Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a fine of $10,000 to Raphael Pirker, known in the drone community as "Trappy". Pirker was the first, and to date, only drone pilot fined by the FAA. The fine was overturned yesterday by Judge Patrick Geraghty of the National Transportation Safety Board, who said in his decision that, "there was no enforceable FAA rule" governing the use of model aircraft.

"The delay in implementing an effective set of rules for [drones] has caused real potential danger, such as the thought that right now there seems to be no regulation on airspace below 400 feet."

While creating an Android App for Criticker, a movie review and recommendation website, this author found some interesting security holes in their API.

Who knew that a LookupPassword function that returned any user's password in plain-text would be a bad idea?

The differences between /dev/random and /dev/urandom have spawned some misconceptions. This article attempts to explain some of the myths surrounding this perplexing random number device.

Also of interest, is a report on weak entropy in key generation, especially during bootup, and another report on the aftermath of Debian's recent OpenSSL vulnerability.

The ever-improving Raptor rocket engine from SpaceX has mutated to a 1Mlbf (4,500kN) gas-gas (full flow) liquid methane and oxygen engine. With nine such engines in an arrangement that could dwarf even the Saturn V, can Musk and his team finally shoot for Mars?

I admit it; amongst all my Linux computers, I still have one remaining Windows box. Until Blizzard takes a hint from Steam, I have to endure the horror of Windows in order to get my weekly raid fix.

Now, being a higher end gaming box and the graphic card being one of those 2 slot varieties, the fans can make a good bit of racket. No problem, I simply moved the system to another room (the cords go through the wall and are still plenty long enough) and viola! Quiet gaming room! All is good, until I finish and want to turn off the system. You see, Windows 7 had this convenient little "Shut Down" button that was easy to get to.

But, last year when I upgraded the system's hardware I (mistakenly) opted to try out the newer version 8 of Windows. Well, Microsoft did a fine job of hiding that shutdown option. It takes no less than 6 clicks and several full screen transitions to get to it using the default UI. When it takes less time to get out of your chair, open the door, walk down a small hallway, open another door, walk over to a humming tower, and depress its power button than it does to do the software equivalent, you know your interface is borked.

But no longer! Microsoft's new Windows 8.1 Update 1 will re-add that missing "Shut Down" option to its (still) metro-tiley start page. And that is progress!

This oragami microscope can be folded in 10 minutes with 50 cents of materials. In addition to the 3D printed card-stock, the kit includes a small lens, an LED, and a watch battery. The goal of the project is to provide a cheap medical screening tool that could be widely used in the developing world.

This Sunday, a reboot of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" will premier on Fox. PBS aired the orginal series in the 1980's.

From the article:

Based on a preview of the first of 13 episodes, "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" is certainly trippy and visually dazzling, but it's also a big-thought-provoking series crammed with scientific and historical fact.

In an age when too many TV documentaries succumb to reality-style formats, and when so many reboots of old shows are little more than ratings ploys, and when special effects obscure or replace substance, MacFarlane and his partners have kept their eyes on the value of the material. They have created something that arouses wonderment, despite the fact that it's airing in prime time, in front of mainstream viewers.

Good news everyone! I've just pushed out the first version of expandable comments! They may still be a little rough around the edges, but you are welcome to try them out below or on any other story.

As for the nerdy details, the scripts are using jQuery to pull the raw comments in JSON format from the server. The two HTML5 slider elements control the display thresholds. Comments that are under the "Hide" threshold are completely hidden. Comments that are under the "Expand" threshold are collapsed. The rest of the comments are shown in full. Collapsed comments show the subject text + the first line of body text. You can click on any collapsed comment to expand it.

For those that prefer to be script free, we will offer an "Enable JavaScript" checkbox in your user settings page. Unchecking this option will present you with server-side-generated pages instead of the JavaScript enabled pages.

I admit it. I was one of the 7.1 million users of the ill-fated service, iGoogle. For over eight years, Google offered a quick glance of your favorite news feeds on a customizable, fast loading, and ad-free homepage. Similar to Reader's fate a few months earlier, Google retired the service in November 2013, leaving its users to look for alternatives.

For the past few months, I have tried a number of these alternatives. Unfortunately, most are either riddled with ads or exist as JavaScript heavyweights. Ad Block Plus can remove most of the ads, but it often leaves giant holes on the page. Because I set the page as my homepage, I also don't like waiting for the browser to load every JavaScript library know to man just to render the page's "Web 2.0" layout.

Luckily, I'm a developer - a developer with an itch. Therefore, Pipedot now offers a user-customizable feed page! An example feed page can be seen here or you can go to your Pipedot user-page at http://yourusername.pipedot.org/ to set up your own page.

Anandtech is running an article about a spacious new 5TB enterprise HDD from Toshiba. 3.5 inch, 7200 RPM, 128 MiB, either SATA or SAS 6Gb/s.