Electronic component distributor Digi-Key will be producing a small manufacturing run of the "open hardware" ereader from the Open Book Project, reports Gizmodo: The raw hardware isn't as sleek or pretty as devices like the Kindle, but at the same time there's a certain appeal to the exposed circuit board which features brief descriptions of various components, ports, and connections etched right onto the board itself for those looking to tinker or upgrade the hardware. Users are encouraged to design their own enclosures for the Open Book if they prefer, either through 3D-printed cases made of plastic, or rustic wooden enclosures created using laser cutting machines. With a resolution of just 400x300 pixels on its monochromatic E Ink display, text on the Open Book won't look as pretty as it does on the Amazon Kindle Oasis which boasts a resolution of 1,680x1,264 pixels, but it should barely sip power from its built-in lithium-polymer rechargeable battery -- a key benefit of using electronic paper. The open source ereader -- powered by an ARM Cortex M4 processor -- will also include a headphone jack for listening to audio books, a dedicated flash chip for storing language files with specific character sets, and even a microphone that leverages a TensorFlow-trained AI model to intelligently process voice commands so you can quietly mutter "next!" to turn the page instead of reaching for one of the ereader's physical buttons like a neanderthal. It can also be upgraded with additional functionality such as Bluetooth or wifi using Adafruit Feather expansion boards, but the most important feature is simply a microSD card slot allowing users to load whatever electronic text and ebook files they want. They won't have to be limited by what a giant corporation approves for its online book store, or be subject to price-fixing schemes which, for some reason, have still resulted in electronic files costing more than printed books.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity "lost its orientation...partway through its last set of activities," reported a planetary geologist on the rover's team Monday. Curiosity had lost track of its position in space and the position of its various parts like its robotic arm. "Thus, Curiosity stopped moving, freezing in place until its knowledge of its orientation can be recovered. Curiosity kept sending us information, so we know what happened and can develop a recovery plan...." Space.com now shares the rest of the story: "We learned this morning that plan was successful and Curiosity was ready for science once more!" mission team member Scott Guzewich, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, wrote in another update on Tuesday. This latest recovery shouldn't come as a shock; Curiosity has overcome numerous setbacks since landing inside Mars' 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater in August 2012. The rover has had issues with its memory and its wheels, for example, but has always bounced back... Curiosity is now climbing the foothills of Mount Sharp, the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 km) mountain that rises from Gale Crater's center. The rover is reading the rocks for clues about Mars' long-ago climate transition, which turned the Red Planet from a relatively warm and wet place to the cold desert world it is today. CNET notes that Curiosity is currently NASA's only working rover on Mars.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Andy Sylvester, a longtime user of my stuff, recorded a voicemailcast. He did an outline too. And here are some of them.

Andy, thanks for the voicemailcast. We've only met once face to face that I know of, and that was in a noisy place (in Portland), and there were a lot of other people there.

This voicemailcast multiplied my understanding of who you are.

Anyway, it is hard to collaborate with me on the code I write, because of the way I work, but that's not likely to change any time soon. Coding has not been the limiting factor for a long time. It's where to go and how to attract writers. I have a massive body of working code. As I said in the podcast, from this point it's about selecting bits to integrate into the current writing environment. With LO2, people will be using the same blogging environment I use. So we can evolve together.

Also if Wordpress works for you, that's great. It just isn't fluid enough for me.

And btw, Doc has shown me how to make it more fluid. I haven't implemented his request yet, but now I see how much it would help. More on that later.

There are ways to collaborate. For example, Andrew Shell has been managing the rssCloud server functionality. Perfect because we have a well-defined API for how our software interacts. He tells me he's doing a new release. So helping him might be an option, if he needs help.

But here's my number one request of the world -- what I want most that other people could create, is a Linux version of Frontier. I am in a precarious place on the Mac. The version of Frontier that I use as a code-writing and devops tool does not run on the latest Mac OS. We knew this was coming. I bought a super hot iMac Pro just before their OS switch, so I'm good as long as this machine continues to run, and the backups I have which are older continue to run. But I'm three hardware failures away from having no way forward. That scares me.

And Linux is great. All my servers run Ubuntu now, all my server code is in Node.js. Imagine how smooth it would be to have my development environment run there too. Lots of synergies, and safety. Ted Howard is the main guy on that stuff. Without his work I would have lost use of Frontier a long time ago. BTW this is a project I personally would put money into. You talk about the economics of software, there is a new bit of info on the economics.

Also next time you do a voicemailcast please send me a link via email. I almost didn't see this, and that would have been a shame.

The naturalist speaks at a newly-formed citizens' assembly examining how the UK cuts emissions.

Slashdot reader McGruber shares the news that several of Alan Turing's historic personal effects have been recovered nearly 36 years after they were stolen. From a report: In filings in the U.S. District Court of Colorado Friday, federal officials say they seized the British mathematician's Princeton University degree, his Order of the British Empire medal and several photos, school reports and letters from his time at Sherborne School, a boarding school in Dorset, England. According to the seizure notices, a woman named Julia Turing approached the University of Colorado Boulder in January 2018, saying she wanted to loan Alan Turing's memorabilia to the library. Archivists at the library determined that the items were stolen from Sherborne in 1984... Julia Turing isn't related to Alan Turing, but she changed her last name from Schwinghamer in 1988, according to the complaint... A month after she reached out to the University of Colorado Boulder, federal officials searched Julia Turing's home in Conifer and recovered the items. The Guardian shared this quote from a member of the government committee that decided Turing should appear on the U.K.'s new £50 note. "[He was] the father of computer science, a significant influence on the modern field of artificial intelligence and most importantly, his work at Bletchley Park during the second world war led a team of code-breakers to crack the German Enigma code."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Dems should embrace the Repubs-with-heads-on-spike meme. They would be doing the Repubs a favor actually because even if they deny it, we know that some of their heads will be on spikes before long. Let's debate that on CNN.

Andy Sylvester, a longtime user of my stuff, recorded a podcast.

Id software has released a new trailer for their upcoming Doom sequel set on a demon-infested planet Earth in the year 2151. And GameSpot has uploaded a 10-minute clip of gameplay while Collider released 15 minutes. Collider writes: Doom Eternal takes everything that was gloriously batshit about Doom 2016, throws it in a Lamborghini full of Slayer albums and catapults it into the sun. This game is out of its goddamn mind in the best possible way, and I literally cannot wait to get my hands on the full version... The Fortress of Doom is massive. I wasn't able to access every area, and could only guess at the function of some of the areas I did see. One section had the original Doom Marine costume on display in a glass case, and the game's director, Hugo Martin confirmed that the skin is an unlockable. Moreover, he indicated that there are several unlockable player skins in the game, including one he was clearly excited about but couldn't reveal, saying that it was still in the licensing approval stage... Doom Eternal, like its predecessor, is a fast game, pitting you against hordes of powerful enemies that force you to constantly be on the move and quick-swapping weapons to inflict maximum damage while avoiding death. You have a few tools at your disposal to earn guaranteed life, ammo, and armor, which are the over-the-top glory kills, the terrifying chainsaw, and the brand-new flame belcher respectively. Glory kills are special instant-death maneuvers you can unleash on enemies after staggering them, and the addition of a retractable arm blade has heightened the graphic absurdity of them to such a degree that I was giggling like an idiot every time I pulled one off. I spent the next three hours murdering my way across three massive levels that were incredibly varied in terms of design, beginning in a blasted post-apocalyptic city, then moving to a vast overgrown temple, and finally ending up in a heavily-fortified arctic base... Each stage had a completely different feel -- the city was very ground-based, with dark subway tunnels and skeletal office buildings. The temple was spread out across what felt like miles, with an unexpected amount of verticality and traversal thanks to the new climbing mechanic. Yep, Doom Guy can now cling to certain walls, as well as swing from poles to extend his jump and gain access to distant ledges. The climbing controls are a bit funky, like Spider-Man with a rotator cuff injury, but the traversal puzzles are fun and satisfying, and allow for some truly massive environments... Martin promised that players will continue to be introduced to new enemies and environments right up until the end of the 22+ hour campaign. He describes Doom Eternal as a thinking person's action game, and that the team's goal was to create a combat puzzle worth your time. DOOM Eternal is scheduled to be released on March 20th.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My mother was a beauty. Always I had the most beautiful mother in school. The other kids said that. I was proud. She married a man, my father, who was not beautiful. I found myself wishing the other day that she had married a beautiful man, then I would be as beautiful as she was. But then I thought, then, I would not be me. Or would I? I have no idea. I'm going to try to get some work done now.

Republican senators should watch this scene from Game of Thrones. You see that guy Joffrey, the guy talking about "putting a son" in the attractive woman -- he's a lot like your leader (except he has nice hair). Wait for the punchline. You're going to love it!

Here's what my day's been like so far. Woke up at 9:30AM. Made some breakfast, turned on WNYC on my Alexa. Listened to their summary of the previous days' impeachment speeches, no mention of Pikes and how angry Republican senators were (thanks for that), then at 10AM they started broadcasting the speech by the White House counsel (who, I thought was supposed to represent the office of the president, not the president in person, but what of it) and he started into the lying and deception. I couldn't handle it. Told Alexa to stop. Finished my orange juice and skipped the coffee and went upstairs and back to bed. Woke up at about 1PM. Guess I needed the sleep. Would you believe it's raining in January. I moved my car out of the carport and into the rain, it could use a wash, totally mud-covered. I feel depressed. I think we're over the edge again, about to free-fall into another worst thing in the world. God please help America. Your devoted servant, Admiral Davey.

The maintainer of the popular Rust web framework Actix has quit the project -- though he's backed off threats to make its code private and delete its repository, instead appointing a new maintainer. "Be a maintainer of large open source project is not a fun task," he'd complained last week on GitHub. "You alway face with rude and hate, everyone knows better how to build software, nobody wants to do home work and read docs and think a bit and very few provide any help... "You felt betrayed after you put so much effort and then to hear all this shit comments, even if you understand that that is usual internet behavior.... Nowadays supporting actix project is not fun, and be[ing] part of rust community is not fun as well." The Register reports: Actix Web was developed by Nikolay Kim, who is also a senior software engineer at Microsoft, though the Actix project is not an official Microsoft project. Actix Web is based on Actix, a framework for Rust based on the Actor model, also developed by Kim. The web framework is important to the Rust community partly because it addresses a common use case (development web applications) and partly because of its outstanding performance. For some tests, Actix tops the Techempower benchmarks. The project is open source and while it is popular, there has been some unhappiness among users about its use of "unsafe" code... Safe code is protected from common bugs (and more importantly, security vulnerabilities) arising from issues like variables which point to uninitialized memory, or variables which are used after the memory allocated to them has been freed, or attempting to write data to a variable which exceeds the memory allocated. Code in Rust is safe by default, but the language also supports unsafe code, which can be useful for interoperability or to improve performance. There is extensive use of unsafe code in Actix, leading to debate about what should be fixed. Kim was not always receptive to proposed changes... Kim said that he did not ignore or delete issues arbitrarily, but only because he felt he had a better or more creative solution than the one proposed -- while also acknowledging that the "removing issue was a stupid idea." He also threatened to "make [Actix] repos private and then delete them...." Since then, matters have improved. The Github repository was restored and Kim said, "I realized, a lot of people depend on actix. And it would be unfair to just delete repos... I hope new community of developers emerge. And good luck!" The developer news site DevClass wrote that "The apparent 'ragequit' has prompted questions about the dynamics within the open source community." Over 120 GitHub users have now signed a sympathetic letter to Nikolay from "users, contributors, and followers of your work in the Rust community," saying "We are extremely disappointed at the level of abuse directed towards you." "Working on open source projects should be rewarding, and your work has empowered thousands of developers across the world to build web services with Rust. It's incredibly tragic for someone who has contributed so much to the community, to be made to feel so unwelcome that they feel that they have no other choice than to leave. This is not the kind of community we want."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Friday America's commander-in-chief revealed the logo for the newest branch of its military, Space Force. CNBC immediately reported that the logo "has boldly gone where Star Trek has gone before." The Pentagon and White House did not immediately respond to CNBC's query as to why the Space Force and Star Trek logos -- both with blue globes, white stars, and swooshed rings around a sleek space ship -- looked similar. "The U.S. government took a thing from a TV show and made it the official emblem of a branch of the military, " tweeted a culture writer for the New York Times. But conservative national security commentator John Noonan argued it looks more like the logo for America's Air Force Space Command (founded in 1982). "So the Air Force originally stole the Star Trek logo?" someone asked him on Twitter -- prompting this wry reply. "Well, that was certainly the joke we made 15 years ago." But it may actually be the other way around. One Star Trek fan site claims that the Starfleet logo never even appeared on the original Star Trek or Star Trek: The Next Generation series, and wasn't created until after the Air Force's logo, during the fourth season of Deep Space Nine (around 1996), by American graphic designer Mike Okuda: In the Star Trek Sticker Book, on the cover of which the logo of Starfleet Command is shown at a large size, Mike Okuda writes, "The Starfleet Command seal was first seen in 'Homefront' (Deep Space 9) and later in 'In the Flesh' (Voyager), although the agency itself, of course, dates back to the original Star Trek series. "The symbol was intended to be somewhat reminiscent of the NASA emblem."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce Perens (Slashdot reader #3872) co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond in 1998. (And then left it this January 2nd.) But in 2017 Perens was also sued partly over comments made in a Slashdot discussion. He's just shared a video from the 9th Circuit Appeals Court hearing -- along with this update: Open Source Security Inc. and their CEO, Mr. Bradley Spengler, sued me for 3 Million dollars for defamation, because I wrote this blog post, in which I explained why I thought they were in violation of the GPL. They lost in the lower court, and had to file this $300,000 bond to pay for my defense, which will be awarded to my attorneys if the appeals court upholds the lower court's finding. Because OSS/Spengler are in Pensylvania and I am in California, this was tried before a Magistrate in Federal court, with the laws of California and the evidentiary rules of the Federal Court. Thus, I am now in the 9th Circuit for appeal. The first attorney to appear is for OSS/Spengler. The second works for EFF, and the third for O'Melveny. In my opinion EFF and O'Melveny did a great job. If you are interested in the case, I have a partial archive of the case documents from PACER, and a link to PACER where the rest can be found, here.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It is one of Europe's "best wildlife secrets" and home to unique and unusual species.