Month: January 2022

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Unter Cheatern sind die im Abo angebotenen Aimbots des Herstellers Engine Owning derzeit besonders beliebt. Nun klagt Activision in den USA. (Call of Duty, Activision)

The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 is a laptop with a 17:3 inch, 3072 x 1440 pixel ultra-wide display, a 12th-gen Intel Core processor, and support for up to 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. But what really makes this laptop unusual is the second screen, which is positioned to the right of the keyboard. First […]

The post Lenovo’s new ThinkBook Plus has a 17.3 inch primary display and an 8 inch second screen appeared first on Liliputing.

Was am 5. Januar 2022 neben den großen Meldungen sonst noch passiert ist, in aller Kürze. (Kurznews, Nvidia)

C++ gehört in der Autoindustrie zum guten Ton. Mit drei Online-Kursen der Golem Akademie gelingt der Einstieg in die komplexe Programmiersprache. (Golem Akademie, Server-Applikationen)

Das Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen10 und das Thinkpad X1 Nano Gen2 ähneln den Vorgängern, jedoch mit Verbesserungen sowie Alder-Lake-Chips. (Thinkpad, Intel)

16:10-Displays gehören der Vergangenheit an, wenn es nach Lenovo geht. Das Unternehmen stellt stattdessen ein Notebook mit 21:10-Panel vor. (Lenovo, Notebook)

BlackBerry is a name that was synonymous with smartphones in the years before the iPhone first launched and touchscreen-only devices powered by Android and iOS came to dominate. But BlackBerry stopped developing its own mobile operating system in 2015 and stopped making phones altogether not longer after.

The company eventually announced it would be pulling the plug on legacy services used by most BlackBerry OS phones to place calls, send messages, and connect to the internet. And CEO John Chen confirmed that the company decommissioned that infrastructure on January 4th. But as of January 5th many BlackBerry owners are discovering that… their phones still work. For now.

First off, if you’re wondering why it’s even possible that shutting down a server in the cloud would stop you from being able to make phone calls with a device that you already own, it’s because the way BlackBerry devices were originally positioned as enterprise hardware – BlackBerry OS was tightly tied to BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) for synchronizing things like email, BlackBerry Messenger, the BlackBerry World app store, and even web browsing.

Over the years folks have found ways to configure some older BlackBerry phones to work without BIS, but functionality is limited, the instructions won’t work on newer phones running BlackBerry 10 OS, and honestly nobody knew what would happen after BlackBerry shut down its infrastructure entirely.

Now that January 4, 2022 has come and gone, many users are happily finding that their phones continue to work.

But one plausible explanation is that wireless carriers also have to decommission their infrastructure related to BlackBerry phones. And until that happens, it looks like users will be able to continue using their phones normally. If that’s the case, it’s likely that rather than all remaining BlackBerry phones turning into paperweights at once, it may happen slowly as one carrier after another ends support.

And honestly, that’s kind of implied in the original shut-down notice. BlackBerry never said phones would stop working altogether. Instead the company said devices running BlackBerry OS 7.1 or earlier, BlackBerry 10, or BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 and earlier would “no longer reliably function” (emphasis added).

That said, reliability is kind of important when you consider what’s at stake. Features that BlackBerry warned would become unreliable after legacy services were shut off include data, phone calls, SMS, and 9-1-1 emergency calls placed either over a mobile network or WiFi.

In other words, it’s probably still a good idea for anyone hanging onto a BlackBerry to think about getting a backup phone in case your preferred device suddenly stops supporting basic functions like placing phone calls or sending text messages. But die-hards (and based on posts on forums, reddit, and social media, it seems like there may be more of them out there than I’d anticipated) may be able to squeeze a little more life out of their aging phones.

The post BlackBerry users are waking up to find that their phones still work… for now appeared first on Liliputing.

Mit dem Elektroauto in den Campingurlaub? Ist nur noch eine Frage der Zeit. (Mercedes Benz, Technologie)

Mit selbstgenerierten Karten sollen Autos ohne Fahrbahnmarkierungen die Spur halten. Zudem will Mobileye autonome Privatautos mit Zeekr entwickeln. (Autonomes Fahren, Intel)