Google-Free /e/ OS Is Now Selling Preloaded Phones In the US, Starting At $380

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: /e/ OS, the “open-source, pro-privacy, and fully degoogled” fork of Android, is coming to Canada and the USA. Of course, you’ve always been able to download the software in any region, but now (as first spotted by It’s Foss News) the e Foundation will start selling preloaded phones in North America. Previously,…

What is the Milky Way?

When someone says “Milky Way,” do you think of the starry pathway across our sky, or of the great pinwheel-shaped galaxy in space? Both are correct! Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/what-is-the-milky-way-galaxy…

Get ready for Perseverance’s landing on Mars February 18

Some call attempts to land on Mars “7 minutes of terror.” The Perseverance mission will provide the most detailed video and photos of a landing yet. We’ll watch ourselves land on another planet, for the first time ever. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/get-ready-nasa-perseverance-landing-feb2021…

Physicists finally figured out why food sticks to a frying pan

Uneven heating in a frying pan causes variance in the surface tension of cooking oil and leads to dry patches that can make food to stick to pans Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2266479-physicists-finally-figured-out-why-food-sticks-to-a-frying-pan/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

How DNSpooq Attacks Could Poison DNS Cache Records

Earlier this week security experts disclosed details on seven vulnerabilities impacting Dnsmasq, “a popular DNS software package that is commonly deployed in networking equipment, such as routers and access points,” reports ZDNet. “The vulnerabilities tracked as DNSpooq, impact Dnsmasq, a DNS forwarding client for *NIX-based operating systems.” Slashdot reader Joe2020 shared Help Net Security’s quote from Shlomi Oberman, CEO and researcher…

Adobe Flash Is Officially Dead After 25 Years With Content Blocked Starting Today

When a user attempts to load a Flash game or content in a browser such as Chrome, the content now fails to load and instead displays a small banner that leads to the Flash end-of-life page on Adobe’s website. While this day has long been coming, with many browsers disabling Flash by default years ago, it is officially the end of…

Sony Publishes An Official Linux Driver For PS5 DualSense Controllers

Sony has published a new “hid-playstation” Linux kernel driver for bringing up the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller and will also be used for supporting other PlayStation hardware on Linux. Phoronix reports: This new Linux kernel driver supports the PlayStation 5 “DualSense” game controller both in USB and Bluetooth modes. All key functionality along with LEDs, motion sensors, touchpad, battery, lightbar, and…

Why Google’s Big ‘Four Year’ Android Update Promise Is a Little Misleading

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Police: Today, Google and Qualcomm announced what seemed like a big improvement to updates for Android smartphones. The headlines (ours included! We were confused, too) largely read as though Android phones with Qualcomm chipsets would now receive “four years” of Android updates, an additional year on top of what manufacturers like Google and…

Google Says It is Expanding Fuchsia’s Open Source Model

New submitter RealNeoMorpheus shares a Google blogpost about Fuchsia — a new open source operating system that has been in the works for several years: Fuchsia is a long-term project to create a general-purpose, open source operating system, and today we are expanding Fuchsia’s open source model to welcome contributions from the public. Fuchsia is designed to prioritize security, updatability, and…

UK Seeks Site For World’s First Fusion Power Station

sciencehabit writes: The U.K. government today invited communities around the country to volunteer a site for a prototype fusion reactor, which would be the first — it is hoped — to put electricity into the grid. The project, called Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP), began last year with an initial 222 million pounds over 5 years to develop a design….