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Growing Young FOSS Programmers With Help of Scratch and Al Sweigart

By Phil Shapiro on March 17, 2017 |

Software, Tutorial and Video

Growing Young FOSS Programmers With Help of Scratch and Al SweigartScratch Cat

If your young child is showing an interest in learning computers, an introduction to Scratch and these instructional videos by Al Sweigart might be in order.

The Screening Room

Scratch Cat
Scratch Cat, the programming language’s mascot.

Talented book author Al Sweigart is a name familiar to many in the FOSS community. He writes books for kids and for adults — including the recently released Scratch Playground. Scratch is a free visual programming language developed at MIT Media Lab as an introduction to computer programming.

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His zeal and talent for explaining is remarkable. I’ve been enjoying the “60 Second Scratch” screencasts (explanatory videos) he has been uploading to YouTube in the past two weeks. For example, check out this little gem:

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No, Evil Hackers Aren’t After YouNSA hackers

No, Evil Hackers Aren’t After You

By Robin "Roblimo" Miller on March 17, 2017 |

Security

Humankind has outgrown the need to have monsters hiding under our beds. Now we let them hide in our phones, computers and microwave ovens.

Roblimo’s Hideaway

NSA hackers

OMG! I think I see a giant camera lens on a long stalk sticking out of my microwave oven! It uses X-rays in addition to visible light, so it can look through the kitchen wall into my home office and watch me type. That’s right. Type. Maybe pet the dog a little or something like that. No contact with the Russian government. No secret conversations with Barack Obama or other members of the Deep State who are bent on overthrowing America’s elected President.

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GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath on Open SourceOctocat GitHub

GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath on Open Source

By Phil Shapiro on March 14, 2017 |

Community and Software

Did you know that the software Stephen Hawking uses to speak is open source and that it’s available on GitHub? Neither did we.

The Screening Room

Octocat GitHub

At the Computer History museum, GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath explains how GitHub has grown far beyond its original scope of being a tool just for nerds.

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WebAssembly Comes to Firefox

By Phil Shapiro on March 10, 2017 |

Browsers, Video and Web Apps

Just when you thought that web browsers were becoming boring, Mozilla announced that Firefox 52 now supports WebAssembly, which brings greatly enhanced speeds to web apps. Learn more about how this expands the capabilities of the web for everyone.

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Should the U.S. Army Have Its Own Open Source License?Army software open source license

Should the U.S. Army Have Its Own Open Source License?

By Robin "Roblimo" Miller on March 9, 2017 |

Copyright

Should the U.S. armed forces begin releasing software under an OSI approved open source license rather than as public domain?

Roblimo’s Hideaway

Army software open source license

This question has generated many pixels’ worth of traffic on the OSI License discuss email list. This post is just a brief summary of a little of the discussion, which has been going on for some weeks and shows no sign of slowing down.

There are currently 80 Open Sourse Initiative-approved open source licenses. It’s nice that the Army (I’m a veteran) wants to not only write software licensed as open source, but OSI-approved open source software. (Go Army!)

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But does the Army really need its own special OS license? Should the Air Force have a different one? Will the Navy want a Coastal Combat Open Source License, along with a separate Blue Water Open Source License? That might sound far-fetched, but Mozilla has three separate open source licenses, Microsoft has two, and Canada’s province of Québec also has three. So why shouldn’t the U.S. Department of Defense have a whole slew of open source licenses?

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Storytelling in the 21st CenturySafia Abdalla Plotcon 2016 nteract

Storytelling in the 21st Century

By Phil Shapiro on March 3, 2017 |

Community, Software and Video

Some words for thought from this week’s video on nteract: “Open science isn’t truly open and open source isn’t truly open.”

The Screening Room

Safia Abdalla Plotcon 2016 nteract

In her PLOTCON 2016 presentation, Safia Abdalla, an open source enthusiast in Chicago, starts off saying, “The need (for human beings) to write and draw things is not new. The desire to communicate with each other has existed since the dawn of our species.” She goes on to say, “I think we’re long overdue for a renaissance that’s going to help us to communicate with each other as people…. Interactive notebooks and nteract will play a key role in the New Knowledge Renaissance.”

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An Introduction to Open Data KitOpen Data Kit

An Introduction to Open Data Kit

By Phil Shapiro on February 28, 2017 |

Internet, Mobile, Video and Web Apps

With just a little imagination, you could easily make yourself a pretty cool mobile app using Open Data Kit.

The Screening Room

Open Data Kit

Open Data Kit is a free and open source set of tools which help organizations author, field, and manage mobile data collection solutions. The flexibility that open source offers means that the use cases for these tools are very broad. Check this introductory video about ODK tools which explains a rural medicine use case.

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The Great Debian Iceweasel/Icedove Saga Comes to an EndIcedove logo

The Great Debian Iceweasel/Icedove Saga Comes to an End

By Christine Hall on February 27, 2017 |

Browsers, Community, Distros and News

Now that Thunderbird is back in the Debian repositories, the decade long dispute that led to all Mozilla products in Debian being rebranded has ended.

Icedove logo

The hatchet is finally completely buried. Iceweasel was laid to rest a year ago with the return of Firefox to Debian. Now, Icedove gets to go gently into that good night as well, as the Thunderbird email client returns to Debian.

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