Month: February 2022

Prosecutors want admitted Team Xecuter pirate jailed for five years

Feds want to “send a message,” but defense argues Bowser “was not the leader.”

It's-a me, the long arm of the law.

Enlarge / It's-a me, the long arm of the law. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Nintendo / Getty Images)

Federal prosecutors say a prominent member of the notorious Team Xecuter hacking group—known for the "SX OS" line of Switch hacking devices—should serve 60 months in prison after pleading guilty to piracy-related charges in November.

The significant sentence for Gary "GaryOPA" Bowser "would send a message that there are consequences for participating in a sustained effort to undermine the video game industry," according to prosecutors. But Bowser's defense is arguing for a shorter 19-month sentence that reflects the fact that he "was not the leader, was not in control of the [TeamXecuter] enterprise, and was not the manufacturer of the devices."

Team Deterrence-ecuter

Bowser—a 52-year-old Canadian citizen who was arrested in the Dominican Republic and deported to the US in 2020—was the "public voice and principal salesperson" for Team Xecuter, according to federal prosecutors, promoting Switch hacking devices through sites such as maxconsole.com and illegal ROM downloads through sites like rom-bank.com. While Team Xecuter "attempted to hide its illegal activity under the homebrew enthusiast umbrella," Bowser admitted in his November plea that the "predominant and primary design of the enterprise’s products was to allow purchasers to play pirated ROMs."

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Akasa’s new cases bring fanless design to Ryzen 4000U and 5000U mini PCs

Over the past few years we’ve seen a growing number of PC makers tap AMD’s Ryzen U-series laptop-class processors for use in min-desktops like the Asus PN51 and Gigabyte BRIX S. One thing they tend to have in common? Active cooling. But case maker Akasa has just introduced two new fanless PC cases that you […]

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Over the past few years we’ve seen a growing number of PC makers tap AMD’s Ryzen U-series laptop-class processors for use in min-desktops like the Asus PN51 and Gigabyte BRIX S. One thing they tend to have in common? Active cooling.

But case maker Akasa has just introduced two new fanless PC cases that you can use to transform an Asus PN50/51 or Gigabyte BRIX mini PCs with AMD Ryzen 4000U or Ryzen 5000U chips into compact, fanless PCs. The Akasa Turing ABX and Akasa Newton A50 should both be available for purchase in the coming weeks.

Akasa Turing ABX

Akasa Turing ABX for Gigabyte BRIX systems with Ryzen 4000U processors

This chassis measures 9.8″ x 4.7″ x 3.7″ and will double the size a Gigabyte BRIX mini PC, but with a volume of 2.9 liters, it’s still reasonably small by desktop computer standards and it can passively dissipate heat from a mini PC with up to a 25-watt AMD Ryzen 7 4800U processor.

There are cut-outs for all of the computer’s ports, a 2.5 inch drive bay for a hard drive or SSD, and holes for optional antennas.

Made of aluminum and incorporating cooling fins, there’s also a heat sink that can be placed atop an M.2 SSD for additional cooling.

The Turing ABX case can be positioned either vertically or horizontally.

Akasa Newton A50 for Asus PN50 and PN51 systems with Ryzen 400U or 5000U processors

Measuring 6.7″ x 4.5″ x 2.7″, this 1.3L fanless chassis isn’t much larger than a standard Asus PN5x series mini PC and supports systems with up to a 25-watt AMD Ryzen 7 5700U processor.

Designed for horizontal use, the aluminum chassis has cut-outs for all of the computer’s ports and comes with an M.2 SSD heat sink and thermal compounds and pads to help dissipate heat without the use of a fan.

Just keep in mind that Akasa is selling both the Turing ABX and Newton A50 as cases rather than complete PCs. In order to use either chassis, you will need to buy your own mini PC and perform a bit of surgery by opening up the original case and transplanting the innards to one of Akasa’s cases.

via FanlessTech

The post Akasa’s new cases bring fanless design to Ryzen 4000U and 5000U mini PCs appeared first on Liliputing.

How $323M in crypto was stolen from a blockchain bridge called Wormhole

Cryptocurrency has always been prone to theft. Blockchain bridges heighten the risks.

How $323M in crypto was stolen from a blockchain bridge called Wormhole

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

This is a story about how a simple software bug allowed the fourth-biggest cryptocurrency theft ever.

Hackers stole more than $323 million in cryptocurrency by exploiting a vulnerability in Wormhole, a Web-based service that allows inter-blockchain transactions. Wormhole lets people move digital coins tied to one blockchain over to a different blockchain; such blockchain bridges are particularly useful for decentralized finance (DeFi) services that operate on two or more chains, often with vastly different protocols, rules, and processes.

A guardian with no teeth

Bridges use wrapped tokens, which lock tokens in one blockchain into a smart contract. After a decentralized cross-chain oracle called a "guardian" certifies that the coins have been properly locked on one chain, the bridge mints or releases tokens of the same value on the other chain. Wormhole bridges the Solana blockchain with other blockchains, including those for Avalanche, Oasis, Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Polygon, and Terra.

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Ghostwire: Tokyo feels like a next-gen Amnesia–Hexen mashup

Long-awaited peek at PS5-console exclusive finally looks like captivating horror.

  • Spooky stuff abounds in Ghostwire: Tokyo. [credit: Bethesda ]

Since its announcement at E3 2019, Ghostwire: Tokyo has loomed as one of Bethesda's weirder and more inscrutable upcoming games. Years have passed without a clear look at how the game will play, and that lack of clarity wasn't improved when the company announced in 2021 that its creative director at developer Tango Gameworks was leaving to start a new company and that Ghostwire would be delayed to sometime in "early 2022."

This week, Bethesda confirmed that the PC- and PlayStation 5-exclusive game finally has a release date of March 25, though that news arrived Thursday alongside a flashy, camera-cutting trailer that still left some questions unanswered. Thankfully, Bethesda hosted members of the press for a behind-closed-doors reveal of raw, uninterrupted gameplay late last month, and the results, which we're now allowed to talk about, were intriguing and impressive.

Instead of feeling like a direct successor to Tango Gameworks' Evil Within series, Ghostwire takes a fresh step into horror gaming by combining complex visual effects, memorable art direction, the creeping dread of Amnesia, and the fantastical, magic-infused exploration and combat of classic PC series Heretic and Hexen.

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