Parrot 5.1 is here six months after Parrot 5.0 and is powered by Linux kernel 5.18. Learn more about the new release here.
The post Security-Oriented Distro Parrot 5.1 Arrives with Linux Kernel 5.18 appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Security-Oriented Distro Parrot 5.1 Arrives with Linux Kernel 5.18
When you’re packing for your trip, you may be thinking about the best ways to get foreign currency to spend while you’re traveling, but you’re probably not thinking about what to do with your leftover bills and coins when you come home. The last thing you want to have to do is exchange back to U.S. dollars and lose 2…
Source: LifeHacker – What to Do With Leftover Foreign Currency After Your Trip
New York City council members are getting serious about bike lanes. A new proposal would allow citizens to submit photographic evidence of blocked bike lanes—and they’ll be rewarded with a percentage of the subsequent ticket.
Source: Gizmodo – New York City Bill Puts a Bounty on Bike Lane Violations
How to win friends and admit how you lost them earlier?Open Source Summit What’s the difference between the Citrix Hypervisor and Xen? Well, one has quite a big crowd of upset current and former community members.…
Source: LXer – How Citrix dropped the ball on Xen … according to Citrix
Enlarge (credit: Isaac Bowen / Flickr)
Google’s journey toward Chrome’s “Manifest V3” has been happening for four years now, and if the company’s new timeline holds up, we’ll all be forced to switch to it in year 5. “Manifest V3” is the rather unintuitive name for the next version of Chrome’s extension platform. The update is controversial because it makes ad blockers less effective under the guise of protecting privacy and security, and Google just so happens to be the world’s largest advertising company.
Google’s latest blog post details the new timeline for the transition to Manifest V3, which involves ending support for older extensions running on Manifest V2 and forcing everyone onto the new platform. Starting in January 2023 with Chrome version 112, Google “may run experiments to turn off support for Manifest V2 extensions in Canary, Dev, and Beta channels.” Starting in June 2023 and Chrome 115, Google “may run experiments to turn off support for Manifest V2 extensions in all channels, including stable channel.” Also starting in June, the Chrome Web Store will stop accepting Manifest V2 extensions, and they’ll be hidden from view. In January 2024, Manifest V2 extensions will be removed from the store entirely.
Google says Manifest V3 is “one of the most significant shifts in the extensions platform since it launched a decade ago.” The company claims that the more limited platform is meant to bring “enhancements in security, privacy, and performance.” Privacy groups like the EFF dispute this description and say that if Google really cared about the security of the extension store, it could just police the store more actively using actual humans instead of limiting the capabilities of all extensions.
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Source: Ars Technica – Chrome’s new ad-blocker-limiting extension platform will launch in 2023
“Is there anything you want to pre-order?” Almost nobody walks in and out of a GameStop without hearing those words. Employees are measured against how many pre-orders they can rack up while GameStop rakes in the cash months ahead of a game’s actual release. But lately, the strategy has been sabotaged by a system…
Source: Kotaku – GameStop Pre-Orders Are A Mess Right Now, Staff Say
For the first time ever, NASA’s Webb and Hubble space telescopes captured the same celestial target at the same time. The two observatories had front row seats as the space agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) slammed into asteroid Dimorphos earlier this week.
Webb and Hubble images have been used in tandem in the recent past,
Source: Hot Hardware – Webb And Hubble Co-Capture DART Mission’s ‘Bigger Than Expected’ Asteroid Impact
Suspected Chinese hackers tampered with widely used software distributed by a small Canadian customer service company, another example of a “supply chain compromise” made infamous by the hack on U.S. networking company SolarWinds. From a report: U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike will say in an upcoming blog post seen by Reuters that it had discovered malicious software being distributed by Vancouver-based Comm100, which provides customer service products, such as chat bots and social media management tools, to a range of clients around the globe. The scope and scale of the hack wasn’t immediately clear. In a message, Comm100 said it had fixed its software earlier Thursday and that more details would soon be forthcoming. The company did not immediately respond to follow-up requests for information. CrowdStrike researchers believe the malicious software was in circulation for a couple of days but wouldn’t say how many companies had been affected, divulging only that “entities across a range of industries” were hit.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Suspected Chinese Hackers Tampered With Widely Used Canadian Chat Program, Researchers Say
Small retail payments in Sub-Saharan Africa are powering exceptional crypto adoption and usage, with the region conducting the world’s highest proportion (80%) of crypto retail payments of less than $1,000, according to a report by blockchain data firm Chainalysis. From a report: The report also highlights how peer-to-peer transactions are more common in Sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world. At about 6% of all crypto transaction volume, Africa’s peer-to-peer transactions dwarf those of Central and Southern Asia and Oceania, the region with the second-highest volumes in that category. Many Africans have integrated crypto into everyday life, the report says. Besides retail transactions, remittances and commercial transactions have also been key drivers for Africa’s high adoption and usage rates. “Crypto usage is driven by everyday necessity, as opposed to speculation by the already well-off … especially in countries where the values of local fiat currencies are dropping, as we’ve seen in Nigeria and Kenya,” the report states.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Crypto Is Quietly Thriving in Sub-Saharan Africa: Chainalysis Report
Enlarge / Deepfake Bruce Willis as he appeared in a 2021 commercial for Russian mobile company MegaFon. (credit: MegaFon)
Bruce Willis has sold the “digital twin” rights to his likeness for commercial video production use, according to a report by The Telegraph. This move allows the Hollywood actor to digitally appear in future commercials and possibly even films, and he has already appeared in a Russian commercial using the technology.
Willis, who has been diagnosed with a language disorder called aphasia, announced that he would be “stepping away” from acting earlier this year. Instead, he will license his digital rights through a company called Deepcake. The company is based in Tbilisi, Georgia, and is doing business in America while being registered as a corporation in Delaware.
In 2021, a deepfake Bruce Willis appeared in a Russian cell phone commercial for MegaFon.
Deepcake obtained Willis’ likeness by training a deep learning neural network model on his appearances in blockbuster action films from the 1990s. With his facial appearance known, the model can then apply Willis’ head to another actor with a similar build in a process commonly called a deepfake. Deepfakes have become popular in recent years on TikTok, with unauthorized deepfakes of Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves gathering large followings.
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Source: Ars Technica – Deepfake Bruce Willis may be the next Hollywood star, and he’s OK with that
Anker’s Soundcore audio brand has revealed yet more products. Among them are the Liberty 4 earbuds, which can track your heart rate. The heart rate sensor is in the right earbud, so you’ll need to wear that one to use the feature. When it’s measuring your blood oxygen levels, the earbud will emit a red light. Soundcore hasn’t disclosed the waterproof rating, which is odd given that heart-rate tracking functions are closely linked to workouts.
Soundcore says an algorithm can tune the spatial audio function depending on whether you’re watching a movie or listening to music. The earbuds offer dynamic head tracking too. Soundcore is using a gyroscope to ensure sound always surrounds you. In addition, Liberty 4 offers adaptive noise canceling (which automatically adjusts noise cancellation levels based on environmental audio) and personalized sound.
You’ll get up to nine hours of use on a single charge, Soundcore claims, and 28 hours in total before you need to top up the charging case’s battery. These figures drop to five and 15 hours with spatial audio on, and seven and 24 hours when ANC is enabled. That said, Soundcore says you’ll get up to three hours of use after charging for 15 minutes.
In addition, there’s multipoint connectivity, so you can pair Liberty 4 to your computer and phone at the same time over Bluetooth. The $150 earbuds come in white or black colorways. You can buy Liberty 4 direct from Soundcore now and other retailers in October.
Soundcore has also unveiled new sleep earbuds. It says the Sleep A10 buds can block out up to 35dB of noise thanks to a four-point noise masking system.
Unlike Bose Sleepbuds 2, which only allow you to listen to sleep sounds from a certain app, you can play any audio through Sleep A10 via Bluetooth. Soundcore says its earbuds have dynamic drivers designed to deliver low-frequency sound that induces sleep. Crucially, the earbuds are seemingly comfortable for folks who sleep on their side. They have ear wings and twin seal ear tips to help keep them snug in your ears during the night.
Other features include sleep monitoring and a personal alarm clock. Anker claims the buds have a battery life of up to 10 hours, so they should be able to help wake you up in addition to lulling you to sleep. The Sleep A10 buds, which cost $69 less than Bose’s Sleepbuds 2, are available from Soundcore’s website for $180.
Currently Linux’s Logitech HID++ driver “hid-logitech-hidpp” relies on a static list of device quirks for indicating which Logitech mice support high resolution scrolling. With the upcoming Linux 6.1 kernel, the plan is to change that list of devices/quirks and to automatically determine if a device supports high resolution scrolling…
Source: Phoronix – Linux 6.1 Change Aims To Auto-Detect Logitech HID++ High Resolution Scrolling Support
This month’s new sci-fi, horror, and fantasy books bring authors you’ll recognize—including Veronica Roth, Alan Moore, Terry Brooks, and George R.R. Martin (no, not that book). But there are also plenty of potential new favorites among these 56 titles. It’s spooky season this month, but it’s always reading season!
Source: Gizmodo – October’s Scary Big Pile of New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books
One of the most divisive topics in education is gifted education. Even the word itself—gifted—has caused debate. The efficacy and equity of gifted programs came under fire in 2021 when New York City mayor Bill De Blasio rolled out a plan to phase out the city’s gifted program completely—a plan that was later quietly…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Tell If Your Child Is Gifted (and What to Do If They Are)
Over the years, the Pokémon Trading Card Game has seen a huge number of artists come and go. Approximately 175 different people have contributed art to the cards, some only ever designing one, others contributing hundreds. Heck, Ken Sugimori has created 966 of them, beginning with the very first set of Pokémon cards,…
Source: Kotaku – Oh Wow, The Best Pokémon Card Art All Comes From The Same Person
Linux Mint 21.1 has been codenamed “Vera” and is the first point release to Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa”. Learn about the upcoming December release here.
The post Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” to Arrive on Christmas appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” to Arrive on Christmas
My Nintendo Switch largely sat unplayed for the duration of the pandemic. I purchased it in the Before Times thinking it’d make for a great subway companion. But between the short battery life and it being uncomfortable to hold for long periods, I just didn’t ever want to play it much. But there might finally be some…
Source: Kotaku – The Next Time You’re Looking For New Switch Joy-Con, Check These Out
People’s cancers are apparently playing host to their very own fungi. A pair of studies this week have documented the unique neighborhoods of fungal species that can live inside our tumors. It’s possible that these microbes may even influence how cancers grow or manage to fend off certain treatments.
Source: Gizmodo – Our Cancers Are Filled With Fungi
