Well, well, well! With the arrival of Google’s heavily leaked, highly hyped new streaming dongle, Chromecast with Google TV, it appears yet another Silicon Valley company has figured out that maybe—just maybe—we do not want to stream everything from our phones.
Source: Gizmodo – Big Tech Finally Figured Out That Phones Aren’t the Best Devices for Streaming
A United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket carrying a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office will take off from Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex-37 in Florida shortly before midnight on Wednesday. Assuming, that is, there isn’t another one of the last-minute delays that have hounded the…
Source: Gizmodo – Watch ULA Try to Finally Launch an NRO Spy Satellite on a Delta IV Heavy Rocket Tonight
The current world record Spelunky 2 speedrun is a sight to behold and won’t take up hours of your time.
Source: Kotaku – Spelunky 2 World Record Speedrun Is Only Three Minutes Long
“In previous years, [Google] launched Call Screen to vet your incoming calls, Duplex for restaurant reservations, and just this month, a feature called Verified Calls that will tell you who is calling and why,” reports TechCrunch. Today, Google introduced a feature called “Hold For Me,” which will make the Google Assistant stay on the line for you when you’re placed on hold, then alert you when someone picks up. From the report: In the short demo of “Hold for Me,” Google showed how a Pixel device owner is able to activate the new feature after they’ve been placed on hold. This is done by tapping a new button that appears on the phone screen above the buttons for muting the call, turning on speakerphone, and the other in-call phone controls. Once activated, you’re alerted with a message that says “Don’t hand up,” where you’re advised that Google Assistant is listening to the call for you, so you can do other things.
A button is also available on this screen that lets you tap to return to the call at any time, and below that an on-screen message says “music playing” to indicate if the Google Assistant is still hearing the hold music. You can also choose to press the red hang up button to end the call from this screen. When a person comes on the line, the device will alert you it’s time to return to the call. Google says the new feature will come to its new Pixel 5 devices, which will soon be followed by its older-generation Pixel phones via the next “Pixel feature drop” roll out.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – A New Google Assistant Feature, ‘Hold For Me,’ Waits On Hold So You Don’t Have To
SELinux is a
security mechanism with a lot of ability to restrict user-space compromises
in various useful ways. It has also generally been considered a
heavyweight option that is not suitable for more resource-restricted
systems like wireless routers. Undeterred by this perception, some OpenWrt developers are adding SELinux as
an option for protecting the distribution, which targets embedded devices.
Source: LWN.net – [$] OpenWrt and SELinux
Hobbyist developers are trying once again to get a Motorola 68000 back-end merged into the upstream LLVM compiler. Phoronix reports: The Motorola 68000 series processors have been around since the 80’s thanks to the likes of the early Apple Macintosh computers. Fast forward to 2020, the Motorola 68000 is still a popular target for vintage computer enthusiasts and hobbyists. Community developers have worked on improving the Linux kernel support for M68k hardware like early Apple Powerbooks as recently as a few years ago and the compiler support is a continued target. GCC 11 due out next year was looking to drop the M68k target over its unmaintained status. Hobbyists though stepped up there so the M68k support will remain in GCC. Now developers are also looking at adding M68k support to the LLVM compiler.
This isn’t the first time that M68k support for LLVM has been brought up albeit never successfully landed to date. Building off the past failures to get the Motorola 68000 series support upstreamed, developers last week sent out new patches proposing this back-end — this time they are showing more clarity about the developers involved and being committed to supporting the code, the sustainability of the code, and responding quickly to code review comments. This patch series is the latest attempt at upstreaming Motorola 68000 series support in LLVM. Besides all the back-end specific code there is also some common LLVM code changes that fall under greater scrutiny.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Developers Try Again To Upstream Motorola 68000 Series Support In LLVM
Enlarge / Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. (credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)
In the last few years, big technology companies have faced growing pressure from employees to become involved in social justice issues. This pressure intensified this summer with the George Floyd protests. But this week, CEO Brian Armstrong of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase staked out a contrarian stance.
“While I think these efforts are well-intentioned, they have the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction, and by creating internal division,” Armstrong wrote in a blog post. “We’ve seen what internal strife at companies like Google and Facebook can do to productivity. I believe most employees don’t want to work in these divisive environments.”
Armstrong’s post attracted a range of responses from online commentators. Some prominent Silicon Valley figures praised it, while critics argued it was “absolutely laughable” to believe that a company could keep politics out of the workplace.
Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Coinbase doubles down on anti-politics stance with exit package offer
Tails 4.11 is now available for download as a monthly update to this amnesic incognito live system a.k.a. the Anonymous OS bringing various improvements, updated components and security fixes.
Source: LXer – Tails 4.11 Anonymous OS Released with Tor Browser 10, Extended Persistent Storage
Though X-Factor was quite busy with its own contained story about its team discovering the latest, most grotesque programming to come out of Mojoworld, the onset of X of Swords has shifted the series in a drastically different direction. It’s established a terrifying complication for the X-Men’s carefully constructed…
Source: io9 – X-Factor Is Testing the Limits of the X-Men’s Age of Ascendance
A couple of years ago I spoke very highly of Nintendo’s parental controls app for the Switch. Microsoft have recently released something very similar, and it’s just as good.
Source: Kotaku – Xbox’s New Parents App Is Great
Earlier today, Google announced the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G, both of which Verizon (Engadget’s parent company) will carry. But if you want to purchase the latter through the carrier, you’ll have to pay $600 or $25 per month on a two-year Verizon Devi…
Source: Engadget – Verizon’s mmWave version of the Pixel 4a 5G costs 0 extra
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: The Seattle City Council unanimously approved a minimum pay standard for Uber and Lyft drivers on Tuesday, the second city in the US to do so. Under the new regulation going in to effect in January, the ride-hailing services will be required to pay their drivers at least $16.39 an hour. The law, passed in a 9-to-0 vote, is modeled after one passed by New York in August 2018 that caps how many ride-hailing cars from services like Uber and Lyft can be on the street. Seattle’s law will require drivers be paid at least 56 cents per minute and $1.33 per mile driven while transporting passengers. Lyft criticized the move, saying it would eliminate thousands of jobs. “The City’s plan is deeply flawed and will actually destroy jobs for thousands of people — as many as 4,000 drivers on Lyft alone — and drive ride-share companies out of Seattle,” Lyft said in a statement. “Uber may have to make changes in Seattle because of this new law, but the real harm here will not be to Uber,” Uber said. “It is the drivers who cannot work and the community members unable to complete essential travel that stand to lose because of the ordinance.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Seattle Approves Minimum Wage For Uber and Lyft Drivers
Developer Insomniac Games says the forthcoming Marvel’s Spider-Man: Remastered for the PS5 will be different from the 2018 original in multiple ways. While we could have predicted changes like a higher frame rate and the addition of new spider suits,…
Source: Engadget – Peter Parker has been recast in ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man: Remastered’
In addition to putting Miles Morales at the center of its next Spider-Man game, Insomniac’s also releasing a remastered version of the first game, meant to show off the PlayStation 5’s raw graphical power. While gameplay won’t be all that different from the original Peter-centric game, a number of updates will…
Source: io9 – I’m Sorry, But Who the Hell Is This Supposed to Be?
Teenage Engineering has been quietly making some of the most exciting niche gadgets for about 15 years. Now, its latest offering is one of the weirdest concepts it’s ever produced. With the OB-4, the boutique electronics studio wants to make radio exciting again.
Source: Gizmodo – Teenage Engineering’s ‘Magic Radio’ Is a Boutique Freakshow
At the 2020 presidential debates on Tuesday, Donald Trump didn’t just choke on condemning white supremacists—he actually gave what a far-right hate group that has beat up protesters and launched street brawls interpreted as at the very least a tacit endorsement, or even a direct order. The president has since…
Source: Gizmodo – ‘Stand Back and Stand By’ Already Selling on Extremist Proud Boys T-Shirts, Thanks to Trump
There’s a lot to like about Genshin Impact, a free-to-play action-RPG that came out this week for PC, PlayStation 4, and mobile. While it might look a bit like Breath of the Wild, with its art style and mechanics, Genshin Impact stands on its own thanks to its combat, its quest and leveling systems, and, …
Source: Kotaku – Genshin Impact Is More Than A Breath Of The Wild Clone
The gawk command is a standard sysadmin tool. Learn to use it to extract information from files and your system.
Source: LXer – A beginner’s guide to gawk
Aaeon’s compact, $475 “Boxer-8222AI” embedded box runs Linux on a Jetson Nano along with 4x USB 3.1 Gen2, HDMI 2.0, RS-232, M.2, mini-PCIe, 40-pin GPIO, and 2x GbE ports, one with PoE/PD. In April, Aaeon unveiled two compact systems: the Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX-based Boxer-8251AI and similar Jetson Nano based Boxer-8221AI. At the time, the […]
Source: LXer – Jetson Nano based system can be powered over Ethernet
Keeping device firmware up-to-date can be a challenge for end users. Firmware
updates are often important for correct behavior, and they can have security
implications as well. The Linux Vendor Firmware
Service (LVFS) project is playing an increasing role in making firmware
updates more straightforward for both end users and vendors; LVFS
just announced its 20-millionth firmware download. Since
even a wireless mouse dongle can pose a security threat, the importance
of simple, reliable, and easily applied firmware updates is hard to
overstate.
Source: LWN.net – [$] LVFS tames firmware updates
