Month: January 2022

Twitter permanently suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account over COVID disinfo

Georgia representative’s fifth “strike” spurred the suspension.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) answers questions in front of the House steps on November 17, 2021, in Washington, DC.

Enlarge / Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) answers questions in front of the House steps on November 17, 2021, in Washington, DC. (credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Twitter permanently suspended the personal account of Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) yesterday, though her professional account remains active.

Greene has been an outspoken opponent of COVID-19 vaccines, routinely posting disinformation about the disease, the vaccines, and other health-related information. Her fifth strike on Twitter (yes, her fifth) came after she posted false claims about vaccine safety based on unverified raw data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, also known as VAERS.

“We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy,” Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokeswoman, said in a statement.

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Anzeige: Hacker verstehen und IT-Infrastruktur schützen

Wer die Firmen-IT vor Angriffen schützen will, sollte die Vorgehensweise von Hackern verstehen. Ein Kurs der Golem Akademie mit praktischen Übungen vermittelt dieses Wissen. (Golem Akademie, Server-Applikationen)

Wer die Firmen-IT vor Angriffen schützen will, sollte die Vorgehensweise von Hackern verstehen. Ein Kurs der Golem Akademie mit praktischen Übungen vermittelt dieses Wissen. (Golem Akademie, Server-Applikationen)

WSATools update will let you backup Windows Subsystem for Android apps and data

The Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) makes it possible to run Android applications on Windows 11 computers. But the software is still very much a work in progress and it’s currently only available to members of the Windows Insider Preview program. Microsoft bundles the Amazon Appstore with WSA, making it easy to find and install […]

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The Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) makes it possible to run Android applications on Windows 11 computers. But the software is still very much a work in progress and it’s currently only available to members of the Windows Insider Preview program.

Microsoft bundles the Amazon Appstore with WSA, making it easy to find and install some Android apps – but the selection of available apps is pretty small so far. Fortunately there a multiple ways to sideload Android apps. Now the developer behind one of those methods is introducing a significant upgrade that will bring a new feature: backups.

WSATools is a free utility that makes it easy to sideload Android applications on a Windows 11 computer with the Windows Subsystem for Android installed. Available from the Microsoft Store, WSA doesn’t require you to manually install Android developer tools or futz around with a command prompt. Just download an Android APK file from a trusted source like F-Droid, APKMirror or APKPure, double-click it and WSATools will walk you through the install process.

While that dramatically increases the number of apps that you can run on a Windows 11 PC, there are some down sides to sideloading rather than using an app store. You won’t get automatic updates for apps installed using WSATools, so you’ll have to keep an eye out for updates and install the manually. And your data won’t be backed up or restored via the store.

To address the backup issue, WSATools developer Simone Franco built WSATools Backups. It makes a copy of your data that can be saved and restored even if you’ve reinstalled the Windows Subsystem for Android, accidentally wiped app data, or need to restore for any other reason. It could, for example, make sure that you don’t lose your progress in a game, as long as you make regular backups.

The new backup feature is built into WSATools version 0.2.0, which is now available from the Microsoft Store.

WSATools isn’t the only game in town. You can also sideload Android apps on Windows 11 computers using other apps like WSA-pacman and APK-Installer. If you prefer to do things via the command line, you can also do things manually using Google’s Android Platform Tools. And if you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you can try installing the Google Play Store, which is a bit trickier, but which makes Android on Windows feel a bit more like the version of Android that ships with most phones and tablets.

But WSATools is certainly turning out to be one of the more versatile and user-friendly options for sideloading Android apps in Windows PCs.

This article was first published January 3, 2022 and last updated March 22, 2022.

The post WSATools update will let you backup Windows Subsystem for Android apps and data appeared first on Liliputing.

Hyundai stops engine development and reassigns engineers to EVs

Yet more proof that the internal combustion engine is on borrowed time.

Hyundai's Namyang R&D center in 2003.

Enlarge / Hyundai's Namyang R&D center in 2003. (credit: Hyundai)

Last year was challenging for many reasons, but 2021 wasn't entirely bad. Despite the pandemic and the chip shortage, it was a great year for new battery electric vehicles. So much so that more than half of our top 10 drives of the year were BEVs. That's good for consumers looking for a new car—assuming they can find one in stock.

End-of-year top 10 lists are extremely subjective, and no one should read too much into them. But if you want proof of the impending extinction of the internal combustion engine, consider this: On December 23, Hyundai Motor Group (parent company of Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis) shuttered its internal combustion engine research and development division, according to The Korea Economic Daily.

Park Chung-kook, the new head of Hyundai's R&D efforts, explained in an email to Hyundai Motor Group employees that "our own engine development is a great achievement, but we must change the system to create future innovation based on the great asset from the past."

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Plastikmüll: "Revolution" im Kapitalismus

In Frankreich dürfen viele Obst- und Gemüsesorten nicht mehr in Plastikverpackungen verkauft werden. Warum ist das nicht europaweit seit 30 Jahren so geregelt?

In Frankreich dürfen viele Obst- und Gemüsesorten nicht mehr in Plastikverpackungen verkauft werden. Warum ist das nicht europaweit seit 30 Jahren so geregelt?

The world just set a record for sending the most rockets into orbit

The total number of global launch attempts has doubled during the last decade.

A picturesque view of a Falcon 9 Starlink launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in December 2021.

Enlarge / A picturesque view of a Falcon 9 Starlink launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in December 2021. (credit: SpaceX)

More rockets made orbital launch attempts during 2021 than in any previous year in history, breaking a record that dates back to the space race.

There are no official records of such matters, but several good online resources provide a compendium of data that includes both orbital launch attempts and successes. Based on this information, a total of 144 orbital launches were attempted in 2021, of which 133 were successful. This total does not include two unannounced launch attempts by Iran's Simorgh vehicle.

Last year's numbers surpass the total orbital launch attempts in 1967 (122 successes out of 139 launch attempts) and a previous record for successes in 1976 (125 successes out of 131 attempts).

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