AMC’s The Walking Dead went through plenty of characters during its 11-season run, but the departure of Andrew Lincoln’s leading man Rick Grimes was a momentous shakeup. Next to him, one of the biggest characters to leave the show alive was Danai Gurira’s Michonne, and the pair eventually fell in love before Rick was…
Source: Gizmodo – The Walking Dead Finally Reveals Rick & Michonne’s Spinoff
“People are getting increasingly fed up with their car infotainment systems,” reports the Verge:
According to JD Power’s Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout (APEAL) Study, overall satisfaction among car owners is 845 (on a 1,000-point scale), a decrease of two points from a year ago and three points lower than in 2021. That’s the first time in the 28-year history of the study that the consumer research firm registered a consecutive year-over-year decline in owner satisfaction…
Only 56 percent of owners prefer to use their vehicle’s built-in system to play audio, down from 70 percent in 2020, JD Power found. Less than half of owners said they like using their car’s native controls for navigation, voice recognition, or to make phone calls…
[I]t seems like most people are preferring to use smartphone-mirroring systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which have proven to be incredibly popular over the years… But it seems like people are warming up to native operating systems, as long as they’re developed by Google and not the automaker. JD Power found that models that have Android Automotive with Google Automotive’s operating system, AAOS, “score higher in the infotainment category than those with no AAOS whatsoever.”
But here’s where things get kind of weird: AAOS without Google Automotive Services (GAS) receives the lowest scores for infotainment of the three categories. Google Automotive Services refers to all the apps and services that come with the car when Google is built into the car — also known as “Google built-in.” Ford, GM, and Volvo have all said they will use GAS for their current and upcoming vehicles… That’s surely music to GM’s ears, which recently made the controversial decision to block access to CarPlay and Android Auto in its future EV lineup in favor of a native Google infotainment system.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Many People Don’t Actually Like Their Car’s Infotainment Systems
Inaki Godoy stars as Monkey D. Luffy in One Piece, the Netflix live-action adaption of the popular Japanese manga and anime franchise.
Netflix has a mixed track record when it comes to adapting beloved Japanese anime series into live action formats. I liked 2021’s Cowboy Bebop more than most diehard fans—just for the pitch-perfect casting alone, despite the fact that the fight choreography left a lot to be desired. It was certainly better than the live-action versions of Fullmetal Alchemist (another of my personal anime faves), but Netflix opted not to renew Cowboy Bebop. So we’ll never know if it would have worked out its issues, although the cameo appearance tacked onto the finale of a particularly grating version of Radical Ed didn’t bode well.
Given that checkered history, one could be forgiven for feelings of trepidation about the streaming platform’s forthcoming live-action series adaptation of One Piece, a hugely popular manga and anime series created by Eiichiro Oda. Who doesn’t love pirates? The first trailer debuted at San Diego Comic-Con, and honestly, the live-action series looks great. Then again, so did the trailers for Cowboy Bebop.
The original One Piece manga debuted in 1997, following the adventures of one Monkey D. Luffy, who heads a motley crew called the Straw Hat Pirates. There’s swordsman Roronoa Zoro, thief and navigator Nami, sniper and compulsive liar Usopp, and a cook named Sanji. They’re searching for the legendary One Piece, a mythical treasure that would make anyone who possesses it King of the Pirates. Monkey wants to be the Pirate King, but so do a host of other pirates with their own ships and crews.
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Source: Ars Technica – Here’s the trailer for the live-action One Piece we’ve been waiting for
There’s a new Punisher in town, and he’s a guy you’ve truly never heard of.
Source: Gizmodo – Marvel Comics’ New Punisher is Genuinely Brand New
NASA has reported that the DART spacecraft left a swarm of boulders in its wake after slamming into asteroid Dimorphos back in September of last year. The space agency describes what the asteroid is currently up to with the song “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”
Double Asteroid Redirect Test, known as DART, is part of NASA’s program to seek out
Source: Hot Hardware – NASA Reports A Swarm Of Space Boulders In Wake Of DART Asteroid Destruction
ExpressVPN has become a household name – or at least as close to one as a VPN is likely to get – taking over mainstream advertisements on sites like YouTube. On our roundup of the nine top providers in June, it came out tops for streaming services, frequent travel and gaming. But, notably, it wasn’t the overall best, falling short on areas like security and user friendliness.
There are three main VPN use cases on top of general security: geoblocking, streaming and gaming. That means my tests looked like watching Shrek on the clock, by using a VPN to access Canadian Netflix from my US-based home office, where the ogre movie isn’t currently available.
ExpressVPN was easy to sign up for, download and use, but compared to the other services, it didn’t wow me. Competitors like ProtonVPN, for example, had easier ways to sign in across platforms. But an ExpressVPN subscription does come with a password manager to store and autofill credentials across websites. That’s a plus in a world where complex passwords are crucial to keeping your accounts secure.
The best VPNs stay out of your way and you’ll barely even notice they’re running. But one oddity was that ExpressVPN internet speeds outperformed our baseline internet speed measures. The service is likely circumventing traffic shaping by the internet service provider or a similar anomaly because every other VPN will hurt internet speed in some way. But it did successfully mask the IP address, and pass the DNS and WebRTC leak tests as privacy measures.
It was also easy to access geo-blocked content using ExpressVPN, with little-to-no buffering. There were some loading delays that only lasted a few seconds when I tried to stream the news on YouTube using ExpressVPN, but no lag came up after that. Finally, ExpressVPN passed the gaming test by avoiding lag and maintaining a normal loading time. Although, it was a pretty basic test where I logged into online game Slither.io from a UK-based VPN to play the worm-eating competition with international users. Surfing the web with ExpressVPN was just as easy as being online without it. With ExpressVPN, a ping test measured how long data takes to travel from the computer to the server and back at 100 milliseconds, versus 16 milliseconds with no VPN turned on.
ExpressVPN’s biggest perk is that it supports up to five devices at once. That means I could conduct all tests simultaneously and still had no slowdown. That’s great for sharing it with a family, or folks that like to game, watch TV and scroll on their phone at the same time. It’s the main reason ExpressVPN landed as our top choice for streaming and gaming. The connectivity was solid, it had a wide range of servers in 94 countries and provided clear instructions on configuration for any device.
But security-wise, I found myself wanting more. ExpressVPN is based in the British Virgin Islands, which the company touts because the territory lacks any foreign intelligence operations and does not participate in 14 Eyes intelligence-sharing agreements. But it is owned by Kape Technologies, which also owns competitor CyberGhost, and Kape has a problematic history that includes spreading malware. Not only that, in 2021, the Department of Justice charged ExpressVPN CIO Daniel Gericke for cyberspying activities on behalf of the UAE. ExpressVPN stood by the CIO in a blog post.
But it’s not all bad. ExpressVPN publicly shared security audits of its mobile apps, protocol and desktop apps last year. That’s a win for security transparency. Still, a 2021 Consumer Reports study found that ExpressVPN didn’t support multifactor authentication, did not meet brute force mitigation checks and retained some data even after an account was terminated. ExpressVPN did, however, exceed industry standards in protections against unauthorized access, implement a vulnerability disclosure program and said it would not pursue legal action against security researchers. That means when it comes to security standards and practices, ExpressVPN as a company has a few too many misses and not enough hits.
I recommended ExpressVPN as our top choice for gamers, frequent travelers and heavy users of streaming services because it lets users access a wide range of locations from a variety of devices with high speed connections and no lag. With options to configure directly to routers and gaming consoles, it’s a solid choice for people that put a lot of strain on their ISPs. Still, there are better VPNs for the security-minded or those who want something more affordable.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/vpn-review-expressvpn-2023-gaming-streaming-160052492.html?src=rssMesa’s LLVMpipe software driver is now exposing system Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) support with the necessary API bits being in place for the modern Rusticl OpenCL driver as well as the older Clover code. Plus with being a CPU-based driver there isn’t any added work or complications around shared virtual memory…
Source: Phoronix – LLVMpipe Now Exposes Shared Virtual Memory Support
Star Wars: The High Republic may have began as a golden age for its titular government and the Jedi Order that stood beside it—but later this year things are taking a turn towards darkness, as Lucasfilm’s prequel publishing initiative kicks off its third and final phase. But as dark as things will be, the future got a…
Source: Gizmodo – Star Wars: The High Republic Teases Its Deadliest Trials Yet at San Diego Comic-Con
An anonymous reader shares this report from Dice.com:
C++ is enjoying a surge in popularity, according to the latest update to the TIOBE Index, which tracks programming languages’ “buzz.”
C++ currently sits right behind C and Python on TIOBE’s list. “A few months ago, the programming C++ language claimed position 3 of the TIOBE index (at the expense of Java). But C++ has not finished its rise. C seems to be its next victim,” added the note accompanying the data… [“At the moment, the gap between the two is only 0.76%.”]
Matlab, Scratch and Rust also match their all time high records at respectively positions #10, #12 and #17.
So here, according to TIOBE, are the 10 most popular programmings languages:
1. Python
2. C
3. C++
4. Java
5. C#
6. JavaScript
7. Visual Basic
8. SQL
9. PHP
10. MATLAB
The site I Programmer digs deeper:
C++ was the only one of the top four languages to see a positive year-on-year change in its percentage rating — adding 0.79% to stand at 10.8%. Python had the smallest loss of the entire Top 20, -0.01% leaving it with a share of 13,42% while Visual Basic had the greatest loss at -2.07%. This, combined with JavaScript gaining 1.34%, led to JavaScript overtaking it to occupy #6, its highest ever ranking in the TIOBE Index.
They also note that COBOL “had a 3-month rise going from a share of 0.41% in April to 0.86% in July which moved it into #20 on the index.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Is C++ Gaining in Popularity?
Debugging is an essential part of the development process. It allows programmers to identify and fix errors in their code, improving the overall quality and reliability of their software. Python provides a powerful built-in debugger called pdb (Python Debugger) that helps developers trace and debug their programs efficiently.
Source: LXer – Using the Python Debugger (pdb) for Efficient Debugging
In this article, we will show you how to check Apache web server uptime on a Linux system using different methods and commands.
The post 3 Methods to Check Apache Server Status, Uptime in Linux appeared first on Linux Today.
Source: Linux Today – 3 Methods to Check Apache Server Status, Uptime in Linux
Tesla has started notifying owners that they can transfer the Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature they purchased to a new vehicle, as long as they take delivery within the next three months. During the automaker’s Q2 2023 investor call, Elon Musk announced a “one-time amnesty” that will allow owners to transfer their FSD. Now, Twitter user Keith Dahlenburg has posted a screenshot (via Not A Tesla App, The Verge) of the offer, along with its rules and conditions.
Perhaps the most pertinent condition is that owners can only take advantage of this one-time amnesty if they take delivery of a new Tesla vehicle between July 20th and September 30th, 2023. It can’t be applied retroactively, so those who’ve taken delivery before and after those dates unfortunately have to pay for access again. And FSD doesn’t come cheap — Tesla raised its price to $15,000 last year. That’s an enormous price jump for early adopters who were able to snag the feature for $5,000 years ago. Now, they can get a new model without having to pay for the feature again.
Owners who choose to take the transfer offer will have to forfeit the capability in their current vehicle. Tesla will remove FSD from their old EV up to a week before their scheduled delivery date, and they can’t get it back even if they cancel their purchase for a new car. That said, Tesla also doesn’t guarantee delivery by the time the promo is over, so owners could still miss the offer if their deliveries unfortunately get delayed.
— Keith Dahlenburg 🇺🇸 (@Kdahlenburg) July 20, 2023
As the planet warms, mosquitoes are slowly migrating to higher places — and bringing malaria to populations not used to dealing with the potentially deadly disease.
Source: Gizmodo – Mosquitos Are Moving to Higher Elevations—and So Is Malaria
Currently, Americans only need a valid passport to visit to countries in the European Union (EU), but that’s soon going to change. Beginning early next year, people from approximately 60 countries around the world—including the U.S. and Canada—will need a new type of travel authorization to enter the EU. Here’s what…
Source: LifeHacker – You’ll Need a ‘Visa’ for Europe Soon
With Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse being a theatrical success and Spider-Man 2 set to hit the PlayStation 5 in October, everyone’s got Spiders on the brain. Ahead of the film’s release, Marvel made an effort to push specific Spider-Man variants such as Pavitr Prabhakar (Spider-Man India) and Hobie Brown…
Source: Gizmodo – Somehow, the Superior Spider-Man Has Returned
An anonymous reader shared this report from Axios:
Over 20% of the U.S.’ population — 80 million people — are expected to face an air temperature or heat index above 105 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend as a record-breaking heat wave persists over most of the South, the National Weather Service (NWS) warns…
The extreme temperatures, which have been exacerbated by human-caused climate change, will come after several days of excessive heat and will be an immediate risk to public health… Heat index is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature, and indices 103 degreesF or above can lead to dangerous heat disorders.
“Dozens” of temperature records could break across the Southern U.S., including overnight highs, the NWS said… About 115 million people in over a dozen states from California to Florida were under heat alerts on Thursday morning… The threatening heat is forecast to continue over the Southwest through “at least” July 28 and may expand into other parts of the country…
Global temperatures are hitting unprecedented highs, too, this year amid climate change and global warming. Elevated temperatures are also contributing to Canada’s worst fire season on record, in which at least 27.1 million acres have burned across the country so far.
On Wednesday the city of Phoenix, Arizona — population 1.6 million — “experienced its 20th straight day with a temperature of over 110 degreesF,” the article points out. And meanwhile Austin Texas (population 960,000) “saw its 10th straight day of temperatures at or above 105 degreesF for the first time in recorded history.”
The National Weather Service’s advice? “Take the heat seriously and avoid extended time outdoors.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Heat Indices Above 105 Degrees for 80 Million Americans This Weekend
2023 has been a doozy of a year for anyone keeping their ear to the ground on technology-related legislation. In just seven months, numerous US states have passed age verification laws and parental content requirements for kids to access social media which would have been impossible to imagine only a few years prior.…
Source: Gizmodo – The Worst Internet Bills of 2023, So Far
Adult Swim’s The Venture Bros. had an eventful life up to and including its sudden cancellation in 2018. For as long as gaps between seasons could get, it was just one of those shows that came to define the late night Cartoon Network block and also released at just the right moment. The years changed and the world…
Source: Gizmodo – The Venture Bros.’ Movie is a Welcome Return and Bittersweet End
The mountain of merchandise revealed at San Diego Comic-Con this year included a couple of toys we wish we could un-see. Lego’s two foot-tall brick-built Chewbacca’s beady eyes are already a staple of our nightmares, and is soon to be joined by a growing Groot Hasbro that makes the character look like he’s being…
Source: Gizmodo – Does Anyone Else Find Hasbro’s Groove ‘N Grow Groot Incredibly Upsetting?
Upgrade kernel on Sparky Linux 2023.07 up to 6.4.4-sparky8 via Synaptic Manager . Then atcivate Debian 12 repo per https://linuxiac.com/virtualbox-7-0-10-released/ and proceed as follows . . .
Source: LXer – Install VirtualBox 7.0.10 on Sparky Linux 2023.07 ( kernel 6.4.4 ) as KVM Guest