Can you believe it? The GNU system is thirty years old today!
In 1983, Richard Stallman launched the free software movement
with the words, "Free Unix!" We've freed a lot more than that in
the last thirty years. The GNU system is now a vast universe of
fully free operating systems, window managers, and software that
serves almost every imaginable purpose. More than 95 percent of
the world's supercomputers run free software. A majority of web
servers run free software. Even more impressive, there are
estimated to be tens of millions of free software users worldwide.
That's a lot to celebrate. This weekend, the Free Software
Foundation will be honoring thirty years of GNU with a
[celebration and hackathon in Cambridge, MA][1]. Around the
world, there are over [eighteen celebrations][2] planned on
almost every inhabited continent. And online, people are showing
their love for GNU by embedding the [special 30th anniversary
badge][2] on their websites and [donating to support GNU's future
work][3].
Please join us in the celebration:
* [Watch the livestream from the Cambridge celebration][4] to see
John Sullivan speak at 10am EDT (14:00 UTC) and Richard Stallman
speak live at 5pm EDT (21:00 UTC) on Saturday, September 28.
* Find the [celebration][2] nearest you.
* Embed the [special 30th anniversary badge][2].
* [Donate][3] to keep GNU going strong for another thirty years.
Happy Hacking,
The entire Free Software Foundation team
[1]: https://gnu.org/gnu30/celebration
[2]: https://gnu.org/gnu30/
[3]: https://my.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom
[4]: http://live.fsf.org/gnu30.ogv "GNU 30th live streaming"
<…> Even on clear moonless nights, many beetles still manage to orientate along straight paths. This led us to hypothesize that dung beetles exploit the starry sky for orientation, a feat that has, to our knowledge, never been demonstrated in an insect. Here, we show that dung beetles transport their dung balls along straight paths under a starlit sky but lose this ability under overcast conditions. In a planetarium, the beetles orientate equally well when rolling under a full starlit sky as when only the Milky Way is present. The use of this bidirectional celestial cue for orientation has been proposed for vertebrates, spiders, and insects, but never proven. This finding represents the first convincing demonstration for the use of the starry sky for orientation in insects and provides the first documented use of the Milky Way for orientation in the animal kingdom.