fidzu : Nerd news

The iPhone XS and XS Max were gorgeous devices, and the updated iPad Pro was a stunner through and through. But my favorite Apple product from 2018 was easily the iPhone XR. It wasn't the first time the company dabbled in lower-cost phones -- there...

17 Sep 2019 10:00am GMT

What does it mean for a phone to earn the name "Pro"? Lots of power, for one. Usually great cameras. And software robust enough to handle arduous tasks with ease. The new iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max certainly tick all these boxes, and — as yo...

17 Sep 2019 10:00am GMT

According to Abner Li from 9to5Google, Google is working on a new "Smart Screenshots" feature that integrates Google Lens abilities into the Google app's screenshot function. From the report: The Google app has long had an "Edit & share screenshots" ability where captures made within Search would reveal cropping and annotation tools. Meanwhile, Assistant has long maintained a "What's on my screen" capability that analyzes what you're currently viewing for search suggestions. Google app 10.61 reveals work on "Smart Screenshots" that combine those two features. Like before, a toolbar -- which interestingly uses a four-color light bar -- appears after you take a screenshot. A small preview is shown at the left with a pencil button overlaid. You can open the system share sheet, but the Google app also suggests a frequently used app. The most interesting addition is Lens. "Exploring with Lens" could be intended as a "Screen search" replacement given that Lens is increasingly taking over visual lookup throughout first-party apps, like Chrome. After taking a capture, Smart Screenshots have an easy way to invoke Lens for search, OCR, and finding visually "similar items." The existing editing tools (Annotating, Cropping, and Sharing) will remain and this new functionality appears to even use the same settings toggle to enable. It's unclear if this functionality once live will again be limited to screenshots taken within Search, or if it will expand to be systemwide and invokable anywhere. A notification from the Google app could appear after capturing a screenshot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

17 Sep 2019 9:00am GMT

HTC announced that it has appointed a former executive from telecom giant Orange, Yves Maitre, as its new CEO. The company said that current chief Cher Wang will step down while remaining chairperson of the company. Wang took over the position from P...

17 Sep 2019 8:21am GMT

Blue's microphones have been a popular choice for podcasters and live streamers for years, mostly due to their plug-and-play ease of use. Now the company is aiming to make things even easier with its latest USB mic: the Yeti X. The new $169.99 option...

17 Sep 2019 7:01am GMT

Uber drivers in NYC may find themselves unable to access the app during lull periods. According to Reuters, the ridesharing giant will start locking drivers out of its app at times and in areas with low demand to comply with the city's new regulation...

17 Sep 2019 6:04am GMT

Multiple Slashdotters are reporting the unfortunate news that famed free software advocate and computer scientist Richard Stallman has resigned from MIT. Slashdot reader iamacat writes: Following outrage over his remarks about Jefferey Epstein's victims, Richard Stallman has resigned from his position in MIT, effective immediately. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him -- even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon. "I am resigning effective immediately from my position in CSAIL at MIT," Stallman wrote in an email, referring to MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. "I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations." Stallman also resigned as president from the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as well as from the organization's board of directors, FSF announced shortly after.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

17 Sep 2019 5:00am GMT

After reports revealed the lengths undertaken by some at MIT to accept donations from convicted sex offender and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito resigned. Now, computer scientist Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU ope...

17 Sep 2019 4:33am GMT

A new band of spectrum will soon be freed up for everything from your smartphone to iOT devices. The FCC today gave approval to five companies to begin what it calls "initial commercial deployment" of the 3.5GHz band. Those selected include Google, F...

17 Sep 2019 4:09am GMT

This week Netflix premieres its three-part docuseries about the founder of Microsoft. Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates uses old and new footage to tell the executive's story, along with interviews by director Davis Guggenheim. Spider-Man: Far...

17 Sep 2019 3:34am GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The California legislature worked through the summer to finalize the text of the state's landmark data privacy law before time to make amendments ran out on Friday. In the Assembly (California's lower house), Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin has been a key voice and vote backing motions that would weaken the law, and a new report says her reasoning may be very, very close to home. A review of state ethics documents conducted by Politico found that Ms. Irwin is married to Jon Irwin, the chief operating officer of Amazon's controversial Ring home surveillance business. That company stands to benefit if the California law is weakened in certain key ways before it can take effect. One proposal put forth by Assemblywoman Irwin would expand what kind of data would be exempt from CCPA provisions, and this drew the ire of consumer protection groups, Politico reports. Irwin also initially proposed striking out "a provision requiring companies to disclose or delete data associated with 'households' upon request," a regulation that will likely affect companies like Ring. She also voted against an amendment that would have required smart speaker systems, like Amazon's Alexa or Google Home, to obtain user consent to sell recorded conversations, and "used store security-camera footage as an example of data that would be burdensome and risky for businesses to be required to link to consumers in response to data-deletion requests." Assemblywoman Irwin told Politico she found questions about her spouse to be offensive, given her own personal background as a systems engineer. "My role in the privacy debate in the Legislature is focused on bringing people together and solving the practical issues posed to us as policy makers and is independent of any job or role my husband may have," she said. The California Consumer Privacy Act was signed into law in June 2018 by California nGovernor Gavin Newsom. "This legislation gives California residents several protections with regard to their personal information, including the rights to know what is being collected, what is being sold, and to whom it is being sold," reports Ars Technica. "It also grants Californians the right to access their personal information, the right to delete data collected from them, and the right to opt out -- without being charged extra for services if they choose to do so."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

17 Sep 2019 3:30am GMT

When the Obama administration kicked out Russian operatives and seized compounds, it might have been for more than their meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Unnamed officials talking to Yahoo News say that some of those diplomats were involv...

17 Sep 2019 2:16am GMT

Almost 400 years after the first folio of Shakespeare was published in 1623, scholars believe they have identified the early owner of one copy of the text, who made hundreds of insightful annotations throughout: John Milton. The Guardian reports: The astonishing find, which academics say could be one of the most important literary discoveries of modern times, was made by Cambridge University fellow Jason Scott-Warren when he was reading an article about the anonymous annotator by Pennsylvania State University English professor Claire Bourne. Bourne's study of this copy, which has been housed in the Free Library of Philadelphia since 1944, dated the annotator to the mid-17th century, finding them alive to "the sense, accuracy, and interpretative possibility of the dialogue." She also provided many images of the handwritten notes, which struck Scott-Warren as looking oddly similar to Milton's hand. The first folio is the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, published seven years after his death. Without it, 18 plays including Macbeth and The Tempest might have been lost to history. Around 750 first folios were printed, with 233 known to survive. They command huge sums at auction, with one selling for 1.87 million pounds three years ago. Scott-Warren has made a detailed comparison of the annotator's handwriting with the Paradise Lost poet's. He also believes that the work the annotator did to improve the text of the folio -- suggesting corrections and supplying additional material such as the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, along with cross-references to other works -- is similar to work Milton did in other books that survive from his library, including his copy of Boccaccio's Life of Dante.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

17 Sep 2019 1:30am GMT

Tesla CEO Elon Musk doesn't believe his use of the term of "pedo guy" was an actual accusation of pedophilia. Lawyers for Musk in a court filing today argued that the missive, which Musk directed at a British diver last year and has made the South Af...

17 Sep 2019 1:06am GMT

The NHTSA is now proposing drivers be able to select an electric-car alert sound at speeds under 18.6 mph. "NHTSA wants the public's opinion 'on whether there should be a limit to the number of compliant sounds that a manufacturer can install in a vehicle and what that limit should be,'" adds CNET. From the report: As of this month, automakers are required to equip 50% of their "quiet cars," which applies to silent electric vehicles, with an alert noise at low speeds. The rules, first brought about in 2010, have been delayed for years, but come 2020, every quiet vehicle will need the alert mechanism. Regulators concluded cars make enough noise from tire and wind noise to forego the alert above 18.6 mph (that's 30 kph in case you're wondering why so precise a figure). Think of the sound as a gentle reminder when strolling through parking lots with cars backing out of spaces and crawling through the area. It's nice to hear a car approach, and something we take for granted with internal-combustion engines. NHTSA said the alert will help prevent 2,400 injuries annually.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

17 Sep 2019 12:50am GMT

Inconsistent data isn't just a headache in the criminal justice system -- it could make the difference between someone going free or serving time. California might do something about that soon, though. The state legislature has passed a bill, AB-13...

17 Sep 2019 12:32am GMT

New submitter JDShewey writes: The CentOS Project has announced that CentOS 8.0 will be available for download beginning Tuesday, September 24. This release was deferred so that work to release CentOS 7.7 could be completed, which means that CentOS 7.7 will be out shortly as well (and 7.7 it is already beginning to appear in mirrors and repos). This comes 20 weeks to the day from the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

17 Sep 2019 12:30am GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple fights the world's biggest tax case in a quiet courtroom this week, trying to rein in the European Union's powerful antitrust chief ahead of a potential new crackdown on internet giants. The iPhone maker can tell the EU General Court in Luxembourg that it's the world's biggest taxpayer. But that's not enough for EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager who said in a 2016 ruling that Apple's tax deals with Ireland allowed the company to pay far less than other businesses. The court must now weigh whether regulators were right to levy a record 13 billion-euro ($14.4 billion) tax bill. A court ruling, likely to take months, could empower or halt Vestager's tax probes, which are now centering on fiscal deals done by Amazon.com and Alphabet. She's also been tasked with coming up with a "fair European tax" by the end of 2020 if global efforts to reform digital taxation don't make progress. Vestager showed her determination to fight the tax cases to the end by opening new probes into 39 companies' tax deals with Belgium on Monday. The move addresses criticism by the same court handling the Apple challenge. A February judgment threw out her 2016 order for them to pay back about 800 million euros. At the same time she's pushing for "fair international tax rules so that digitization doesn't allow companies to avoid paying their fair share of tax," according to a speech to German ambassadors last month. She urged them to use "our influence to build an international environment that helps us reach our goals" in talks on a new global agreement to tax technology firms. After the 2016 EU order, Apple CEO Tim Cook blasted the EU move as "total political crap." "The company's legal challenge claims the EU wrongly targeted profits that should be taxed in the U.S. and 'retroactively changed the rules' on how global authorities calculate what's owed to them," reports Bloomberg.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

17 Sep 2019 12:10am GMT

The Wi-Fi Alliance, the organization that oversees implementation of the Wi-Fi standard, is launching its official Wi-Fi 6 certification program. "That might sound boring, but it means the Wi-Fi 6 standard is truly ready to go, and tech companies will soon be able to advertise their products -- mostly brand new ones -- as certified to properly support Wi-Fi 6," reports The Verge. From the report: So the point of Wi-Fi 6 is to boost speeds within a crowded network. The theoretical maximum speed for Wi-Fi is increasing, too -- to 9.6 Gbps from 3.5 Gbps -- but those numbers don't really matter since you'll never get them at home. What matters is that Wi-Fi 6 has a bunch of tools allowing it to operate faster and deliver more data at once, so the speeds you actually get will be higher than before. Those gains will be most noticeable on crowded networks, where the efficiency improvements will make up for the higher Wi-Fi demands. (Wi-Fi 6 also mandates a major security improvement.) Really, though, today's launch is largely a formality. The Wi-Fi certification program -- while important, and very much marking the beginning of the Wi-Fi 6 era -- isn't required, and companies have been rolling out Wi-Fi 6 devices for months that likely work just fine. But the Wi-Fi Alliance is made up of members of the tech industry big and small, and its actions represent what wireless features and technologies they're interested in delivering, so this is a clear sign that Wi-Fi 6 has arrived. All that said, this week's biggest news for Wi-Fi 6 has no immediate connection to the Alliance: it's that the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro go on sale, and both support Wi-Fi 6. That's going to quickly put millions of Wi-Fi 6 devices into people's hands, meaning adoption of the new tech will very suddenly be well underway.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

16 Sep 2019 11:30pm GMT

Evidence shows Iran supplied cruise missiles, "loitering munitions" used previously.

16 Sep 2019 11:10pm GMT

An anonymous reader shares a report: What do you do with a $2 million natural yellow diamond? If you're at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you coat it in a wild high-tech material that makes any object look like it fell into a black hole. The coated diamond is now a piece of art called The Redemption of Vanity, a collaboration between Diemut Strebe, artist-in-residence at the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology, and Brian Wardle an MIT aeronautics and astronautics professor. The diamond will be on exhibit at the New York Stock Exchange until Nov. 25, giving viewers a chance to see MIT's new carbon nanotube material in action. "The unification of extreme opposites in one object and the particular aesthetic features of the CNTs caught my imagination for this art project," Strebe said in an MIT release. MIT described the carbon nanotubes as "microscopic filaments of carbon, like a fuzzy forest of tiny trees" that's grown on an aluminum foil surface. "The foil captures more than 99.96 percent of any incoming light, making it the blackest material on record," MIT said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

16 Sep 2019 10:50pm GMT

Been pining for Nintendo's SNES-styled Switch controller ever since it was announced alongside the arrival of SNES games on the platform? You now have the chance to get them. Nintendo has started taking orders for the retro $30 gamepad, with the fi...

16 Sep 2019 10:28pm GMT

Developers of the LastPass password manager have patched a vulnerability that made it possible for websites to steal credentials for the last account the user logged into using the Chrome or Opera extension. Ars Technica reports: The vulnerability was discovered late last month by Google Project Zero researcher Tavis Ormandy, who privately reported it to LastPass. In a write-up that became public on Sunday, Ormandy said the flaw stemmed from the way the extension generated popup windows. In certain situations, websites could produce a popup by creating an HTML iframe that linked to the Lastpass popupfilltab.html window, rather than through the expected procedure of calling a function called do_popupregister(). In some cases, this unexpected method caused the popups to open with a password of the most recently visited site. "Because do_popupregister() is never called, ftd_get_frameparenturl() just uses the last cached value in g_popup_url_by_tabid for the current tab," Ormandy wrote. "That means via some clickjacking, you can leak the credentials for the previous site logged in for the current tab." On Friday, LastPass published a post that said the bugs had been fixed and described the "limited set of circumstances" required for the flaws to be exploited. "To exploit this bug, a series of actions would need to be taken by a LastPass user including filling a password with the LastPass icon, then visiting a compromised or malicious site and finally being tricked into clicking on the page several times," LastPass representative Ferenc Kun wrote. "This exploit may result in the last site credentials filled by LastPass to be exposed. We quickly worked to develop a fix and verified the solution was comprehensive with Tavis."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

16 Sep 2019 10:10pm GMT

Mazda is following through with its promise to introduce an EV. The Japanese automaker plans to unveil a full-electric vehicle next month at the Tokyo Motor Show, reported Automotive News. The plan is for Mazda to debut the electric car next year, an...

16 Sep 2019 9:56pm GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: Advertisers on Facebook are able to completely rewrite the displayed headline for news stories, CBC News has learned, opening the door for potential disinformation to spread on the platform while using news media branding as cover. When placing an ad on the platform, one option is to include a link to a website, including links to news stories. The news story's real headline is auto-filled into the ad copy, but advertisers have the option to rewrite the headline. However, the article's website address still appears in the ad, giving the impression that the headline is the one written by the article's author. This policy raises the possibility that it could be abused by political parties or third-party advertisers during the federal election campaign. The article provides an example where the UK's Conservative Party ran an ad containing a BBC article whose headline was, "14 billion pound cash boost for schools." However, the actual BBC story is headlined "School spending: Multi-billion pound cash boost announced," and instead put the number at 7.1 billion pounds, criticizing the government's use of 14 billion pound figure as not the usual way of calculating spending. Facebook is aware of the issue and said it is planning changes. "We have a system that gives publishers control over how their links appear on Facebook. We're working to put additional safeguards in place by the end of this year to make sure advertisers don't misuse this tool," said a Facebook spokesperson in an email to CBC News.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

16 Sep 2019 9:30pm GMT

Two US Senators want the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to review whether two Chinese state-owned telecoms should be permitted to operate in the US. In a letter to the FCC, Democratic leader Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Senator Tom...

16 Sep 2019 9:07pm GMT

FastCompany magazine editor and Slashdot reader harrymcc writes: On the night of October 26, 1960, CBS aired a special -- coproduced with MIT -- about an emerging field of technology called 'artificial intelligence.' It featured demos -- like a checkers-playing computer and one that wrote scripts for TV westerns -- along with sound bits from leading scientists on the question of whether machines would ever think. It was well reviewed at the time and then mostly forgotten. But it's available on YouTube, and surprisingly relevant to today's AI challenges, 59 years later.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

16 Sep 2019 8:50pm GMT

"Audible Captions is not a book of any kind," Audible writes in court filing.

16 Sep 2019 8:41pm GMT

We'll see the Pixel 4 and probably a bunch of other Google hardware.

16 Sep 2019 8:28pm GMT

Google Project Zero finds and reports flaw in widely used password manager.

16 Sep 2019 8:12pm GMT

Seinfeld will be master of a new domain starting in 2021. From a report: Netflix has landed worldwide rights to the iconic sitcom in a five-year deal with distributor Sony. The show will move from current rightsholder Hulu when its deal is up in 2021. Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the new Seinfeld streaming deal is worth more than $500 million and covers global rights. By comparison, The Office and Friends moved to NBC's streaming platform and HBO Max, respectively, for similar valuations that only covered domestic. The deal, sources stress, was competitive with Netflix beating out rich offers from the likes of Amazon, NBC's streamer, HBO Max, Hulu and CBS All Access. The acquisition of Seinfeld for the streamer comes after Netflix lost rights to two other classic NBC comedies: Friends, which is moving to WarnerMedia's HBO Max in 2020, and The Office, which will be part of Comcast's streaming platform starting in 2021.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

16 Sep 2019 8:10pm GMT

Verizon may soon carry OnePlus phones. According to Android Police, sources say Verizon and the Chinese manufacturer signed a deal and that the phones could arrive in 2020. It's unclear which model (or models) that would include, but PhoneArena claim...

16 Sep 2019 8:02pm GMT

Starting today, September 16th, Pokémon Go players can begin collecting Pokémon from the series' fifth generation of games. As with any of the other Pokémon you could collect previously, you'll be able to catch Gen 5 monsters by...

16 Sep 2019 7:45pm GMT

Australian intelligence determined China was responsible for a cyber-attack on its national parliament and three largest political parties before the general election in May, Reuters reports. From the report: Australia's cyber intelligence agency -- the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) -- concluded in March that China's Ministry of State Security was responsible for the attack, the five people with direct knowledge of the findings of the investigation told Reuters. The report, which also included input from the Department of Foreign Affairs, recommended keeping the findings secret in order to avoid disrupting trade relations with Beijing, two of the people said. The Australian government has not disclosed who it believes was behind the attack or any details of the report.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

16 Sep 2019 7:30pm GMT

The knives simply melted upon contact, leaving behind streaks of melted poop.

16 Sep 2019 7:29pm GMT

An anonymous reader shares a report: Many moons ago in Tibet, the Second Buddha transformed a fierce nyen (a malevolent mountain demon) into a neri (the holiest protective warrior god) called Khawa Karpo, who took up residence in the sacred mountain bearing his name. Khawa Karpo is the tallest of the Meili mountain range, piercing the sky at 6,740 metres (22,112ft) above sea level. Local Tibetan communities believe that conquering Khawa Karpo is an act of sacrilege and would cause the deity to abandon his mountain home. Nevertheless, there have been several failed attempts by outsiders -- the best known by an international team of 17, all of whom died in an avalanche during their ascent on 3 January 1991. After much local petitioning, in 2001 Beijing passed a law banning mountaineering there. However, Khawa Karpo continues to be affronted more insidiously. Over the past two decades, the Mingyong glacier at the foot of the mountain has dramatically receded. Villagers blame disrespectful human behaviour, including an inadequacy of prayer, greater material greed and an increase in pollution from tourism. People have started to avoid eating garlic and onions, burning meat, breaking vows or fighting for fear of unleashing the wrath of the deity. Mingyong is one of the world's fastest shrinking glaciers, but locals cannot believe it will die because their own existence is intertwined with it. Yet its disappearance is almost inevitable. Khawa Karpo lies at the world's "third pole." This is how glaciologists refer to the Tibetan plateau, home to the vast Hindu Kush-Himalaya ice sheet, because it contains the largest amount of snow and ice after the Arctic and Antarctic -- about 15% of the global total. However, a quarter of its ice has been lost since 1970. This month, in a long-awaited special report on the cryosphere by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists will warn that up to two-thirds of the region's remaining glaciers are on track to disappear by the end of the century. It is expected a third of the ice will be lost in that time even if the internationally agreed target of limiting global warming by 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is adhered to.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

16 Sep 2019 6:50pm GMT

Amazon denies report; WSJ says algorithm uses factors associated with profitability.

16 Sep 2019 6:30pm GMT

The assemblywoman said her husband's job has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

16 Sep 2019 5:25pm GMT

The news came in an SEC filing on Friday.

16 Sep 2019 5:18pm GMT

5-year "global" deal begins in 2021; lands as services battle over classic series.

16 Sep 2019 5:00pm GMT

This battery-electric hatchback was the best thing at the Frankfurt auto show.

16 Sep 2019 4:49pm GMT

The OxyContin-maker filed for bankruptcy as part of a proposed $10-$12 billion deal.

16 Sep 2019 4:39pm GMT

We'll know all about the OnePlus 7T soon, with OnePlus 7T Pro info coming October 10.

16 Sep 2019 4:27pm GMT

Wi-Fi 6 is officially here.

16 Sep 2019 4:17pm GMT

Infinity Ward still tinkering with ideas, including an enemy-free mini-map.

16 Sep 2019 3:10pm GMT

"The X-15 was the most demanding airplane I've ever flown."

16 Sep 2019 11:30am GMT

Rock core allows researchers to create an incredible timeline.

15 Sep 2019 1:00pm GMT

It's Wednesday, which means another Deck of Cards workout, the fun yet challenging segment of our group exercise program, The Lifehacker Workout. More »

10 Nov 2011 1:15am GMT

Readers offer their best tips for previewing your iPad home screen from another app, troubleshooting your friends and family's computers from far away, and accessing Google Tasks in the new Gmail layout. More »

10 Nov 2011 1:00am GMT

Facebook recently changed its layout, no longer allowing you to choose between "top stories" and "most recent" stories. Due to user outcry, however, they announced today that they'll be changing it back, though you might not notice it at first. Here's how it works. More »

10 Nov 2011 12:30am GMT

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet gets a full slate of dedicated apps for its launch next week, Adobe officially pulls the plug on mobile flash development, and Google continues to add the +1 button to its services. More »

10 Nov 2011 12:00am GMT

Lion's resume feature can be pretty handy, but other times it opens a bunch of old windows when you least expect it. If you're tired of apps opening up all the windows you had open last time, you can stop the app from remembering those windows next time with Command+Option+Q. More »

09 Nov 2011 11:30pm GMT

Now that Gmail's rolled out its new look and you've learned your way around the changes, it's time to fix the little quirks and annoyances that remain. Here are a few of our favorite userstyles and userscripts for making the best of the Gmail redesign. More »

09 Nov 2011 11:00pm GMT

The Daily App Deals post is a round-up of the best app discounts of the day, as well as some notable mentions for ones that are on sale. More »

09 Nov 2011 10:30pm GMT

Flies are already annoying, but if you spend too much time chasing after them to no avail, they're that much more annoying. Fortunately, Wired Magazine found that the answer to your aggravation lies in our good old friend science. More »

09 Nov 2011 10:00pm GMT

Dear Lifehacker,
Can you tell me why in iTunes, under my iPhone summary, there is 1.1GB used by 'other'? I can understand app, music, photos but don't know what the 'other' option is and why it is using my precious 1.1GB of space. Can I do anything about that? I have only 16GB so I want to use it for something useful! More »

09 Nov 2011 9:30pm GMT

iOS: Need a little help cementing your new acquaintance's name in your brain so you won't need to embarrass yourself next time you meet? iPhone application Namerick uses tried-and-true techniques to help you remember the name of a person you've just met, creating memory mnemonics, sending you followup reminders, and more. More »

09 Nov 2011 9:00pm GMT

iOS 5 has been available for download and install for almost a month, but if you want to jailbreak, your only option is a tethered jailbreak. A full, untethered jailbreak is likely still a ways away. If you want to jailbreak now, however, tethered is your only option. Here's a look at what's really involved with a tethered jailbreak and whether it's worth it for you. More »

09 Nov 2011 8:30pm GMT

Instead of featuring one artist today, we're going to feature eight in this Work at a Different Speed Mix. The 99% says: More »

09 Nov 2011 8:00pm GMT

Every day we're on the lookout for ways to make your work easier and your life better, but Lifehacker readers are smart, insightful folks with all kinds of expertise to share, and we want to give everyone regular access to that exceptional hive mind. Help Yourself is a daily thread where readers can ask and answer questions about tech, productivity, life hacks, and whatever else you need help with. More »

09 Nov 2011 7:30pm GMT

Food can be beautiful, simple, and make for some great wallpapers. Today we're offering several options for your desktop to snack on, whether you like to stay healthy or...not. Enjoy some fruit, pancakes, french fries, and beer in to today's Wallpaper Wednesday pack. More »

09 Nov 2011 7:00pm GMT

Text messaging is pretty expensive, but fortunately there are a number of great alternatives for your iPhone that will provide the service for free. Of all the options, our favorite is Google Voice thanks to its cross-platform and web syncing plus full control over how you get your messages and who can send them. More »

09 Nov 2011 6:30pm GMT

Dear Lifehacker,
I love having a smartphone, and Wi-Fi's nearly everywhere these days, so I'd rather not pay $30 a month for data. Sadly, most of the cellphone carriers require that I purchase a data plan. Is there any way I can get out of it? More »

09 Nov 2011 6:00pm GMT

Many of you have commented that our NewsVac section hasn't been refreshed since the middle of last month. Others have noticed that our story volume has dropped off. Changes are coming to Linux.com, and until they arrive, you won't see any new stories on the site.

01 Jan 2009 2:00pm GMT

The free and open source software community has been waiting for the G1 cell phone since it was first announced in July. Source code for Google's Android mobile platform has been available, but the G1 marks its commercial debut. It's clearly a good device, but is it what Linux boosters and FOSS advocates have long been anticipating?

31 Dec 2008 2:00pm GMT

Many public administrations already use open source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to let citizens look at public geographic data trough dedicated Web sites. Others use the same software to partially open the data gathering process: they let citizens directly add geographic information to the official, high-quality GIS databases by drawing or clicking on digital maps.

30 Dec 2008 2:00pm GMT

The Interclue extension is supposed to give you a preview of links in Firefox before you visit them, saving you mouse-clicks and, with a little luck, allowing you to move quickly between multiple links on the same page. Unfortunately, the determination to monetize the add-on and keep its source code closed results in elaborations that make the basic idea less effective, and its constant pleas for donations make Interclue into nagware. As much as the usefulness of the basic utility, Interclue serves as an object lesson of the difficulties that the decision to go proprietary can take.

29 Dec 2008 2:00pm GMT

Shell programming is heavily dependent on string processing. The term string is used generically to refer to any sequence of characters; typical examples of strings might be a line of input or a single argument to a command. Users enter responses to prompts, file names are generated, and commands produce output. Recurring throughout this is the need to determine whether a given string conforms to a given pattern; this process is called pattern matching. The shell has a fair amount of built-in pattern matching functionality.

26 Dec 2008 2:00pm GMT

Many religions have some sort of holiday during this season, where we look back at the joyful moments of the year that's coming to a close, and look ahead with anticipation and hope to the year to come. We hope your year is filled with all you wish for.

25 Dec 2008 2:00pm GMT

Google Maps gives you a quick and easy way to add maps to your Web site, but when you're using Google's API, your ability to display other data is limited. If you have your own data you want to display, or data from sources other than Google, OpenLayers, an open source JavaScript library, can give you more options.

24 Dec 2008 2:00pm GMT

At a time when new and buggy features cloud basic computer functions, it's refreshing to see a new release of a distro like Slackware that stays true to its core philosophy. Slackware has an unfair reputation of being a distro only for experienced users. Granted it doesn't sport many graphical configuration tools, but it balances that with stability and speed.

23 Dec 2008 7:00pm GMT

Documentation is one area in which free/libre/open source software (FLOSS) is weakest. A project called FLOSS Manuals is trying to remedy this situation. The idea behind project is to create quality, free documentation for free software.

23 Dec 2008 2:00pm GMT

A next-generation package manager called Nix provides a simple distribution-independent method for deploying a binary or source package on different flavours of Linux, including Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, Fedora, and Red Hat. Even better, Nix does not interfere with existing package managers. Unlike existing package managers, Nix allows different versions of software to live side by side, and permits sane rollbacks of software upgrades. Nix is a useful system administration tool for heterogeneous environments and developers who write software supported on different libraries, compilers, or interpreters.

22 Dec 2008 7:00pm GMT

Managing buddies on a few online social networks isn't too much of a hassle, but throw in your contact list from instant messaging platforms and online apps and services like Flickr, Digg, and Twitter, and you have a contact list that'd rival that of Kevin Bacon. Managing so many people can be a headache, but here are three browser plugins that can help you manage your online presence more efficiently.

22 Dec 2008 2:00pm GMT

As a regular browser of the Firefox Add-ons site, I'm troubled by the apparent proliferation of proprietary extensions in the last year. Maybe I've simply exhausted the free-licensed extensions that interest me, but recently every interesting-looking extension seems to be a proprietary one -- especially in the recommended list. Nothing, of course, in the Mozilla privacy or legal notice prohibits proprietary extensions simply because they are proprietary, but I find them not only contrary to the spirit of free and open source software (FOSS), but, often, annoying attempts to entangle me in some impossible startup.

19 Dec 2008 7:00pm GMT

The past couple of years have seen an explosion of open source programming languages and utilities that are geared toward children. Many of these efforts are based around the idea that, since the days of BASIC, programming environments have become far too complex for untrained minds to wrap themselves around. Some toolkits aim to create entirely new ways of envisioning and creating projects that appeal to younger minds, such as games and animations, while others aim to recreate the "basic"-ness of BASIC in a modern language and environment.

19 Dec 2008 2:00pm GMT

It's that time of the year again. No, not Christmas -- it's the time of the year we get the latest versions of our favorite Linux distributions. Version 11.1 of openSUSE is being released today. Designated as a point release, there are enough new goodies to warrant a new install or upgrade.

18 Dec 2008 7:00pm GMT

Let's take a look at three projects that are aimed at showing calendar information through a Web interface: WebCalendar, VCalendar, and CaLogic. These projects run on a LAMP server and provide a Web interface to calendar events.

18 Dec 2008 2:00pm GMT

For many years Spamhaus has been top dog in the anti-spam world of DNSBL (Domain Name System Block List; also known as Realtime Blackhole Lists or RBLs). But Spamhaus is no longer a 100% free service. Even small nonprofits are now expected to pay at least $250 per year for a subscription to the Spamhaus DNSBL Datafeed Service. Now a new, free alternative to Spamhaus has arrived: the Barracuda Reputation Block List (BRBL), provided by well-known, open source-based Barracuda Networks. And Barracuda CEO Dean Drako says the company has no plans to charge for the service in the future. He says that BRBL (pronounced "barbell") "does cost us a little bit of money to run, but we think that the goodwill, the reputation and the understanding that Barracuda is providing the service will do us well in the long run."

17 Dec 2008 7:00pm GMT