By BeauHD from
Slashdot's show-no-mercy department:
An anonymous reader writes: After researchers discovered that SHA-1 can be decrypted, Mozilla, together with Microsoft and Google, said they will no longer "trust" SHA-1-based certificates issued after January 1, 2016, and later stop supporting any type of SHA-1 certificates after June 30, 2016, or January 1, 2017. The foundation went back on its word this week, when Symantec begged Mozilla to allow it to issue nine new certificates for one of its clients, Worldpay PLC, which forgot to request these certificates before January 1. Symantec got what it wanted. Fortunately, other companies like Microsoft, Apple, or Google didn't cave under the pressure.
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By BeauHD from
Slashdot's How-do-you-like-them-batteries department:
mdsolar writes: BioSolar and the University of California, Santa Barbara, reinforced a previous international patent application by jointly filing applications in the US, Canada and Japan for something called a "multicomponent-approach to enhance stability and capacitance in polymer-hybrid supercapacitors." The BioSolar energy storage approach solves two core problems of conventional lithium-ion battery technology. One is the cost of materials, and the other is the limited capacity of the cathode compared to the anode. BioSolar has solved the cost and capacity problem by developing an inexpensive polymer for the cathode. "Our novel high capacity cathode is engineered from a polymer, similar to that of low-cost plastics used in the household. Through a smart chemical design, we are able to make the polymer hold an enormous amount of electrons. The estimated raw materials cost of our cathode is similar to that of inexpensive plastics, with a very high possible energy density of 1,000 Wh/kg." BioSolar's research also indicates that the new polymer enables batteries to charge and discharge rapidly while far outlasting the lifecycle of conventional lithium-ion energy storage. According to the company, conventional batteries drop down to 80 percent of their storage capacity after 1,000 charge/discharge cycles. When the new polymer is used in a supercapacitor, BioSolar's lab work has demonstrated a lifespan of 50,000 cycles without degradation.
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By timothy from
Slashdot's call-and-response department:
prisoninmate writes: On Monday, February 22, 2016, Softpedia reported on the availability of new kernel updates for several of Canonical's supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems, including Ubuntu 15.10, for which five kernel vulnerabilities have been patched at that point in time. And from the looks of it, the respective kernel updates introduced a regression, which Canonical patched four days later, on February 26, 2016, saying that the issue was introduced along with the fixed vulnerabilities for Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) and it broke graphics displays for those running the OS in VMWare VMs.
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By timothy from
Slashdot's shoot-reliably-even-in-rough-conditions department:
WheatGrass writes to note that the company T-Platforms has introduced the first mass production unit based upon the Russian Baikal-T1 processor, mentioned here last in 2014. The new Baikal-based workstation is called the "Meadowsweet terminal," according to T-Platform's official website; the feature list says it's running a Debian-based Linux distro. "Congratulations, Russia," Says WheatGrass.
(According to Google's translation of this Russian-language story at RG.RU Digital,
"[Y]ou can install many conventional applications, such as the LibreOffice office suite, Firefox web browser, and so on, the developers say," but the main use seems to be as a thin client.)
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