Monthly Archive:: November 2014

Google wants to store your genome

Google 19 Comments

Google Genomics could prove more significant than any of these moonshots. Connecting and comparing genomes by the thousands, and soon by the millions, is what’s going to propel medical discoveries for the next decade. The question of who will store the data is already a point of growing competition between Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.

This seems like a great technology to help advance medicine, but this being Google, one does have to wonder just what Google will do with data like this - or, better put, what can be done with data like this at all beyond its intended and promised purpose.

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Motorola unveils new Moto 360 options

Wireless 6 Comments

We're introducing more choice for Moto 360. From new metal watches and a selection of interchangeable bands, to enhanced experiences that promote a healthier lifestyle, Moto 360 offers a diverse portfolio of modern timepieces.

I was on vacation in the US and Canada the past two weeks, and one of the things I wanted to buy there was a Moto 360. I went to Best Buy - the store that sells them - but they were all out. The sales person told me that they get new shipments every week, but that they sell out in minutes. I had no luck finding one.

These new options are only going to make it sell better. I'm very curious to see just how well.

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Haiku: Ohio LinuxFest 2014 report

Haiku 7 Comments

As I talked to many attendees about various things like our package management, scheduler update, WebPositive progress, Wi-Fi, ASLR/DEP, and anything else I could think of, and there was an overwhelming positive energy about Haiku by those who saw it in action. By far the most common question I got was "When will the next release be out?". In the past, I would say the most common question is "Why would I ever choose Haiku over any existing Linux distribution?", so it is nice to see that there was a lot more positive energy about Haiku, as well as excitement about the next release.

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Debian 8.0 “Jessie” enters feature freeze

Debian 8 Comments

Debian is one of the largest and longest lived GNU/Linux distributions. The project forms the foundation of many other popular Linux-based operating systems, including Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Raspbian. The Debian project announced this week that the distribution's Testing repository, called "Jessie", has entered a feature freeze. This means Debian's Jessie branch will not receive any new features nor any significant software upgrades. From now until Debian's upcoming stable release is launched, the Jessie repository will accept only important bug fixes and updated translations. Based on the time-line presented by Debian's freeze policy it seems as though Debian 8.0 will be released in late February.

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Lenovo launches iPhone 6

Wireless 17 Comments

It isn't often that we see a huge device manufacturer rip off a competitor. Sure, we've seen iPhone copies in the past, but this one comes from the third largest handset maker in the world, Lenovo. Today, the company released the Lenovo S90 "Sisley", a 5-inch phone with a Super AMOLED 720p screen, a thickness of only 6.9mm, and an incredible amount of inspiration from the most recent flagship by Apple.

The perfect phone for MIUI 6.

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FSF Endorsed Trisquel 7.0 Released

Linux 4 Comments
The Free Software Foundation endorses few operating systems, directing interested parties to just a handful of GNU/Linux projects that follow a strict definition of supporting and distributing free software. The Trisquel operating system is one of the few projects on the FSF's list of endorsed operating systems. The latest version of Trisquel is a long term support release, based on Ubuntu 14.04, and will be supported through to 2019. Trisquel strives to be as user friendly as possible while sticking firmly to the philosophy of free software. The distribution ships with a version of the Linux kernel that has been stripped of non-free components and is available in GNOME and LXDE flavours. Details of Trisquel's latest version can be found in the project's release announcement.
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Microsoft Office now free for iPad, iPhone, Android

Microsoft 48 Comments

Microsoft's Office suite for iPad, iPhone, and Android is now free. In a surprise move, the software giant is shaking up its mobile Office strategy to keep consumers hooked to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Starting today, you'll no longer need an Office 365 subscription to edit documents or store them in the cloud. The move comes just days after Microsoft announced a strategic partnership with Dropbox to integrate the cloud storage service into Office across desktop, mobile, and the web. You can now download Office for iPad and store all your documents on Dropbox without paying Microsoft anything at all. Microsoft is also releasing a brand new iPhone app today, alongside a preview of Office for Android tablets, all with Dropbox integration.

The news I've been waiting for. The fact that it's going to be free is very nice, but the Android tablet version specifically has me very excited. Office is the number one tool with which I earn my living, and having the proper Office on my Xperia Z2 Tablet is a godsend.

The past decade of sweeping changes in the computing industry is finally truly taking hold inside Microsoft.

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Hyperion to release AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition for all Amiga platforms

  Submitted by Raffaele Amiga & AROS 6 Comments

Hyperion Entertainment is pleased to announce the imminent availability of "AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition" for all supported platforms.

AmigaOS 4.1 was released in September of 2008 and has seen no less than 6 free major updates and at least 88 smaller updates released through AmiUpdate.

Aside from being a rollup of all previous updates, this release also brings a bunch of improvements and fixes of its own, so it's a worthwhile update for all AmigaOS 4.x users.

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AmigaOS 3.1 is now available on diskettes again

  Submitted by AmixG5 Amiga & AROS 18 Comments

Our customers have regularly been asking for replacement Workbench floppy disk sets since their older disks have either become corrupted or worn out due to age. About a year ago, we approached our friends at Cloanto to enquire about a possible solution. As a result, we are pleased to announce the immediate availability of new Workbench 3.1 Floppy Disk Set.

This isn't just a really old operating system generating enough demand to be sold, but it's also on floppy. So awesome.

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Haiku Developers Discuss the Future

Haiku 56 Comments
Adrien Destugues sent an email to Haiku developers after the BeGeistert forum, addressing their inability to get R1 out the door, and proposed that they rededicate themselves to getting a beta out ASAP. He then asks a question that hangs above the heads of all developers of alternative and hobbyist OSes: is their goal "to create an operating system that specifically targets personal computing? Or have we evolved to the goal of a fun playground for OS-developers to play around with modern OS concepts?" He concludes ... "I do think that the PC-landscape has changed dramatically since the inception of the project, and I also underscore that there is a clear lack of focus when it comes to accomplishing our current mission. I would go so far as to say that the severe lack of interest of developers into finishing R1 is a great indication in that there really hardly seems to be any place for a new (mainstream?) desktop operating system anymore? Even the Linux on the desktop guys seem to have ceased preaching their gospel." That's some sober talk that's important for alternative OS fans to consider.
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openSUSE 13.2 gets the green light

SuSE, openSUSE 8 Comments
The openSUSE project released openSUSE 13.2 on Tuesday. The latest version of the big, green distro ships with updated desktop software, including KDE 4.14 and GNOME 3.14. The new release also features new artwork, a streamlined installer and faster YaST modules. Perhaps most importantly, openSUSE ships with the advanced Btrfs file system by default and will automatically take snapshots of the operating system whenever configuration changes are made. This allows administrators to roll back disruptive changes quickly and without using backups.Further details of the new openSUSE release can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
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A Love Letter to Obsolete OSes and Emulation

OS News 8 Comments
The death of an old friend sent Paul Ford on a bender; emulating old hardware to run familiar obsolete operating systems and software, and remembering 1980s and 1990s computing culture in about the most OSNews-bait article I've ever read. It's a wonderful read, with all your old favorites: Commodore Amiga, dial-up BBSes, Xerox Alto, MacOS 6, Smalltalk-80, Plan 9, LISP, Windows 3.1, NeXT OpenStep. Nostalgic and heartwarming.
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ReactOS 0.3.17 Released

  Submitted by AmineKhaldi ReactOS 1 Comment
The ReactOS Project is pleased to release version 0.3.17. A major new feature for this release is the inclusion of NTVDM, which provides support for a wide range of 16bit applications, a long requested feature by the community. NTVDM is still undergoing work but we felt that it was ready enough to provide a sneak peak to the wider community. In addition, the leadup to the 0.3.17 release saw a very impressive round of testing by the community. Several regressions and bugs discovered in the release candidates were promptly fixed and incorporated into the final release. ReactOS is quickly approaching a stage where what the releases will offer is polish compared to previous releases. That will be an important milestone, as it is then that we can begin recommending to people that they try using ReactOS for day-to-day computing.
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Canonical Proposes LXD: A Next-generation Hypervisor

General Development 22 Comments
Take all the speed and efficiency of docker, and turn it into a full virtualisation experience. That's the goal of Canonical's new initiative to create the next big hypervisor around Linux container technologies. Imagine you could launch a new machine in under a second, and that you could launch hundreds of them on a single server. Hundreds! Now, imagine that you have hardware-guaranteed security to ensure that those machines can’t pry or spy on one another. Imagine you can connect them separately and securely to networks. And imagine that you can run that on a single node or a million, live migrate machines between those nodes, and talk to all of it through a clean, extensible REST API. That’s what LXD sets out to deliver. Update: a bit more about LXD from Dustin Kirkland.
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Editorial: Thoughts on Systemd and the Freedom to Choose

Linux 138 Comments
Over the past year I've been reading a lot of opinions on the new init technology, systemd. Some people think systemd is wonderful, the bee's knees. Others claim that systemd is broken by design. Some see systemd as a unifying force, a way to unite the majority of the Linux distributions. Others see systemd as a growing blob that is slowly becoming an overly large portion of the operating system. One thing that has surprised me a little is just how much people care about systemd, whether their opinion of the technology is good or bad. People in favour faithfully (and sometimes falsely) make wonderful claims about what systemd is and what it can supposedly do. Opponents claim systemd will divide the Linux community and drive many technical users to other operating systems. There is a lot of hype and surprisingly few people presenting facts.
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Daringfireball on Google’s App Aesthetic

Graphics 3 Comments
As Google’s new “material” design language evolves, it’s very clearly heading in a different direction than iOS. Talking about flatness is simply too superficial to be a useful discussion. Superficially, iOS and Android seemingly converged toward flatness (and Windows Phone, of course, was there already), but once you get past those surface similarities, all three mobile platforms are evolving in noticeably different ways.
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GCHQ: Silicon Valley is Terrorist “Command and Control” Network

  Submitted by M.Onty Privacy, Security 13 Comments
The new head of GCHQ , Robert Hannigan, has spoken out strongly against American Internet companies. The BBC reports: "His concerns appear to be twofold. Firstly the fact that militant organisations such as Islamic State (IS) are using Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp to promote themselves and the increasing sophistication that extremists are showing in their use of such platforms. And secondly he is not happy about pledges from Microsoft, Google, Apple and Yahoo to make encryption a default option to protect users from government snooping."
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David Pogue’s Android Lollipop Review

Android 87 Comments
Lollipop is out, though, of course, the only way to get it now is to buy a new device that supports it. And, according to Pogue, disappointment for people who like upgrading their OSes is only one of the ways that the new Android disappoints. It's flat. Perhaps too flat, and guilty of a myriad of user experience sins. But it's also chock full of new, improved, and useful features, many of which were cribbed from inspired by other platforms, like battery saver, do not disturb, new unlocking, phone to phone transfer, user accounts.
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