Seeking compliance with Linux's new Code of Conduct, Intel software engineer Jarkko Sakkinen recently requested comments on a set of changes to kernel code comments which Neowin described as "replacing the F-word with 'hug'. "
80 comments quickly followed on the Linux Kernel Maintainer's List:
Several contributors responded to the alterations calling them insane. One wondered if Sakkinen was just trying to make a joke, and another called it censorship and said he'd refuse to apply any sort of patches like this to the code he's in charge of...
Some of the post-change comments read "Some Athlon laptops have really hugged PST tables", "If you don't see why, please stay the hug away from my code", and "Only Sun can take such nice parts and hug up the programming interface".
Eventually LWN.net publisher Jonathan Corbet deflated most of the controversy by pointing out that Linux's new Code of Conduct applies to future comments but clearly indicates that it does not apply explicitly to past comments.
And Jarkko Sakkinen acknowledged that he had missed that part of the discussion.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: After three weeks, 12 straight draws and a day of tiebreakers, Norway's Magnus Carlsen finally retained the world chess championship in London on Wednesday with a victory against Fabiano Caruana (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), his American challenger. Carlsen's victory came in what amounted to sudden-death chess: a scheduled series of four so-called rapid games in which the players started with 25 minutes to make their moves. The speedier pace of the games, after the far more deliberate matchups of the previous three weeks, meant players were more likely to make blunders. And that increased the chance of a victory by one player. Carlsen won the first two games, then closed out Caruana in Game 3.
Caruana, 26, was bidding to become the first American champion since Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky to win the world title in 1972. The famously cantankerous Fischer forfeited his title in 1975 amid a dispute with the world chess federation, and the sport has been dominated by Russians and Eastern Europeans in the decades since then. The tiebreaker result was not a shock. While Carlsen, 27, and Caruana, 26, are closely matched in longer conventional chess games, known as classical chess, Carlsen had been considered the favorite in the tiebreaker because he has had better rapid chess results than Caruana. "It was the first time in the history of the world championship, which dates to the 1800s, that regulation play ended with every game a draw," the report notes.
A new study conducted at the University of Innsbruck in Austria finds that people who drink their coffee black often has psychopathic or sadistic traits. The study surveyed more than 1,000 adults about their taste preferences with foods and drinks that are bitter. They also took four different personality tests that assessed traits like narcissism, psychopathy, sadism, and aggression. From a report: Researchers found a trend that suggested a correlation between preferences for black coffee, and other bitter tastes, and sadistic or psychopathic personality traits. They also found that people who enjoyed milky or sugary coffee, and other sweet flavors, generally tended to have more "agreeable" personality traits like sympathy, cooperation, and kindness. The closest correlation found in the study was between bitter foods, like radishes and tonic water, and "everyday sadism," or the enjoyment of inflicting moderate levels of pain on others. The researchers went further, suggesting that this association between bitter foods and psychopathic tendencies could "become chronic" and get worse with time.
An anonymous reader writes: A Microsoft exec has confirmed yesterday that the company's engineers are working on porting the highly popular Sysinternals software package to Linux. Microsoft engineers have already ported the ProcDump utility and are currently working on porting ProcMon as well. More tools to follow. Microsoft's decision to port this highly popular debugging utility to Linux comes after two months ago, in September, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's executive vice president of the cloud and enterprise group, revealed that "sometimes slightly over half of Azure VMs are Linux." With Linux's growing adoption as the preferred OS for running Azure VMs, it's only natural that Azure engineers are now looking into porting their favorite debugging utilities to Linux, for both themselves but also for the company's customers.
"The HTTP-over-QUIC experimental protocol will be renamed to HTTP/3 and is expected to become the third official version of the HTTP protocol, officials at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) have revealed," writes Catalin Cimpanu via ZDNet. "This will become the second Google-developed experimental technology to become an official HTTP protocol upgrade after Google's SPDY technology became the base of HTTP/2." From the report: HTTP-over-QUIC is a rewrite of the HTTP protocol that uses Google's QUIC instead of TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) as its base technology. QUIC stands for "Quick UDP Internet Connections" and is, itself, Google's attempt at rewriting the TCP protocol as an improved technology that combines HTTP/2, TCP, UDP, and TLS (for encryption), among many other things. Google wants QUIC to slowly replace both TCP and UDP as the new protocol of choice for moving binary data across the Internet, and for good reasons, as test have proven that QUIC is both faster and more secure because of its encrypted-by-default implementation (current HTTP-over-QUIC protocol draft uses the newly released TLS 1.3 protocol).
In a mailing list discussion last month, Mark Nottingham, Chair of the IETF HTTP and QUIC Working Group, made the official request to rename HTTP-over-QUIC as HTTP/3, and pass it's development from the QUIC Working Group to the HTTP Working Group. In the subsequent discussions that followed and stretched over several days, Nottingham's proposal was accepted by fellow IETF members, who gave their official seal of approval that HTTP-over-QUIC become HTTP/3, the next major iteration of the HTTP protocol, the technology that underpins today's World Wide Web.
Където и да стъпя в Родопите през есента, знам че ще съм на правилното място.
Тук, сред изваяните обли форми на планината, повече откъдето и да е другаде, природата е изляла от своята палитра с цветове.
В слънчевото ноемврийско утро ме посреща любопитен бял жребец.
Малкото, но много разпръснато село Гела, се събужда огряно в нетипично за месеца топло слънце.
Връх Турлата, който бди над селцето, посреща пръв лъчите.
Съседното село Стикъл също грейва в златна светлина.
Толкова е топло, че само червените цветчета и окапалите листа издават, че есента отдавна е дошла по тези места.
В гора от трепетлика се е приютила селската черква.
Горе на хълма вятърът рано е отвял жълтите листа и издайнически е свалил маскировката на храма.
Различна е обстановката при долната църква, където листата са все още по местата си.
В околностите на селото есента е във вихъра си.
Малкото широколистни дървета са изпъстрени в ярко жълто.
От връх Орфей (Широколъшки снежник, Карлъка) се открива панорамна гледка на юг, където властват вечно зелени борови гори.
Под върха безгрижно се разхожда огромно стадо коне.
Лидери на стадото, като че ли са двойката коне в бяло и черно, колкото и да е предсказуемо това.
Есента се стъмва рано и безброй звезди изпълват нощния простор.
В тихата безлунна нощ, като с остри нокти, далачен кучешки лай раздира тишината.
Успокояващо похлопват камбанки на овцете в кошарите.
In an incident that is somehow somewhat common, a man is claiming he survived being accidentally shot with a shotgun by his own dog, according to the Las Cruces Sun-News this week. Perhaps unsurprising to anyone who’s ever owned a dog, however, is the fact that the pup’s owner says he’s still a good boy.
Rick Schumann writes about the findings of a new study published in the journal Neuron: A team of neuroscientists from Washington University in St. Louis, performing fMRI tests on 10 people to quantify the various connections between the cerebellum and the rest of the brain, are now being led to believe that the cerebellum actually plays a role in conscious thought, whereas previously it was believed it was only involved in sensory-motor function. What they found is that it appears that only 20 percent of the cerebellum was dedicated to physical motion, while the other 80 percent serves as an "editor" of the conscious thought process, refining and filtering thoughts in a sort of background process. This discovery may lead to changes in the way psychiatric patients are treated for disorders like schizophrenia, depression, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.
An anonymous reader writes: In a study published Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, [physiologist and neuroscientist Hideki Kashiwadani] and his colleagues found that sniffing linalool, an alcohol component of lavender odor, was kind of like popping a Valium (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). It worked on the same parts of a mouse's brain, but without all the dizzying side effects. And it didn't target parts of the brain directly from the bloodstream, as was thought. Relief from anxiety could be triggered just by inhaling through a healthy nose. Their findings add to a growing body of research demonstrating anxiety-reducing qualities of lavender odors and suggest a new mechanism for how they work in the body. Dr. Kashiwadani believes this new insight is a key step in developing lavender-derived compounds like linalool for clinical use in humans.
In this study, they exposed mice to linalool vapor, wafting from filter paper inside a specially made chamber to see if the odor triggered relaxation. Mice on linalool were more open to exploring, indicating they were less anxious than normal mice. And they didn't behave like they were drunk, as mice on benzodiazepines, a drug used to treat anxiety, or injected with linalool did. But the linalool didn't work when they blocked the mice's ability to smell, or when they gave the mice a drug that blocks certain receptors in the brain. This suggested that to work, linalool tickled odor-sensitive neurons in the nose that send signals to just the right spots in the brain -- the same ones triggered by Valium.
An anonymous reader quotes Microsoft's Developer blog:
In March 2014, Microsoft released the source code to MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 via the Computer History Museum. The announcement also contains a brief history of how MS-DOS came to be for those new to the subject, and ends with many links to related articles and resources for those interested in learning more.
Today, we're re-open-sourcing MS-DOS on GitHub. Why? Because it's much easier to find, read, and refer to MS-DOS source files if they're in a GitHub repo than in the original downloadable compressed archive file.... Enjoy exploring the initial foundations of a family of operating systems that helped fuel the explosion of computer technology that we all rely upon for so much of our modern lives!
While non-source modifications are welcome, "The source will be kept static," reads a note on the GitHub repo, "so please don't send Pull Requests suggesting any modifications to the source files."
"But feel free to fork this repo and experiment!"
Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, thinks it's broken and he has a plan to fix it. The British computer scientist has announced a new project that he hopes will radically change his creation by giving people full control over their data. Tim Berners-Lee: This is why I have, over recent years, been working with a few people at MIT and elsewhere to develop Solid, an open-source project to restore the power and agency of individuals on the web. Solid changes the current model where users have to hand over personal data to digital giants in exchange for perceived value. As we've all discovered, this hasn't been in our best interests. Solid is how we evolve the web in order to restore balance -- by giving every one of us complete control over data, personal or not, in a revolutionary way. Solid is a platform, built using the existing web. It gives every user a choice about where data is stored, which specific people and groups can access select elements, and which apps you use. It allows you, your family and colleagues, to link and share data with anyone. It allows people to look at the same data with different apps at the same time. Solid unleashes incredible opportunities for creativity, problem-solving and commerce. It will empower individuals, developers and businesses with entirely new ways to conceive, build and find innovative, trusted and beneficial applications and services. I see multiple market possibilities, including Solid apps and Solid data storage. Solid is guided by the principle of "personal empowerment through data" which we believe is fundamental to the success of the next era of the web. We believe data should empower each of us. Imagine if all your current apps talked to each other, collaborating and conceiving ways to enrich and streamline your personal life and business objectives? That's the kind of innovation, intelligence and creativity Solid apps will generate. With Solid, you will have far more personal agency over data -- you decide which apps can access it. In an interview with Fast Company, he shared more on Solid and its creation: "I have been imagining this for a very long time," says Berners-Lee. He opens up his laptop and starts tapping at his keyboard. Watching the inventor of the web work at his computer feels like what it might have been like to watch Beethoven compose a symphony: It's riveting but hard to fully grasp. "We are in the Solid world now," he says, his eyes lit up with excitement. He pushes the laptop toward me so I too can see. On his screen, there is a simple-looking web page with tabs across the top: Tim's to-do list, his calendar, chats, address book. He built this app -- one of the first on Solid -- for his personal use. It is simple, spare. In fact, it's so plain that, at first glance, it's hard to see its significance. But to Berners-Lee, this is where the revolution begins. The app, using Solid's decentralized technology, allows Berners-Lee to access all of his data seamlessly -- his calendar, his music library, videos, chat, research. It's like a mashup of Google Drive, Microsoft Outlook, Slack, Spotify, and WhatsApp. The difference here is that, on Solid, all the information is under his control. Every bit of data he creates or adds on Solid exists within a Solid pod -- which is an acronym for personal online data store. These pods are what give Solid users control over their applications and information on the web. Anyone using the platform will get a Solid identity and Solid pod. This is how people, Berners-Lee says, will take back the power of the web from corporations. Starting this week, developers around the world will be able to start building their own decentralized apps with tools through the Inrupt site. Berners-Lee will spend this fall crisscrossing the globe, giving tutorials and presentations to developers about Solid and Inrupt. "What's great about having a startup versus a research group is things get done," he says. These days, instead of heading into his lab at MIT, Berners-Lee comes to the Inrupt offices, which are currently based out of Janeiro Digital, a company he has contracted to help work on Inrupt. For now, the company consists of Berners-Lee; his partner John Bruce, who built Resilient, a security platform bought by IBM; a handful of on-staff developers contracted to work on the project; and a community of volunteer coders. Later this fall, Berners-Lee plans to start looking for more venture funding and grow his team. The aim, for now, is not to make billions of dollars. The man who gave the web away for free has never been motivated by money. Still, his plans could impact billion-dollar business models that profit off of control over data. It's not likely that the big powers of the web will give up control without a fight.
October 1 marks International Coffee Day. We’ve looked at various aspects of coffee chemistry on the site previously, but haven’t yet looked at the key divide between coffee beans: arabica and robusta. This graphic looks at the two types of coffee beans and some of their chemical differences. If this leaves you wondering more about […]
Parents who possess the resolve to separate their children from their smartphones may be helping their kids' brainpower, a new study suggests. A report adds: Children who use smartphones and other devices in their free time for fewer than two hours a day performed better on cognitive tests assessing their thinking, language, and memory, according to a study published this week in the Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. The study assessed the behavior of 4,500 children, ages 8 to 11, by looking at their sleep schedules, how much time they spent on screens and their amount of exercise, and analyzed how those factors impacted the children's mental abilities. The researchers compared the results with national guidelines for children's health. The guidelines recommend that children in that age group, get at least an hour of physical activity, no more than two hours of recreational screen time and nine to 11 hours of sleep per night. The researchers found that only 5 percent of children met all three recommendations. Sixty-three percent of children spent more than two hours a day staring at screens, failing to meet the screen-time limit.
WikiLeaks’ founder has been stuck in Ecuador’s London embassy for six years and cut off from accessing the internet for six months. Those circumstances have made it difficult for him to do the job of running WikiLeaks and the organization announced on Thursday that Assange will step aside as its editor-in-chief.
Caffeine is a stimulant, and the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive drug. Many of us need our morning coffee to be functional, but others prefer to avoid caffeine due to its effects on sleep, restlessness, or pregnancy. Handily, chemists have come up with several ways for us to enjoy coffee without the caffeine. Here, we […]
Slashdot reader OneHundredAndTen writes: Sir Michael Atiyah claims to have proved the Riemann hypothesis. This is not some internet crank, but one the towering figures of mathematics in the second half of the 20th century. The thing is, he's almost 90 years old. According to New Scientist, Atiyah is set to present his "simple proof" of the Riemann hypothesis on Monday at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany. Atiyah has received two awards often referred to as the Nobel prizes of mathematics, the Fields medal and the Abel Prize; he also served as president of the London Mathematical Society, the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
"[T]he hypothesis is intimately connected to the distribution of prime numbers, those indivisible by any whole number other than themselves and one," reports New Scientist. "If the hypothesis is proven to be correct, mathematicians would be armed with a map to the location of all such prime numbers, a breakthrough with far-reaching repercussions in the field."
I really dislike artificial fragrances, especially those plug-in types of air fresheners that are full of chemicals. Give me essential oils any day. However, many of the nicer reed diffusers are also pretty pricey. Paying $20 or $30 for a store-bought one seems rather silly when many of us have the raw materials to make our own lying around the house.
Here's how to DIY a reed diffuser for a hit of natural aromatherapy at home.
Two mathematicians have found what they say is a hole at the heart of a proof that has convulsed the mathematics community for nearly six years. Quanta Magazine: In a report [PDF] posted online Thursday, Peter Scholze of the University of Bonn and Jakob Stix of Goethe University Frankfurt describe what Stix calls a "serious, unfixable gap" within a mammoth series of papers by Shinichi Mochizuki, a mathematician at Kyoto University who is renowned for his brilliance. Posted online in 2012, Mochizuki's papers supposedly prove the abc conjecture, one of the most far-reaching problems in number theory. Despite multiple conferences dedicated to explicating Mochizuki's proof, number theorists have struggled to come to grips with its underlying ideas. His series of papers, which total more than 500 pages, are written in an impenetrable style, and refer back to a further 500 pages or so of previous work by Mochizuki, creating what one mathematician, Brian Conrad of Stanford University, has called "a sense of infinite regress." Between 12 and 18 mathematicians who have studied the proof in depth believe it is correct, wrote Ivan Fesenko of the University of Nottingham in an email. But only mathematicians in "Mochizuki's orbit" have vouched for the proof's correctness, Conrad commented in a blog discussion last December. "There is nobody else out there who has been willing to say even off the record that they are confident the proof is complete." Nevertheless, wrote Frank Calegari of the University of Chicago in a December blog post, "mathematicians are very loath to claim that there is a problem with Mochizuki's argument because they can't point to any definitive error." That has now changed. In their report, Scholze and Stix argue that a line of reasoning near the end of the proof of "Corollary 3.12" in Mochizuki's third of four papers is fundamentally flawed. The corollary is central to Mochizuki's proposed abc proof. "I think the abc conjecture is still open," Scholze said. "Anybody has a chance of proving it."
