I love a good game that you can immerse yourself in for hours, but I don[he]#039[/he]t always have the luxury of ignoring daily tasks to disappear into a video game. Still, I do love a fun challenge from time to time, and two of my favourite applications to launch when my computer gets busy doing something that I need to wait on are games from the KDE Games package: KBlocks and Kolf.
Source: LXer – My favorite casual games to play on Linux
Monthly Archives: February 2022
BitConnect Founder Indicted Over $2.4 Billion Cryptocurrency Ponzi Scheme
From the Hindustan Times:
BitConnect founder Satish Kumbhani was indicted by a U.S. grand jury on charges he orchestrated a global Ponzi scheme that raised $2.4 billion from investors in a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platform, according to a Justice Department statement.
Kumbhani, 36, was charged in San Diego with misleading investors about BitConnect’s purported propriety technology… BitConnect used money from new investors to pay earlier ones and also operated as an unlicensed money transmitting business, the U.S. said.
More details from the San Diego Union-Tribune:
Investors around the world, including those in San Diego, were encouraged to buy BitConnect’s open-source, decentralized cryptocurrency, called BCC, using Bitcoin for the purchase. Investors would then “lend” their BCC tokens to Bitconnect, which would purportedly invest the proceeds using proprietary technology known as the Trading Bot and Volatility Software. The technology was supposedly designed to trade automatically, and profitably, by buying and selling on the volatility of Bitcoin, according to the indictment.
But much of the technology remained a mystery to investors. When someone asked for a demonstration at an event in 2017, Kumbhani was evasive: “So you ask me very hard question,” he told one interviewer. He added later, “For privacy reasons we are not disclosing anything…”
Prosecutors say the investments weren’t being traded as promised but were instead used to pay out earlier investors, typical of a pyramid scheme. The funds would also be used to pay BitConnect’s army of promoters, who would market the investment opportunity on social media and at live events. Glenn Arcaro, described by prosecutors as “one of the most prolific and successful” of the bunch overseeing the United States, also formed his own cryptocurrency education course called Future Money. But the course was really a way to funnel potential investors to BitConnect, prosecutors said.
Arcaro, a Los Angeles resident, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in September for his role in the scheme.
After shutting down abruptly, Kumbhani then “directed his network of promoters to fraudulently manipulate and prop up the price” of BCC, “to create the false appearance of legitimate market demand…” according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice:
Kumbhani is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodity price manipulation, operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business, and conspiracy to commit international money laundering. If convicted of all counts, he faces a maximum total penalty of 70 years in prison.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – BitConnect Founder Indicted Over .4 Billion Cryptocurrency Ponzi Scheme
Pokémon Presents: All The Big News You Need To Know
It’s exactly 26 years since the first Pokémon games released in Japan and the developers of the series lived up to the hype of this year’s international Pokémon Day by offering up a ton of updates on current games and one major surprise reveal: new mainline entries Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are coming to Nintendo…
Source: Kotaku – Pokémon Presents: All The Big News You Need To Know
TCL’s latest concept phone folds inwards and outwards
TCL seems to love showing off eye-catching prototypes at shows, and today it’s doing the same for MWC 2022. Alongside an array of new phones and tablets, the company just debuted a concept device tentatively called the “Ultra Flex” — a phone with a 360-degree rotating hinge and a flexible display that bends along with it. That means this thing can fold in on itself as well as out towards the world.
This is a technically challenging proposition, since the screen has to undergo much more flexing than those that only bend one way. The strip that’s right above the hinge, in particular, would probably suffer the most stress.
In fact, it’s so prone to breaking that the unit we saw at our hands-on in New York never did turn on. Its 8-inch, 2,480 x 1,860 PLP AMOLED screen remained disappointingly dark, though TCL reps did show us photos of it working earlier that day. For now, we can only take their word for it.
TCL
The display wasn’t the only engineering challenge for this prototype: The 360-degree hinge also needed some finessing. Each time I folded and unfolded the device, most of the movement was smooth until the screen’s halves were close to touching. That’s when it made unsettling noises and felt like crunching cereal under a membrane. TCL has not shared any specifics on how the hinge and display work, either, keeping those details confidential for now. It’s clear that this prototype is nowhere close to being a real product.
Why would we even want a device that can fold both ways? TCL reps said it would offer the benefits of both inward-folding devices like the Galaxy Z Fold as well as those that bend outwards like Huawei’s first Mate X foldable. Having a panel you could fold outwards could offer a preview for your camera subjects to see how they look while you frame them up, for example, or let you present slides to someone facing you. Given that Huawei has since adopted Samsung’s approach instead of sticking with an outside-facing flexible screen, it appears that style of foldable might not be very feasible.
Still, I liked the Ultra Flex prototype’s matte blue finish and the mock quad-camera array on the back. The pliable, corrugated backing for the hinge also added an interesting touch to the design, and a slot on the bottom left indicates potential for the inclusion of an onboard stylus.
Cherlynn Low / Engadget
We also got to see the company’s “Fold n’ Roll” concept device in person for the first time since it was unveiled in April last year. This is a foldable 6.7-inch phone that uses a motorized mechanism that, at the push of a button, unfurls more of its screen to make an 8.8-inch 2,880 x 2,160 canvas. Like the Ultra Flex, this prototype felt janky, and getting the device to roll out its screen was like asking a dog to sit. Sometimes it worked as expected, sometimes pushing the button did nothing and sometimes the mechanism would whir away but the screen would struggle to move.
At least on this device the screen was working… Ish. For the first half of the demo session, the Fold n’ Roll was stuck on the lock screen, and didn’t respond to any touches or swipes. By some miracle, it eventually unlocked and revealed the Android home screen, but still refused to register any taps. I launched a grand total of zero apps on this prototype, helplessly watching it do nothing as I jabbed at the screen. It reminded me of the panel on Motorola’s Razr — both felt like they were slightly detached from the rest of the components below, like a piece of tape stuck to itself and no longer adhering to the rest of the roll.
The only thing it did was actually recognize when the additional bit of screen had finished rolling in or out, and change its aspect ratio and size to fill up and match the new widths. At this point I was so happy something worked that I was probably too impressed by a feature that should be expected, rather than a bonus.
Cherlynn Low / Engadget
Were these prototypes buggy as hell? Yes. Was I intrigued by them regardless? Also yes. We all love being distracted by interesting new form factors and product types, especially as non-foldable smartphone hardware matures and stagnates. As foldables continue to pique our interest and actually become better over the years, who knows what other shapes they might evolve into?
TCL hasn’t said if these prototypes are worth pursuing and turning into actual products, but the company has promised that it plans to launch a foldable phone that costs hundreds less than the competition. Though that has yet to happen, we did see a canceled product last year codenamed Chicago. It’s very similar to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 3, though with a different external screen and camera setup, as well as a slightly more textured finish. I was impressed how nice this looked in person, and the hinge felt less resistant than the Z Flip 3’s. Until TCL starts selling these for real, though, all of its prototypes and concepts remain aspirational. I get that there are global supply issues potentially in the way, but at this point it feels like TCL has teased us for too long.
Catch up on all of the news from MWC 2022 right here!
Source: Engadget – TCL’s latest concept phone folds inwards and outwards
You Should Be Safer at the Grocery Store
When we think of food poisoning, it’s usually in the context of the frequent food recalls on everything from salads, to onions, to dried spices.
Source: LifeHacker – You Should Be Safer at the Grocery Store
'Pokémon Scarlet' and 'Violet' head to Switch in late 2022
Pokémon fans won’t have to wait long to play the next entry in their favorite gaming series. On Sunday morning, the Pokémon Company announced two new mainline titles, PokémonScarlet and Violet, and said it expects them to launch sometime in late 2022. Building on the recently released Pokémon Legends: Arceus, developer Game Freak said the games would offer an “open-world adventure” for players to discover.
Judging from the teaser the studio shared, players can expect to explore a mix of pastoral countryside and bustling urban landscapes. You can see the three new starters at the end of the clip. From left to right, they’re Sprigatito, Fuecoco and Quaxly. As you might expect, all three look adorable, and you might have trouble picking one over another. I know I will.
While fans wait for Scarlet and Violet, they can look forward to a new “Daybreak” update for Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Available to download later today, the update adds a new quest for players to complete and additional opportunities to battle Legendary Pokémon. Oh, and a new anime based on the game’s Hisui region is coming later this year.
Source: Engadget – ‘Pokémon Scarlet’ and ‘Violet’ head to Switch in late 2022
How to Configure Task Switcher in KDE Plasma Desktop
This guide explains how to configure the Task Switcher in the KDE Plasma desktop.
Source: LXer – How to Configure Task Switcher in KDE Plasma Desktop
Pokémon Legends Arceus is Already Dictating the Franchise's Future
It’s only been about a month since Pokémon Legends Arceus hit the Nintendo Switch, but it’s been extremely clear both critically (mostly) and commercially that Game Freak’s evolution of their iconic monster fighting franchise is something fans want to see more of. While you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that there…
Source: Gizmodo – Pokémon Legends Arceus is Already Dictating the Franchise’s Future
Pokémon Scarlet And Violet Announced, Here Are The New Starters
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the next two games in the mainline Pokémon series, are coming to Nintendo Switch later this year, The Pokémon Company announced during today’s Pokémon Presents.
Source: Kotaku – Pokémon Scarlet And Violet Announced, Here Are The New Starters
Huawei’s MatePad Paper is half e-reader, half tablet
A lot of Engadget readers – and to be honest, Engadget editors – are obsessed with e-ink devices. Whether they’re productivity workhorses or digital canvases, the tech has slowly continued to inch beyond the one-handed e-readers of the last decade.
The latest addition is a substantially-sized e-ink tablet from Huawei. The MatePad Paper has a 10.3-inch grayscale screen with an anti-glare, reflective display to aid low-light use. The Paper can reproduce 256 shades of greyscale to display text and images – and even video — although I’m not sure why you’d want B&W video.
You probably already noticed it’s got surprisingly small bezels for an e-ink device. Huawei says it’s honed the tablet down to an 86.3 percent screen-to-body ratio, with a book spine-inspired design ensuring there’s something for you to hold. All that e-paper, coupled with the size of the thing, sets it apart from pretty much every other e-ink device we’ve seen so far. (The Kindle DX was a long time ago.)
Alongside 32 levels of backlighting, the device is also compatible with Huawei’s M Pencil, which usually launches alongside its more typical tablets. This means you can scribble, annotate and edit your documents and books, which is a very useful tool when it comes to e-ink devices. Notably, Huawei has been able to refine the sensitivity of the textured screen to 26ms. It might not be quite as super smooth as an S22 Ultra – or even Huawei’s other tablets, but it’s notable on a matte e-ink surface. Is this the perfect digital note-taking device?
Continuing Huawei’s push to connect all of its devices as seamlessly as possible, you can connect the MatePad Paper to the company’s laptops, PCs, tablets and phones. Huawei says the tablet will appear like a USB drive, and you can drag and drop your notes and annotated PDFs across to your laptop. This is possible thanks to the company’s propriety operating system, HarmonyOS.
Huawei product announcements come with the usual proviso, however. The hardware is exciting – and tempting for anyone who works with lots of books, documents and digital paperwork — but you’ll be constrained by HarmonyOS.
The company says it’s still growing out the ecosystem, but the onus remains on app creators and companies as to whether they’ll offer support. For example, There are a few ways I could check out my Kindle books on the MatePad Paper – maybe I could use the web-based reader? – but it won’t be as seamless as Amazon hardware. Then again, the MatePad Paper is also capable of more than a simple Kindle.
Huawei didn’t announce the availability and pricing of the MatePad Paper ahead of its MWC presentation. We’ll update this report when we hear more.
Catch up on all of the news from MWC 2022 right here!
Source: Engadget – Huawei’s MatePad Paper is half e-reader, half tablet
Huawei’s new MateBook X Pro has six speakers packed inside it
Huawei’s top laptop series has gone through a few iterations, but the company has made some notable upgrades to its 2022 MateBook X Pro, without losing what we’ve liked from these laptops over the last few years. Yes, it’s still slim, yes it’s still understated. Yes, we don’t know if it’ll ever appear in the US.
The 2022 model will land with 11th gen Intel U series processors (a spokesperson added that 12th-gen MateBooks would arrive later this year), and a bigger screen. Huawei has expanded the screen up to 14.2 inches from the 13.9 inches of its predecessor, while simultaneously making the body even slimmer. Above the 3,120 x 2,080 display, there’s a HD micro camera – fortunately Huawei hasn’t moved it back to the peek-a-boo webcam keyboard button.
This is also Huawei’s first laptop to support the P3 color gamut and over 1 billion colors and reaches refresh rates of 90Hz too. And for those into touch displays, there’s 10-point multitouch compatibility too.
Inside the new wedge design, there are now triple air intakes, up from a single intake last year, including one built into the keyboard. Huawei says this results in 60 percent more airflow through the device. And it might be put to use. The new MateBook X Pro has a new ‘performance mode’ — accessed through a keyboard shortcut. Huawei says this boosts the CPU’s thermal design power (TDP) to 30W for a “performance uplift”.
The MateBook X Pro comes with a 90W SuperCharge function that can give 3 hours of use on just a 15-minute charge. (And this all comes from a tiny 180-gram charger that looks more like a phone charger.)
Plug a phone into one of the four USB-C ports and you’ll get up to 50 watts of charge, too. Huawei has also upgraded the sound in its latest laptop, with six speakers dotted around the MateBook X Pro. That’s a lot. There are also four mics dotted around the perimeter to improve audio recording and conference calls.
These are the big changes, but a lot is staying the same. There’s still a large trackpad (with some new “free touch” gestures, including one for swiftly scrobbling through video), a chiclet keyboard and Huawei’s Mobile App engine (for running Huawei’s mobile… apps on your laptop).
Huawei
Alongside a new e-ink device, Huawei is also launching a new OLED hybrid PC. The 2-in-1 MateBook E comes with two keyboard options — alas likely to be sold separately or bundled with the PC, depending on region.
Alone, the 12.6-inch MateBook E weighs just over 700 grams (1.5 pounds) and is a slender 7.99mm thick. It will run on 11th-gen Intel Core processors with Intel’s embedded Iris X graphics. Huawei’s second-generation stylus will also work with the hybrid — the first time it’s been compatible with the MateBook series — supporting 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and 2ms responsiveness. A magnetic keyboard folio, seen above, will allow you to adjust the view of the 2-in-1 while working, while a new Glide keyboard peripheral, adds an extra USB port to the device and will, according to Huawei, allow you to hold it in one hand. For spreadsheets on the go?
The company is holding onto other details – including, crucially, price – for its big MWC reveal. We’ll update this story when it’s streamed this weekend.
Catch up on all of the news from MWC 2022 right here!
Source: Engadget – Huawei’s new MateBook X Pro has six speakers packed inside it
All the Clever Ways You Can Use Glycerin Around Your House
When it comes to putting together your arsenal of standard household products, you probably already have things like white vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and nail polish remover in a closet somewhere, or under the sink. But what about glycerin?
Source: LifeHacker – All the Clever Ways You Can Use Glycerin Around Your House
Hands On With the Latest Version of DahliaOS
I hadn’t heard of DahliaOS until about 20 minutes ago when a tweet talking up the latest development pre-release flew past my eyes. Naturally I was intrigued. DahliaOS has nothing to do with Ubuntu of course and thus no real tangible reason to be featured on this blog. But hey: new Linux distros and desktop environments are interesting, and unless I want to kick the bees nest that is the Firefox deb to Snap transition (the no-more-apt-build package hit Jammy today) I’ve not got much else to talk about. So what is dahliaOS?
Source: LXer – Hands On With the Latest Version of DahliaOS
Ukraine Official Urges 'IT Army' of World's Digital Talent To Attack Russian Energy and Financial Firms
VentureBeat reports:
In Ukraine today, Mykhailo Fedorov, the country’s vice prime minister, announced on Twitter, “We are creating an IT army.”
“We need digital talents,” wrote Fedorov, who also holds the title of minister of digital transformation — sharing a link to a Telegram channel where he said operational tasks will be distributed. “We continue to fight on the cyber front.” On the Telegram channel, the IT army reportedly posted its list of Russian targets — which were also translated into English “for all IT specialists from other countries….”
On Friday, Christian Sorensen, a former U.S. Cyber Command official, told VentureBeat that “hacktivists around the world [will be] working against Russia, because they are the aggressor…. I think things will ramp up against western targets, but Russia and Belarus will be targeted by these groups even more” said Sorensen, formerly the operational planning team lead for the U.S. Cyber Command….
[O]n Friday, a Bloomberg report said that a hacker group that was now forming to bring counterattacks against Russia had amassed 500 members. And today, we have the announcement of Ukraine’s IT army — potentially including assistance from hackers around the globe. “Whether sanctioned or not, official or not, if people have or can get the right information, know-how, and desire — they can make an impact,” Sorensen said on Friday, prior to the announcement of Ukraine’s IT army. “We’ll have to wait and see what they are able to do.”
The next day Reuters reported that the official website of the Kremlin, “the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin….was down on Saturday, following reports of denial of service (DDoS) attacks on various other Russian government and state media websites.
“The outages came as Ukraine’s vice prime minister said it had launched an ‘IT army’ to combat Russia in cyberspace.”
But the Independent reports that the cyberattacks may have been even more extensive:
Ukraine’s state telecommunications agency announced on Saturday that six Russian government websites, inclduing the Kremlin’s, were down, according to The Kyiv Independent.
The agency also stated that the Russian media regulator’s website had gone down, and that hackers had got Russian TV channels to play the Ukrainian music.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Ukraine Official Urges ‘IT Army’ of World’s Digital Talent To Attack Russian Energy and Financial Firms
Linux's ReiserFS Plan Is To Deprecate It, Remove The File-System In 2025
As noted last week there were Linux developers discussing the idea of removing the ReiserFS file-system given that it hasn’t been really relevant in more than a decade and is very unlikely to be used still in production use-cases with modern kernels. It looks like the deprecation will move forward but the actual removal from the mainline kernel won’t happen until 2025…
Source: Phoronix – Linux’s ReiserFS Plan Is To Deprecate It, Remove The File-System In 2025
Con Kolivas Releases LRZIP 0.650 With Optimizations, Fixes
While free software developer Con Kolivas is known for his work on the Linux kernel to improve desktop responsiveness and efforts like BFS and MuQSS, there is also user-space software he has developed. One of those user-space programs under is belt is LRZIP, the Long Range ZIP format, that is focused on providing speedy compression of large files and to do so with lower amounts of memory…
Source: Phoronix – Con Kolivas Releases LRZIP 0.650 With Optimizations, Fixes
Australia’s standoff against Google and Facebook worked—sort of
Enlarge (credit: Elena Lacey | Getty )
Over Zoom, Australia’s communications minister, Paul Fletcher, has the air of a man in the middle of a victory speech. He credits his team and the country’s competition regulator for succeeding where others had failed: forcing tech giants to pay for news. “There were a lot of people saying you can’t really succeed in taking on the global digital giants,” he says, sitting beneath strip lighting in his Sydney constituency office. But Fletcher and Australia’s federal treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, persevered. In 2020, when the Australian government asked the competition regulator to develop a law that would force tech giants to pay for the news that appears on their feeds, Fletcher was aware of the stories others used as warnings. When Germany’s biggest news publisher, Axel Springer, tried to block Google from running snippets of its articles in 2014, it backtracked after just two weeks once traffic plunged. When Spain tried to force Google to pay for news in 2014, the search giant just left—blocking Google News in the country for seven years.
Google threatened Australia with even more drastic action. In January 2021, the tech giant suggested Australians could lose access to its entire search engine if Fletcher and Frydenberg’s “news media bargaining code,” which would force platforms to pay news publishers for links, came into force. Facebook also lobbied hard against the code, arguing that news makes up less than 4 percentof the content people see in their news feed. On February 17, Australians woke up to discover that all news links had been wiped off the platform, leaving the Facebook pages of the country’s biggest media companies completely blank. Traffic to news websites sank 13 percent, illustrating exactly what the government said it was worried about. Facebook’s actions “confirm for all Australians [the] immense market power of these media digital giants,” Frydenberg said at the time.
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Source: Ars Technica – Australia’s standoff against Google and Facebook worked—sort of
Elon Musk Says SpaceX's Starlink Service is Now Active Over Ukraine
“Elon Musk says SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are now active over Ukraine after a request from the embattled country’s leadership to replace internet services destroyed by the Russian attack,” reports the Independent, in a story shared by Slashdot readers schwit1 and SubMitt:
Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion has left parts of the country without internet, while SpaceX has launched thousands of communications satellites to bring broadband to hard to reach areas of the world.
“Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route,” the entrepreneur tweeted on Saturday.
The move came after Ukraine’s vice prime minister urged Mr Musk to help them out, as the SpaceX system does not require any fiber-optic cables.
Newsweek reports that on Friday Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister also asked Apple’s Tim Cook to stop providing products and services to Russians — including the Apple Store.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Elon Musk Says SpaceX’s Starlink Service is Now Active Over Ukraine
Coreboot 4.16 Released With New Motherboard Ports, AMD Sabrina SoC
Coreboot 4.16 is out this weekend as the newest quarterly release for this project striving for open-source system firmware / BIOS replacements…
Source: Phoronix – Coreboot 4.16 Released With New Motherboard Ports, AMD Sabrina SoC
Cairo Graphics Library Drops Many Old Backends
The Cairo graphics library that is used by GNOME/GTK, Mozilla Gecko, and many other projects for vector-based 2D graphics drawing has decided to remove a number of its old drawing back-ends…
Source: Phoronix – Cairo Graphics Library Drops Many Old Backends