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I’m in the camp that believes Google’s browser-based Chrome OS was always a “real” operating system and not just a glorified web browser. But the addition of support for Android apps and Linux apps in recent years has certainly …
I’m in the camp that believes Google’s browser-based Chrome OS was always a “real” operating system and not just a glorified web browser. But the addition of support for Android apps and Linux apps in recent years has certainly gone a long way toward making the operating system more versatile. Now it looks like there […]
The post Chrome OS updates to bring Linux apps to MediaTek Chromebooks, Android 9 to most Chromebooks appeared first on Liliputing.
Buggy updates point at deeper problems.
Enlarge / Windows 10 during a product launch event in Tokyo in July 2015. (credit: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
It's fair to say that the Windows 10 October 2018 Update has not been Microsoft's most successful update. Reports of data loss quickly emerged, forcing Microsoft to suspend distribution of the update. It has since been fixed and is currently undergoing renewed testing pending a re-release.
This isn't the first Windows feature update that's had problems—we've seen things like significant hardware incompatibilities in previous updates—but it's certainly the worst. While most of us know the theory of having backups, the reality is that lots of data, especially on home PCs, has no real backup, and deleting that data is thus disastrous.
Microsoft's ambition with Windows 10 was to radically shake up how it develops Windows 10. The company wanted to better respond to customer and market needs, and to put improved new features into customers' hands sooner. Core to this was the notion that Windows 10 is the "last" version of Windows—all new development work will be an update to Windows 10, delivered through feature updates several times a year. This new development model was branded "Windows as a Service." And after some initial fumbling, Microsoft settled on a cadence of two feature updates a year; one in April, one in October.
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Extreme weather events led to cascading failure of critical water infrastructure.
Enlarge / The Cambodian city of Angkor was once the largest in the world until vast swathes of the population decamped in the 15th century. Its famous temple, Angkor Wat (above), survived. (credit: Stefan Irvine/LightRocket/Getty Images)
The Cambodian city of Angkor was once the largest in the world... then the vast majority of its inhabitants suddenly decamped in the 15th century to a region near the modern city of Phnom Penh. Historians have put forth several theories about why this mass exodus occurred. A new paper in Science Advances argues that one major contributing factor was an overloaded water distribution system, exacerbated by extreme swings in the climate.
Angkor dates back to around 802 CE. Its vast network of canals, moats, embankments, and reservoirs developed over the next 600 years, helping distribute vital water resources for such uses as irrigation and to help control occasional flooding. By the end of the 11th century, the system bore all the features of a complex network, with thousands of interconnected individual components heavily dependent on each other.
Such a configuration, hovering at or near the so-called critical point, is ideal for the effective flow of resources, whether we're talking about water, electricity (power grids), traffic, the spread of disease, or information (the stock market and the Internet). The tradeoff is that it can become much more sensitive to even tiny perturbations—so much so that a small outage in one part of the network can trigger a sudden network-wide cascading failure.
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Interne Dokumente sollen Aufschluss über das künftige Finanzierungsmodell für die Google-Apps geben: Demnach will Google von den Herstellern je nach Region und Pixeldichte bis zu 40 US-Dollar pro Android-Gerät verlangen. Wer Chrome und die Google-Suche…
Interne Dokumente sollen Aufschluss über das künftige Finanzierungsmodell für die Google-Apps geben: Demnach will Google von den Herstellern je nach Region und Pixeldichte bis zu 40 US-Dollar pro Android-Gerät verlangen. Wer Chrome und die Google-Suche installiert, soll Ermäßigungen bekommen. (Google, Browser) Like chucking dice? Check this game out.
Enlarge (credit: Nate Anderson)
Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.
When it comes to gaming, I am a man of simple pleasures. I need no boxes of sculpted minis, no hour-long setup, no manuals the size of novels. Let me chuck huge handfuls of dice, collect colorful goods, earn chunky gems, and I am content. Wrap the whole package in elegant artwork with a clear ruleset and a low price, and I am ready to play, anytime, anywhere.
That's why I love Istanbul: The Dice Game, the (inevitable) dice-driven implementation of 2014's award-winning board game, Istanbul. In that earlier big-box game, players moved their "merchants" around the "bazaar" to collect and trade goods, or to gamble in the tea shop, or to spring a relative from jail and send him on an errand for you. (Don't ask.) The goal was to collect enough shiny acrylic rubies to retire rich.
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Nutzer von Googles Pixel-Smartphones berichten von Problemen mit nicht abgespeicherten Fotos. Nachdem sie eine Aufnahme gemacht haben, taucht diese manchmal gar nicht in der Galerie auf oder nur das Thumbnail. Ursache des Problems könnte die HDR-Funkti…
Dietmar Gollnick ist Chef von e*message, einem Pager-Funkbetreiber, der unter anderem Ärzte und Feuerwehrleute über Notfälle benachrichtigt. Vor dem Landgericht Braunschweig verklagt er Apple, da diese mit iMessage einen Dienst mit zu ähnlichem Namen a…
Steam users who want to keep up with the latest news in the file-sharing, copyright, and game cheating lawsuit arenas are not currently free to do so via Steam. For reasons best known to the gaming platform, all links to TorrentFreak.com news articles posted by users are banned by the platform and wrongfully labeled as “potentially malicious”.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
Once upon a time, Internet users were free to look at whatever content they liked. There was an almost complete absence of intervention from third-parties, which was mostly a good thing.
However, after the number of Internet users rocketed, more threats began to emerge. Viruses and other types of malware became pervasive, aiming to abuse users’ computers in various ways, from creating botnets to simple vandalism.
As a result, the security market has boomed. Barely a week goes by without some website or piece of software triggering an alert on a machine protected by good anti-virus and anti-malware tools. They don’t always get it right but most interventions are welcomed when the intention is to keep us safe.
On top, however, Internet users are finding online resources censored. Nation states sometimes decide what citizens can and cannot read, while corporate firewall products and network routers often act as over-protective nannies, blocking content based on non-transparent, non-public rules.
Here at TorrentFreak we’re used to censorship. Every few months we’re contacted by readers trying to access our news articles on public WiFi, only to find that the site is blocked alongside various warnings, none of which are true. It’s almost as if the word ‘torrent’ in our URL has been blindly blacklisted for some reason.
Sadly, this week we’ve discovered that Steam, the popular digital game distribution and social networking platform, has jumped on the “let’s censor TorrentFreak” bandwaggon. A tip from a TF reader and Steam user highlighted the problems he’d experienced when trying to read TF articles via Steam’s chat interface.
“I don’t know if you’re already aware of this but the PC gaming software ‘Steam’ is flagging your website as ‘suspicious’ in its chat interface,” he explained.
As the first image below shows, Steam first flagged a link to an article we published this week detailing how Japan intends to crack down on sites that offer links to copyrighted content.
The small irony here is that the article details how Japan needs to bring in new and highly controversial laws to criminalize linking to copyrighted content, something which is currently legal in the country. Steam, however, is free to block links to our 100% legal copyrighted content on a whim, mark our platform as “suspicious”, while blocking users from reading our reports.
The second image below shows just how misguided Steam’s policy is. This week, TorrentFreak broke the news that cheat developers in Australia face home searches and asset freezing following legal action from GTA V developer Rockstar Games and parent company Take-Two Interactive.
It is an original article that covers an important and growing issue in the gaming sector that will hopefully prove of interest to gamers – the very people using Steam’s platform. However, Steam users are prevented from following links to the piece because someone or something at Steam has labeled our news site as “potentially malicious.”
While these are just two examples, we could go on forever. As the large image below shows, Steam has banned our entire platform and put up a warning that’s not only completely false but also damaging to our reputation.
“https://torrentfreak.com has been flagged as being potentially malicious. For your safety, Steam will not open this URL in your web browser. The site could contain malicious content or be known for stealing user credentials,” the warning reads.
Of course, on its own platform Steam is fully entitled to block resources that it believes can harm its users. Some might even argue that it has a duty of care to do so, in order to keep its community safe. However, making blatantly false statements while blocking access to accurate news reporting shouldn’t ever be part of that.
Steam is no stranger to blocking links to sites in the file-sharing niche. Previously we’ve reported how it blocked links to KickassTorrents, The Pirate Bay, and MEGA.nz.
While the ban on MEGA was lifted shortly after our article was published back in April, the company appears to be out of favor with Steam once again. Tests show that Mega.nz links are completely banned by the gaming platform with a warning about malicious content and potential stealing of credentials. Meanwhile, known scam sites such as Demonoid.to are in the clear, according to Steam.
There is nothing malicious about our news resource and we’re really upset at the suggestion we might steal user credentials. We’d therefore be very grateful indeed if a Steam engineer could remove TorrentFreak.com from its blacklists, whenever he or she gets a couple of free minutes.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
Steam users who want to keep up with the latest news in the file-sharing, copyright, and game cheating lawsuit arenas are not currently free to do so via Steam. For reasons best known to the gaming platform, all links to TorrentFreak.com news articles posted by users are banned by the platform and wrongfully labeled as “potentially malicious”.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
Once upon a time, Internet users were free to look at whatever content they liked. There was an almost complete absence of intervention from third-parties, which was mostly a good thing.
However, after the number of Internet users rocketed, more threats began to emerge. Viruses and other types of malware became pervasive, aiming to abuse users’ computers in various ways, from creating botnets to simple vandalism.
As a result, the security market has boomed. Barely a week goes by without some website or piece of software triggering an alert on a machine protected by good anti-virus and anti-malware tools. They don’t always get it right but most interventions are welcomed when the intention is to keep us safe.
On top, however, Internet users are finding online resources censored. Nation states sometimes decide what citizens can and cannot read, while corporate firewall products and network routers often act as over-protective nannies, blocking content based on non-transparent, non-public rules.
Here at TorrentFreak we’re used to censorship. Every few months we’re contacted by readers trying to access our news articles on public WiFi, only to find that the site is blocked alongside various warnings, none of which are true. It’s almost as if the word ‘torrent’ in our URL has been blindly blacklisted for some reason.
Sadly, this week we’ve discovered that Steam, the popular digital game distribution and social networking platform, has jumped on the “let’s censor TorrentFreak” bandwaggon. A tip from a TF reader and Steam user highlighted the problems he’d experienced when trying to read TF articles via Steam’s chat interface.
“I don’t know if you’re already aware of this but the PC gaming software ‘Steam’ is flagging your website as ‘suspicious’ in its chat interface,” he explained.
As the first image below shows, Steam first flagged a link to an article we published this week detailing how Japan intends to crack down on sites that offer links to copyrighted content.
The small irony here is that the article details how Japan needs to bring in new and highly controversial laws to criminalize linking to copyrighted content, something which is currently legal in the country. Steam, however, is free to block links to our 100% legal copyrighted content on a whim, mark our platform as “suspicious”, while blocking users from reading our reports.
The second image below shows just how misguided Steam’s policy is. This week, TorrentFreak broke the news that cheat developers in Australia face home searches and asset freezing following legal action from GTA V developer Rockstar Games and parent company Take-Two Interactive.
It is an original article that covers an important and growing issue in the gaming sector that will hopefully prove of interest to gamers – the very people using Steam’s platform. However, Steam users are prevented from following links to the piece because someone or something at Steam has labeled our news site as “potentially malicious.”
While these are just two examples, we could go on forever. As the large image below shows, Steam has banned our entire platform and put up a warning that’s not only completely false but also damaging to our reputation.
“https://torrentfreak.com has been flagged as being potentially malicious. For your safety, Steam will not open this URL in your web browser. The site could contain malicious content or be known for stealing user credentials,” the warning reads.
Of course, on its own platform Steam is fully entitled to block resources that it believes can harm its users. Some might even argue that it has a duty of care to do so, in order to keep its community safe. However, making blatantly false statements while blocking access to accurate news reporting shouldn’t ever be part of that.
Steam is no stranger to blocking links to sites in the file-sharing niche. Previously we’ve reported how it blocked links to KickassTorrents, The Pirate Bay, and MEGA.nz.
While the ban on MEGA was lifted shortly after our article was published back in April, the company appears to be out of favor with Steam once again. Tests show that Mega.nz links are completely banned by the gaming platform with a warning about malicious content and potential stealing of credentials. Meanwhile, known scam sites such as Demonoid.to are in the clear, according to Steam.
There is nothing malicious about our news resource and we’re really upset at the suggestion we might steal user credentials. We’d therefore be very grateful indeed if a Steam engineer could remove TorrentFreak.com from its blacklists, whenever he or she gets a couple of free minutes.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.
Die forensische Software Printracker erlaubt es, von 3D-gedruckten Gegenständen präzise Rückschlüsse auf den verwendeten Drucker zu ziehen. Sogar einzelne Geräte können identifiziert werden, haben Forscher belegt. (3D-Drucker, Technologie)
Die forensische Software Printracker erlaubt es, von 3D-gedruckten Gegenständen präzise Rückschlüsse auf den verwendeten Drucker zu ziehen. Sogar einzelne Geräte können identifiziert werden, haben Forscher belegt. (3D-Drucker, Technologie) 
Nutzer von Googles Pixel-Smartphones berichten von Problemen mit nicht abgespeicherten Fotos. Nachdem sie eine Aufnahme gemacht haben, taucht diese manchmal gar nicht in der Galerie auf oder nur das Thumbnail. Ursache des Problems könnte die HDR-Funktion sein. (
Dietmar Gollnick ist Chef von e*message, einem Pager-Funkbetreiber, der unter anderem Ärzte und Feuerwehrleute über Notfälle benachrichtigt. Vor dem Landgericht Braunschweig verklagt er Apple, da diese mit iMessage einen Dienst mit zu ähnlichem Namen anbieten. (
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