Lilbits: Xiaomi drops the Mi, Saygus sued, and a new UI for Linux phones

Once upon a time, there was going to be a phone called the Saygus V2 that had an unusual design, best-in-class specs, and support for up to 320GB of storage thanks to dual microSD card slots. It was unveiled in early 2015, went up for pre-order a few …

Once upon a time, there was going to be a phone called the Saygus V2 that had an unusual design, best-in-class specs, and support for up to 320GB of storage thanks to dual microSD card slots. It was unveiled in early 2015, went up for pre-order a few weeks later for $600, and then it […]

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Netflix reveals premiere date, first images for live-action Cowboy Bebop series

Images show star John Cho in Spike Spiegel’s iconic purple suit.

Netflix has announced that its long-delayed, live-action adaptation of the influential and popular classic anime series Cowboy Bebop will premiere on Friday, November 19.

The streaming service also released the first images from the show, giving fans some sense of what to expect from a live-action series based on an animated one famous for its visual flair.

The images show actor John Cho (Star Trek, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle) as the series' lead character, Spike Spiegel. The series will also star Alex Hassell (Suburbicon), Daniella Pineda (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), and Mustafa Shakir (Luke Cage), among others.

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Google Pay team reportedly in major upheaval after botched app revamp

“Dozens of employees and executives have left” the struggling payments division.

The Google Play logo is flushed down a toilet alongside many dollar bills.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica)

Google Pay is apparently just as much a disaster internally as the app transition has been externally. That's the big takeaway from a recent Business Insider article detailing an exodus of executives from Google's payment division, lower-than-expected app adoption, and employees frustrated with the slow movement of the division.

Business Insider spoke with ex-employees and learned that "dozens of employees and executives have left" the Google Payments team in recent months, including "at least seven leaders on the team with roles of director or vice president." The most prominent departure, of payments chief Caesar Sengupta, kicked off the exodus in April, and now employees are worried about another reorganization and even slower progress. Many rank-and-file team members have reportedly departed, too, with the story saying, "One former employee estimated that half the people working on the business-development team for Google Pay—a group of about 40 people—have left the company in recent months."

In 2018, Sengupta took over the payments division, which oversees the Google Pay app and the wider Google payments infrastructure, and the report says that "much of Sengupta's attention was on bringing the US Google Pay app more in line with the version Google built for India."

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Intel Foundry Services gets a boost from $100M Pentagon award for US-made chips

Currently, no onshore foundry can meet the Pentagon’s needs.

Intel Foundry Services gets a boost from $100M Pentagon award for US-made chips

Enlarge (credit: ony Avelar/Bloomberg)

Intel announced Monday that it has been awarded a contract for foundry services through a Department of Defense program intended to support leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing in the US. 

Though Intel’s share of the estimated $100 million award wasn’t disclosed, it is certain to boost Intel’s fledgling Foundry Services division that was announced in March as a part of the company’s IDM 2.0 strategy. The company will be working alongside IBM and electronic design automation companies Cadence and Synopsys. The program, known as "Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes—Commercial or RAMP-C," seeks to expand the Pentagon’s access to trusted, secure, and reliable chips from sub-7 nm process technology.

“One of the most profound lessons of the past year is the strategic importance of semiconductors and the value to the United States of having a strong domestic semiconductor industry,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said. “When we launched Intel Foundry Services earlier this year, we were excited to have the opportunity to make our capabilities available to a wider range of partners, including in the US government, and it is great to see that potential being fulfilled through programs like RAMP-C.”

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Raumfahrt: Leitende Angestellte verlassen Blue Origin

Klagen und Werbekampagnen gegen SpaceX werden Blue Origin-Mitarbeitern peinlich. Leitende Angestellte der Raketen- und Mondlanderprogramme kündigen. (Mondlandung, Nasa)

Klagen und Werbekampagnen gegen SpaceX werden Blue Origin-Mitarbeitern peinlich. Leitende Angestellte der Raketen- und Mondlanderprogramme kündigen. (Mondlandung, Nasa)

Shang-Chi film review: Marvel’s latest grabs the brass ring—all ten of them

Fantasy, family, and frantic action turn a refreshing new page for Marvel Studios.

If you want to know what direction Marvel's post-Avengers superhero films are going, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a pretty clear indicator—and it's an optimistic one at that.

I had a blast watching Shang-Chi, which arrives exclusively in theaters on Friday, September 3, and I spent most of the time after my screening wishing for more. It could have been longer. Maybe there's a director's cut. Or, maybe this is the darned good launch of an entirely new film franchise, and this film is merely meant to set up the even more fully rounded sequel(s). Whatever the case, that's a decidedly better way to leave theaters than being bored, annoyed, or otherwise shaken out of a good moviegoing experience by bad writing, acting, and directing decisions.

Shang-Chi seems driven by an apparent top-down directive to fortify a new class of mystical superheroes while sticking to Marvel's guns of inclusion and fully rounded character development. The result is good news for anyone looking for a mix of refreshing surprises and comfort food in their superhero tentpole films. Plus, this superhero big screen debut delivers enough "holy whoa" moments to make any viewer feel like a kid again.

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Lenovo ThinkPad X13 5G and Chomebook 300e with LTE coming to AT&T in September

Two Lenovo laptops with built-in support for cellular networks are heading to AT&T next month. The Lenovo ThinkPad X13 5G is a premium Windows-powered notebook with an Core i5 Intel Tiger Lake processor that goes up for pre-order August 27th and s…

Two Lenovo laptops with built-in support for cellular networks are heading to AT&T next month. The Lenovo ThinkPad X13 5G is a premium Windows-powered notebook with an Core i5 Intel Tiger Lake processor that goes up for pre-order August 27th and ships September 17th, while the Lenovo 300e Chromebook LTE is an 11.6 inch convertible with a […]

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Windows 11 ISOs make it easier to test the betas with a clean install

And you can get around the TPM and Secure Boot requirements, at least for now.

New ISO files make it easier to do clean installs of the Windows 11 preview (and to see its first-time setup screens).

Enlarge / New ISO files make it easier to do clean installs of the Windows 11 preview (and to see its first-time setup screens). (credit: Microsoft)

When Microsoft released the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview builds to Dev and Beta channel testers late last week, the company also posted traditional ISO files of the new operating system for download for the first time. These ISO files can be burned to a disc or copied to a USB drive, making it faster to install Windows 11 to multiple PCs (or just to do a clean install on a single PC).

Previously, it was possible to do a clean install of Windows 11 by using tools that convert Insider builds to ISOs, or by installing one of the Insider Preview builds through Windows Update and then resetting your PC. These new official ISOs can save you those steps, even though they're based on preview builds that will already need to be updated right after you set them up (the ISOs are based on build 22000.132, while both Dev and Beta channels have already moved on to 22000.160). Microsoft offers ISOs for both the Dev and Beta channels—you can switch between channels as you normally would once Windows is up and running, but the ISO you use determines which channel your PC is automatically signed up for.

As with other Insider Preview builds, the version of the WinPE preinstall environment that you boot to use these ISOs will not enforce Windows 11's processor requirement but will enforce the Secure Boot and TPM requirements (for now, having any version of TPM seems to satisfy the installer, though Microsoft says you'll need a TPM 2.0 module for the final version). And as when installing the Windows 11 Insider builds from within Windows 10, you can use a handful of registry tweaks to disable those checks, at least for now.

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