An anonymous reader quotes a report from SlashGear: NASA has released a bunch of patents for its technologies so that anyone can use them. A total of 56 'formerly-patented' technologies developed by the government are now available in the public domain, meaning they can be used for commercial purposes in an unrestricted manner. To make it easier to find these technologies and others like them, NASA has also created a new searchable database that links the public to thousands of the agency's now-expired patents. According to NASA, the patents it has released may have non-aerospace applications that could help companies with commercial projects underway. Of the 56 formerly-patented technologies, users will find things like methods of propulsion, thrusters, rocket nozzles, advanced manufacturing processes, and more. NASA is "encouraging entrepreneurs to explore new ways to commercial NASA technologies," says NASA executive Daniel Lockney. Here's a direct link to search the database to your heart's content.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The whistleblower behind the Panama Papers broke their silence on Friday to explain in detail how the injustices of offshore tax havens drove them to the biggest data leak in history. The source, whose identity and gender remain a secret, denied being a spy. The whistleblower said the leak of 11.5m documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca had triggered a "new, encouraging global debate," thanks to the publication last month of stories by an international consortium of newspapers, including the Guardian. The source gave Suddeutsche Zeitung leaked documents from Mossack Fonseca's internal database in real time installments. The papers included details of the beneficial owners of offshore companies, passport copies, and emails. The source said they decided to act after understanding the "scale of the injustices" the documents described. Mossack Fonseca denies wrongdoing and says its operations in Panama and elsewhere are "beyond reproach." Intriguingly, the source said they originally offered the documents to "several major media outlets." Editors reviewed the Panama Papers but in the end "chose not to cover them," they alleged. It is unclear which media organizations declined the material. The anonymous whistleblower also approached WikiLeaks -- again without success. "Even WikiLeaks didn't answer its tip line repeatedly," the source complained, adding: "The media has failed." The source used the name "John Doe" when they approached Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

prisoninmate writes: Today is the last day of the Ubuntu Online Summit 2016, and the Ubuntu developers discussed the future of the Ubuntu Desktop for Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) and beyond. It looks like Snaps (Snappy) and Unity 8 with Mir are slowly conquering the Ubuntu Desktop, at least according to Canonical's Will Cooke, Ubuntu Desktop Manager. Work has already begun on pushing these new and modern technologies to the Ubuntu Desktop, as Ubuntu 16.04 LTS has just received support for installing Snaps from the Ubuntu Snappy Store. Canonical's Will Cooke has mentioned the fact that the Unity 7 desktop enters its twilight years, which means that it gets fewer features and it's being reduced to only critical and OEM work. This is because Unity 8 desktop is getting all the attention now, and it will become the default desktop session somewhere after Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak).

Donald Robertson, writing for Free Software Foundation: Proprietary JavaScript is a threat to all users on the Web. When minified, the code can hide all sorts of nasty items, like spyware and other security risks. [...] On March 1st, 2016, the Copyright Office announced a call for comments on an update to their technology infrastructure. We submitted a comment urging them to institute a policy that requires all software they develop and distribute to be free software. Further, we also urged them to not require people to run proprietary software in order to communicate or submit comments to them. Unfortunately, once again, the Copyright Office requires the use of proprietary JavaScript in order to submit the comment and they are only accepting comments online unless a person lacks computer or Internet access. [...] The most absurd part of all this is that other government agencies, while still using Regulations.gov, are perfectly capable of offering alternatives to submission.

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has paid $10,000 to a 10-year-old hacker who discovered how one could hack into Instagram and delete comments made by users. Speaking to local publication Iltalehti, Jani said: "I would have been able to eliminate anyone, even Justin Bieber." The Finnish hacker just became the youngest person to receive cash from Facebook for hacking its products. The previous record was set by a 13-year-old back in 2013. What's funny is Jani isn't technically old enough to sign-up and use Facebook or Instagram, as it's supposed to be restricted to those under the age of 13. Jani found he could alter code on Instagram's servers and force-delete users' posts. This was confirmed by Facebook using a test account and patched in February, Facebook told Forbes. Facebook has received more than 2,400 valid submissions and awarded upwards of $4.3 million to over 800 researchers since the bounty program launched in 2011.

An anonymous reader writes: Though many would say Prince changed the world through his music, the artist also took a hands-on approach to changing the world beyond music. The global superstar was the inspiration behind YesWeCode, an Oakland nonprofit, which works to help young people from minority backgrounds enter the tech world. The idea for the program came from a conversation between Prince and his friend Van Jones, who heads Rebuild the Dream charity, following the 2012 shooting of teenager Travoyn Martin. "Prince said, 'A black kid wearing a hoodie might be seen as a thug. A white kid wearing a hoodie might be seen as a Silicon Valley genius. Let's teach the black kids how to be like Mark Zuckerberg.'" Jones told CNN. The program is aiming to teach 100,000 low-income non-white teenagers how to write code, and was launched at the 20th Anniversary Essence Festival in New Orleans in 2014.

An anonymous reader writes from a report published on Tech Times: China has developed the world's first graphene electronic paper that can possibly revolutionize the screen displays on electronic gadgets such as wearable devices and e-readers. Developed by Guangzhou OED Technologies in partnership with another company in the Chongqing Province, the material is also the world's lightest and strongest material in prevalence today. It's 0.335 nanometers thick and can be used to create hard or flexible graphene displays. Graphene e-paper comes with the capability to conduct both heat and electricity, and it can supposedly enhance optical displays to a brighter level, owing to its high-light transmittance properties. What about cost? Since it's derived from carbon, graphene-based e-papers can be easily produced cost-effectively. Traditional e-papers use indium metal for their display, which is very expensive and rare to source.

An anonymous reader writes: Humble Bundle announced a special "pay what you want" sale for four ebooks from No Starch Press, with proceeds going to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (or to the charity of your choice). This "hacker edition" sale includes two relatively new titles from 2015 -- "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" and Violet Blue's "Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy," as well as "Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering" by Andrew "bunnie" Huang, and "The Linux Command Line".

Hackers who are willing to pay "more than the average" -- currently $14.87 -- can also unlock a set of five more books, which includes "The Maker's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse: Defend Your Base with Simple Circuits, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi". (This level also includes "Bitcoin for the Befuddled" and "Designing BSD Rootkits: An Introduction to Kernel Hacking".) And at the $15 level -- just 13 cents more -- four additional books are unlocked. "Practical Malware Analysis: The Hands-On Guide to Dissecting Malicious Software" is available at this level, as well as "Hacking: The Art of Exploitation" and "Black Hat Python."
Nice to see they've already sold 28,506 bundles, which are DRM-free and available in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI format. (I still remember Slashdot's 2012 interview with Make magazine's Andrew "bunnie" Huang, who Samzenpus described as "one of the most famous hardware and software hackers in the world.")

the_newsbeagle writes: More than 2.5 exabytes of data is created every day, and some experts estimate that 90% of all data in the world today was created in the last two years. Clearly, storing all this data is becoming an issue. One idea is DNA data storage, in which digital files are converted into the genetic code of four nucleotides (As, Cs, Gs, and Ts). Microsoft just announced that it's testing out this idea, getting synthetic bio company Twist Bioscience to produce 10 million strands of DNA that encode some mystery file the company provided. Using DNA for long-term data storage is attractive because it's durable and efficient. For example, scientists can read the genome from a woolly mammoth hair dating from 20,000 years ago.

An anonymous reader writes: HTC today announced the Vive X accelerator program through which the company will invest from it's newly created $100 million VR fund. The fund aims to kickstart the VR ecosystem in support of the company's Vive VR headset. Applications for the accelerator program, which will open first in Beijing, Taipei, and San Francisco, are open today. The company says their aim is to "help cultivate, and grow the global VR ecosystem by supporting startups and providing them with expertise, special access to advanced VR technology, financial investment, mentorship and unmatched go-to-market support."

An anonymous reader quotes a report on Buzzfeed: There's trouble afoot inside the Emoji Council of Elders, or, at the very least, signs of a low-simmering schism that's being referred to by some of its participants -- perhaps with less humor than one might expect -- as "Emojigeddon." A series of frustrated emails show a deepening rift between those who adhere to the organization's original mission to code old and obscure and minority languages and those who are investing time and resources toward Unicode's newer and most popular character sets: emojis. From the article: "The correspondence offers a peek behind the scenes of the peculiar and little-known organization that's unexpectedly been tasked with building what some see as the first digital universal language." What are your thoughts of emojis? Have you embraced and intertwined them into your digital language or are you unconvinced of their ability to transcribe any kind of deep understanding?

dmleonard618 writes: The JavaScript runtime Node.js has reached version 6.0, and unlike version 5.0 this version will receive Long Term Support (LTS). LTS is meant to provide the release with long-term stability, reliability, performance and security. The LTS will begin in October. The current LTS release will go into maintenance mode and will only receive bug, security and documentation updates. Version 5.0 of Node.js will continue to be maintained for a few more months. The latest version features improved module loading, 96% of ECMAScript 2015 features, as well as reliability and security enhancements. "The Node.js Project has done an incredible job of bringing this version to life in the timeline that we initially proposed in September 2015," said Mikeal Rogers, community manager for the Node.js Foundation. "It's important for us to continue to deliver new versions of Node.js equipped with all the cutting-edge JavaScript features to serve the needs of developers and to continue to improve the performance and stability enterprises rely on."

snydeq writes: InfoWorld's Dan Tynan offers an inside look at how high-tech software vendors such as Adobe, Oracle, and IBM play hardball over software licensing, pushing customers to "true up" to the tune of billions of dollars per year -- and using the threat of audits as a sales tool to close lucrative deals. "When it comes to software audits, the code of omerta prevails," Tynan writes. "It's not a question of whether your organizations' software licenses will get audited. It's only a question of when, how often, and how painful the audits will be. The shakedown is such a sure thing that nearly every customer we contacted asked us to keep their names out of this story, lest it make their employers a target for future audits."

The online programming school Tech Rocket just published a new interview with Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python. "Looking back I don't think I ever really doubted Python, and I always had fun," he tells the site. "I had a lot of doubts about myself, but Python's ever-increasing success, and encouragement from people to whom I looked up (even Larry Wall!), made me forget that."

He describes what it's like being Python's Benevolent Dictator for Life, and says that the most astonishing thing he's seen built with Python is "probaby the Dropbox server. Two million lines of code and counting, and it serves hundreds of millions of users." And he leaves aspiring programmers with this advice. "Don't do something you don't enjoy just because it looks lucrative -- that's where the competition will be fiercest, and because you don't enjoy it, you'll lose out to others who are more motivated."

Friday the Huffington Post wrote that "Ageism runs rampant through Silicon Valley, where older workers are frequently overlooked for jobs." They ran tips from the man who recruited Tim Cook for Apple, who pointed out that it's difficult and expensive to recruit new talent, urging businesses to "stop seeing workforce diversity as a good deed; it's good business." And earlier this month The Observer ran an article by Dan Lyons, a writer for HBO's "Silicon Valley," who shared his perspective on ageism from his time at HubSpot. Their CEO actively cultivated an age imbalance, bragging that he was "trying to build a culture specifically to attract and retain Gen Y'ers," because, "in the tech world, gray hair and experience are really overrated."

Meanwhile, Slashdot reader OffTheLip writes: Information technology is a young business in comparison to many other industries but one of the few where older workers are not valued for their institutional knowledge... As a recently retired techie I experienced this firsthand, both as an older worker, and earlier in my career [as] one who didn't see the value in older workers. As Lyons states, older workers are good business.
What are your thoughts? And have you experienced ageism?

prisoninmate quotes a report from Softpedia: According to Matthew Garrett, a renowned CoreOS security developer, and Linux kernel contributor, Canonical's new snap package format is not secure at all when it is used under X.Org Server (X Window System), which, for now, it is still the default display server of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system. The fact of the matter is that X11's old design is well-known for being insecure, and Matthew Garrett took the time to demonstrate this by writing a simple snap package that can steal data from any other X11 software, in this case anything you type on the Mozilla Firefox web browser. As more developers will provide snaps for their apps, Canonical needs to do something about the security of snaps in Ubuntu when using X11 or switch to the Mir display server. In the meantime, the security of snaps remains unaffected for the Ubuntu Server operating system, which is usually used without a display server. Canonical has officially released Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, which is now available to download for those interested.

An anonymous reader writes: In response to the FCC's efforts to open up the pay-TV set-top box market, Comcast said today it will allow some of its subscribers to watch TV without leasing a set-top box. Customers with a Roku TV, Roku streaming media player, or 2016 Samsung Smart TV will be able to watch Comcast's TV programming through the Xfinity TV app embedded in the TV set or Roku devices later this year. However, customers will still have to subscribe to a standard cable TV package from Comcast's Xfinity brand. "We remain committed to giving our customers more choice in how, when and where they access their subscription," said Mark Hess, a Comcast senior vice president, in a prepared statement. The FCC has responded to Comcast's recent announcement saying in a statement, "While we do not know all of the details of this announcement, it appears to offer only a proprietary, Comcast-controlled user interface and seems to allow only Comcast content on different devices, rather than allowing those devices to integrate or search across Comcast content as well as other content consumers subscribe to."

An anonymous reader writes: Johan Kanflo has managed to make the already small Tiny328 Arduino clone into an even smaller computing platform about the size of a single AA battery. Not only will it fit in a typical AA battery holder, but it will actually draw power from the batteries beside it as it's wired in "backwards" (with the + and - poles reversed). The Arduino platform consists of open-source hardware, open-source software, and microcontroller-based kits, making it easy to (re)program the processors, and develop software for hardware applications using a java-clone and an easy-to-learn IDE. For those interested in the AAduino, Johan has made his creation available online on Github with instructions and schematics to build your own.

An anonymous reader writes: Oracle has released the April 2016 Critical Patch Update, which provides fixes for 136 vulnerabilities in 49 products, including Java SE and MySQL, the company's Database Server and E-Business Suite, its Fusion Middleware, and its Sun Systems Products Suite. "Oracle continues to periodically receive reports of attempts to maliciously exploit vulnerabilities for which Oracle has already released fixes. In some instances, it has been reported that attackers have been successful because targeted customers had failed to apply available Oracle patches. Oracle therefore strongly recommends that customers remain on actively-supported versions and apply Critical Patch Update fixes without delay," the company advised.

An anonymous reader writes: GameStop has announced today a publishing label called "GameTrust," which includes developers like Insomniac Games, Ready at Dawn, Tequila Works, and Frozenbyte. Mark Stanley, GameStop VP of Internal Development and Diversification, told GameSpot in a recent interview, "We do not involve ourselves in the creative process because at the end of the day, that is what our developer partners are passionate about," he explained. "By allowing developers to fully focus on their craft, GameTrust can focus on all other aspects of bringing a new IP to market, leveraging our deep expertise and retail channel leadership to support each developer and connect their games with a broader global audience." According to GameStop's program release, GameTrust will "revolutionize the game development and distribution process" by way of giving developers another option to bring their games to market, leveraging GameStop's leadership in the retail channel (including marketing and more) to help bring games to a larger audience. Everything "from casual to serious, console to PC, triple AAA titles to independent games" will be supported. They'll be available through all of GameStop's retail channels as well as Steam, Xbox Live, Playstation Network, the eShop, and others. The full interview with Mark Stanley can be found here. GameStop first revealed its foray into game publishing when Insomniac Games, developer of Ratchet and Clank Overdrive, unveiled its upcoming adventure game Song of the Deep.