Micropost

Computational Engineers at the University of Southampton have built a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pi computers and Lego. The team, led by Professor Simon Cox, consisted of Richard Boardman, Andy Everett, Steven Johnston, Gereon Kaiping, Neil O’Brien, Mark Scott and Oz Parchment, along with Professor Cox’s son James Cox (aged 6) who provided specialist support on Lego and system testing. Professor Cox comments: ”As soon as we were able to source sufficient Raspberry Pi computers we wanted to see if it was possible to link them together into a supercomputer. We installed and built all of the necessary software on the Pi starting from a standard Debian Wheezy system image and we have published a guide so you can build your own supercomputer.” ...

As software developers, we develop habits that allow us to build products that work and do not fail under stress. Every software developer knows what an ”off-by-one” error is, and like the Karate Kid, we train extensively so we can avoid those traps. We learn how to avoid these and other similar software problems and we sharpen our skills to find logic errors. As we mature as developers, finding logic errors and incomplete solutions becomes our way of life. It defines us. But our engineering strength is also our social weakness. Countless times as engineers you will find yourself interrupting someone telling a story, an anecdote or a joke to correct a false assumption, provide an extra fact that the narrator overlooked, give a bigger perspective on the problem or point out that the joke premise is actually flawed. You can identify this behavior because the person interrupting usually starts with the phrase ”Well, actually…”. ...

This proposal adds new elements and attribute to [HTML5] to enable different sources of images based on browser and display characteristics. The proposal addresses multiple use cases such as images used in responsive web designs and different images needed for high density displays. This proposal allows content authors to provide user agents with the information they need to select the best image source. The current img element only allows for a single source of an image, but there are numerous use cases where document authors need to define different image sources depending on the factors such as the design, size resolution, and display density. The best image source may be an image sized appropriately for the display size or pixel density. Or the best image source may be a different version of an image that has been modified by the author to be suitable for a particular use (see: art direction use case). ...

As you probably already heard in recent news, 1,000,001 Apple UDID’s were leaked. It’s unfortunate that so many apps use UDID’s to identify users since it’s extremely insecure. This brings me to WhatsApp, a free messaging service, used by millions of people. Their system runs on a modified version of XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). There is nothing wrong with using XMPP, but there is a problem in how WhatsApp handle authentication. If you installed WhatsApp on an Android device for example, your password is likely to be an inverse of your phones IMEI number with an MD5 cryptographic hash thrown on top of it (without salt). md5(strrev(’your-imei-goes-here’)) ...

A co-worker watched me type the other day and noticed that I use certain Unix commands for purposes other than they are intended. Yes, I abuse Unix commands. » Tom Limoncelli | everythingsysadmin.com

Without open source, Twitter wouldn’t exist. Every Tweet you send and receive touches open source software on its journey between computers and mobile devices. We were curious about how much open source is used at Twitter. Beyond that, we wanted to discover how open source may influence the culture at Twitter, Inc. We asked Chris Aniszczyk, Open Source Manager at Twitter, to share the company’s open source story. Aniszczyk will be keynoting at this month’s LinuxCon, August 29 through 31, in San Diego, CA. His topic: The open source technology behind a Tweet. ...

Hace año y medio que recopilé datos sobre la distribución de la propiedad de los medios de comunicación, compilando esos datos en un solo gráfico: los dueños de la información. Parece que el gráfico tuvo buena acogida y a mucha gente le pareció interesante. A mí, al menos, me parece útil. Una herramienta para tener presente, cuando consultamos algún medio de comunicación, a qué intereses sirve. Así que me puse manos a la obra, recopilando datos de los movimientos empresariales en el sector, para poder mostraros un nuevo gráfico, ampliado, corregido y actualizado. ...

Watch me jam solo, then use the special interactive player to record your own remix. Go ahead, show me what you got! Ver vídeo » Terry Crews | vimeo.com

Paper Biped Robot making process from H/P MPM (Mechanical Paper Model) http://www.geocities.jp/kikousya290821/newmpm.htm All paper made Biped Robot without wooden shafts and elastic band as power source » geocities.jp/kikousya290821 | via microsiervos.com

Back in 1998 when Times New Roman was still widely used on the web, my then boss made sure we always designed our web sites with Arial, as she hated the look of serif fonts on the web. Was it the case that sans serif fonts were more legible, or was it just a matter of taste? In 2003 as part of my master’s degree I reviewed over 50 empirical studies in typography and found a definitive answer. An argument has been raging for decades within the scientific and typographic communities on what seems a very insignificant issue: Do serifs contribute to the legibility of typefaces, and by definition, are sans serif typefaces less legible? To date, no one has managed to provide a conclusive answer to this issue. ...