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astroengine writes "The site where NASA's Mars rover Curiosity landed last year contains at least one lake that would have been perfectly suited for colonies of simple, rock-eating microbes found in caves and hydrothermal vents on Earth. Analysis of mudstones in an area known as Yellowknife Bay, located inside the rover's Gale Crater landing site, show that fresh water pooled on the surface for tens of thousands — or even hundreds of thousands — of years. 'The results show that the lake was definitely a habitable environment,' Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology, told Discovery News. The finding was announced at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SternisheFan writes "Monday's Google Doodle honors computing genius Grace Hopper (remembered as a great pioneer in computing, as well as in women's achievements in science and engineering), on what would have been her 107th birthday, doodling her right where she spent much of her time – at the helm of one of the world's first computers."

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Zothecula writes "Industrial robots have proven useful in reducing production costs in large factories, with major enterprises enlisting their services to execute repetitive tasks. The Factory-in-a-Day project, which kicked off in October, aims to also make robotic technology beneficial to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), by developing adaptable robots that can be integrated with workplace systems within 24 hours."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Another week, another panel refresh.

Rather than the 2-pane approach, and a separate setup interface we used to have, we've gone for a single pane device list, as you've probably seen on your smartphone.




We also do away with the "Discoverable" switch (your computer will be visible when this panel is opened, invisible if not), and nearby devices will show up at the bottom of the list. Simply click on one to set it up.

Clicking on an already setup device will bring up the properties, allowing you to connect to the device if necessary, or link to related preferences.


Finally, the biggest part of the work was making sure that the new setup mechanism worked at least as well as the stand-alone wizard. This means that I got 17 of my most representative devices out, and set up every single one of them. Edge case.


There's a good chance that we'll make some additional, minor, adjustments to the wording, spacing and behaviour of this panel before the GNOME 3.12 release. I'd particularly like to make clicking on a device connect to it if already setup and offer some other way of accessing properties.

A while ago you had the chance to ask gamer and console modder extraordinaire Ben Heck about his favorite mods, hacks, and what he sees coming in the future. Below you'll find his answers to your questions.

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An anonymous reader writes in with news that some NSA agents were trying to dig up info by joining the horde. "To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs. That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency GCHQ to infiltrate the massive communities playing online games, according to secret documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.....The agencies, the documents show, have built mass-collection capabilities against the Xbox Live console network, which has more than 48 million players. Real-life agents have been deployed into virtual realms, from those Orc hordes in World of Warcraft to the human avatars of Second Life. There were attempts, too, to recruit potential informants from the games' tech-friendly users."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I’ve come up with some new favorites this season. The boys and Laura were around for all three, and I am happy to report there were many kitchen smiles over these!

From-Scratch Hot Chocolate

There’s something about hot chocolate made from scratch, with chocolate melted into milk, instead of a powder stirred in. It takes quite a bit more time, and probably has more calories, but it is quite delicious.

The key to a delicious result where milk is concerned is to take things slow and keep stirring. You don’t want the chocolate to scorch at the bottom of the pan. Heating up the milk before the chocolate should help things mix in more easily as well.

• Begin with 3 cups milk and 1 cup heavy whipping cream. Heat slowly over moderate to low heat, stirring periodically. Once you see bubbles start to form around the edges, it is plenty hot (or even a bit more hot than it needs to be).
• Add one cup of semisweet chocolate chips, 1 teaspoon sugar, and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract.
• Stir constantly until all the chocolate is melted and well mixed. There will still be some small bits of chocolate within, but if it is all done slowly like this, the chocolate should be pretty well melted.

The basis for this recipe was here, and it called for 2 cups milk and 2 cups half-and-half. I trust my heavy whipping cream was fine! <grin> There are also some other variations on that site.

This nearly made my little cast iron kettle overflow, so next time I made a 3/4 recipe.

Hot Spiced Cider

We put up a Christmas tree yesterday, so I thought hot spiced cider would be perfect for the occasion. I went searching for recipes, and many of them called for cloves (which have to be sifted out later or put in a spice bag). I wasn’t going to have time to delay two boys from setting up a Christmas tree long enough for that, so I found this basic recipe to work well. However, I, as usual, made some modifications ;-)

• Warm 4 cups apple cider (not juice, as the recipe suggests) in a pot.
• Add 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• Add 1/4 tsp nutmeg or allspice (I used allspice because I was mysteriously out of nutmeg, but will probably use nutmeg next time)
• Add 1 tbsp brown sugar
• Stir constantly until sufficiently dissolved. Pour immediately before drinking, as the contents will tend to separate.

Mmmmm…. yum….

Turkey or Chicken Noodle Soup

The annual “what to do with all that leftover turkey” quest strikes again. I like chicken noodle soup, so why not a turkey noodle soup done the same way?

Here’s what I used, roughly, in my large 6-quart cast iron cooking pot (aka “Dutch oven”):

• 9 cups chicken/turkey broth. Your own if you have it, or the canned variety works. Or make your own with boullion if you have it.
• 2 chopped yellow onions. (I added half a chopped red onion as well because I had it sitting around. Nobody complained, but 2.5 onions was a little much.)
• 4 tsp fresh basil or 1 tsp dried basil
• 4 tsp fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp beef bouillon
• 2 bay leaves
• 20 oz frozen mixed vegetables (I’d probably add more than that next year; this wasn’t quite enough)
• Plenty of wide egg noodles. The recipe I used called for 1 cup, which was laughably inadequate. I just dumped until it looked right, and then the package was almost empty so I dumped the rest in too.
• 4 cups cooked turkey or chicken, cubed (a kitchen scissors makes quick work of that)
• Two 14.5-oz cans diced tomatoes (do not drain)

Start with the broth, onion, basil, oregano, pepper, and bay leaf. Heat up the mixture and add the vegetables. Bring it to boiling, then add the uncooked noodles. Return to boiling, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 8 minutes. Add the turkey or chicken and diced tomatoes, and simmer until hot enough to serve.

The nice thing about soups is that they freeze well and make great winter leftovers. This recipe makes quite a lot of soup; you may wish to halve it.

This recipe was adapted from one in a Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.

This past week, I’ve been working on a Clang plugin for GLib and GNOME, with the aim of improving static analysis of GLib-based C projects by integrating GIR metadata and assumptions about common GLib and GObject coding practices. The idea is that if running Clang for static analysis on a project, the plugin will suppress common GLib-based false positives and emit warnings for common problems which Clang wouldn’t previously have known about. Using it should be as simple as enabling scan-build, with the appropriate plugin, in your JHBuild configuration file.

I’m really excited about this project, which I’m working on as R&D at Collabora. It’s still early days, and the project has a huge scope, but so far I have a Clang plugin with two major features. It can:

• Load GIR metadata1 and use it to add nonnull attributes based on the presence (or absence) of (allow-none) annotations.
• Detect g_return_if_fail(), assert(), g_return_val_if_fail() (etc.) preconditions in function bodies and add nonnull attributes if the assertions are non-NULL checks (or are GObject type checks which also assert non-nullability).

Additionally, the plugin can use GIR metadata to add other attributes:

• Add deprecated attributes based on Deprecated: gtk-doc tags.
• Add warn_unused_result attributes to functions which have a (transfer container) or (transfer full) return type.
• Add malloc attributes to functions which are marked as (constructor).
• Constify the return types of (transfer none) functions which return a pointer type.

By modifying Clang’s abstract syntax tree (AST) for a file while it’s being scanned, the plugin can take advantage of the existing static analysis for NULL propagation to function calls with nonnull attributes, plus its analysis for variable constness, use of deprecated functions, etc.

So far, all the code is in two ‘annotaters’, which modify the AST but don’t emit any new warnings of their own. The next step is to implement some ‘checkers’, which examine (but don’t modify) the AST and emit warnings for common problems. Some of the problems checked for will be similar to those handled above (e.g. warning about a missing deprecated attribute if a function has a Deprecated: gtk-doc tag), but others can be completely new, such as checking that if a function has a GError parameter then it also has a g_return_if_fail(error == NULL || *error == NULL) precondition (or something along those lines).

I’ve got several big ideas for features to add once this initial work is complete, but the next thing to work on is making the plugin effortless to use (or, realistically, nobody will use it). Currently, the plugin is injected by a wrapper script around Clang, e.g.:

cd /path/to/glib/source GNOME_CLANG_GIRS="GLib-2.0 Gio-2.0" gnome-clang -cc1 -analyze … /files/to/analyse

This injects the -load $PREFIX/lib64/clang/3.5/libclang-gnome.so -add-plugin gnome arguments which load and enable the plugin. By specifying GIR namespaces and versions in GNOME_CLANG_GIRS, those GIRs will be loaded and their metadata used by the plugin.

This can be configured in your ~/.jhbuildrc with:

static_analyzer = True static_analyzer_template = 'scan-build --use-analyzer=$JHBUILD_PREFIX/bin/gnome-clang -v -o %(outputdir)s/%(module)s' os.environ['GNOME_CLANG_GIRS'] = 'GLib-2.0 Gio-2.0 GnomeDesktop-3.0'

Please note that it’s alpha-quality code at the moment, and may introduce program bugs if used during compilation, so should only be used with Clang’s -analyze option. Furthermore, it still produces some false positives, so please be cautious about submitting bug reports to upstream projects ‘fixing’ problems detected by static analysis.

The code so far is here: http://cgit.collabora.com/git/gnome-clang.git/ and there’s a primitive website here: http://people.collabora.com/~pwith/gnome-clang/. If you’ve got any ideas, bug reports, patches, or just want to criticise my appalling C++, please e-mail me: philip {at} tecnocode.co(.)uk.

1. Actually, it loads the metadata from GIR typelib files, rather than using the source code annotations themselves, so there is a degree of data loss incurred due to the limitations of the typelib binary format. ↩

Nerval's Lobster writes "Will Xbox One and PS4 emulators hit your favorite download Websites within the next few years? Emulators have long been popular among gamers looking to relive the classic titles they enjoyed in their youth. Instead of playing Super Mario Bros. on a Nintendo console, one can go through the legally questionable yet widespread route of downloading a copy of the game and loading it with PC software that emulates the Nintendo Entertainment System. Emulation is typically limited to older games, as developing an emulator is hard work and must usually be run on hardware that's more powerful than the original console. Consoles from the NES and Super NES era have working emulators, as do newer systems such as Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii, and the first two PlayStations. While emulator development hit a dead end with the Xbox 360 and PS3, that may change with the Xbox One and PS4, which developers are already exploring as fertile ground for emulation. The Xbox 360 and PS4 feature x86 chips, for starters, and hardware-assisted virtualization can help solve some acceleration issues. But several significant obstacles stand in the way of developers already taking a crack at it, including console builders' absolute refusal to see emulation as even remotely legal."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mrspoonsi writes "BBC reports: Leading global technology firms have called for 'wide-scale changes' to US government surveillance. Eight firms, Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Yahoo, have formed an alliance called Reform Government Surveillance group. The group has written a letter to the US President and Congress arguing that current surveillance practice 'undermines the freedom' of people. It comes after recent leaks detailed the extent of surveillance programs. 'We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens. But this summer's revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide,' the group said in an open letter published on its website."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sfcrazy writes "A giant exoplanet that is in the most distant orbit ever seen around its host star, has been recently discovered. Dubbed HD 106906 b, the newly discovered planet is relatively young (13 million years old, compare this to our 4.5 billion years old Earth) and bigger than any other planet discovered till date. It is 11 times the size of Jupiter, and that's what makes it a most singular discovery."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There have been some dark days for UK coops recently – the crystal Methodist and all that – and I have not been able to talk about it much because of the amount of work that I want to do before the end of the year.

Happily good colleagues have been writing about it and here’s another good article from Kate Whittle that links to Ed Mayo and Ian Snaith who are the other two that I’d suggest.  http://www.cooperantics.coop/2013/12/09/co-ops-governance/

I should be back in a few days to summarise the event I attended last week.

angry tapir writes "In the race to deliver online shopping purchases faster, drones don't impress eBay's CEO. 'We're not focusing on long-term fantasies, we're focusing on things we can do today,' John Donahue said in an interview. He was reacting to an interview Jeff Bezos, CEO of e-commerce rival Amazon, gave last weekend in which he said Amazon is investigating the use of drones for package delivery."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Despite how much people might say they like creative thinking, they don't, at least according to studies. 'We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,' says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity. 'As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform,' he says."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LinuxSecurity.com: In March of 2010, WikiLeaks was just weeks away from bursting onto the world stage with the first of its major leaks from intelligence analyst Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning: the "Collateral Murder" video showing a 2007 Apache helicopter attack that killed civilians and wounded children.

LinuxSecurity.com: The U.S. Department of Defense may have found a new way to scan millions of lines of software code for vulnerabilities, by turning the practice into a set of video games and puzzles and having volunteers do the work.

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have discovered huge freshwater reserves beneath the seabed on continental shelves off the coast of Australia, North America, China and South Africa. 'The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we've extracted from the Earth's sub-surface in the past century since 1900. Fresh water on our planet is increasingly under stress and strain so the discovery of significant new stores off the coast is very exciting. It means that more options can be considered to help reduce the impact of droughts and continental water shortages' says Dr Vincent Post of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) and the School of the Environment at Flinders University."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

a more or less weekly digest of juicy stuff

• letter to a young programmer considering a startup, i urge you to consider both sides of the startup coin. there are so many ways to make a dent in the world. highly recommended
• why i create for the web, the most amazing thing about the web is simple yet devastatingly powerful, and the whole reason the web exists in the first place. it's the humble hyperlink
• always remember to put the glass down
• business cards can slide, awesome idea
• what if successful startups are just lucky? it's interesting because in this mindset your vision of how to succeed is really different. you start thinking about how to maximize your chances to win at a random game
• why he is there and i am here, i was always this good. i was also doing lots of stuff i wasn't good at. the only thing i changed in the last 12 years is that i stopped doing those bits
• the only way to grow huge, the only way to generate sustained exponential growth is to make whatever you're making sufficiently good
• how complex systems fail, spot on (pdf)
• the difference between information, knowledge and wisdom
• user experience euphemisms, hilarious
• meritocracy is almost as real as this unicorn, the only way that meritocracy could actually work is in a world where 1. we are all starting from the same position of advantage. time, money, ability, education, etc. 2. we had checks and balances on our biases
• why spies never discover anything useful, the basic lesson of game theory for a game of bluff like that of espionage is that, as long as it is possible for counterspies to generate misleading information most of the time, spies are useless even when their information happens to be correct. if the defence plays optimally, the spymaster can never have any reason to believe one piece of information produced by spies and disbelieve another
• the art of naming military operations
• why i don't trade stocks and (probably) neither should you, unfortunately, it's not enough for us to be right (even if we are). everyone else needs to be wrong in order for us to profit
• cow tipping or cow pushing is the purported activity of sneaking up on an unsuspecting upright cow and pushing it over for entertainment

A prime minister fled police protection.

Protesters are assaulting police who have been ordered not to resist the assaults.

A financial wire notes on their Twitter feed that the Army chief won’t step in to stop the political unrest.

Protesters even sought the removal of barriers to police headquarters and Government House as part of the plan to seize the police headquarters.

A truce was effectively called to respect the King’s birthday.

The nation’s parliament was dissolved with a call for a fresh elections except that the leader of the opposition protesters said forcing a snap election was not the goal while getting an unelected body of picked “good people” to run the country was.

One could hope these were scenes from some new dystopian novel or film. Sadly, they’re what we found after we learned that Ubuntu Thailand had its website go offline when protesters knocked out the data center where it was hosted. Ubuntu Thailand handles their own web and forum hosting on their own server which unfortunately has non-technical issues at the moment.

With the civil unrest in Thailand now entering a third week, LoCo Council has decided to postpone further consideration of their Verification application until matters become more settled. In keeping with normal policy, Ubuntu Thailand will remain in Verified status until we conclude our handling of the application. The priority now must be preservation of the safety of life and the protection of property for those affected by this situation in Thailand. In the grand scheme, we come in a bit lower in priority when there is talk of civil unrest and insurrection being thrown about.

We’re keeping the Thai community in our thoughts as things have the potential to get very interesting very quickly. Hopefully you will remember them too.

An anonymous reader writes in with this link about the advances in China's lunar program. "A $30 million Google-backed competition to land a spacecraft on the moon may be about to be scooped. China's Chang'e 3 probe successfully put itself into lunar orbit on Friday in preparation for an attempted touchdown around Dec. 14. China won't be winning the prize money, which is reserved for privately funded, previously enrolled teams, not government agencies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.