A team of geneticists, archaeologists, and paleontologists believes they’ve settled the identity of an enigmatic equid from ancient Mesopotamia. That animal is a kunga, which the researchers show was a cross between a female donkey and a male Syrian wild ass.
Source: Gizmodo – Oldest Known Human-Bred Hybrid Animal Was a ‘Kunga’
Google’s expansion into the living and entertainment rooms has really taken off. There are now 110 million Android TV devices active each month, nearly a third of which have come online since May 2021. To continue its growth, the company is looking to turn your Google TV into a fitness hub with smart home features and more.
At least 250
Source: Hot Hardware – Google TV Might Soon Become A Fitness Hub With Smart Home Features And More
Mesa’s V3D and V3DV drivers providing open-source OpenGL and Vulkan driver support, respectively, for newer Broadcom VideoCore hardware now has a double buffer mode implemented. This is a win for numerous workloads for these drivers most notably used by modern Raspberry Pi single board computers…
Source: Phoronix – Open-Source Raspberry Pi Graphics Drivers Add Double Buffer Mode
In this guide, we explain the super easy way of installing Arch Linux using automated script archinstall. Intended for beginner to advanced users.
Source: LXer – Installing Arch Linux Using archinstall Automated Script Complete Guide
As of January 4, 2022, openSUSE Leap 15.2 reached end-of-life and will no longer receive security and maintenance updates. Learn what that means for users here.
The post openSUSE Leap 15.2 Reached End-of-Life appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – openSUSE Leap 15.2 Reached End-of-Life
This week, YouTuber Logan Paul was scammed out of three and half million bucks, crypto-heads are planning to move away from us forever, and kids are eating NyQuil chicken—or none of that is happening at all, because everything is fake.
Source: LifeHacker – The Out-of-Touch Adults Guide to Kid Culture: Did Logan Paul Pay .5 Million for Fake Pokémon Cards?
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Russian law enforcement authorities said on Friday that they have arrested 14 people associated with REvil, a top ransomware group that has disrupted critical operations of wealthy targets and held their data hostage.
The action, carried out by Russia’s FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, is a rare example of the country’s government cracking down on cybercrime by its citizens. The US and Russia have no extradition treaty in place, and critics have said the Kremlin routinely harbors cybercriminals as long as they don’t target organizations located in the former Soviet Union. The arrests come as tensions between Russia and the US escalate over a standoff involving Ukraine.
“The FSB of Russia established the full composition of the criminal community ‘REvil’ and the involvement of its members in the illegal circulation of means of payment and documented illegal activities,” Russian officials wrote. “In order to implement the criminal plan, these persons developed malicious software and organized the theft of funds from the bank accounts of foreign citizens and their cashing, including by purchasing expensive goods on the Internet.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Russia says it has neutralized the cutthroat REvil ransomware gang
Google misled publishers and advertisers for years about the pricing and processes of its ad auctions, creating secret programs that deflated sales for some companies while increasing prices for buyers, according to newly unredacted allegations and details in a lawsuit by state attorneys general. From a report: Meanwhile, Google pocketed the difference between what it told publishers and advertisers that an ad cost and used the pool of money to manipulate future auctions to expand its digital monopoly, the newly unredacted complaint alleges. The documents cite internal correspondence in which Google employees said some of these practices amounted to growing its business through “insider information.” The unredacted filing on Friday in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York came after a federal judge ruled this week that an amended complaint filed last year could be unsealed. The lawsuit was first filed in December 2020, with many sections of the complaint redacted. Since then, the redactions have been stripped away in a series of rulings, providing fresh details about the states’ argument that Google runs a monopoly that harmed ad-industry competitors and publishers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Google Misled Publishers and Advertisers, Unredacted Lawsuit Alleges
Enlarge / This phone is receiving a 2G signal. (credit: Getty Images)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is celebrating Google’s addition of a 2G kill switch to Android 12. The digital rights group has been campaigning against the dated, insecure 2G cellular standard since 2020, and Android is the first mobile OS to take the group’s advice and let users completely disable 2G.
In the US, carriers shut down 2G years ago, and the 3G shutdown is already underway. Phones have not really gotten the message, though, and modems still try to connect to any nearby 2G signals automatically. The problem is that 2G is very old, and it’s a lot like connecting to a WEP-secured Wi-Fi hotspot—the security is obsolete, so it’s easy to crack. If you’re in a country where legitimate uses of 2G are long dead, the standard only serves as an attack vector via fake cell phone towers, so why not just shut it off?
The EFF explains the issues:
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Source: Ars Technica – EFF praises Android’s new 2G kill switch, wants Apple to follow suit
The Book of Boba Fett’s second episode, “The Tribes of Tatooine,” not only shows a new side to the iconic character, but allows for a fresh perspective on the Tusken Raiders. The nomadic people of Tatooine have always been heavily influenced by Indigenous cultures, but the latest Star Wars series is taking them beyond…
Source: Gizmodo – How The Book of Boba Fett Evolved Star Wars’ View of the Tuskens
My idea of wisdom is knowing better than to judge how somebody orders their martini*. It’s a deeply personal thing. Among the most classic of classic stirred-up cocktails, the martini has perhaps the most forgiving dress code of any. So, it pains me when someone sheepishly admits that they like olives and a twist in…
Source: LifeHacker – Make It Personal With the Gibson Cocktail
On January 7, a U.S. federal court dismissed the final lawsuit against Valve regarding the company’s alleged facilitation of what plaintiffs claimed amounts to illegal gambling in CSGO matches. This was the last case in a series of claims brought to the court by parents whose children had purchased CSGO skins for the…
Source: Kotaku – Court Dismisses Lawsuit By Parents Whose Kids ‘Gambled’ With CSGO Skins
Five dozen companies specializing in women’s health products and services say Facebook has frequently rejected their ads over objections they contain “adult content,” according to a report the Center for Intimacy Justice published this week. Facebook’s advertising policies prohibit reproductive health products or services that focus on sexual pleasure, but anecdotes from the companies the Center for Intimacy Justice either interviewed or surveyed paint the picture of a platform that enforces those guidelines in a way that’s seemingly arbitrary and sexist.
The 60 companies that took part in the report have all had advertisements rejected by Facebook at one point or another. About half said they’ve also had their accounts suspended by the social media giant. One such company is Joylux. It offers vFit Gold, a product women can use to strengthen their pelvic floor. “Because of the nature of our product, the look of it,” Joylux CEO Colette Courtion told The New York Times Facebook and other companies believe it’s “pornographic” in nature.
Since 2017, Joylux claims Facebook has shut down its advertising account twice. It says the company never provided a reason for those actions. It also claims Facebook has automatically denied ads that include “vagina.” That’s something Meta, Facebook’s parent company, disputes. A spokesperson for the company told Engadget it doesn’t enforce a blanket ban on keywords like “vagina” and “menopause.” Instead, it says it considers “how each ad is positioned.”
With help from an agency specializing in appealing ad rejections, Joylux has managed to get its ads up on Facebook in recent years. However, the company has had to change its copy to the point where those advertisements aren’t helpful to consumers. “We can’t show what the product looks like and we can’t say what it does,” Joylux told The New York Times.
A spokesperson for Meta told Engadget its enforcement isn’t perfect and that sometimes it makes mistakes. The company also noted it has its current policy in place in part because it strives to take into account what people from different countries and cultures will take away from ads that promote adult products.
“We welcome ads for sexual wellness products but we prohibit nudity and have specific rules about how these products can be marketed on our platform,” the spokesperson said. “We have provided detail to advertisers about what kinds of products and descriptions we allow in ads.”
What makes Facebook’s actions in these instances frustrating for the 60 companies that took part in the report is that they believe Meta hasn’t applied the same standards to ads targeting men. “Right now, it’s arbitrary where they’ll say a product is or isn’t allowed in a way that we think has really sexist undertones and a lack of understanding about health,” Jackie Rotman, the founder of the Center for Intimacy Justice, told The Times.
To that point, the organization found an ad promoting an erectile dysfunction pill that promised a “wet hot American summer.” Another, promoting a lubricant, said the lotion was “made just for men’s alone time.”
Source: Engadget – 60 companies say Facebook unfairly rejected their ads for women’s health products
Enlarge (credit: Getty)
One of the hallmarks of Boost Mobile prepaid phones in the early 2000s was their push-to-talk (PTT), or walkie-talkie, feature, which allowed you to play your voice through another Boost Mobile user’s phone speaker with the push of a button. Microsoft is now bringing a similar feature to iOS and Android devices via its Teams app. However, Microsoft isn’t using rappers and athletes to try to make PTT seem “cool,” as Boost Mobile did. Instead, the company is positioning the feature as a way to use technology to aid frontline workers.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Emma Williams, corporate VP of modern work transformation at Microsoft, announced that the walkie-talkie ability in Teams is now available “on all iOS mobile devices, such as iPhones and iPads, in addition to Android mobile devices.”
Williams also said the feature will come to some Zebra Technologies devices, such as rugged phones or scanning devices. Such products may even have a button you can press to connect instantly, just like real walkie-talkies and Boost Mobile’s old PTT phones.
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Source: Ars Technica – Microsoft Teams turns your phone into a walkie-talkie
Intel removed the security feature SGX from processors of the 11th and newer generations. Problem is, the feature is one of the requirements to play Ultra HD Blu-Ray discs on computer systems. From a report: The Ultra HD Blu-Ray format, often referred to as 4K Ultra HD or 4K Blu-Ray, supports 4K UHD playback with a pixel resolution of 3840×2160. One of the requirements for playback of Ultra HD Blu-Ray discs on PCs is that SGX is supported by the installed processor and by the motherboard firmware. The Blu-Ray Disc Association defined DRM requirements for Ultra HD Blu-Ray disc playback. Besides SGX, playback is protected by HDCP 2.2 and AACS 2.0, with some discs using AACS 2.1. Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) “allow user-level as well as operating system code to define private regions of memory, called enclaves, whose contents are protected and unable to be either read or saved by any process outside the enclave itself, including processes running at higher privilege levels” according to Wikipedia.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Intel’s Dropping of SGX Prevents Ultra HD Blu-Ray Playback on PCs
Some people may find this hard to believe, but the built-in antivirus protection in Windows is pretty good these days, and has been for quite some time. Defender routine passes musters by independent AV testing agencies. Unlike other AV solutions, though, it is exclusive to the Windows platform for consumers. Perhaps not for much longer.
If
Source: Hot Hardware – Microsoft Defender May Soon Offer Malware Protection For Android And Mac Devices Too
Are you trying to stay anonymous on Reddit? If you’ve already tried creating burner accounts, you should consider periodically deleting your old Reddit accounts as well to make it harder for people to use your post history to find information about you. And if you need to go the nuclear route, you can permanently…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Permanently Delete Your Reddit Account (or Your Old, Embarrassing Posts)
With the right military equipment, a single person can target a plane from three miles away using a heat-seeking missile. While such a nightmare is a rare occurrence, FedEx has applied to the FAA seeking approval to install a laser-based, anti-missile defense system on its cargo planes as an added safety measure.
Source: Gizmodo – FedEx Asks FAA to Let It Install Anti-Missile Lasers on Its Cargo Planes
Enlarge / Screenshot comparisons like these do make Free Fire look very similar to PUBG.
Shortly after the 2017 release of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), creator Brendan Greene publicly aired his exasperation at just how many developers were releasing shameless clones of the game’s then-unique battle royale concept and how hard it was to stop those copycats. Now, PUBG‘s Korean publisher Krafton has filed a lawsuit against one PUBG clone it says has engaged in “rampant, willful copyright infringement” of the popular game.
In the lawsuit, Krafton alleges that mobile hits Free Fire and Free Fire Max “extensively copy numerous aspects of Battlegrounds, both individually and in combination.” Those games attracted over 100 million daily users at the end of 2020, according to the lawsuit, and brought in the majority of Singaporean publisher Garena’s more than $2 billion in revenue for that year.
Krafton also makes Apple and Google party to the suit for listing the infringing game in their mobile app stores and for ignoring a recent request to take them down. In addition, Google is allegedly liable for hosting YouTube videos showing Free Fire‘s infringing gameplay on its service.
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Source: Ars Technica – PUBG maker sues mobile clone, Apple, Google for copyright infringement
Three Santa Clause films just weren’t enough. Now, almost two decades since the release of the third one, Disney is bringing back the holiday comedy as a limited series for Disney+. Tim Allen will reprise his role as Santa in a story where he’s looking for a new Santa to pass the sleigh too.
Source: Gizmodo – Tim Allen Is Returning to The Santa Clause for Disney+
