In yet another sign of a more open Apple, the company today debuted a new blog dedicated to its new Swift programming language. Promising to provide a “behind-the-scenes look into the design of the Swift language” from Swift engineers, the blog currently has only one entry, but it’s a good one: an announcement that the Xcode 6 beta is now available for free download (formerly, downloads of Xcode required a paid Apple developer account). As the blog has no reader comment capability, we don’t foresee the blog becoming a forum in which developers can offer their own suggestions for improvements and enhancements to the language, so it will be interesting to see just what Apple does with the blog in the coming weeks and months.

 

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ConstantineM writes: It has finally happened. Bob Beck of The OpenBSD Foundation has just announced that the first release of LibreSSL portable is now available, and can be found in the LibreSSL directory of your favourite OpenBSD mirror. libressl-2.0.0.tar.gz has been tested to build on various versions of Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X and FreeBSD. This is intended to be an initial portable release of OpenBSD's libressl to allow the community to start using it and providing feedback, and has been done to address the issue of incorrect portable versions being attempted by third-parties. Support for additional platforms will be added as time and resources permit.

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Bomber över Gaza och raketer mot Israel. Hundratals döda palestinier. Att det fördes fredssamtal mellan israeler och palestinier så sent som i våras är svårt att föreställa sig. Men fortfarande finns förstås de som hoppas – trots allt.

Lucas123 writes: A DARPA-funded project has successfully developed a .50 caliber sniper round capable of maneuvering during flight in order to remain on target. The self-guiding EXACTO bullet, as it's being called, is optically guided by a laser that must remain on target for the bullet to track. The EXACTO round is capable of accurately tracking a target up to 1.2 miles away, DARPA stated. The technology, which is being developed by Teledyne Scientific and Imaging, is targeted at helping snipers remain at longer distances from targets as well as improving night shots. While DARPA's tracking bullet is the first to use a standard, small-arms caliber round, in 2012 Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) successfully demonstrated a prototype self-guided bullet that was more like like a four-inch dart.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lucas123 writes: A DARPA-funded project has successfully developed a .50 caliber sniper round capable of maneuvering during flight in order to remain on target. The self-guiding EXACTO bullet, as it's being called, is optically guided by a laser that must remain on target for the bullet to track. The EXACTO round is capable of accurately tracking a target up to 1.2 miles away, DARPA stated. The technology, which is being developed by Teledyne Scientific and Imaging, is targeted at helping snipers remain at longer distances from targets as well as improving night shots. While DARPA's tracking bullet is the first to use a standard, small-arms caliber round, in 2012 Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) successfully demonstrated a prototype self-guided bullet that was more like like a four-inch dart.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan utfärdar tsunamivarning efter ett jordskalv med magnituden 6,8, 165 kilometer öster om staden Iwaki, inte långt från det havererade kärnkraftverket Fukushima.

Under veckan har 101 Gaza-bor dödats i israeliska luftangrepp. 22 av dem var barn. Samtidigt flaggar Israel för att aktionen i Gaza kan komma att trappas upp ytterligare.

JeremyHsu writes: A one-second delay can still seem like an eternity for a quantum computing machine capable of running calculations in mere millionths of a second. That delay represents just one of the challenges D-Wave Systems overcame in building its second-generation quantum computing machine known as D-Wave Two — a system that has been leased to customers such as Google, NASA and Lockheed Martin. D-Wave's rapid-scaling approach to quantum computing has plenty of critics, but the company's experience in building large-scale quantum computing hardware could provide valuable lessons for everyone, regardless of whether the D-Wave machines live up to quantum computing's potential by proving they can outperform classical computers. (D-Wave recently detailed the hardware design changes between its first- and second-generation quantum computing machines in the the June 2014 issue of the journal IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity.) "We were nervous about going down this path," says Jeremy Hilton, vice president of processor development at D-Wave Systems. "This architecture requires the qubits and the quantum devices to be intermingled with all these big classical objects. The threat you worry about is noise and impact of all this stuff hanging around the qubits. Traditional experiments in quantum computing have qubits in almost perfect isolation. But if you want quantum computing to be scalable, it will have to be immersed in a sea of computing complexity.

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En man i Oslo fördes på fredagskvällen till sjukhus efter att ha fått en harpun genom huvudet. Det var mannens grannar som larmade om händelsen.

Europa måste avlasta Syriens grannländer och ta emot fler flyktingar från det av inbördeskrig så sargade landet, säger Melissa Fleming, talesperson för FN:s flyktingkommissariat, UNHCR.

Europa måste avlasta Syriens grannländer och ta emot fler flyktingar från det av inbördeskrig så sargade landet, säger Melissa Fleming, talesperson för FN:s flyktingkommissariat, UNHCR.

Japan utfärdar tsunamivarning efter ett jordskalv med magnituden 6,8, 165 kilometer öster om staden Iwaki, inte långt från det havererade kärnkraftverket Fukushima.

Japan utfärdar tsunamivarning efter ett jordskalv med magnituden 6,8, 165 kilometer öster om staden Iwaki, inte långt från det havererade kärnkraftverket Fukushima.

En man i Oslo fördes på fredagskvällen till sjukhus efter att ha fått en harpun genom huvudet. Det var mannens grannar som larmade om händelsen.

mrspoonsi sends this news from The Verge: Elon Musk can no longer say that no one's ever died in a Tesla automobile crash. But few people will be pointing fingers at the electric car maker for this senseless tragedy. Earlier this month, 26-year-old Joshua Slot managed to successfully ride off with a Model S he'd stolen from a Tesla service center in Los Angeles, but police quickly spotted the luxury vehicle and gave chase. According to Park Labrea News, the high-speed pursuit was eventually called off after officers were involved in a fender bender of their own, leaving the police department strained for resources and without any feasible way of catching up to Slot. Reports claim he was traveling at speeds of "nearly 100 mph," but losing the police tail apparently didn't convince Slot to hit the brakes. Instead he sped on, eventually colliding with three other vehicles and a pair of street poles. The final impact was severe enough to "split the Tesla in half" and eject Slot from the car's remains. The Tesla's front section wound up in the middle of the road and caught fire. Its rear portion flew through the air with such force that it slammed into the side of a local Jewish community center and became wedged there.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.