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A Cubestormer 3 robot based on a Galaxy S4 Android phone and eight Linux-driven Lego Mindstorms EV3 bricks aims to beat the Rubik’s Cube solving record. The Cubestormer 3 was formally unveiled today at the Big Bang Fair held in Birmingham, UK, and is expected to beat the 5.27 second record set by the Cubestormer […]

Zorin OS 8.0, released last month, is available in the free core and free education versions, as well as in a paid or ultimate version that provides support and a few other features. Though it is an interim upgrade, Zorin OS 8.0 has several very noteworthy changes and software improvements that make it worth using despite the shorter support period.

Newark Element14 and Wolfson have launched an HD-ready Wolfson Audio Card for the Raspberry Pi with 192kHz sampling, MEMS mics, and I/O including S/PDIF. The Wolfson Audio Card extends and enhances the Linux-ready Raspberry Pi’s audio features beyond its native HDMI output with onboard HD audio and a variety of interfaces. Raspberry Pi manufacturer Premier […]

Kontron announced tiny Pico-ITX and compact Mini-ITX SBCs based on Intel’s Atom E3800 SoC, with the Pico-ITX model offering extended temperature operation. Kontron’s new Linux-friendly “pITX-E38″ Pico-ITX and “mITX-E38″ Mini-ITX single-board computers take advantage of the 22nm Atom E3800′s power efficiency, improved graphics, and hardware-integrated security features for IoT applications, says the company. Both boards […]

Mystery Microsoft e-reader program to take their place? Barnes & Noble's struggling Nook e-book division can breathe a little easier, now that Microsoft has let the bookseller off the hook on its promise to offer e-reader apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone.…

As a software developer myself, I have seen developers rushing to finish the feature they are assigned to, with little or no consideration for security in the code—no security guidelines, no coding standards, just a mad dash to finish the feature. Next comes the security review, in which the software obviously fails, and then comes the security-hardening phase.

NASA’s Ubuntu Linux- and ROS-based “Robonaut 2″ humanoid robot will receive a set of robotic legs in a SpaceX resupply launch this weekend, enabling the robot for full operation. NASA’s second-generation Robonaut 2 (R2) was shipped to the International Space Station (ISS) in Feb. 2011, and began to see limited duty there about a year […]

My friend Mary, a folk singer, stopped by to visit spontaneously this evening. "What are you up to?" she inquired. "I'm recording a music video for a new folk song," I explained. "The Firefox Phone was announced last week, so I need to compose a song about it."

In this hands-on mini review, we take a quick look at the Ugoos UT2, a TV-centric mini-PC based on a 1.6GHz quad-core RK3188 SoC, and running Android 4.2.2. Like the earlier Ugoos “UM2″ HDMI-stick style device, the “UT2″ runs Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) on a 1.6GHz quad-core Rockchip RK3188 ARM Cortex-A9 SoC, and offers HDMI, […]

Ugoos is shipping an updated version of its UT2 TV-centric Android mini-PC, based on a 1.6GHz quad-core RK3188 SoC, and backed by 2GB RAM and 32GB flash. Like the earlier Ugoos “UM2″ HDMI-stick style device, the “UT2″ runs Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) on a 1.6GHz quad-core Rockchip RK3188 ARM Cortex-A9 SoC, and offers HDMI, dual-band […]

Open source news for your reading pleasure. March 8-14, 2014 In this week's edition of our open source news roundup, we look at the new Raspberry Pi sound card, open source kitchen design, and more.

Almost 25 years ago a young engineer started an operating system project "just for fun" to run on his own hardware. He opened it up to the world, and through a combination of good design and good luck, Linux was born. The Internet was the fundamental enabling technology of the large scale collaboration that produces Linux. The ability to cheaply and easily share files has created a system and community that has disrupted major industries, where Linux’ impact has been felt from super computing to mobile phones. Higher education is facing a similarly disrupting force powered by the Internet—Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) make information available to anyone, anywhere, as long as they have a connection to the Internet.

Like other non-profit organizations, The Partnership for Appalachian Girls' Education (PAGE) faces funding challenges as it aims to achieve its mission of delivering innovative out-of-school learning opportunities for adolescent Appalachian girls.

Heads up smartwatch developers, Google's wearable device SDK is just two weeks away.

Congatec announced a Linux-ready Qseven computer-on-module with a choice of three dual-core AMD G-Series SoCs, an optional 64GB SSD, and up to 8GB ECC RAM. Like last year’s Conga-TCG COM Express computer-on-module, Congatec’s new Conga-QG taps AMD’s Embedded G-Series SoC. But like its more recent Atom E3800 based Conga-QA3, the Conga-QG adheres to the 70 […]

Regrets? None at all, says whistleblower Video NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, addressing the SXSW conference via video link today, urged programmers to help save the world from government spies who are "setting fire to the future of the internet." developers to help save America.…

When I started teaching PostgreSQL education courses in 2001, PostgreSQL was the ugly one in the data center. Many of the people who were learning how to work with it were doing so grudgingly because of some specific requirement. They had inherited a PostgreSQL database, for example. As a result, many of them tried to learn just enough to do what they needed to do. The other population of students were serious technologists, die-hard open source devotees who wanted to use only open source solutions and were learning PostgreSQL because they needed a relational database for their operations.

Experts team up with space miners to sponsor asteroid finding algorithm contest NASA is teaming up with the asteroid-mining wannabes at Planetary Resources to offer $35,000 in prizes in a contest to develop algorithms to detect Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) – asteroids – with the goal of spotting those that might threaten the Earth.…

Advanced Format disks use 4,096-byte sectors rather than the more common 512-byte sectors. This change is masked by firmware that breaks the 4,096-byte physical sectors into 512-byte logical sectors for the benefit of the operating system, but the use of larger physical sectors has implications for disk layout and system performance. This article examines these implications, including benchmark tests illustrating the likely real-world effects on some common Linux file systems. As Advanced Format disks have become the norm, understanding how to cope with these disks is a vital skill for anyone who wants to avoid serious performance penalties associated with suboptimal configuration.

It’s been a while since I started to talk to people in the financial services ecosystem about our approach towards open source. At first, most of them thinking we were either bold, ahead of our time, or mad would listen to our story but would not really comment: "Let’s see where it goes" or "good luck with your brave intentions." Only after we started to show progress with the delivery of the FinTP Project, did people start to look seriously at what we were doing. That's when FinTP started to stir up interest and we got many inquiries about the project. I’ve already shared the most common questions, like: Why do we do it? Why should we join?