• Added support for the following GPUs:
  • GeForce GTX 780

• Fixed a regression that could cause X to crash when querying GPU information through NV-CONTROL on multi-GPU systems where some GPUs failed to be initialized for X.

• Fixed a bug that could cause X to crash when using Vertex Buffer Objects (VBOs) with indirect rendering.

• Fixed a bug that prevented some drop-down menus in nvidia-settings from working correctly when using older versions of GTK+.

• Fixed RandR panning reporting when the current MetaMode is smaller than the X screen.

• Fixed a regression that caused nvidia-installer to attempt post-processing of non-installed files.

• Added the “ForceCompositionPipeline” and “ForceFullCompositionPipeline” MetaMode options. See the README for details.

• Added support for HDMI 4K resolutions. Using a 4K resolution with an HDMI display requires a Kepler or later GPU.

• Added support in VDPAU for 4k resolution MPEG-1/2 and H.264 video decoding, up to 4032×4048 for MPEG-1/2 and 4032×4080 for H.264, and up to 65536 macroblocks for both.

For home theater enthusiast, the most compelling feature of this new driver is support for decoding video at 4k resolutions with VDPAU.  Compelling is about all that it is however, considering that it’s unlikely any of you have genuine, 4k video occupying 200GB of your disk space that you need to view on Linux.  Though, we could be wrong.

There is one astonishing omission however; HDMI audio has been broken on Nvidia cards since Kernel 3.8.  Those who were looking for, at best, a hotfix, have been left out in the cold.

Pidora 18 (Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix) Release

We're excited to announce the release of Pidora 18 --
an optimized Fedora Remix for the Raspberry Pi.
It is based on a brand new build of Fedora for the ARMv6
architecture with greater speed and includes packages
from the Fedora 18 package set.

* * *

There are some interesting new features we'd like to highlight:
* Almost all of the Fedora 18 package set available via yum
    (thousands of packages were built from the official Fedora
    repository and made available online)
* Compiled specifically to take advantage of the hardware already
    built into the Raspberry Pi
* Graphical firstboot configuration (with additional modules
    specifically made for the Raspberry Pi)
* Compact initial image size (for fast downloads) and auto-resize
    (for maximum storage afterwards)
* Auto swap creation available to allow for larger memory usage
* C, Python, & Perl programming languages available & included
    in the SD card image
* Initial release of headless mode can be used with setups
    lacking a monitor or display
* IP address information can be read over the speakers and
    flashed with the LED light
* For graphical operation, Gedit text editor can be used with
    plugins (python console, file manager, syntax highlighting)
    to serve as a mini-graphical IDE
* For console operation, easy-to-use text editors are included
    (nled, nano, vi) plus Midnight Commander for file management
* Includes libraries capable of supporting external hardware
    such as motors and robotics (via GPIO, I2C, SPI)

Pidora Release Announcement

Who you callin’ a Pidora?

Unfortunately, while Pidora looks to be a very interesting distribution for the Raspberry Pi, with many features taking advantage of the board’s unique properties, the Fedora team made one critical error during its development: they forgot to Google their intended name.

As it turns out, Pidora has a rather embarrassing meaning to some members of the community: in Russian, “pidora” is a derogatory word for a male homosexual. It’s closest translation into English would be “faggot”.

This coincidence was pointed out immediately via various social networks, and most users seemed to accept it as a fluke. Still, the Pidora maintainers have felt the situation serious enough to add a page to the official Wiki about it:

It has come to our attention that the Pidora name bears an unfortunate similarity to another word in Russian, and this has offended some community members and amused others.

Please accept our apologies for any offence caused. Our goal was to simply associate “Pi” (from Raspberry Pi) and “Fedora” (from the Fedora Project).

We are actively seeking a broadly-acceptable alternative Russian name in consultation with some community members, and will post more information shortly.

-Chris Tyler

Pidora Wiki

It will be interesting to see how this is handled moving forward, as releasing Pidora under a completely different name in Russia seems both awkward and ineffectual.

I an addition to being quite possibly the oldest Debian developer, he was also an occasional contributor to Wikipedia.  In addition, Dassen has frequently given talks regarding free and open source software and has been published in many texts and journals since 1999.

Ray had this to say about software patents, non-free software, propaganda, and himself.

I think software patents are evil and try to educate people about them, e.g. by pointing them to the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, the League for Programming Freedom, and freepatents.

I’m a hacker, in particular of free software.

I educate people on the all too common misuse of the term hacker to mean cracker.

I advocate free speech.  Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!

I think cryptography is useful as a means of protecting privacy and providing authentication when needed.

Debian had this to say about Ray and his extraordinary contributions:

 Ray was a Debian Developer for an incredible 19 years. He joined the project in 1994, and continued to be an active contributor until recently. He was involved in Debian as a maintainer of several packages, particularly Gnumeric, and was a driving force behind the creation of the Debian Gnome team.

The Debian Project honours Ray’s great work and his strong dedication to Debian and Free Software. His technical knowledge and his ability to share that knowledge with others will be missed. His contributions will not be forgotten, and the high standards of his work will continue to serve as an inspiration to others.

As of this time, the cause of Ray Dassen’s death is unknown.  All of us at the Powerbase would like to lend our gravest condolences to Dassen’s friends and family, and the community that he has left behind.

Source | Debian.org

Ray Dassen’s Homepage

Developer of the mega-successful casual strategy gem World of Goo is back, and this time they’ve brought Linux along for the first ride!  Tomorrow Corporation‘s much anticipated, already award-winning indie game Little Inferno is now available in the Humble Store, and we can’t wait to play it!

So, what’s this Little Inferno game all about??

Here is the description from Tomorrow Corporation.

Congratulations on your new Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace!  Throw your toys into your fire, and play with them as they burn. Stay warm in there. It’s getting cold outside!

Burn flaming logs, screaming robots, credit cards, batteries, exploding fish, unstable nuclear devices, and tiny galaxies. An adventure that takes place almost entirely in front of a fireplace – about looking up up up out of the chimney, and the cold world just on the other side of the wall.

Finally, a toy burning simulator with Katamari Damacy like ridiculousness!

Interested in a copy for yourself?  Head on over to the Humble Store now!  $10 is probably a small price to pay for this one, and while it is also available in the Steam store, we’re having a hard time finding the Linux version there.

Source | Tomorrow Corporation

Via | Gaming on Linux

Buy Little Inferno | Humble Store | Steam

While GNU/Hurd is still not considered production-ready, and may not even get there, we are still amazed to see releases after 23 years of development!  In fact, our imaginations tell us that development is a lot like one person working a loom at 1/4 normal speed, trying to make a blanket to wrapped the earth with.  What’s even more amazing is that development continues even though Richard Stallman is not optimistic that it will ever be completed.

Stallman on Hurd:

I have done most of my work while anxious about whether I could do the job, and unsure that it would be enough to achieve the goal if I did. But I tried anyway, because there was no one but me between the enemy and my city. Surprising myself, I have sometimes succeeded.

From the announcement:

It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian “sid” at the time of the Debian “wheezy” release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.

Compatibility (in general)

Astonishingly, Debian GNU/Hurd is compatible with %75 of all the packages available for Debian Sid (about 10,000!!).  On the flip-side of the coin, GNU/Hurd is only available for i386 systems which are a bit of a rarity these days.  Debian is known for its wide support for different architectures going way back to the Motorola 68k.  Though it should be noted; this is not an official Debian release…

Source | GNU/Hurd News

Via | Reddit

Here is what he has to say about his work so far:

- we can manage chrome extensions (I just copied examples from here): we can recognize unpacked extensions, install, enable/disable. (oops.. uninstall/delete missing. Adding next days..)
- we can interpret (a bit) the version 2 manifest.json inside
- we can manage browse actions
- we can manage page actions
- we can open popups

So, the first easy step is done. Now what to really say we are supporting chrome extensions? Here is my todo list:
- support chrome object and (a subset of) its API (very long task)
- support the callback mechanism (really hard, this is the trick missing to say we’ll reach one day our goal)
- implement a way to retrieve extensions (support chrome extensions site? seems problematic. Add a ghns layer? Should do the trick. Probably…)
- ehm… port/implement extensions

Boon or bust?

It’s unclear to us how many KDE users prefer ReKonq over Firefox or Chrome but I would assume that it’s not an army.  That said, ReKonq does have a very compelling ‘web-app’ creation tool that supplements Firefox & Chrome quite nicely!  Tools like Google Keep work great in ReKonq as a stand-a-lone web app that iconifies to your taskbar.  At the same time, users of tools like Feedly –the ultra-popular Google Reader replacement– can’t take advantage of ReKonq powerful web app wrapper because it requires an extension to be installed in either Firefox or Chrome.  Feedly even leaves Internet Explorer users out in the cold with their model!

Source | Adjam

While we’re certainly happy with the look and feel of the site, what we think really makes our current setup special is that we’re now able to release our WordPress theme as a GPL project.

What did you expect?

The Dark Ages

During our early years, the layout for the site was unpopular, to say the least. When asked directly, most people we polled didn’t like the layout at all, and we believed it to be a major reason we weren’t getting much repeat traffic. In an effort to curb this, we purchased the commercial WordPress theme, Avenue.

Avenue did look pretty good, but we started to notice problems right away. There were some bugs and missing functions in the theme that bothered us, but worse, it appeared that development had stopped (or at least stagnated) on it. Even as of this writing, the last update to the theme was in October of 2012.

So naturally, we decided to start fixing some of the issues ourselves.

Adding author images was one of the first improvements.

After awhile, our theme had deviated significantly from the stock Avenue, and there was some concern about how we would gracefully handle an upstream update if one ever came (for the record, the theme was never updated in the entire time we ran it here on the site).

The social buttons in the header were a popular addition.

Knowing first hand how frustrating it was to purchase a theme only to realize it wasn’t complete and that support was essentially non-existent, we wanted to be able to take our modified version of the theme and release it publicly so others could benefit.

But unfortunately, we couldn’t. The licensing was unclear, and even though it appeared that Avenue was abandoned by its developers, that didn’t give us a pass to start distributing our own build of it for free. We couldn’t get anyone to answer through their support email address, but something told us the lines of communication would spring to life (and not in a good way) once we started giving their paid theme away for free .

Frustrated that we couldn’t distribute our refined version of Avenue, and still looking to improve the site’s look and feel, we started to look for yet another theme that would fit us a bit better.

DW Focus

After a bit of searching, we came across DW Focus by DesignWall. This theme looked even better than Avenue, supported a lot of interesting features (like built-in mobile and tablet UI’s), and best of all, was licensed under the GPLv2. Seeing this, we mashed the “Buy Now” button down as hard as possible and installed our new theme. But there was a bit of a problem.

Even though DW Focus was advertised as a 1.0 release, it was clearly not finished.

Now, small glitches and bugs are to be expected. We wouldn’t have minded that. But with DW Focus, whole swaths of functionality were missing, or worse, completely fake.

Don’t these look cool?

Take, for example, the “Sharing” panel displayed on the right. That looks nice and professional, doesn’t it? Counters to show how many shares you have, links to email the article to friends, etc, etc. One would assume, seeing such a thing in the live preview of the theme, that those little numbers would increment with how many shares you got on those social networks. Or that clicking “Email this article” might, in fact, email the article to somebody. Seems a natural enough assumption, no?

Well, as it turns out, those counters are all statically set at “0″. There was absolutely no code in the theme to make those numbers ever change, they were just for show. But a handful of zeros make for a rather embarrassing show, so everyone who installed DW Focus would have a site where it appeared nobody ever shared any of their content.

Asking support about this function only led to “It will be implemented later on” sorts of responses, with no clear timetable on when that would actually be happening.

We asked support about other issues as well, such as adding an icon for Google+ to the theme’s social bar. In this case, support gave us code we were instructed to place in the theme, but the code didn’t work. It’s syntax wasn’t even correct, it would immediately cause errors when inserted into the live theme.

These were some pretty serious issues, and frankly, we were left more than a little disappointed with the theme and its developers. Selling a clearly half-finished theme as a 1.0 and charging a premium price is questionable to begin with, but when you neglect to mention that the features prominently displayed in your preview don’t actually work, you’re bordering on a scam.

Fork This

There was no question that DW Focus had the look we were going for, and the stuff that was actually working was great. So we didn’t want to bail on the theme just because of the problems we were having. Instead, inspired by our previous bout of theme modifications, we decided to do what any lovers of FOSS would do when presented with a flawed piece of software covered under the GPL…we forked it.

Our modified version of the DW Focus theme is available on GitHub, and we invite others to look at the modifications we’ve made, submit any problems you might be having, and (if you’re really, really, nice) send us some patches for the things we haven’t sorted out yet.

A few of the notable changes we’ve made so far:

• Add author name and picture to each post
• Remove non-functional Social counters
• Add Google+ to hover-over social icons
• Fixed “Email this article” button

One thing we want to make very clear though, is that we are not trying to take over development of DW Focus, or undermine DesignWall’s paid theme business. Rather, we would much prefer the enhancements and changes we’ve made to DW Focus get integrated into the upstream, so that everyone can benefit.

As expected, the media has gone wild with the news that Defense Distributed finally made good on their plans of designing and releasing as open source the world’s first 3D printed firearm. But what does it really change? Does a 3D printed weapon pose any more of a threat than a traditionally obtained one? Does this development endanger the 3D printing field as a whole?

The DD Liberator

The Defense Distributed Liberator is a single shot .22 LR handgun that contains only a single component that can’t be printed on a 3D printer: the firing pin, for which you need to supply nothing more exotic than a small nail. Every other component, from the barrel to the springs that move the hammer, are 3D printed.

Essentially, the Liberator is nothing more than a “zip gun”, a form of improvised firearm that’s little more than a way to hold a .22 round steady while its primer is struck with a rudimentary firing pin. Like other improvised firearms, the Liberator is slow to reload, inaccurate, and has a rather nasty tendency to explode.

The Defense Distributed Liberator

But unlike zip guns, the Liberator can be produced on a large scale with automated processes. It’s this distinction which has caused the most debate, as it turns the normally haphazard process of building homemade firearms into something that could be considered close to a full production run.

Of course, the most obvious argument against the Liberator is that it’s made (almost) entirely out of plastic, rendering metal detectors useless as a deterrent. The official documentation for the Liberator says you need to install a piece of metal into the weapon’s frame to comply with the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, but of course the person who constructs the weapon could simply skip that helpful suggestion.

This is illegal, right?

Not necessarily, no.

In the United States, you are allowed to build (for your own use) any weapon that you could otherwise obtain legally. In other words, if you could walk into a gun store and purchase a gun, you could also build one at home. Similarly, anything which is not legally obtainable under normal circumstances (such as fully automatic machine guns) can NOT be built at home legally.

You could even sell a weapon you built at home, so long as it wasn’t made with the intent to sell. If you built Liberators in large quantities with the goal of making a profit, that’s another story.

There is some debate about the fact that the Liberator, due to limitations in 3D printing technology, lacks a rifled barrel. This may put the Liberator into a different class of weapon, but in that case it’s possible to rifle the barrel manually after it has been printed and therefore comply with all ATF regulations.

Liberator in the field

Practicality

So if the Liberator works as advertised (I.E. can shot a bullet without killing the person pulling the trigger at the same time) and is legal to print (at least in some parts of the world), does it pose a threat? Is this something we need to be worried about?

Not likely.

Take for example that printing the Liberator requires a significantly more capable printer than what most hobbyists have access to. The Liberator has been created for high end commercial 3D printers, not the cobbled together kits which individuals use (which still cost upwards of $1000 anyway). Not to say that it won’t be possible to adapt this design for less capable printers, but for safety reasons it’s probably ill advised.

Purchasing a handgun would certainly cost much less than the printer required to construct a Liberator, and would be several times more practical and powerful.

Even if you take price out of the equation, the Liberator is not a particularly good firearm. Single shot and smooth bore, the Liberator is more like firing a flintlock pistol than a modern weapon. It might be good for pretending you’re a pirate, but I wouldn’t want to try to defend my family with one.

The Liberator also has the rather inconvenient habit of consuming barrels at the same rate it does rounds of ammunition:

Before firing a barrel, we recommend heating acetone to boiling and treating the barrel for ~30 seconds to decrease the inner diameter friction, which increases barrel life from 1 round to ~10 rounds.  Note that we recommend printing multiple barrels and using each only once.  Swapping the barrels is simple and fast: rotate the barrel to release the locking cam.  Pull up on the barrel.  If the barrel cam broke, turn the Liberator upside down to remove the debris.  Then drop your new barrel in and rotate it until it locks.

Liberator README

So unless you break out the boiling acetone (boy, doesn’t that sound like a lot of fun), you’re advised to throw out the barrel each time you fire the Liberator. Considering how slow 3D printers are, you’re talking about consuming a component which took hours to print in a split second.

Challenging Ideas

If not a weapon in the traditional sense, then the Liberator is surely an ideological weapon, and in that capacity it’s extremely effective. It shows how absolutely pointless current concepts in gun control really are. What good are arbitrary limitations on magazine size in an era of self-manufactured weapons?

On the other hand, Defense Distributed have opened up themselves, and perhaps the entire 3D printing community, to critical attention on a global scale. The mass media and government is reactionary at best, and the Liberator is an easy target for those who want to put limits on what the individual has access to.

By releasing the Liberator as open source (under the zlib license), Defense Distributed has ensured that the Liberator will be here to stay. Even if Defense Distributed gets shut down, the source files for the Liberator are now so widely spread that the genie can never be put back in the bottle.

In the end, the fact of the matter is that the Liberator is more of a proof of concept than a realistic firearm. Defense Distributed created the Liberator to prove that they could, to show how worthless gun control laws are in the modern world, and perhaps most importantly, to exercise their rights as American citizens.

The situation is a matter of fact, but the causes are still a matter of debate. Are females really less interested in technology? Or is it more likely that there are many females who would have gotten into the field had it not been for the negative connotations of a “girl on the Internet”?

In an effort to help increase female participation in open source development, the Ada Initiative recently announced they had entered into an agreement with social programming site GitHub, wherein any female who requested a private repository on the service could receive one free of charge (a feature which usually costs $7+ per month).

While this sounds good on paper, and is no doubt an excellent PR move for both parties, who does this actually help?

Fear of Open Source

The open source world is sadly not immune to this particular plaque of the larger technology field: females are in very short supply. One would hope that the more enlightened open source community would be somewhat more inviting for female participants, but the reality of the situation doesn’t seem to agree.

The Ada Initiative reports they’ve found a general reluctance among the comparatively few female programmers to open up the source code of their software for a number of reasons:

In working with women in open source, the Ada Initiative found that many women are reluctant to post their code publicly when they are first getting started in open source software. This reluctance has good reasons behind it: fear of being told they are bad programmers, fear of being publicly mocked or harassed, and even fear of losing job opportunities. All of these are greater risks for women on average than men.

Ada Initiative Blog

These fears are well known to anyone looking to start in the open source world. Every person who has submitted a patch or published an open source project has, at least once, had a pang of self-consciousness. In the wide world of open source there are players of every conceivable skill level, all the way up to industry leaders; putting your code out for that vast repository of knowledge and experience to examine causes a feeling that is every bit like stage fright.

The claim that female programmers feel this fear any more than males seems a bit dubious. It’s pretty hard to put a number on emotion, and I say you’d be hard pressed to find any open source developer who could say with a straight face that they entered into the community without any fear of inferiority; male or otherwise.

While this is absolutely an issue that the community should be addressing, what good to separate it into male and female categories? Work should be done to make the open source community a more accepting place for new contributors of both sexes, rather than focusing on females and letting the males fend for themselves.

Helping or Hurting?

Despite the dichotomy the Ada Initiative is bringing to the situation, their core observations are indeed correct: open source can be intimidating  So how do we fix this? How do we make it so new developers are more comfortable with releasing their source code?

Apparently GitHub feels that the best way to do that…is to help developers hide their code.

GitHub’s offer to give free private repositories to female open source developers seems to be a complete step backwards. By making this public policy, it simply strengthens the notion that female programmers aren’t good enough to play with the “big boys”. Setting the precedent that any female who requests it can have the source code of their supposedly open source software hidden from public view does nothing but validate the fears that keep females from releasing their source in the first place.

I am a male who has written open source code, and know all to well the feeling of uncertainly you get when developers who are clearly more skilled than yourself review your code. Can I have a free private repository? If not, why not? Why is it that women should receive special treatment if they are nervous about contributing to the open source community? Isn’t that the opposite of equality?

But besides the issue of gender, how does using GitHub’s private repository feature help further the cause of open source software? Even the blog post that announced this partnership mentioned how the key to becoming accepted and comfortable in the open source community is just that: opening up your source for peer review:

But the best way to get better at programming is to collaborate with and get review from other programmers, which is far easier to do with a shared repository like those provided by GitHub.

Advising that female programmers use GitHub private repositories as a way to control who looks at their source code is against the principles of open source, and furthers the stereotype that female programmers are unable to operate on the same playing field as the rest of the open source community.

Make no mistake, the goals of the Ada Initiative are honorable enough. There is no question that the gender ratio is strongly skewed towards males, which is something that clearly needs to be addressed. But advising policies which segregate development into male and female categories is certainly not the right approach.

The Antares rocket safely delivered all three of NASA’s PhoneSats into their intended orbit, and according to amateur radio operators all over the world, the three micro-satellites are performing as expected.

NASA’s PhoneSat

Global Effort

As the PhoneSat satellites have rather limited transmission capability, NASA is relying on a global network of amateur (AKA ham) radio operators to keep an ear out for these tiny little craft.

By openly documenting the spacecraft’s packet protocols, listing the frequencies they will be transmitting on, and even displaying an animated map to show where each PhoneSat is in the sky, NASA has given the public everything they need to receive regular downlinks.

Once a radio operator has received one of these broadcasts, he or she can upload it to the PhoneSat.org site, where it will be cataloged. When enough data has been collected, NASA will (hopefully) be able to piece together information spanning the entire mission, including the sensor data and images the PhoneSats are constantly sending out.

Listen Up

Interested in trying your hand at receiving signals from these Android-powered spacecraft?

It’s not nearly as complex as you probably think, as there are now multiple low-cost USB radios which can be used to receive satellite transmissions. All you need is a decent antenna, and some patience.

Take a look at our guide on RTL-SDR for some ideas on how you can get started in the fascinating world of amateur radio for around $30 USD.