Blender Fox


Why do you use Blender? (Survey) | Blender Guru

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There has been a lot of talk recently of improving the UI of Blender. Andrew Price of Blender Guru has put up a survey of the Blender user-base . You can find it at the link below.

Why do you use Blender? (Survey) | Blender Guru.

Rip-off Britain

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Went to my local hospital for a blood test and found these. Over-inflated prices: 80p for a bag of crisps, £1.00 for a can of soft drink, £1.50 for a bottle, £1.50 for a vending machine cup of coffee…

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This Netflix employee just raised the bar for awesome customer service (screenshot)

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Brilliant customer service. You reading this, Sky?

After switching 37,000 PCs to Ubuntu, French Armed Forces says open source cuts costs 40 percent | Apps and Software | Geek.com

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After switching 37,000 PCs to Ubuntu, French Armed Forces says open source cuts costs 40 percent | Apps and Software | Geek.com.

 

iOS 7 bug lets you call any number from a locked homescreen (video)

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iOS 7 bug lets you call any number from a locked homescreen (video).

Hackers Mistake NASA For NSA, Take Down Wrong Home Page

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Hackers Mistake NASA For NSA, Take Down Wrong Home Page.

OpenSUSE

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I tried to install OpenSUSE today using the Network Installer. Some interesting things happened.

  1. When installing via a Network Installer, you would expect the latest versions of packages to be used. Evidently not. I did this, and when the installer did the update (which I would expect to be quick since there's nothing to update), it took an extra 30 minutes to apply hundreds of DRPMs.
  2. Whilst doing the update, the installer flagged up the fact that I had run out of space on my boot partition -- so the boot partition I had just created via the installer, using values the installer decided upon by itself, has now been clogged up DURING the install. Needless to say, the next thing I did was roll back to my previous Clonezilla image.
This isn't going to discourage me, though, I do want to try out OpenSUSE properly, so I think what I'll try next time, is run the installer from the CD instead of the netinstall and keep my software choices minimal until after the install is complete.

 

Android KITKAT 4.4 -- The future of confectionery - YouTube

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKOrkLxOBoY

Android KITKAT 4.4 – The future of confectionery - YouTube.

13 Children's Book Quotes Every Adult Should Know

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13 Children's Book Quotes Every Adult Should Know.

Ubuntu Edge | Indiegogo

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Hi everyone

So ends a crazy month. We’ve broken records, we’ve been written and talked about across the world, we’ve worn out our F5 keys, and we’ve learned a lot of invaluable lessons about crowdfunding. Our bold campaign to build a visionary new device ultimately fell short, but we can take away so many positives.

We raised $12,809,906, making the Edge the world’s biggest ever fixed crowdfunding campaign. Let’s not lose sight of what an achievement that is. Close to 20,000 people believed in our vision enough to contribute hundreds of dollars for a phone months in advance, just to help make it happen. It wasn’t just individuals, either: Bloomberg LP gave $80,000 and several smaller businesses contributed $7,000 each. Thank you all for getting behind us.

Then there’s the Ubuntu community. Many of you gave your time as well as money, organising your own mailing lists, social media strategies and online ads, and successfully reaching out to your local media. We even saw entire sites created to gather information and help promote the Edge. We’ll be contacting our biggest referrers personally.

Most importantly, the big winner from this campaign is Ubuntu. While we passionately wanted to build the Edge to showcase Ubuntu on phones, the support and attention it received will still be a huge boost as other Ubuntu phones start to arrive in 2014. Thousands of you clearly want to own an Ubuntu phone and believe in our vision of convergence, and rest assured you won’t have much longer to wait.

All of the support and publicity has continued to drive our discussions with some major manufacturers, and we have many of the world’s biggest mobile networks already signed up to the Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group. They’ll have been watching this global discussion of Ubuntu and the need for innovation very closely indeed. Watch this space!

As for crowdfunding, we believe it’s a great way to give consumers a voice and to push for more innovation and transparency in the mobile industry. And who knows, perhaps one day we’ll take everything we’ve learned from this campaign -- achievements and mistakes -- and try it all over again.

Thank you all

Mark Shuttleworth, the Ubuntu Edge team and everyone at Canonical

 

P.S. We’ve been assured by Paypal that all refunds will be processed within five working days.

Ubuntu Edge | Indiegogo.

Endomondo Training Plans

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You may recall a while ago, I posted about training plans suddenly showing up on Endomondo. Well, they’ve now hit the mobile app - at least on the Pro version. Unsurprising, really, since Training Plans are a premium feature (at the moment)

Link to the Endomondo Pro app

 

Facebook: We Failed Timeline Hacker

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Facebook has long been associated with all manner of negative connotations, from murder, rape, party-crashing, yet, when one person tries to point out a security hole, they getting the virtual equivalent of a f**k off, denial that it is a bug, and a metaphorical middle finger? So the hacker then takes it higher and gets suspended for violating T+Cs? Why am I not surprised by Facebook's behaviour? Because that is what I have come to expect of Facebook.

I am thankful I have no Facebook account. I used to many moons ago, and terminating it was probably the best decision of my life.

Facebook: We Failed Timeline Hacker.

LastPass Passwords Exposed for Some Internet Explorer Users

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Internet Explorer, a malicious hacker’s dream. Am I the only one to think that as long as you have it installed, you’ve got a hole in your system?

LastPass Passwords Exposed for Some Internet Explorer Users.

Britain Detains Partner Of Journalist Who Exposed NSA Spying. Are They Crazy Or Stupid? | TechCrunch

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I would say both.

Britain Detains Partner Of Journalist Who Exposed NSA Spying. Are They Crazy Or Stupid? | TechCrunch.

Unetbootin

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I’ve found out that unetbootin, which is the tool of choice for most usb stick generation, does have it’s problems. I’ve just tried to setup a network install usb stick for Fedora and Debian, and both were fine setting up via unetbootin, but did not boot successfully into the installer (although the splash screen did start.) For both, the initialisation seems to want something in the cdrom drive, but even after putting a disc in there, it doesn’t boot. This also happens when using the netbootcd boot usb.

The solution? Surprisingly simple, actually. To use dd or dcfldd:

dd if=debian-7.1.0-i386-netinst of=/dev/sdb dcfldd if=Fedora-19-i386-netinst of=/dev/sdb

This wipes the contents of the stick, but does ensure that its an extract copy of the iso, without getting rebuilt by unetbootin

 

Hacker posts Facebook bug report on Zuckerberg’s wall — RT News

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Evidently, unfriending people on Facebook won’t stop them posting on your timeline, as this article proves. And the surprising thing (or unsurprising, depending on your perspective), is that Facebook refused to acknowledge it was a bug, so the whitehat went all the way to the top and posted on Zuckerberg’s wall.

Hacker posts Facebook bug report on Zuckerberg’s wall — RT News.

BBC News - Ubuntu sets crowdfund pledge record for Edge smartphone

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BBC News - Ubuntu sets crowdfund pledge record for Edge smartphone.

Followers

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This blog has broken the 100 follower mark. When I wrote my first post on here in March, I had no idea that within 5 months, I’d have 101 people following me. True I have no idea how many of those 101 are “real” people and how many are just bots, but nonetheless, if you are following this blog and you’re a real human, I want to thank you. Really :)

Google Play Music - All Access Trial

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Google are now offering All Access to users in the UK. I had a go at their trial. And I wasn’t impressed. The things it offers like Radio and recommendations you can already get for free in other providers (Last.fm, Spotify, Grooveshark). Recommendations you already get from the main Play Music app. Suffice to say, my trial didn’t last very long before I cancelled it…

Take a look at some of the related articles and make your own decision.

11 Hidden Windows Secrets and Tricks

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Whilst primarily for Windows 7, there’s plenty of tricks hidden under the Aero hood.

11 Hidden Windows Secrets and Tricks.

Do you have the dumbest PIN in ATM history?- MSN Money

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Is your Credit/Debit/ATM card PIN in this list? Change it – NOW.

  1. 1234
  2. 1111
  3. 0000
  4. 1212
  5. 7777
  6. 1004
  7. 2000
  8. 4444
  9. 2222
  10. 6969

Do you have the dumbest PIN in ATM history?- MSN Money.

TV on Google Play

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It would appear that Google Play now do TV shows. Kind of an “On Demand” thing. True, you still have to pay for the shows, but they’ve got some pretty big name shows there now:

And even for the learning types, they've got documentary series too: They're running a couple of free episodes at the moment via here.

Use the Decoy Effect to Your Advantage to Score Good Deals

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Use the Decoy Effect to Your Advantage to Score Good Deals.

Security

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As a result of the Ubuntu Forums hack recently, I’ve now had to spend several hours going through all my internet logins accounts to see whether or not I have used the same password anywhere else. Not surprising, I have so I have to go through and change them all. Fortunately, LastPass allows me to generate secure passwords which  I can use to replace other passwords. The only real place where I would be concerned if they have access would by emails, but I have 2-factor authentication turned on there, and have had it turned on for many months, and they need my email address, password AND phone to get into my account. Even my backup codes are stored on a TrueCrypt volume stored on a LUKS partition on my laptop so they would need two passwords to get at those.

Mind you, it IS good that these forums were hacked, it’s given me a reason to go through my accounts and see which ones I still use and which ones I can delete.

 

What's the Most Unusual Question You've Been Asked in a Job Interview?

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What's the Most Unusual Question You've Been Asked in a Job Interview?.