News archive (5 / 2020)

Microsoft has yesterday announced that its long-awaited Windows 10 v2004 update has been given the green light.

While the May update, as they like to call it, includes numerous improvements, new features, and security buffs, one of the most anticipated upgrades is definitely the ability reset the operating system without using a local media.

Yes, Microsoft has officially released the cloud reinstall feature that it has been teasing us about. Reset this PC now has two options one of which is cloud download alongside local reinstall.

Obviously this requires an internet connection, and for the sake of it not taking longer than the same process in the nineties it should be fairly fast.

Windows reinstall was a meme before memes were even cool, and although Microsoft have reduced the pain of having to reset your computer over the years, this new feature can't come fast enough.

The update also includes an improved Windows Hello, new and improved Microsoft Edge browser, Cortana search with text, new DirectX features, WSL 2 for developers, and much more.

Windows 10 v2004 roll-out has begun but it might take days of even weeks for it to land on your device. You can check whether you are the lucky recipient by going to your Windows Update section and hitting Check for updates.

The United States President has attacked the social media after Twitter added the first fact check link to his tweet. President Trump threatened to regulate or even close social media if there isn't action to make them a better home for conservatives.

This comes after Trump tweeted about mail-in ballots being a hotbed for fraud. This was the first tweet by the president that was marked by Twitter for fact check link.

This linked to a custom Twitter page which highlighted opposing views to Trump's, headlined by the likes of CNN and other sources Trump probably considers "fake news."

Regulations on social media have been a hot topic for years now. Even the social media themselves don't know what to think. Many times they've welcomed regulation since it would make it easier for them to do business.

Facebook and Twitter often come on different sides of this issue, and this case was no different. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg made a statement that they wouldn't have acted in the way Twitter did.

Facebook CEO told Fox News that he doesn't think social media companies, or more specifically platforms, should not act as an arbiter of truth.

OnePlus has become one of the larger smartphone manufacturer, and for its size it has managed to gain significant momentum in the Android space. However, it all started in 2014 with an aggressive campaign that promised flagship killer specs for less than half the price.

Now years later, things are very different. Biannual price hikes mean that the current OnePlus flagship costs around $900, three times as much as the OnePlus One (pictured). However, the company has promised it hasn't forgotten where it initially started from.

In an interview with Fast Company, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau has confirmed that they are working on a more affordable smartphone to accompany this years OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro. Not many details are shared about the product, but it should arrive soon in India and later this year in Europe and the United States.

This will be the first time since OnePlus has taken the approach since OnePlus X in 2015, when even their flagships were still very cheap. According to the rumors, the new affordable phone will be called OnePlus Z, which would make it seem definitely like a successor to the first cheaper OnePlus phone.

As subscription services have become a mainstay in everything from music, movies, games and more, providers are trying to tempt everyone to join their monthly billed services.

Most companies offer some sort of starter perk, usually a free or discounted membership for months, others, namely Netflix, are promising to kick you off the service is you are too inactive. Wait, what?!

Yes, you read that right. Netflix has announced that it will start contacting inactive users whether they'd like to cancel their service, and if they don't answer, they'll just go ahead, kick them off the platform and say goodbye to their income.

The company's product innovations director Eddy Wu has announced in a press release that they will start asking members that haven't watched anything for a year whether they'd like to cancel their subscription.

Nice approach from Netflix, who acknowledge according to the press release that nobody wants to pay for a service they don't use. According to Wu, these account represent around half a percentage of total subscribers and are "already factored into our financial guidance."

Yes, you read the headline right. The 8-bit computer back from 1980s is still very much alive. Sold mostly in Japan and in various European countries back in the day, the MSX hobbyist are making sure that the MSX will be relevant, also in 2020s.

So, to bring the almost 40 year old computer to modern times, there's now Instagram client for it: instagr8. Software itself works on both, the original MSX standard (dubbed nowadays often as MSX1) and on more modern MSX2 computers. As one might expect, the picture quality of Instagram photos is much better when used on MSX2 computers.

Here's a short demo of the software, running on original MSX1:

MSX1 specs aren't exactly top notch nowadays: mere 3.52MHz CPU (or, in modern terms: 0.00352GHz) and with 25kb of free RAM memory to run your own software. To make up this shortfall, most of the code itself has been shifted to server-side processing. Basically, the proxy server in between does most of the heavy lifting and converts the image to be better suited for the ancient computer model. But nevertheless, the project is quite awesome, as you can see from the videos here!

instagr8 is open source project and its code can be found from itse official Github page. As MSX1 standard doesn't include any form of network connectivity, the software also requires a cartridge called GR8NET that adds HTTP layer, network connectivity and more to the MSX1 device.

Microsoft's feeling towards open source community have taken a full U-turn during the past couple of years. Most notably, company acquired the beloved GitHub back in 2018.

Besides acquiring GitHub, Microsoft has also realized its own importance in history of technology and has open-sourced several of its historic products. Most notably, company released the source codes of MS-DOS operating system back in 2018.

Now, the trend continues, as Microsoft has decided to release the source codes for GW-BASIC, the BASIC programming language intepreter that originally shipped with MS-DOS 2.0, back in 1983. Intepreter has been developed with 8088 assembly, meaning that in order to tinker with it, you need to know assembly - not high-level programming languages, like C or Java. But the source is there, so anyone can get it and start developing even better BASIC intepreter, if they feel like it. And of course, the source code is available through GitHub. Obviously.

COVID-19 has been destructive on both the health of people of the world as well as the health of most economies. Obviously some have gotten it worse than other, and this is true in both realms.

In business, not many businesses have had it harder than the airline industry, and, as we all know, Zoom has become the new Kleenex of video conferencing. Merging financial data from these companies brings us to a very interesting tidbit.

An infographic shared on Twitter expands upon the market cap difference of Zoom and seven of the largest airlines. According to it, Zoom has outgrown all seven combined with $47.47 billion.

The largest of the airlines is Southwest with a market cap of $14.68 billion and it's followed by Delta at $12 billion, United at $6 billion, as well as IAG (including British Airways), Lufthansa, American Airlines and Air France with peanuts.

Figures have been calculated using May 15 stock prices, and even though Zoom's stock has gone up, so have the airlines, and they've overtaken Zoom eve so slightly.

At the time of writing this the combined value of the seven airlines is at just over $53 billion while Zoom's market cap is a pitiful 48.45 billion.

Although Zoom's rise has been impressive one wouldn't expect competition between Zoom and seven largest airlines to last much longer as travel rules are loosening.

Nintendo of America has filed two lawsuits targeting products that circumvent the technological protection measures of its Nintendo Switch devices.

It filed two lawsuits last week in the United States. One lawsuit filed in Los Angeles targets the operator of a website called UberChips, while a second lawsuit filed in Seattle targets anonymous defendants from numerous different websites.

At the core of the complaint are mod products created by the group Team Xecuter. In the lawsuits, Nintendo described the infringing products as providing an "unauthorized operating system." This OS circumvents the device's protection against unauthorized access and copying.

Makers of video game console devices tend to use systems that prevent or limit the running of third-party software. This prevents the devices from being tricked into running pirated copies of video games or to do other things like interfering with a running video game for the purposes of cheating and unauthorized modifications.

These systems can be breached by hardware or software modifications once a weakness is found. Team Xecuter is one group that has long developed modchips and tools that enable the modification of software and hardware video game devices, enabling them to execute what would otherwise be restricted.

The media personality, stand-up comic, UFC commentator and perhaps nowadays most importantly podcast host Joe Rogan has shared a huge announcement on Instagram. The host of Joe Rogan Experience has announced that the show will be soon on Spotify.

What's crazier, after the initial move on September 1 to Spotify in addition to other channels, JRE will become Spotify exclusive starting at some point late in the year. No more YouTube videos of JRE, except for short clips he assures are to stay on Google's video platform.

Both audio and video versions of JRE will be moved to Spotify only but Rogan made it clear in the post that Spotify will have no editorial control, he's not an employee of Spotify, and the show will remain free as always. No changes to the show are expected, except for the platform it is hosted on.

There's no word on how large of a purse full of gold coins the Swedish streaming giant had to offer Rogan in order to secure the licensing deal but it must be an all-time most influential move on the podcast market.

Joe Rogan Experience guests this year alone have included Elon Musk, Bill Maher, Robert Downey Jr. and host of other high-profile experts, comics, leaders, actors and other guests.

Ten years ago Markus "Notch" Persson founded the gaming studio Mojang and after a year Minecraft was released. After years and years of breaking records Microsoft bought the company, and the game with it, for $2.5 billion.

Everyone knows the game and it has become a social phenomenon in the nearly 10 years it's been around. More importantly it has continued to evolve and lure in new players.

Last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Minecraft has never been in a better spot, and the main man of Microsoft might have been right.

Now Minecraft is celebrating a milestone no game has ever come even close to. The game has sold an unbelievable 200 million copies.

To give this achievement some perspective, the second-most sold game in history is GTA V with 120 million units and Minecraft has sold twice as many copies as the legandary Tetris at 100 million. And Minecraft is definitely not done selling, either.

Just recently, Mojang updated the graphics of Minecraft and now includes support for ray tracing.

To celebrated the milestone, Mojang has been renamed Mojang Studios, which encompasses all the studios. Also, the company received a brand new logo, that you can see above and is introduced in the video below.

The squabble between Huawei and the U.S. government has continued for years now, and there seems to be no end to it. the most recent changes to government rules renew existing restrictions and add some new ones.

Trump admin has added another three months to the Huawei ban, meanwhile also extending the exceptions to this rule. This means that there won't be Android on Huawei phones at least for another three months, and probably for the foreseeable future.

The exceptions that allow some specific cases, like some companies building networks in the U.S., to still do business with the Chinese company will remain in place. However, bipartisan pressure might make this the last extension.

Both aisles seem to believe that Huawei's connections with the Chinese government indeed endanger national security.

The most important part of the new rules are however, well, the new rules. These include a required license from all companies that are selling American-owned technology to Huawei.

Due to this the Taiwanese semiconductor powerhouse TSMC, who's been providing most of Huawei's smarpthone chips, has to acquire a license to continue manufacturing for Huawei. That hasn't happened, at least yet, and thus TSMC has had to halt production.

Apple is reopening more of its stores in the U.S. and Canada but it taking extra precautions to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

The Cupertino giant had closed all of its Apple stores worldwide in April as the world responded to a wave of COVID-19 cases. Now that the pandemic seems to be slowing in many places, Apple is responding in line with local circumstances and orders in reopening its retail stores.

According to reports, 25 stores are reopening next in California, Washington, Florida, Colorado, Hawaii and Oklahoma. However, it is not business as usual. For starters, all staff at the stores will be wearing face masks and all customers are expected to wear masks or face coverings too. If customers do not have a mask, they will be provided with one.

Additionally, customers may have their temperature checked and be posted health questions will screen for those with symptoms -- like cough or fever -- or who have had recent exposure to someone infected with COVID‑19. Overall level of service will depend on the status of the virus locally, so in some places there may be only pick up service. Stores may close just as quickly as they opened if circumstances change too.

Multiple reports of compromised high-performance computer systems across Europe surfaced in the past week, and clues may indicate a single actor behind the breaches.

Supercomputer systems are energy-hungry high-performance number crunchers that are used for everything from weather pattern modelling to simulating protein folding. That same raw calculation power can be used for mining cryptocurrencies, and cases have happened in the past where employees have been busted running unauthorized mining operations on HPCs.

Reports out of Europe last week suggests that for the first time hackers have successfully breached multiple HPCs and clusters to run a mining application. Last Monday, the ARCHER supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh was was shut down while a security exploitation was investigated. The same day, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, the bwHPC organization shut down five of its HPC clusters due to similar incidents.

Furthermore, later last week similar incidents was reported in Germany, in Barcelona, and also in Zurich. None of the organizations managing the systems gave detailed accounts of the breaches, but the Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) for the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) provided malware samples and network compromise indicators from the multiple incidents.

It might sound like a very small change, but it is interesting decision nevertheless. YouTube has recently changed its video quality classification in a way that no longer categorizes 720p video as High Definition (HD) video.

From now on, only videos with 1080p resolution or higher are being listed as HD videos in YouTube listings. This is also visible when user changes the quality of the video playback - there, the small HD label appears only for 1080p and beyond.

YouTube itself hasn't commented on the change, but the trend is pretty clear. A decade ago, yes, 720p could be realistically categorized as "high definition", as most videos were still using 480p resolution (or worse) and 1080p was the de facto best video quality available for most people. But since then, 4K videos have become commonplace, as have TV sets and services that are capable to ourput such videos.

For comparison, the good olde 720p video has 921'600 pixels in each video frame. Meanwhile, the most common 4K videos, using UHD resolution, have 8 294 400 pixels per frame. Thus, 4K videos have almost ten times higher resolution than 720p videos.

Ubisoft has filed a lawsuit against Apple and Google over the availability of a game it alleges to have ripped off its intellectual property on their digital stores.

In the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Friday, the French publisher claims that the tech giants have refused to remove Area F2. Developed by Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd.'s Ejoy.com, Area F2 is the title is a near carbon copy of Rainbow Six: Siege, according to the Ubisoft complaint.

"R6S is among the most popular competitive multiplayer games in the world, and is among Ubisoft's most valuable intellectual properties," Ubisoft claims, reports Bloomberg.

"Virtually every aspect of AF2 is copied from R6S, from the operator selection screen to the final scoring screen, and everything in between."

The title has been available to download from the services for a month, and according to Ubisoft, it notified both Google and Apple of its infringing nature.

While the use of legitimate film and TV streaming services has risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for illegal streaming has also gone up sharply.

In some cases, it has also trebled, according to a report by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). FACT has observed a significant increase in links to illegal streams of films that are shared online during the past couple of months, compared to February.

It reports that the FACT scanning team removed more than double the volume of film links and illegal streams in April. FACT also notes that the closure of movie theaters has resulted in movies being made available for streaming when in normal times they would be exclusively in cinemas.

While that has been seen as a success - with Trolls World Tour generating more revenue during three weeks of digital release than its prequel did during five months in cinemas - FACT also warned that it comes with a hidden cost of piracy spreading illegal copies and streams of them around the world.

"Piracy is any rights holders' biggest competitor and with content consumption set to stay digital, it's never been more important to protect content. Whenever its release; we can protect it," the FACT report reads.

Social network giant Facebook is to acquire animated GIF-sharing platform Giphy, putting it under its Instagram service.

The company announced its decision to acquire Giphy in a company blog post on Friday, though it did not disclose the financial cost of the move. However, Axios estimated the cost at around $400 million.

Facebook will make Giphy a part of its Instagram photo-sharing platform, revealing that 50 percent of GIPHY's traffic comes from the Facebook family of apps, half of that from Instagram alone.

"GIPHY will continue to operate its library (including its global content collection), and we're looking forward to investing further in its technology and relationships with content and API partners," the Facebook announcement blog reads.

"People will still be able to upload GIFs; developers and API partners will continue to have the same access to GIPHY's APIs, and GIPHY's creative community will still be able to create great content."

Read more at Facebook.

Sony has released an app that will help shoppers determine if televisions will fit comfortably in their living rooms.

The new Envision TV AR app lets potential buyers select a TV model and see how it will fit in a given space. All the user has to do is select a TV and point the phone's camera to view the TV in any space. It can show TVs mounted or on a stand.

Additionally, the app displays technical details including HDMI and other ports.

"As we continue to stay home, this app offers a new way for our customers to confidently purchase a Sony TV in the comfort of their living rooms," said Mike Fasulo, president, and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics North America. "We hope this new technology takes the guesswork out of shopping online."

The Envision TV AR app can be downloaded for Android devices from the Play Store. It is also available from Apple's App Store for iOS devices.

Epic Games online store greeted users with errors on Thursday as online shoppers sought to get a copy of Grand Theft Auto V for free.

The Rockstar Games blockbuster, released in 2013, is available for free until May 21 and can be downloaded from the Epic Games Store provided you install the store's launcher on your computer. There is currently a Mega sale going on at the store with many big titles seeing price ups up to 50 percent.

As news of the GTA V freebie spread, traffic to the Epic Games Store blew up to the point that visitors started to see a '500' error presented in a variety of languages. There were also reports that Launcher logins were affecting Fortnite players throughout the day as a result of the extra traffic.

Popular titles including Red Dead Redemption 2 and Control are available with significant discounts until June 11, while the store is also giving everyone a $10 coupon to spend on games that cost $14 or more.

President Donald Trump has extended the ban of several Chinese telecom manufacturers, namely Huawei, to May 2021.

Ban essentially bars American compnies from using telecom equipment manufactured by Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE, citing national security risk as the reason.

However, The U.S. Commerce Department has granted several extensions that have allowed U.S. companies to continue business with Huawei. Current extension is set to expre on Friday, but it is highly likely that it will be extended once again.

The trade war between United States and China is most visible with Huawei's consumer products where company has abandoned the use of Google services. Basically all new Huawei phones are sold without Google Play, Youtube and other Google products. It also means that consumers buying new Huawei phones can't access the Google Play to download new apps, but they have to rely on much more limited selection of alternative app stores.

Rooting Huawei phones has proven to be tricky, so there are no easy options for those who want to buy Huawei phone, but also want to use familiar Google services.

Several sources claim that Google is planning to retire its popular Chromecast media streaming device line and replace it with Android TV -based device.

According to rumors, the upcoming device would carry Google Nest brand, to be in line with company's other "smart home" devices. Device itself would use Android TV, like many other popular media streaming solutions, such as Roku and Android Fire TV.

Chromecast itself isn't an independent media streaming solution, but rather a playback device where user can "cast" videos from his/her phone or computer that the Chromecast would then happily output to user's TV set. Android TV-based device, however, would be completely independent device, allowing user to use a traditional remote control to watch material from select providers, such as YouTube and Netflix.

Chromecast fans wouldn't be forgotten: the rumored device would also include Google Cast support, meaning that it would still function exactly like Chromecast does, if needed.