Apple has announced its 2018 refresh of the MacBook Pro family, and it brings some oft-requested updates. For starters, Apple is finally giving professionals a 32GB RAM option, doubling what was previously available to customers. Secondly, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is finally getting quad-core processors courtesy of a switch to
Source: Hot Hardware – Apple Launches 2018 MacBook Pros With Coffee Lake, 32GB RAM, True Tone Displays, Third-Gen Keyboard
Monthly Archives: July 2018
Stop Copy-Paste From Turning Your Emails Into Ransom Notes
You’re typing an email, you paste in some text from a Word doc, and suddenly half your email is in the same font as the doc. Or you paste a headline into a Google doc, and it shows up in giant 48pt text. This annoying paste behavior is the default in most Windows, MacOS, and web apps. In outgoing docs and emails, it…
Source: LifeHacker – Stop Copy-Paste From Turning Your Emails Into Ransom Notes
Add a Lot of Extra Storage To Your Switch or GoPro For a Great Low Price
If you need a lot of space to store GoPro footage, Nintendo Switch games, or anything else that you can put on a microSD card, this massive 200GB model is down to $55 on Amazon right now, one of the best prices ever outside of a short-lived $50 deal last holiday season.
Source: Gizmodo – Add a Lot of Extra Storage To Your Switch or GoPro For a Great Low Price
OpenBSD Finally Has The Ability To Auto-Join WiFi Networks
Granted OpenBSD isn’t the most desktop focused BSD out there and that WiFi isn’t therefore the highest priority for this security-focused operating system, but with the latest code it can now finally auto-join WiFi networks…
Source: Phoronix – OpenBSD Finally Has The Ability To Auto-Join WiFi Networks
Splatoon 2's new weapon looks like a toilet
Splatoon and its Switch-based sequel, Splatoon 2, are known for their imaginative and bombastic weapons. You can tackle the series’ ink-based warfare with dual pistols, shotguns and sniper rifles, but also paint brushes, buckets and even a modified N…
Source: Engadget – Splatoon 2’s new weapon looks like a toilet
How to Make the Most of Mac's 'Preview' for PDFs
In a perfect world, we’d all have a feature-packed, free PDF editor that can do everything you might need whenever you’re given an important document to fiddle with.
Source: LifeHacker – How to Make the Most of Mac’s ‘Preview’ for PDFs
Raspberry Fields 2018: ice cream, robots, and coding
Umbrella trees, giant mushrooms, and tiny museums. A light-up Lovelace, LED cubes, LED eyelashes, and LED coding (we have a bit of a thing for LEDs). Magic cocktails, melted ice creams, and the coolest hot dog around. Face paint masterpieces, swag bags, and bingo. More stickers than a laptop can cope with, a flock of amazing volunteers, and it all ending with an exploding microwave! This can only mean one thing: Raspberry Fields 2018.
The #RaspberryFields digital making festival 2018
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: http://rpf.io/ytsub Help us reach a wider audience by translating our video content: http://rpf.io/yttranslate Buy a Raspberry Pi from one of our Approved Resellers: http://rpf.io/ytproducts Find out more about the Raspberry Pi Foundation: Raspberry Pi http://rpf.io/ytrpi Code Club UK http://rpf.io/ytccuk Code Club International http://rpf.io/ytcci CoderDojo http://rpf.io/ytcd Check out our free online training courses: http://rpf.io/ytfl Find your local Raspberry Jam event: http://rpf.io/ytjam Work through our free online projects: http://rpf.io/ytprojects Do you have a question about your Raspberry Pi?
Raspberry Fields forever
On 30 June and 1 July, our community of makers, vendors, speakers, volunteers, and drop-in activity leaders impressed over 1300 visitors who braved the heat to visit our festival of digital making at Cambridge Junction.
Our mini festival was both a thank you to our wonderful community and a demonstration of the sheer scale of support and ideas we offer to people looking to get involved in digital making for the first time.
Projects and talks galore
Our community of makers came out in force at Raspberry Fields, with shops, hands-on activities, installations, and show-and-tells demonstrating some of the coolest stuff you can do with a Raspberry Pi and with digital making in general.
Many visitors we spoke to couldn’t believe some of the incredible creations and projects our community members had brought along for them to learn about and play with.
Over the weekend, e had 29 talks on two stages, with our community speakers coming from all over the UK, as well as France, Germany, Korea, Japan, and Australia! Their talks covered a fascinating range of topics such as volunteering with our coding clubs, digital inclusion, drones, wildlife conservation, and so much more! If you missed any of the speakers, don’t worry: we will be uploading talks to our Youtube channel for everyone to see.
Spectacular live shows
We rounded off the two days with three smashing performances: on Saturday, the fantastic Neil Monteiro showed off some of the awesome things you can do with an Astro Pi at home. He was followed by the outstanding Ada.Ada.Ada., in which Ada Lovelace, kitted out in an epic tech-covered dress, taught people all about her programming legacy.
Sunday’s finale brought the mischief of Brainiac Live! to Raspberry Fields: the Brainiacs showed us just how much they laugh in the face of science, before providing us with the explosive finish every good festival needs!
Outstanding volunteers
A whopping 60 community members came and helped us out, many of whom had never volunteered at a Raspberry Pi event before! Our festival of digital making would not have happened without these lovely people willing to give up some of their precious weekend to ensure that everything went off without a hitch.
The volunteers were doing everything from greeting and registering guests as they arrived, handing out swag bags, and stamping bingo cards, to giving directions, helping out with activities, and managing our two stages. They were absolutely fantastic, and we hope to see them all again at future events!
Join our community today
Raspberry Fields was just a taster of what is going on around the world every day within the marvellous Raspberry Pi community at Raspberry Jams, Code Clubs, CoderDojos, Coolest Projects events, or at home, where people use our products and free resources to create their own projects. If our festival has made you curious, then dive in and join the amazing people that have made it possible!
Till next time!
The whole Raspberry Pi team is hugely grateful to all our community members who helped out in some way with Raspberry Fields, as well as to all the staff at Cambridge Junction, who were so open and friendly, and happy to let us taking over the whole venue for a weekend. We would like to say a massive thank you for making the event so much fun for everyone involved, and for being so welcoming to everyone who took part!
We look forward to seeing all of you at upcoming events!
The post Raspberry Fields 2018: ice cream, robots, and coding appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
Source: Raspberry Pi – Raspberry Fields 2018: ice cream, robots, and coding
Wonder Woman 1984 Set Footage Gives Us a Look at Cheetah in Action
Henry Cavill is still pondering what could’ve been with Man of Steel 2. Another Rob Liefeld comic hero could be coming to the big screen. Dwayne Johnson says his Black Adam won’t appear in Shazam! Plus, what’s to come on The Originals, and a tiny sneak peek at the next season of The Expanse. Spoilers, go!
Source: Gizmodo – Wonder Woman 1984 Set Footage Gives Us a Look at Cheetah in Action
The First Privately-Funded Unmanned Spacecraft Might Land on the Moon in February
An Israeli company is going to be the first to land a privately-funded unmanned spacecraft on the moon if everything goes to plan early next year. SpaceIL originally started this project as part of the Google Lunar XPrize, but they along with all the other competitors weren’t able to make the March 31, 2018 deadline to land a craft on the moon and move it 500M once it landed. Even though the XPrize has been cancelled this didn’t stop SpaceIL from finishing their design and booking a Falcon 9 for next year. If successful this will make Israel the fourth country in the world to soft land a spacecraft on the moon. Check out their flight plan in the animated video.
The spacecraft is a “hopper”, which will land and then take off again with the fuel left in its propulsion system, and then perform another landing 500m away, which was a condition of the XPrize.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – The First Privately-Funded Unmanned Spacecraft Might Land on the Moon in February
7 ways to observe Simplicity Day
The anniversary of Thoreau’s birthday is a fitting time to remind ourselves that less is often more.
Source: TreeHugger – 7 ways to observe Simplicity Day
Sprint adds an Unlimited plan without high-resolution video
Source: Engadget – Sprint adds an Unlimited plan without high-resolution video
Firefox Focus can lock your tabs behind Face ID
If you use Firefox Focus for its privacy features, you’d love its latest version for iOS. You can now set it up so that it auto-locks when it’s relegated to the background. The only way to unlock it if you choose to switch the feature on is by verify…
Source: Engadget – Firefox Focus can lock your tabs behind Face ID
Switch RPG ‘Octopath Traveler’ gives you too many roles to play
Nintendo’s Switch was in desperate need of a roleplaying game, and Square Enix’s Octopath Traveler, with its retro pixel-art feel, heeded the call. The unashamedly old-school game draws inspirations from myriad RPGs of the past but centers its story…
Source: Engadget – Switch RPG ‘Octopath Traveler’ gives you too many roles to play
Cipro's Safety Warnings Just Got Scarier
I was prescribed Cipro once. When I got the bottle of pills home, I took a minute to read the leaflet that the pharmacy stuffs in the bag—mostly just to be a diligent nerd, not because I expected any shocking news. But when I got to the part that said one side effect is tendon rupture(!!!), I put the leaflet down and…
Source: LifeHacker – Cipro’s Safety Warnings Just Got Scarier
An experiment in people-moving: Transit agency buys electric double-decker bus
Enlarge / This electric double-decker bus from Alexander Dennis and Proterra will be put into service with Foothills Transit by 2019. (credit: Alexander Dennis)
On Thursday, a Los Angeles county transit agency purchased the first all-electric double-decker bus in North America. The bus will be made with batteries from electric bus designer Proterra, and the carriage of the bus will be designed by Alexander Dennis, the company that supplies double-decker buses in London, Hong Kong, Auckland, Singapore, Toronto, Ottawa, Seattle, and Mexico City.
Buses are prime candidates for electrification: their diesel counterparts are considerably polluting, and buses travel extremely predictable routes at relatively low overall speeds, so range anxiety can be eliminated with route planning and heavier, more powerful batteries. Proterra has been making electric bus batteries for years, and the company recently broke a record for electric buses by traveling 1,101.2 miles on a single charge.
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Source: Ars Technica – An experiment in people-moving: Transit agency buys electric double-decker bus
Apple Refreshes MacBook Pro Lineup
Apple said on Thursday it is refreshing the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models. Neither machines are getting major redesigns, but the innards are getting a spec update. For starters, both the models are powered by the 8th-generation Intel processors and house more cores than before — a maximum of six cores on the 15-inch model (compared to four in last year’s models) and four in the 13-inch model (compared to two). That means faster performance for many use cases. Maximum SSD capacity is also doubled, and the MacBook Pro line offers DDR4 RAM for the first time. ArsTechnica: The laptops also borrow some features from the iMac Pro and the iPad Pro — the T2 chip and True Tone, respectively — and feature a revised butterfly keyboard, the third generation of the design Apple introduced in 2016 (the revision is a little more significant this time around). Apart from those tweaks to the keyboard, the basic design of the MacBook Pro is unchanged. The top configuration of the 15-inch model includes an 8th-generation, six-core Intel Core i9 CPU clocked at 2.9GHz. Six-core Intel Core i7 processors are also options. The 2017 iteration of the MacBook Pro featured DDR3 memory with a maximum configuration of 16GB. This time, it’s DDR4, and the maximum is 32. The faster memory uses more energy, so a bigger battery is now included — but Apple’s battery life estimate remains the same as last year’s. The GPU in the top standard configuration is listed as an AMD Radeon Pro 555X. The 13-inch model has different specs, of course. It still only offers integrated Intel graphics, for one thing — Intel Iris Plus 655, this time with 128MB of eDRAM. But the maximum number of cores are again doubled — in this case to four — in 8th-generation Intel Core i5 or Core i7 CPUs, which run at up to 2.7GHz. Maximum SSD capacity is also doubled; it’s now 2TB. The maximum memory is still 16GB. Apple claims the 13-inch model is up to twice as fast as its predecessor, though it will of course depend on the application. ArsTechnica says the keyboard on the new MacBook Pro models, though look similar to the one in the predecessor lineup, feel a little different to type on. The price of 13-inch starts at $1,799 while the 15-inch starts at $2,399.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Apple Refreshes MacBook Pro Lineup
GTK+ 4.0 Likely Being Released In Spring Of 2019
While the GTK+ 4.0 tool-kit was previously talked about for release by the end of 2018, that’s now looking more like spring of 2019 when this next major version will be released…
Source: Phoronix – GTK+ 4.0 Likely Being Released In Spring Of 2019
Apple’s new 2018 MacBook Pros are now available, and the top specs are much faster
Apple
Today, Apple begins shipping the new 2018 refresh of the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro. The new machines are not major redesigns, but they offer configurations with 8th-generation Intel processors and more cores than before—a maximum of six cores on the 15-inch model (compared to four in last year’s models) and four in the 13-inch model (compared to two). That means faster performance for many use cases. Maximum SSD capacity is also doubled, and the MacBook Pro line offers DDR4 RAM for the first time.
The laptops also borrow some features from the iMac Pro and the iPad Pro—the T2 chip and True Tone, respectively—and feature a revised butterfly keyboard, the third generation of the design Apple introduced in 2016 (the revision is a little more significant this time around). Apart from those tweaks to the keyboard, the basic design of the MacBook Pro is unchanged.
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Source: Ars Technica – Apple’s new 2018 MacBook Pros are now available, and the top specs are much faster
Apple's MacBook Pro refresh appeals to power users
Good news, Mac fans: If you were waiting for Apple to refresh the MacBook Pro, today is your lucky day. Both the 13- and 15-inch models have received some under-the-hood upgrades, along with a quieter keyboard. (Be warned: It’s maybe not the overhaul…
Source: Engadget – Apple’s MacBook Pro refresh appeals to power users
Apple Updates MacBook Pro Family for 2018: More CPU Cores, DDR4, & Same Form Factors
A surprising no-show at this year’s Apple World Wide Developer’s Conference was any kind of hardware refresh for Apple’s Mac products. While WWDC is first and foremost a software development show, it’s also been a convenient event for Apple to announce lower-key refreshes of their existing hardware platforms, as the press and developers are already there and paying attention. So with the MacBook Pro family all but guaranteed to receive a refresh thanks to Intel’s Coffee Lake launch, we had been expecting to see new MacBook Pros around then.
Instead Apple has gone in a slightly different direction (more on that in a sec) but the end result is the same. Today, roughly a month after WWDC, Apple is announcing a more substantial refresh of both the MacBook Pro 13-inch and MacBook Pro 15-inch. The combination of Intel’s Coffee Lake processors and some of Apple’s own innovations such as their T2 controller make this a potentially potent performance upgrade for Apple’s professional-grade workhorses.
Source: AnandTech – Apple Updates MacBook Pro Family for 2018: More CPU Cores, DDR4, & Same Form Factors