It was just a little more than 24 hours ago that SDL 2.26 released for this widely-used library by cross-platform games and other software for abstracting software/hardware interfaces. With SDL 2.26 released, SDL 3.0 is now in development. One of the first stages of that big Simple DirectMedia Layer update is removing a lot of old platform code and other obsolete targets…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/SDL3-Dumping-Old-Code
Enlarge / Just a few of the Activision franchises that will become Microsoft properties if and when the acquisition is finalized. (credit: Microsoft / Activision)
The Federal Trade Commission will “likely” move to file an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and Activision Blizzard to block the companies’ planned $69 billion merger deal. That’s according to a new Politico report citing “three [unnamed] people with knowledge of the matter.”
While Politico writes that a lawsuit is still “not guaranteed,” it adds that FTC staffers “are skeptical of the companies’ arguments” that the deal will not be anticompetitive. The sources also confirmed that “much of the heavy lifting is complete” in the commission’s investigation, and that a…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899979
New stuff in the GNU Press shop
New stuff in the GNU Press shop
Enlarge / No, those donut tracks aren’t mine, officer. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
The Perseverance rover landed in Mars’ Jezero Crater largely because of extensive evidence that the crater once hosted a lake, meaning the presence of liquid water that might once have hosted Martian life. And the landing was a success, placing the rover at the edge of a structure that appeared to be a river delta where the nearby highlands drained into the crater.
But a summary of the first year of data from the rover, published in three different papers being released today, suggests that Perseverance has yet to stumble across any evidence of a watery paradise. Instead, all indications are that water…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1899919
People with long commutes usually come up with tricks to stay focused and alert and avoid the dangerous tendency to zone out during the drive. One trick I used to use was keeping mental track of the various construction projects I’d pass by on my way to work, noticing which piers on a new highway overpass were nearing completion, or watching steelworkers put together the complex rebar endoskeletons of a new stretch of roadway.
One project I loved to watch back in the 80s was a new high-rise going in right next to the highway, which fascinated me because of the construction method. Rather than putting together a steel frame, laying out decking, and covering each floor…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2022/11/23/books-you-should-read-why-buildings-fall-down/
To save the children, we must destroy everything. That’s the reality of the EARN IT Act. I mean, you can get some sort of sense of what you’re in store for just by reading the actual words behind the extremely labored acronym: Eliminating Abuse and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act. Whew. It’s a mouthful. And, given the name, it seems like this would be Congress putting funding towards supporting moderation efforts that target abusive content.
But it’s nothing like that. It’s all about punishing tech companies for the acts of their users. Like FOSTA before it, the bill has zero interest in actually targeting the creators and distributors of illegal content, like child sexual abuse…
Supposedly leftist President Boric wants Chile to sign the TPP — which would eliminate Chile’s right to regulate many areas of business and health.
Fossil fuel companies use these business-supremacy treaties to attack measures for decarbonizing. Boric also wants Chile to sign the Energy Charter Treaty, a
business-supremacy treaty designed specifically to interfere with
measures to reduce use of fossil fuels. It is effectively a suicide
pact.If you are in Chile, launch a fight against this absurd plan.
At the November 8, 2022 election, Nevada voters passed Question Three, the top-five initiative, with 52.5% of the vote. It does not go into effect unless the voters pass it again in November 2024.
If it had been in effect in 2022, it is almost certain that no minor party candidates would have been on the November ballot for either Governor or U.S. Senator. At the 2022 primaries, there were ten major party candidates for Governor, and twelve for U.S. Senator. Based on what has happened in California 2012-2022, and Washington 2008-2022, the only choices for those two offices in November 2022 would have been five major party members for each office.
Libinput 1.22 was released this weekend by José Expósito as the newest version of this widely-used input handling library that is now common to the Linux desktop by both X.Org and Wayland based environments…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/libinput-1.22-Released
NORILSK, RUSSIA—In response to complaints of skyrocketing ticket prices caused by excessive fees, live-entertainment monolith Ticketmaster has opened a new workhouse where Taylor Swift fans can labor to earn tickets for her forthcoming Eras Tour, sources within the music industry confirmed Friday. “Whenever I feel…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.theonion.com/ticketmaster-opens-new-workhouse-where-taylor-swift-fan-1849797023
The Green Party national website lists 14 Green Party members who were elected or re-elected on November 8, 2022. See here. All are non-partisan races. … Continue reading →
External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2022/11/11/fourteen-green-party-candidates-elected-on-november-8-2022/
Pictured here: a federated instance stabbing itself in the brain. The more I read about Mastodon promoters’ opinions on how it should work, the more I think, “How could you possibly think that is how it is going to go?” One group of people want a Federated Feed Reader: They want to read the clever updates and memes from their friends and favorite celebrities. They want to post a GIF and have their friends validate them by hitting “like” on it. They want to see a feed of all the people they follow. And, maybe, some recommendations or trends. For these people, the best situation is: “It just doesn’t…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/11/mastodon-and-federation/
Should the government be allowed to collect your DNA—and retain it indefinitely—if you’re arrested for a low-level offense like shoplifting a tube of lipstick, driving without a valid license, or walking your dog off leash? We don’t think so. As we argue in an amicus brief filed in support of a case called Thompson v. Spitzer at the California Court of Appeal, this practice not only impinges on misdemeanor arrestees’ privacy and liberty rights, but also violates the California Constitution.
Since 2007, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office (OCDA) has been running an expansive program that coerces thousands of Orange County residents annually to provide a DNA sample in exchange for dropping charges for low-level misdemeanor offenses….
In almost every case, proportional fonts are superior. They look better and they’re easier to read. One obvious exception is when programming but, even there, not everyone agrees. Still, most programmers are pretty firm in their preference for monospaced fonts when programming.
Some writers also like monospaced fonts when preparing their manuscripts, probably for atavistic reasons involving typewriters. I thought that was silly when I read it but then I realized I do all my writing in a monospaced font even though Emacs would allow me to easily use a proportional font if I wished.
All of that notwithstanding, it remains true that monospaced fonts are a bit harder to read. Blake Watson has a very interesting post…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://irreal.org/blog/?p=10941
You don’t need much to do a persistence of vision display. A few LEDs and a processor is all it really takes. [B45i] made a simple PC board with five LEDs and an ATtiny CPU. There’s a battery and it connects to a fan to spin around.
While the project is pretty simple, we liked two aspects of it. First, he provides very detailed explanations about how to use an Arduino to program the Tiny using the Arduino IDE.The other item of interest is the two web applications that can build arrays of data for the POV display easily. Examining the code is instructive, too, because of the use of bit coding and enumerations to save space.
The…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2022/11/09/1-pov-display-goes-round-and-round/
Reducing replication lag with IO concurrency in Postgres 15 PostgreSQL 15 improves crash recovery and physical replication performance of some large and very busy databases by trying to minimise I/O stalls. A standby server might now have an easier time keeping up with the primary. How? The change in PostgreSQL15 is that recovery now uses the maintenance_io_concurrency setting (default is 10, but you can increase it) to decide how many concurrent I/Os to try to initiate, rather than doing random read I/Os one at a time. With big and busy databases, when I/O concurrency increases, replication lag can be reduced. In this blog post, you’ll learn how recovery prefetching minimises I/O stalls and reduces replication…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/5s1
Enlarge / Archaeologists excavated this engraved ivory comb at an ancient site in Israel. (credit: Dafna Gazit, Israel Antiquities Authority)
Several years ago, archaeologists unearthed a small ivory comb at Tel Lachsich in Israel, once a major Canaanite city-state in the second millennium BCE. But it wasn’t until last December that someone realized the comb had an inscription using early pictograph symbols of the first alphabet. Once deciphered, the inscription turned out to be a spell for preventing an infestation of head lice, according to a new paper published in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology.
“This is the first sentence ever found in the Canaanite language in Israel,” said co-author Yosef Garfinkel, an archaeologist…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1895815
In August, the Tulsa police department held a press conference about how its new Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), a controversial piece of surveillance technology, was the policing equivalent of “turning the lights on” for the first time. In Ontario, California, the city put out a press release about how its ALPRs were a “vital resource.” In Madison, South Dakota, local news covered how the city’s expenditure of $30,000 for ALPRs “paid off” twice in two days.
All these stories have two things in common: One, they are all about the same brand of ALPRs, Flock Safety. And two, they’re all reminders of how surveillance technology companies are coaching police behind the scenes on how best…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/11/rise-police-advertiser
Website blocking has become an increasingly common anti-piracy tool around the globe.
In dozens of countries, ISPs have been ordered by courts to block pirate sites, usually on copyright grounds. More recently, neutral DNS providers have been targeted as well.
Earlier this year, an Italian court ordered Cloudflare to block three torrent sites on its public 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver. The order applies to kickasstorrents.to, limetorrents.pro, and ilcorsaronero.pro, three domains that are already blocked by ISPs in Italy following an order from local regulator AGCOM.
Cloudflare Appeals DNS Blocking Order
Disappointed by the ruling, Cloudflare filed an appeal at the Court of Milan. The internet infrastructure company doesn’t object to blocking requests that target its customers’ websites but believes…