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Ein Ausbau von Huawei-Technik aus dem Netz der Deutschen Telekom wird intern als Armageddon bezeichnet. (Huawei, Telekom)
A few years after creating a Raspberry Pi-based science and education kit called the CrowPi, the developers of that project are back with a new model called the CrowPi 2. This time they’ve developed a kit that looks more like a traditional laptop…
Yes, more testing means more proof of cases—but there’s far more to it than that.
Enlarge / US Vice President Mike Pence having a facial expression during a roundtable meeting on seniors with US President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, DC, June 15, 2020. (credit: Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images)
States and cities all but completely shut down earlier this year in an attempt to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19. Many of those state and local authorities have now eased up on restrictions, allowing people to return to their pre-pandemic habits and behaviors. In many of those regions, COVID-19 cases are now on the rise, but the White House is pushing the message that COVID-19 spikes are due to an increase in testing and nothing more.
President Donald Trump said during a meeting on Monday, "If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any." Vice President Mike Pence doubled down on that messaging in a call with several states governors later in the day, trying to downplay any new outbreaks in their states.
"I would just encourage you all, as we talk about these things, to make sure and continue to explain to your citizens the magnitude of increase in testing," Pence told the governors, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times.
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Once upon a time Chromebooks were basically laptops designed to run a single app — the Chrome web browser. But over time Google has added support for Android apps and Linux apps, not to mention thousands of web apps. Soon you’ll also be abl…
A mutation that’s becoming common seems to boost infectivity in cultured cells.
Enlarge (credit: State of Delaware)
About a month ago, news reports painted a potentially grim picture: a single mutation in SARS-CoV-2 was taking over the world, rapidly displacing earlier forms of the virus in most locations. The researchers behind the finding suggested we were watching in real time as SARS-CoV-2 was evolving into a form that spreads more readily within human populations.
While the evidence was suggestive, it wasn't decisive, and there were a number of alternative explanations for the pattern of viral spread. As is so often the case in science, we needed more data. Now, some additional data has arrived in the form of a draft paper that suggests that there's a biochemical reason for why the mutated form of the virus might be more potent.
The idea behind the original results was fairly simple. If we assume that mutations show up at random in the coronavirus genome, then the chance of two identical mutations appearing independently in the virus's genome is pretty low, given that the genome is over 30,000 bases long. Thus, if we see the same mutation in two different locations, the chances are very good that they got there through common descent from an ancestor that had the mutation.
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Seven-day event includes a few biggies, plus former Epic Games Store exclusives.
Enlarge / E3 would probably be nicer in a forest full of trees that grow computer mice. (credit: Steam)
This week, Steam is hosting its largest free-demo event yet: the Steam Summer Festival, which includes over 500 limited-time trials of mostly unreleased games. Like prior Steam "festival" events, this week's demo showcase essentially works by shifting the usual E3 expo show floor experience from crowded, line-filled halls to the comfort of your favorite PC playing space. Try a time-limited game, "wishlist" it if it grabbed your attention, then move on to the next.
Since we're well into the span of time that would normally constitute a traditional E3, the Steam Summer Festival is also leaning into that expo's vacuum by offering its own E3-like content, which is presented in what appears to be a new "Steam Labs" experiment: the "news hub." This link will take you to a full schedule of gameplay streams, developer interviews, and links to game-specific hubs. Even as we speak, that news hub is filled to the brim with ongoing, developer-hosted sessions, and each feed includes a nifty chat slider so that you can ask devs questions while they're hosting their brand-new games (or easily hide the chat if that's not your thing).
A handy new Steam Labs experiment for sorting a slew of live, archived, and upcoming video streams. [credit: Steam ]
Unsurprisingly, most of the games you'll find at the SSF fall into the "indie" spectrum, though that qualifier doesn't mean the demos on offer are slouches. Some of the biggest names in the free-demo collection include former Epic Games Store exclusives like Superliminal and the Quantic Dream library (Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, Detroit: Become Human). Most others are intriguing indies such as the classic-arcade revival of Windjammers 2, the satantic-Atari throwback adventure of Faith: The Unholy Trinity, the wall-running hack-and-slasher Ghostrunner, and the quirky "puppeteer side-scroller" concept of A Juggler's Tale.
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The itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality may have ended yesterday (after raising over $8 million dollars from more than 800-thousand people who paid $5 or more), but Humble Bundle has just launched its own week-long deal to raise money for th…
With a new law criminalizing the downloading of manga content set to come into force in 2021, a new anti-piracy campaign in Japan is hoping to persuade fans to go legal. Spearheaded by anti-piracy group CODA with the assistance of well-known manga artists, the campaign will project its message through the medium of manga itself.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Earlier this month, Japan’s parliament passed new copyright amendments that will ban the unlicensed downloading of manga, magazines and academic texts from the Internet.
Those illegally downloading publications will face a sentence of up to two years in prison or a maximum fine of two million yen (US$18,620). Under local law, these penalties are already available for movies and music content.
The new anti-downloading law will come into effect on January 1, 2021, but ahead of this big change the Japanese government, publishers, and anti-piracy group CODA are hoping to persuade fans to take a new direction with a campaign supported by well-known manga artists.
Every Friday the ‘Manga-Anime Guardians Project’ (MAGP) will release four brand new manga comics, each telling stories about manga piracy. The ultimate aim is to put freeloading consumers back on the track to legal consumption before a more damaging response is authorized under law.
The first batch of manga, featuring artists including Akira Akatsuki, Adachitoka, Rie Arai, and Ammitsu, has just been released. Produced in the distinctive manga style, it’s hoped that the monochrome cartoons, which are available in both Japanese and English, will hit the right note with consumers.
Masaharu Ina, CODA’s Director of Overseas Copyright Protection, informs TorrentFreak that the aim is for the campaign to enjoy a global reach while helping to nudge fans currently not parting with their money in a direction more profitable for the industry.
“The target audience is manga readers/lovers, especially innocent readers who unknowingly read manga on pirate sites like Mangamura,” he says.
“We would like to educate and guide them to the right channel. And with the English versions as well as the Chinese versions coming up, we expect to reach out to the audience around the globe.”
According to CODA, the now-shuttered pirate site Mangamura caused around $2.91 billion in damages to the local manga industry. In July 2019, alleged operator Romi Hoshino was apprehended in the Philippines and later arrested by Japanese authorities during a deportation flight.
While Hoshino awaits his fate, it’s hoped that the new anti-piracy campaign, which is supported by the government’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, will steer people away from pirate platforms. The major publishers behind the campaign, including the likes of Shueisha, Kodansha, Shogakukan, and Kadokawa, are already known for targeting unlicensed content providers (1,2) through the courts.
However, in addition to pursuing their own cases, the publishers involved in this project are also vocal supporters of the somewhat draconian laws set to come into force next year. Masaharu Ina confirms that this campaign is all about raising public awareness before the gentle carrot of choice becomes a pretty big stick next January.
“[Y]ou are absolutely right in assuming that this campaign coincides with the revision to the Copyright Act which passed the [Japanese parliament] on 5th June,” he says.
“Our intention is to fully utilize this timing to help boost awareness for the importance of copyright protection.”
In total, 16 pieces of manga will be released as part of the campaign, with a message designed “to warn of the dangers of piracy and to promote the legitimate distribution of manga/animation.”
The next four, featuring contributions by Hiromu Shinozuka and Kazutoshi Soyama, among others, will be released this Friday on CODA’s website and Instagram channel.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
The next major Windows update is currently scheduled for sometime later this year, and it’ll be the first version of the operating system to ship with Microsoft’s new Edge web browser based on Google’s Chromium. While the browser has …
But Pai’s FCC has a history of letting carriers off easy.
Enlarge / The logo of Deutsche Telekom, owner of T-Mobile, seen at Mobile World Congress in February 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )
T-Mobile's network suffered an outage across the US yesterday, and the Federal Communications Commission is investigating.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who takes an extremely hands-off approach to regulating telecom companies, used his Twitter account to say, "The T-Mobile network outage is unacceptable" and that "the FCC is launching an investigation. We're demanding answers—and so are American consumers."
No matter what the investigation finds, Pai may be unlikely to punish T-Mobile or impose any enforceable commitments. For example, an FCC investigation last year into mobile carriers' response to Hurricane Michael in Florida found that carriers failed to follow their own previous voluntary roaming commitments, unnecessarily prolonging outages. Pai himself called the carriers' response to the hurricane "completely unacceptable," just like he did with yesterday's T-Mobile outage. But Pai's FCC imposed no punishment related to the bad hurricane response and continued to rely on voluntary measures to prevent recurrences.
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Ein Ausbau von Huawei-Technik aus dem Netz der Deutschen Telekom wird intern als Armageddon bezeichnet. (
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