In many ways, handheld gaming PCs are the modern descendants of the UMPCs (ultra mobile PCs) from twenty years ago. But with a few exceptions, most don’t have the keyboards or long battery life that you’d want for general purpose computing….
In many ways, handheld gaming PCs are the modern descendants of the UMPCs (ultra mobile PCs) from twenty years ago. But with a few exceptions, most don’t have the keyboards or long battery life that you’d want for general purpose computing. Fortunately for fans of handheld computing, we’ve also seen a number of DIY solutions […]
The post Lilbits: A new handheld Linux PC, Google opens up the Play Store (a little), Samsung’s web browser comes to PCs appeared first on Liliputing.
Casey Means missed hearing on surgeon general nomination after going into labor.
Siblings Casey and Calley Means—wellness darlings of the Make America Healthy Again movement, despite being rife with potential conflicts of interest—are both missing from the political arena, at least for now.
Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, was scheduled to appear virtually at a Senate confirmation hearing today, but the hearing was postponed indefinitely after she went into labor. The hearing, it turns out, had been scheduled two days after her due date, CNN reported this morning.
Meanwhile, The New York Times separately reported that Calley Means has departed from the White House, vacating his role as a “Special Government Employee,” which has a 130-day term limit. The Times reported that Calley left about a month ago when the term ended, though the White House never announced his departure, and he has continued to be identified as a government employee in press articles and at a conference. Calley, who has acted as an influential advisor to anti-vaccine health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., told the Times that the press articles and his conference biography were inaccurate.
Bodycam footage undermined sheriff’s “true threat” justification for the arrest.
The saga of a 61-year-old man jailed for more than a month after reposting a Facebook meme has ended, but free speech advocates are still reeling in the wake.
On Wednesday, Larry Bushart was released from Perry County Jail, where he had spent weeks unable to make bail, which a judge set at $2 million. Prosecutors have not explained why the charges against him were dropped, according to The Intercept, which has been tracking the case closely. However, officials faced mounting pressure following media coverage and a social media campaign called “Free Larry Bushart,” which stoked widespread concern over suspected police censorship of a US citizen over his political views.
Bushart’s arrest came after he decided to troll a message thread about a Charlie Kirk vigil in a Facebook group called “What’s Happening in Perry County, TN.” He posted a meme showing a picture of Donald Trump saying, “We should get over it.” The meme included a caption that said “Donald Trump, on the Perry High School mass shooting, one day after,” and Bushart included a comment with his post that said, “This seems relevant today ….”
Cellebrite can apparently extract data from most Pixel phones, unless they’re running GrapheneOS.
Despite being a vast repository of personal information, smartphones used to have little by way of security. That has thankfully changed, but companies like Cellebrite offer law enforcement tools that can bypass security on some devices. The company keeps the specifics quiet, but an anonymous individual recently logged in to a Cellebrite briefing and came away with a list of which of Google’s Pixel phones are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking.
This person, who goes by the handle rogueFed, posted screenshots from the recent Microsoft Teams meeting to the GrapheneOS forums (spotted by 404 Media). GrapheneOS is an Android-based operating system that can be installed on select phones, including Pixels. It ships with enhanced security features and no Google services. Because of its popularity among the security-conscious, Cellebrite apparently felt the need to include it in its matrix of Pixel phone support.
The screenshot includes data on the Pixel 6, Pixel 7, Pixel 8, and Pixel 9 family. It does not list the Pixel 10 series, which launched just a few months ago. The phone support is split up into three different conditions: before first unlock, after first unlock, and unlocked. The before first unlock (BFU) state means the phone has not been unlocked since restarting, so all data is encrypted. This is traditionally the most secure state for a phone. In the after first unlock (AFU) state, data extraction is easier. And naturally, an unlocked phone is open season on your data.
Time for some “life lessons.”
With a child in college and a spouse who’s a professor, I have front-row access to the unfolding debacle that is “higher education in the age of AI.”
These days, students routinely submit even “personal reflection” papers that are AI generated. (And routinely appear surprised when caught.)
Read a paper longer than 10 pages? Not likely—even at elite schools. Toss that sucker into an AI tool and read a quick summary instead. It’s more efficient!
Time for some “life lessons.”
With a child in college and a spouse who’s a professor, I have front-row access to the unfolding debacle that is “higher education in the age of AI.”
These days, students routinely submit even “personal reflection” papers that are AI generated. (And routinely appear surprised when caught.)
Read a paper longer than 10 pages? Not likely—even at elite schools. Toss that sucker into an AI tool and read a quick summary instead. It’s more efficient!
Updated app is “free forever,” but perpetually licensed Affinity apps are gone.
When graphic design platform-provider Canva bought the Affinity image-editing and publishing apps early last year, we had some major questions about how the companies’ priorities and products would mesh. How would Canva serve the users who preferred Affinity’s perpetually licensed apps to Adobe’s subscription-only software suite? And how would Affinity’s strong stance against generative AI be reconciled with Canva’s embrace of those technologies.
This week, Canva gave us definitive answers to all of those questions: a brand-new unified Affinity app that melds the Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps into a single piece of software called “Affinity by Canva” that is free to use with a Canva user account, but which gates generative AI features behind Canva’s existing paid subscription plans ($120 a year for individuals).
This does seem like mostly good news, in the near to mid term, for existing Affinity app users who admired Affinity’s anti-AI stance: all three apps’ core features are free to use, and the stuff you’re being asked to pay for is stuff you mostly don’t want anyway. But it may come as unwelcome news for those who like the predictability of pay-once-own-forever software or who are nervous about where Canva might draw the line between “free” and “premium” features down the line.
Updated app is “free forever,” but perpetually licensed Affinity apps are gone.
When graphic design platform-provider Canva bought the Affinity image-editing and publishing apps early last year, we had some major questions about how the companies’ priorities and products would mesh. How would Canva serve the users who preferred Affinity’s perpetually licensed apps to Adobe’s subscription-only software suite? And how would Affinity’s strong stance against generative AI be reconciled with Canva’s embrace of those technologies.
This week, Canva gave us definitive answers to all of those questions: a brand-new unified Affinity app that melds the Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps into a single piece of software called “Affinity by Canva” that is free to use with a Canva user account, but which gates generative AI features behind Canva’s existing paid subscription plans ($120 a year for individuals).
This does seem like mostly good news, in the near to mid term, for existing Affinity app users who admired Affinity’s anti-AI stance: all three apps’ core features are free to use, and the stuff you’re being asked to pay for is stuff you mostly don’t want anyway. But it may come as unwelcome news for those who like the predictability of pay-once-own-forever software or who are nervous about where Canva might draw the line between “free” and “premium” features down the line.
Dustin: “We stay true to ourselves, we stay true to our friends, no matter the cost.”
We’re a few weeks away from the debut of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things—at least the first of three parts of it—and Netflix has dropped one doozy of a trailer that shows things looking pretty bleak for our small-town heroes of Hawkins.
(Spoilers for prior seasons below.)
As previously reported, S4 ended with Vecna—the Big Bad behind it all—opening the gate that allowed the Upside Down to leak into Hawkins. We’re getting a time jump for S5, but in a way, we’re coming full circle, since the events coincide with the third anniversary of Will’s original disappearance in S1. The fifth season will have eight episodes, and each one will be looong—akin to eight feature-length films. Per the official premise:
US says net neutrality is price regulation and is banned in $42B grant program.
The Trump administration is refusing to give broadband-deployment grants to states that enforce net neutrality rules or price regulations, a Commerce Department official said.
The administration claims that net neutrality rules are a form of rate regulation and thus not allowed under the US law that created the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Commerce Department official Arielle Roth said that any state accepting BEAD funds must exempt Internet service providers from net neutrality and price regulations in all parts of the state, not only in areas where the ISP is given funds to deploy broadband service.
States could object to the NTIA decisions and sue the US government. But even a successful lawsuit could take years and leave unserved homes without broadband for the foreseeable future.