Linux Foundation to Make Its $2,400 "Introduction to Linux", Free

Linux is the basic backbone of almost all open source works and powers most of the web servers. The governing body for Linux is The Linux Foundation, and it offers many courses and training for people who needs it through it website. The cost for those training can be as much as $2,400.

Last week The Linux Foundation has announced that it will work with non-profit MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) site edX, which is powered by Harvard and MIT, to make those Linux courses free and open for everyone.

The course will be held this summer and over 2500 people have already signed up within 24 hours. The course will take 40 to 60 hours to complete and also don't have any prerequisites.

It is said that if this course will be a success, then The Linux Foundation will make more courses MOOC.

Link for "Introduction to Linux" on edX

Source: arstechnica

Newly Found Quasar Spinning as Fast as Physically Possible

Black holes are one of the deepest secrets of the universe, and when it comes to detect them, it is near impossible due to its size, even observing super massive black holes are hardest.

The recent discovery is about a quasar that is 200 million times massive than our Sun, named RX J1131-1231, is about 6.1 billion light years away. Because it is so far away, studying it clearly is a hard or even near impossible one.

But fortunately there is a galaxy right between the quasar and Earth, there for making a lensing effect known as gravitational lensing, predicted by General Relativity theory by Einstein.

Mega Force is Tearing The Galaxy Down

New images from Hubble space telescope captured the galaxy named ESO 137-001 - a spiral galaxy in the southern constellation of Triangulum Australe, is torn apart by a massive force.

The blue fireworks like shapes are actually new born hot stars being torn away from the galaxy by the surrounding force as the galaxy moves through space. This process is known as ram pressure stripping.

ESO 137-001 is part of a massive intergalactic cluster, known for its massive size and stronger gravitational pull. This region is located about 200 million light years away from our Milky Way galaxy. It is also detected that our galaxy and local group of galaxies too being attracted toward this massive region.

Facebook Redesigns Its News Feed Again

Yesterday Facebook has rolled out new design for its News Feed page. This time the design is not all changed, rather it is a minor design change to make the desktop Facebook to look like its mobile counter part.

Last year Facebook experimented with radical new design and got many people in fire, but that design had few good elements such as bigger photos. So Facebook address those ‘bad design’ issues now, it keeps the same news feed and bigger images, best of both worlds, also with new font.

The changes are only in visual and not anything technical – how the content is displayed to people. Though the new design has bigger images, but links, stories and ads will be the same size.

The new updated news feed will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

Source: Facebook

NVIDIA Reveals Tegra K1 Benchmarks

Nvidia announced that it will release next generation mobile processor with Kepler architecture – The same architecture that powers GeForce graphics cards with 192 cores.

Now Nvidia has shown 2 versions of SoC, one is 32-bit, 4 core and other one is dual core 3.0 GHz 64-bit. Both perform far better that latest Snapdragon 805 SoC. You can see the benchmarks below.

The quad core 32-bit Tegra K1 based mobile phones will be available in few months, but the 64-bit version will be further delayed.

Nvidia is known for its high performance GPUs for PC and well known player in GPU/CPU design. Nvidia couldn’t create x86 based CPU for PCs because of the license conflict with Intel and AMD, so they are trying to conquer the mobile market.

After seeing the performance of K1, now we can see what Qualcomm and ARM will come up with.

Source and Images : MyDrivers via NeoWin

Flipboard Buys Competitor App Zite

The all famous news reader app Flipboard has bought another news app Zite from CNN. CNN acquired Zite in mid-2011 for $25 million and then added CNN content to it. Flipboard says that it will stop updating the Zite app and incorporate its functionalities and CNN news source into its Flipboard app.

CNNMoney reported that the deal was sealed with $60 million. Flipboard was interested in Zite because of its technology – Zite’s personalized content display. Flipboard generates almost 2.5 billion page views per month and adds 250,000 new users everyday.

Source and image : The Verge

Yahoo to Disable User Sign-in Using Google and Facebook

Yahoo allowed its users to sign in to Yahoo services using Yahoo account or Google or Facebook account since 2011 – a move made by former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. But Yahoo now seeking to remove that option and want it users to use it own sign-in process.

Yahoo said that this will help streamline the sign in experience across its vast services, faster customer services and account assistance. Yahoo spokeswoman said that “The eventual switch for all users to a Yahoo username will occur over time”.

Under its new CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo seems to be going very well and this move will be seen as a way for Yahoo to say that I am still in the game.