Kyoto University, a top research institute in Japan, recently lost a whole bunch of research after its supercomputer system accidentally wiped out a whopping 77 terabytes of data during what was supposed to be a routine backup procedure.
Source: Gizmodo – University Loses Valuable Supercomputer Research After Backup Error Wipes 77 Terabytes of Data
The video game industry went on a shopping spree in 2021. Throughout the year, a handful of larger companies consistently bought up a boatload of smaller ones, at a rate where it seemed a new acquisition was announced every few weeks.
Source: Kotaku – The Year In Video Game Companies Buying Other Video Game Companies
A pair of non-fungible token projects are testing the boundary between plagiarism and parody. From a report: Digital marketplace OpenSea has banned the PHAYC and Phunky Ape Yacht Club (or PAYC) collections, both of which are based on the same gimmick: selling NFTs with mirrored but otherwise identical versions of high-priced Bored Ape Yacht Club avatars. Now the dueling projects are selling their apes while dodging bans from other marketplaces, becoming the latest example of how the NFT world handles copied art. Bored Ape Yacht Club (or BAYC) NFTs are some of the most expensive crypto art assets — they recently overtook CryptoPunks as the highest-priced NFT avatars with the cheapest available ape selling for $217,000. Like other avatars, though, anybody can technically copy or modify the associated ape picture. So PAYC and PHAYC simply flip the right-facing BAYC avatars to face left, associate them with cryptocurrency tokens, and resell them.
PAYC announced its launch in early December with a loose mission statement promoting decentralization and denigrating “rich douchebags” who had (allegedly) taken over the original ape market. It called back to CryptoPhunks, a similar project that flipped and resold expensive CryptoPunks images earlier this year. Early arrivals could mint left-facing apes for free starting December 28th, while others paid a fee of .042 ETH (currently around $157). PHAYC launched shortly after with a tongue-in-cheek website describing the project as “a limited NFT collection where the token itself offers no membership and no allegiance,” an inversion of the promise made by BAYC creator Yuga Labs. One PHAYC community member described the project to CoinDesk as “a satirical take on the current state of NFTs and members of the NFT community who might be taking the NFT market a little too seriously.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Two NFT Copycats Are Fighting Over Which is the Real Fake Bored Ape Yacht Club
Despite some truly important medical advances this year, the covid-19 pandemic is far from over, both in the U.S. and even more so in poorer countries with low vaccination rates. But there is hope on the immediate horizon. Cheap, easily stored, and effective covid-19 vaccines are set to be mass-produced and…
Source: Gizmodo – Texas Scientists Are Sharing the Design for Their New, Cheap Covid-19 Vaccine
Caution: Major ‘Halo Infinite’ story spoilers follow.
There’s more to Halo Infinite‘s story than it appears — unofficially, at least. Windows Centralnotes fans have discovered an unfinished mid-credit cutscene hidden in the game’s code. As you can see below, it’s not just a throwaway moment, either. If anything, it’s a strong hint at what might come next in a story add-on or sequel.
The cutscene shows Esparza, the pilot you meet at the start of Halo Infinite, alerting Master Chief to a friendly UNSC tag. While the short segment is mysterious, some have speculated the tag belongs to a character that wasn’t present in the core campaign, such as Commander Palmer or Spartan Locke. You might have a ‘new’ ally when the story picks up.
It’s not clear why 343 Industries left the cutscene code in the official release, or whether the clip reflects what you’ll see in future content. We’ve asked for more information. Whatever the explanation, it’s rare to see such potentially important material hiding in files a player could uncover.
Source: Engadget – Unfinished ‘Halo Infinite’ cutscene hints at a future storyline
Bad news for furniture shoppers out there: on Thursday, IKEA confirmed that the company would be raising prices on a good chunk of its historically budget-friendly catalog. The culprit IKEA’s blaming for the price hike is—you guessed it—the dreaded supply chain.
Source: Gizmodo – Supply Chain Woes Have Come for IKEA’s Prices
There are 10+ file systems in Linux with unique features to offer. Learn how to determine the file system type in Linux here.
The post How to Determine the File System Type in Linux (Ext2, Ext3, or Ext4)? appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – How to Determine the File System Type in Linux (Ext2, Ext3, or Ext4)?
The third act of Ghostbusters: Afterlife is filled with huge reveals. Some of them, even if you haven’t seen the film, you probably know about—like the fact that Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson all appear, reprising their roles from the original. Others, however, have still remained relatively secret…
Source: Gizmodo – Jason Reitman Explains the Care That Went Into Ghostbusters: Afterlife’s Biggest Surprise
If you’ve been on Twitter recently, you may have noticed people posting a bunch of differently colored squares. No, this is not a psy-op you are being unfairly excluded from, rather it’s the Twitter manifestation of Wordle, a daily word-guessing game that is currently picking up steam in the world of Online.
Source: Kotaku – Wordle Is That Square Grid Game You’ve Been Seeing All Over Social Media
Privacy groups sounded alarms about the coin-sized location-tracking devices when they were introduced. Now people are concerned those fears are being realized. From a report: On a Sunday night in September, Ashley Estrada was at a friend’s home in Los Angeles when she received a strange notification on her iPhone: “AirTag Detected Near You.” An AirTag is a 1.26-inch disc with location-tracking capabilities that Apple started selling earlier this year as a way “to keep track of your stuff.” Ms. Estrada, 24, didn’t own one, nor did the friends she was with. The notification on her phone said the AirTag had first been spotted with her four hours earlier. A map of the AirTag’s history showed the zigzag path Ms. Estrada had driven across the city while running errands. “I felt so violated,” she said. “I just felt like, who’s tracking me? What was their intent with me? It was scary.”
Ms. Estrada is not alone in her experience. In recent months, people have posted on TikTok, Reddit and Twitter about finding AirTags on their cars and in their belongings. There is growing concern that the devices may be abetting a new form of stalking, which privacy groups predicted could happen when Apple introduced the devices in April. The New York Times spoke with seven women who believe they were tracked with AirTags, including a 17-year-old whose mother surreptitiously placed one on her car to stay apprised of her whereabouts. Some authorities have began to take a closer look at the threat posed by AirTags. The West Seneca Police Department in New York recently warned its community of the tracking potential of the devices after an AirTag was found on a car bumper. Apple complied with a subpoena for information about the AirTag in the case, which may lead to charges, West Seneca police said. And in Canada, a local police department said that it had investigated five incidents of thieves placing AirTags on “high-end vehicles so they can later locate and steal them.” Researchers now believe AirTags, which are equipped with Bluetooth technology, could be revealing a more widespread problem of tech-enabled tracking.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Are Apple AirTags Being Used To Track People and Steal Cars?
Time to put a lid on this year of years and call it done. We’re observing New Year’s Day tomorrow, 31 Dec 21, so we’ll be on a reduced publishing schedule through Monday, 3 Jan 22.
Whatever your plans are to ring in the new year, be happy and safe tomorrow night!
The post “Should aaaauld Linux-es be forgot…” appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – “Should aaaauld Linux-es be forgot…”
Bad news, Pixel fans: Google has confirmed it’s pausing the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro December update over reports of call dropping and disconnecting. As Droid Life reports, the news explains why many Pixel 6 owners haven’t received the update over the past few weeks. For the lucky few who managed to snag it and aren’t having any issues, Google says you can sit tight.
But for those those experiencing connectivity issues, your only fix is to flash your phone to an earlier version of Android and perform a factory reset. As always, be sure to backup your device before attempting such a massive undertaking. The December update was meant to add new features like ultra-wideband on the Pixel 6 Pro, and Quick Tap to Snap for easily accessing Snapchat from your lockscreen. Google says those features will make their way to the January fix.
The delay is something of a debacle for the company, especially since the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro were meant to show off the combined power of Google’s custom processor and software. This probably isn’t the best way to prove it could build the Android equivalent of an iPhone.
Source: Engadget – Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro update ‘paused’ to fix dropped calls
South Korea’s SK Hynix said it had completed the first phase of its acquisition of Intel’s NAND flash memory chip business, after it received regulatory nods from eight countries including China. From a report: In exchange, SK Hynix will pay $7 billion out of the deal’s total $9 billion price tag, the world’s second-largest memory chip maker said in a statement on Thursday. The deal, signed in 2020, will allow Intel to focus on its smaller but more lucrative Optane memory business. For SK Hynix, it is the biggest acquisition ever as it seeks to boost its capacity to build NAND chips, used to store data in smartphones and data centre servers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – SK Hynix Completes First Phase of Billion Intel NAND Business Buy
Here are the next set of GNOME Apps that is perfect for your GNOME Desktop. It ranges from games, utilities and productivity.
Source: LXer – 10 Perfect Apps to Improve Your GNOME Experience Part 2
We knew PCIe 5 SSDs would be fast, but now we’ve got some confirmation. The new Samsung PM1743 PCIe 5 SSD we told you about last week is already in some folks’ hands, and its overall bandwidth and throughput are off the hook. In fact, one technology expert at Intel has been testing the new drive and clocked it at speeds of more than 13.7GB
Source: Hot Hardware – Intel’s PCIe 5 SSD Sneak Peek Shows Blistering-Fast 13.7GB/s Speeds With A Samsung Drive
2021 was a year, wasn’t it? The pandemic is still causing unnecessary disruptions despite the widespread availability of vaccines. The semiconductor shortage is whipping the economy’s ass. Black and queer people are still dying. It was hard playing games this year, especially when I didn’t have a PS5 or Xbox Series…
Source: Kotaku – Jeremy Winslow’s Top Ten Games Of 2021
Welcome back to io9’s the Nerd’s Watch, where we pare down the enormous lists of new films and television shows arriving on all your favorite streaming services into the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror titles we think you’ll like most.
Source: Gizmodo – The Nerd’s Watch: Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Streaming in January 2022
Telegram is squeezing in one last major update before 2021 wraps up. Among the new features is hidden text to mask spoilers. So, if you can’t wait to blab about what happens in Spider-Man: No Way Home before everyone in the chat has seen it, you can select any section of your text and use the Spoiler formatting. This will hide the text in the chat, notifications and chat list. When your friends are ready to read what you think about [redacted] showing up, they can tap the spoiler text to read it.
Also new are iMessage-style reactions. You can double tap any message to send a thumbs-up reaction. Tapping once (or tapping and holding on iOS) will let you select other emoji, such as a grin, fire, a shocked face or a thumbs down. You can change the default double-tap emoji in the Chat Settings on Android, and under the Stickers and Emoji section in iOS settings.
In private chats, reactions are always enabled. Channel and group admins can decide whether to switch them on and what reactions the other members can choose from.
Elsewhere, Telegram now has a useful translation option. Through the Language section in Settings, you can enable translation, which adds a Translate button to the context menu. You can nix languages you’re able to understand and the Translate button won’t be available on messages you receive in those languages. Translation is available on all Android devices, but iPhone and iPad users will need to be running iOS 15 or later. The number of languages Telegram supports depends on your operating system.
In addition, users can generate QR codes for anyone with a public username, as well as bots, groups and channels. You can tap the QR code icon next to their username and select the colors and pattern before sharing it elsewhere. You can find your own QR code in Settings.
The Telegram team redesigned the context menus on macOS with new shortcut hints and animated icons. The app will display a full-screen effect in one-on-one chats when you send certain emoji too.
Earlier this year, Telegram added group video calls and other features, including a way to block others in group chats from taking screenshots and saving shared media, as well as live streams with unlimited viewers. There’s been some blowback against Telegram this year, however, with reports suggesting there has been a significant uptick in the level of cybercriminal activity taking place on the encrypted messaging app.
Source: Engadget – Telegram adds iMessage-style reactions and hidden text for spoilers
Legendary NFL coach John Madden died on the morning of Tuesday, December 28. While many took the occasion of his passing to celebrate the man’s coaching, broadcasting, and video game legacy, others used it as an opportunity to call Madden out for his part in turning “brain injuries into a video game.” The takes were…
Source: Kotaku – The John Madden Video Game Concussion Drama, Explained
A critically endangered Malaysian tiger living at the Naples Zoo in Florida died this week after being shot by a deputy trying to save a 26-year-old maintenance worker from being mauled to death.
Source: Gizmodo – Florida Cop Shot and Killed an Endangered Malaysian Tiger That Was Mauling a Zoo Worker
