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LoRdTAW writes:

Found this on Phronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Xfce-4.12-Finally-Weeks-Away

It looks like the release of Xfce 4.12 is finally about to materialize!

Xfce 4.12 is running about two years behind its original schedule but there's now a concerted effort underway to get out this lightweight GTK+ desktop environment out around the end of February or early March.

Simon Steinbeiß wrote on the xfce4-dev list, "we're writing to you [core Xfce component maintainers] proposing a concrete release date for 4.12 about a month from now, the weekend of February 28 and March 1. As we have discussed the status and progress of core components with many of you individually, we feel confident that the state of Xfce is good enough to polish some final edges and push more translations until then."

I myself have been waiting for a new Xfce but have since moved on to Mate. I am a bit eager to see what they have done to improve Xfce.

darkfeline writes:

A psychology paper covered by Ars Technica suggests that upper-class individuals are more likely to cheat for themselves, and lower-class individuals are more likely to cheat for others. Social class was extrapolated from income and education. The article is easy to read and informative, so RTFA.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/02/the-powerful-cheat-for-themselves-the-powerless-cheat-for-others/

TGV writes:

Mobile phones have become a part of our life style, but trying to give your new phone street cred in a rap video does not seem a smart move:

Video, lyrics and more at http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/03/htc-hip-hop-video/

martyb writes:

I found this fascinating story The Fundamental Constants Behind Our Universe at medium.com's "Starts with a Bang" column. Ethan Siegel posits:

But the Universe itself experiences continual growth, constant change, and new experiences all the time, and it does so spontaneously.

And yet, the better we understand our Universe — what the laws are that govern it, what particles inhabit it, and what it looked/behaved like farther and farther back in the distant past — the more inevitable it appears that it would look just as it appears.

[...] We’d like to describe our Universe as simply as possible; one of the goals of science is to describe nature in the simplest terms possible, but no simpler. How many of these does it take, as far as we understand our Universe today, to completely describe the particles, interactions, and laws of our Universe?

The answer? "Quite a few, surprisingly: 26, at the very least." He then goes on to explore what these are and how they are computed.

Sadly, we don't know enough to be able to predict everything. As the article notes, there remain problems with explaining CP violations, matter-antimatter asymmetry in our Universe, cosmic inflation, and what dark matter actually is.

Separately, but related: many years ago I came upon a site that provided interactive exploration of the scale of things in the universe from Planck length on up to the the visible universe. (And, no, it was not powersof10.com) I have a niece who is curious about such things and I would love to share such a site with her. Sadly, I can no longer locate a link. Any suggestions?

ghost writes:

You wouldn't think adding lldb (llvm debugger) support to gud.el, the emacs debugger front-end, would be that difficult. After all, the point is to support multiple debuggers (including gdb but also non-GPL ones). But wait until Richard Stallman hears about it!

It looks like there is a systematic effort to attack GNU packages. The GNU Project needs to respond strategically, which means not by having each GNU package cooperate with each attack. For now, please do NOT install this change.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Google is reportedly laying plans to enter the wireless phone service business, in competition with Verizon and AT&T and in co-opetition with T-Mobile and Sprint. In late January, The Information broke the news that the company had reached agreements with T-Mobile and Sprint (paywalled, but a secondary report is here) enabling Google to use their cellular networks. When placing a call, Google's handset would choose between the two carrier networks, or Wi-Fi, depending on the caller's location and relative signal strength of the alternatives.

This is not a new idea; mobile operators such as FreedomPop and Republic Wireless have created successful businesses selling Wi-Fi phone service while relying on cellular networks as a backup for locations with poor Wi-Fi signals. As the Washington Post's Brian Fung points out, though, Google brings formidable additional leverage to the table: they can compete while making little or no profit on phone service, because their main business involves providing access to data, and analyzing usage of it. Google has a brand name and huge financial resources. They control the Android operating system. And Google has laid fiber across several US cities, with more to come, for the purpose of offering Internet, TV, and phone services directly to consumers.

In an earnings call, Verizon's CFO Fran Shammo dismissed Google's projected entrance as not a big deal — Google would be yet another mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), or reseller of services from the major carriers:

"Resellers, or people leasing the network from carriers, have been around for 15 years," Shammo told Verizon investors. "It's a complex issue. You have to deal directly with the consumer. There is a whole infrastructure that is needed to do that."

ah.clem writes:

Pluto's got a blank face. It seems that the dwarf planet's nitrogen-rich ice evaporates faster than realized, disappointing those who hoped its pockmarks could keep a census of the outer solar system.

Thousands of icy bodies orbit the sun in a ring beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper belt, but many are too small to be observed from Earth. Because the Kuiper belt is thought to be populated with the leftover building blocks that did not get incorporated into the planets, knowing the size distribution of these objects' impacts on Pluto (i.e. craters) could help reveal what the solar system looked like soon after it formed more than 4 billion years ago.

There is some hope, however, in that it is unknown what is the exact ratio of frozen methane to frozen nitrogen in Pluto's surface; frozen methane is harder and better preserves any impact craters.

Small NewScientist article here. Paywalled journal reference: Icarus, DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2014.12.006

Hugh Pickens writes:

Brittny Mejia writes at the Los Angeles Times that while some are accusing Brian Williams of deliberately lying about his account of being on a helicopter under attack in Iraq, researchers have long said that memory is not as straightforward as we tend to think. Elizabeth Loftus, a professor of psychology and social behavior at UC Irvine, has been conducting research into planting false memories of events in people's minds and found that people can be convinced of these made-up memories through the power of suggestion. "Memory is susceptible to contamination and distortion and supplementation. It happens to virtually all of us," says Loftus. "This could easily be the development of a false memory." According to Daniel Schacter we create these false memories because our brains are designed to tell stories about the future. “Memory’s flexibility is useful to us, but it creates distortions and illusions,” says Schacter. “If memory is set up to use the past to imagine the future, its flexibility creates a vulnerability — a risk of confusing imagination with reality.”

Williams isn't the only one involved in the incident who recanted claims and blamed his memory. Pilot Richard Krell originally said that he was at the command of the "second bird" in a formation of three Chinooks, with Williams riding in the back of the "second bird." Krell said all three of the helicopters came under "small arms fire," lending support to the stories Williams told over the years about being "under fire" in Iraq. However Krell later recanted after the newspaper Stars and Stripes published a story contradicting his account. "The information I gave you was true based on my memories, but at this point I am questioning my memories," Krell said. "For the past 12 years I have been trying to forget everything that happened in Iraq and Afghanistan; now that I let it back, the nightmares come back with it, so I want to forget again."

c0lo writes:

Wired is running a piece about the effect of DMCA on farmers. If you think Phantom drones not flying near the White House due to a firmware upgrade is bad or jailbreaking your phone is a hassle, what would you think if your farming tractor, the one you paid some $100,000 for, does the same? Because it does!

Says Kyle Wiens:

...Over my left shoulder a massive John Deere tractor loomed. I came here to fix that tractor. So far, things weren’t going as planned.
I’m a computer programmer by training, and a repairman by trade. Ten years ago, I started iFixit, an online, DIY community that teaches people to repair what they own. Repair is what I do, and that I was being rebuffed by a tractor was incredibly frustrating.

The family farmer who owns this tractor is a friend of mine. He just wanted a better way to fix a minor hydraulic sensor. Every time the sensor blew, the onboard computer would shut the tractor down. It takes a technician at least two days to order the part, get out to the farm, and swap out the sensor. So for two days, Dave’s tractor lies fallow. And so do his fields.

...fixing Dave’s sensor problem required fiddling around in the tractor’s highly proprietary computer system—the tractor’s engine control unit (tECU): the brains behind the agricultural beast.

[More after the break.]

LancePodstrong writes:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141215094147.htm

Because of undetected toxicity problems, about a third of prescription drugs approved in the U.S. are withdrawn from the market or require added warning labels limiting their use. An exceptionally sensitive toxicity test invented at the University of Utah could make it possible to uncover more of these dangerous side effects early in pharmaceutical development so that fewer patients are given unsafe drugs.

The key to the test's sensitivity is the way it uses untamed house mice -- rather than docile, inbred laboratory strains -- and subjects them to a relentless, Darwinian competition for food, shelter and mates much like they would face in the wild. Mice jostle and race for a place in a roughly 300-square-foot pen divided into six territories by wire fencing that individuals must climb to invade or flee neighboring turf. Four of the territories are prime real estate with multiple hidden nesting sites and direct access to feeders. Two territories are poor, offering only open nesting sites and indirect feeder access. The test is called the organismal performance assay, or OPA.

Potts first came up with the idea as a way to explore the impact of inbreeding. Those studies revealed harmful effects of cousin-level inbreeding that had gone unnoticed for decades of research on mouse genetics. Laboratory mice that are only slightly less healthy may not appear so when given ample food and living space. But if there is a defect in any physiological system, it is likely to stand out during intense competition.

tonyPick writes:

The Conversation has an article analysing the recent major spending of the UK Conservative party on Facebook.

News that the Conservative Party has been spending more than £100,000 a month on Facebook advertising has its supporters and rivals all wondering if this is money well spent.

The article examines the spending and return of the current strategy.

The Conservative Party are currently the majority partner in the present UK Coalition Government (alongside partners the Liberal Democrats), and the next UK General Election is set for Thursday 7 May 2015. All the UK political parties appear to be gearing up their use of Social Media ahead of this, following the experience of the 2008 US election campaigns.

The source for the spending figures is this BBC Article on the Conservative's Facebook Bill. For the non-UK readers - £100,000 is around $150,000 (US).

frojack writes:

Columbia University has published a story about the confusing interplay of volcanoes and global warming.

The discussion this time isn't about the effect of volcanic aerosols perhaps causing the recent pause in warming. This time the discussion is whether warming induces volcanic eruptions, or whether eruptions trigger the warming. Turns out, its both, depending on where you look.

Marine geophysicist Maya Tolstoy of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has research that suggest that the undersea volcanoes wax and wane on a cycle that is correlated with historical climate change cycles.

We are all aware that there are vast ranges of volcanoes hidden under the oceans. These have been presumed by scientists to be oozing lava at slow, steady rates along mid-ocean ridges. But Tolstoy's new study shows that they flare up on strikingly regular cycles, ranging from two weeks to 100,000 years.

Historically researchers have suggested that as icecaps build on land, pressure on underlying volcanoes also builds, and eruptions are suppressed. But when warming somehow starts and the ice begins melting, pressure lets up, and eruptions surge. They belch CO2 that produces more warming, which melts more ice, which creates a self-feeding effect that tips the planet suddenly into a warm period.

Tolstoy's theory is the corollary, and suggests that undersea volcanoes do the opposite: As the climate warms, sea levels rise, and the added weight suppresses under sea eruptions, and as earth cools, sea levels may drop 100 meters, because so much water gets locked into ice. This relieves pressure on submarine volcanoes, and they erupt more.

This theory may help climate scientists adjust the predictive models of human-induced global warming to better tune them to actual measurements.

AnonTechie writes:

Maybe the Universe isn't expanding at all. Maybe everything is actually just shrinking, so it looks like it's expanding. Turns out, scientists have thought of this.

There are some people who would have you believe the Universe is expanding. They're peddling this idea it all started with a bang, and that expansion is continuing and accelerating. Yet, they can't tell us what force is causing this acceleration. Just "dark energy", or some other JK Rowling-esque sounding thing. Otherwise known as the acceleration that shall not be named, and it shall be taught in the class which follows potions in 3rd period.

I propose to you, faithful viewer, an alternative to this expansionist conspiracy. What if distances are staying the same, and everything is in fact, shrinking? Are we destined to compress all the way down to the Microverse? Is it only a matter of time before our galaxy starts drinking its coffee from a thimble or perhaps sealed in a pendant hanging on Orion's belt? So, could we tell if that's actually what's going on?

http://phys.org/news/2015-02-universe.html

http://www.nature.com/news/cosmologist-claims-universe-may-not-be-expanding-1.13379

[Abstract]: http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.6878

Magic Oddball writes:

Note: I'm not mentioning what I'm trying to fund, as I don't want this to look like a thinly-disguised play on people's emotions for money. I'll just say it's nothing unethical, immoral, or controversial, and put a link in my sig once I've set something up.

I need any tips or suggestions on personal crowdfunding sites that fellow Soylentils have — recommendations, warnings, which have unusual practices or options, personal experiences you've heard, anything you feel is relevant. I've had one site recommended to me (GoFundMe) by non-technical family, though my experience is that by the time a site/service is popular with the non-technical crowd, there's usually much better options available that they're unaware of!

Normally I research everything myself, but my initial searches have been so packed with irrelevant & spammy sites/articles that finding the gems while sleep-deprived and stressed-out isn't going well. More importantly, this is an extremely urgent situation, so every moment I spend searching is time I'm not filling out charity aid forms, tracking down more to apply for, handling the situation itself, and so forth.

Thanks in advance for any info people can drum up!

"gewg_" writes:

The Inquirer reports:

Canonical has taken the covers off the first phone to be powered by Ubuntu, created in association with Spanish electronics company BQ. The BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition phone will be available across Europe by mail order starting next week.

It boasts a 4.5in screen, Mediatek A7 quad-core processor running at 1.3GHz and 1GB RAM, with 8GB storage. The rear camera is 8MP and the front is 5MP.

[...]No operators have agreed to take on the BQ Aquaris as yet, although several, including Giffgaff in the UK, are offering plans for the device, although it isn't yet clear whether that means anything specific.

[...]Cristian Parrino, VP of mobile at Canonical, described [the debut] as a product "aimed at early adopters". The version of Ubuntu included is not the latest, it does not have Snappy, the system that allows easy rollout of app updates in the operating system, and most notably of all, this is not the Universal version of Ubuntu which we were promised over a year ago.

[...]the whole thing has a feeling of being rushed out rather than thought out.

Engadget notes:

Where Canonical and BQ are hoping to break the mould is with their software and sales strategy. Taking a page from the playbook of Chinese firms such as Xiaomi, the first Ubuntu handset will be sold, at least to begin with, through a series of online flash sales. The first of these is next week and a handful of European carriers will be offering special SIM bundles to early adopters.

But here's the bad news: BQ currently has no plans to sell the phone outside of Europe. Canonical has stressed that it's still "actively working on a US device strategy" and that its flash sales are a deliberate move to target early adopters.

Jay Cassano at Fast Company says of the Scopes interface:

The First Ubuntu Phone Won't Rely On Apps. Here's Why That's Brilliant

The mobile market is saturated. Any new entrants are doomed from the start. And if you need proof, just look at Windows Phone or BlackBerry. The problem is that you need an app ecosystem to gain market share, but you need market share in order to entice developers to your platform.

So goes the prevailing wisdom.

[...]Scopes are essentially contextual home-screen dashboards that will be much simpler and less time-consuming to develop than full-on native apps. [...] The user experience offered by Scopes seems a lot more intuitive than the "app grids" that dominate most devices.