU."

laserfusion writes:

"CNET is reporting on a massively-mono-player gaming experiment. From the article :

In what can only be described as the best thing to happen to Valentine's Day, about 12,000 people are participating in a collective game of Pokemon Red on the live game-streaming service Twitch, all by simply typing in directions in the comment box in a messy frenzy. Not every single one of the viewers is mashing in commands of course, but because anyone with a Twitch account can comment on a public stream, any viewer is a potential player in this wacky experiment.

Currently there are 80,000 players. Despite all the noise and trolls, they were able to make progress in the game and multiple goals have been achieved. Now there is a new control mode "democracy" in which the most popular commands in every 10 seconds are executed. "Democracy" and "anarchy" modes can be switched by a 75% vote."

"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the primary backer for the inBloom educational grading and service (which also acts as a platform for third-party applications), is catching flak for its role in encouraging the outsourcing of US Education. The article (cited by RMS today) argues that though the Common Core is a scary new concept that takes power away from state and local school governance, the real danger is allowing corporate enterprises to have so much control over our classrooms. The Washington Post also reports a case where Pearson included corporate logos and promotional materials inside its test booklets."