Month: February 2022

Lilbits: Holo Lens canceled, Astro Slide smartphone with a keyboard now shipping and more

The Astro Slide is a smartphone that you can also use like a tiny laptop thanks to a QWERTY keyboard that slides out from behind the display. Designed for touch-typing and inspired by the Psion line of handheld devices, the keyboard is quite different from the thumb keyboards found on BlackBerry-style devices or even modern […]

The post Lilbits: Holo Lens canceled, Astro Slide smartphone with a keyboard now shipping and more appeared first on Liliputing.

The Astro Slide is a smartphone that you can also use like a tiny laptop thanks to a QWERTY keyboard that slides out from behind the display. Designed for touch-typing and inspired by the Psion line of handheld devices, the keyboard is quite different from the thumb keyboards found on BlackBerry-style devices or even modern devices like the F(x)tec Pro-1. The closest comparison I can think of is the PinePhone Keyboard, but that’s an optional accessory rather than a built-in part of the phone.

Planet Computers first unveiled the Astro Slide nearly two years ago and followed up with a crowdfunding campaign that closed in May, 2020. Now company has begun shipping the first units to backers and it’s taking pre-orders for the phone through its website, with an estimated ship date of March 2022 for new orders. But does the Astro Slide deliver on its promise?

According to one of the first real-world reviews of the phone… kind of. It’s a decent phone with mid-range specs and a chunky design (at 18mm or 0.7 inches thick, it’s kind of like holding two phones stuck together). And the cameras are apparently really underwhelming. But the Astro Slide delivers decent performance and has some custom software that makes Android a little more keyboard-friendly.

One remaining question? How well does this thing run operating systems other than Android? Planet Computers has promised users will be able to install Ubuntu Touch and other mobile GNU/Linux distributions. But that’s not covered in the review.

Astro Slide review: does this device deliver on the Psion Series 5 phone promise? [ Big Tech Question]

The Astro Slide smartphone from Planet Computers has a slide-out keyboard that lets you use the 6.4 inch Android phone as a tiny Android laptop. It began shipping to crowdfunding backers at the end of January, and real-world reviews are starting to arrive.

Exclusive: This is the intelligent Android lock screen Google never gave us [Android Authority]

Android 11 introduced smart home controls in the power menu… and they disappeared when Android 12 launched. But apparently Google considered making the Android 11 lock screen & always-on display way more powerful. Here’s a look at the cancelled plans.

Inside Microsoft’s mixed reality mess [Business Insider]

Microsoft has reportedly cancelled the Hololens 3 and it’s unclear whether there will ever be a first-party follow-up to the company’s first two mixed reality headsets, but Microsoft may have signed a deal with Samsung to developer a new device.

What’s coming for the Windows Insider Program in 2022 [Microsoft]

Microsoft will get more experimental with Windows 11 Insider Preview builds for the Dev Channel in 2022. Some features rolled out to testers will eventually go stable. Some will never ship. Beta Channel will be for features that are closer to shipping.

Windows Terminal Preview 1.13 Release [Microsoft]

The latest Windows Terminal preview brings an updated user interface, support for Win11 snap layouts, automatically launching a profile as Administrator or restoring recently closed tabs & panes plus a new text rendering engine and customizable bell sounds.

Keep up on the latest headlines by following Liliputing on Twitter and Facebook and follow @LinuxSmartphone on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news on open source mobile phones.

The post Lilbits: Holo Lens canceled, Astro Slide smartphone with a keyboard now shipping and more appeared first on Liliputing.

Lilbits: Holo Lens canceled, Astro Slide smartphone with a keyboard now shipping and more

The Astro Slide is a smartphone that you can also use like a tiny laptop thanks to a QWERTY keyboard that slides out from behind the display. Designed for touch-typing and inspired by the Psion line of handheld devices, the keyboard is quite different from the thumb keyboards found on BlackBerry-style devices or even modern […]

The post Lilbits: Holo Lens canceled, Astro Slide smartphone with a keyboard now shipping and more appeared first on Liliputing.

The Astro Slide is a smartphone that you can also use like a tiny laptop thanks to a QWERTY keyboard that slides out from behind the display. Designed for touch-typing and inspired by the Psion line of handheld devices, the keyboard is quite different from the thumb keyboards found on BlackBerry-style devices or even modern devices like the F(x)tec Pro-1. The closest comparison I can think of is the PinePhone Keyboard, but that’s an optional accessory rather than a built-in part of the phone.

Planet Computers first unveiled the Astro Slide nearly two years ago and followed up with a crowdfunding campaign that closed in May, 2020. Now company has begun shipping the first units to backers and it’s taking pre-orders for the phone through its website, with an estimated ship date of March 2022 for new orders. But does the Astro Slide deliver on its promise?

According to one of the first real-world reviews of the phone… kind of. It’s a decent phone with mid-range specs and a chunky design (at 18mm or 0.7 inches thick, it’s kind of like holding two phones stuck together). And the cameras are apparently really underwhelming. But the Astro Slide delivers decent performance and has some custom software that makes Android a little more keyboard-friendly.

One remaining question? How well does this thing run operating systems other than Android? Planet Computers has promised users will be able to install Ubuntu Touch and other mobile GNU/Linux distributions. But that’s not covered in the review.

Astro Slide review: does this device deliver on the Psion Series 5 phone promise? [ Big Tech Question]

The Astro Slide smartphone from Planet Computers has a slide-out keyboard that lets you use the 6.4 inch Android phone as a tiny Android laptop. It began shipping to crowdfunding backers at the end of January, and real-world reviews are starting to arrive.

Exclusive: This is the intelligent Android lock screen Google never gave us [Android Authority]

Android 11 introduced smart home controls in the power menu… and they disappeared when Android 12 launched. But apparently Google considered making the Android 11 lock screen & always-on display way more powerful. Here’s a look at the cancelled plans.

Inside Microsoft’s mixed reality mess [Business Insider]

Microsoft has reportedly cancelled the Hololens 3 and it’s unclear whether there will ever be a first-party follow-up to the company’s first two mixed reality headsets, but Microsoft may have signed a deal with Samsung to developer a new device.

What’s coming for the Windows Insider Program in 2022 [Microsoft]

Microsoft will get more experimental with Windows 11 Insider Preview builds for the Dev Channel in 2022. Some features rolled out to testers will eventually go stable. Some will never ship. Beta Channel will be for features that are closer to shipping.

Windows Terminal Preview 1.13 Release [Microsoft]

The latest Windows Terminal preview brings an updated user interface, support for Win11 snap layouts, automatically launching a profile as Administrator or restoring recently closed tabs & panes plus a new text rendering engine and customizable bell sounds.

Keep up on the latest headlines by following Liliputing on Twitter and Facebook and follow @LinuxSmartphone on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news on open source mobile phones.

The post Lilbits: Holo Lens canceled, Astro Slide smartphone with a keyboard now shipping and more appeared first on Liliputing.

Next-gen USPS mail trucks are only capable of 8.6 mpg, EPA says

It’s claimed the USPS did not consider environmental impacts as required by law.

The proposed replacement USPS mail truck got a lot of attention for its odd looks, but the real crime is a pathetic 8.6 mpg fuel efficiency—barely any improvement on the current vehicles.

Enlarge / The proposed replacement USPS mail truck got a lot of attention for its odd looks, but the real crime is a pathetic 8.6 mpg fuel efficiency—barely any improvement on the current vehicles.

The United States Post Office's plan to replace its aging delivery vehicles has been heavily criticized by the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The letters, first published by The Washington Post on Tuesday, excoriate the decision to award a $482 million contract to Oshkosh Defense without properly examining the environmental impact, as required by law.

Specifically, the EPA says that the USPS's required environmental impact report "does not disclose essential information underlying the key analysis of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), underestimates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fails to consider more environmentally protective feasible alternatives, and inadequately considers impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns."

Or, as the Chair of the CEQ wrote in a letter to Postmaster Louis DeJoy, his "agency committed to walk down a path before looking to see where the path was leading," in contravention of longstanding practices and laws.

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MPA, Amazon & Apple Urge Court to Issue Rapid Pirate IPTV Injunction

A coalition of Hollywood studios plus Amazon, Netflix and Apple is urging a court in the US to issue an urgent injunction to prevent two pirate IPTV services from infringing their rights. In parallel, the defendant’s legal team argues that the plaintiffs’ case is not only deficient but relies on ‘expert’ evidence that is both biased and inaccurate.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

IPTVLast December, movie and TV giants Universal, Disney, Paramount, Warner and Columbia joined Netflix, Amazon, Apple and several other studios in a lawsuit against Texas resident Dwayne Anthony Johnson.

According to the plaintiffs, Johnson (and Does 1-20) are the brains behind pirate IPTV providers AllAccessTV (AATV) and Quality Restreams.

In common with several similar suits, the complaint claims that the services supply infringing movies and TV shows via their IPTV and VOD platforms, with AATV attempting to disguise its service behind the branding of a supposed VPN company, VPN Safe Vault LLC, which Johnson is said to manage.

The studios allege direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and inducement of copyright infringement, demanding the standard $150,000 in statutory damages for each willfully infringed work plus an urgent injunction.

In response, Johnson’s legal team seems keen to put up a fight.

Defendant: No Injunction is Necessary

In a late January filing, Johnson’s legal team cites the plaintiffs’ claim that Johnson’s alleged customers access infringing content via web-based applications but say that there is no evidence to prove this is the case.

“Plaintiffs’ only evidence of this alleged access are screenshots that do not show any URLs whatsoever, i.e., no actual evidence that the websites accused contain the alleged content,” they write in their opposition to the motion for injunction, noting that since key domains listed in the complaint are already down, an injunction is not necessary.

Moving on to the content allegedly infringed, the original complaint states that Johnson’s platforms make available 600 movie titles and 600 TV series. However, the defense says that since no evidence has been provided, “these are simply bald assertions” by the plaintiffs including the Motion Picture Association.

“Secondary Infringement Claims Will Fail”

In order to prove contributory and inducement of infringement, there must be an underlying direct infringement to base these claims upon. According to Johnson’s lawyers, the studios’ lawsuit is a “moving target” in this respect, shifting between allegations against viewers of streams, claims that the “unknown source of a restream” of IPTV is the direct infringer, or a combination of both.

“Plaintiffs do not provide evidence to show direct infringement by either the end users or the unknown source of a restream…[and]… Plaintiffs provide no evidence for the Court or Defendant to assess regarding any direct infringement by the unknown source of a restream of IPTV,” the response reads.

Proposed Injunction Deficient

The studios’ complaint demanded preliminary and permanent injunctions against not only Johnson but also the doe defendants, resellers, and anyone acting in concert with them including “any officers, agents, servants, employees, attorneys..” According to Johnson’s lawyer, since there is no proof that his client does business as AllAccessTV or Quality Restreams, there are no officers, agents, servants or employees to target.

The fact that the studios also asked for an injunction against Johnson’s attorneys hasn’t gone down well either.

“[A]n injunction against Dwayne Johnson’s ‘attorneys’ is completely unsupported and borders on the absurd. Undersigned counsel, for example, has not been and cannot be accused of infringing any of Plaintiffs’ copyrights. There is no legitimate argument or assertion in this regard and Plaintiffs’ requested injunction as to Dwayne Johnson’s ‘attorneys’ must not be granted,” the response adds.

VPN Safe Vault LLC and Evidence Objections

While VPN Safe Vault was mentioned in the complaint, the entity was not named as a defendant in the case. According to the response, this is because the plaintiffs have no evidence to show copyright infringement. Any injunction that targets that business, including its domains, would be “an unlawful restraint on trade”, the response states, since it sells “VPN access that is not even arguably copyright infringement.”

Jan van Voorn is the Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the Motion Picture Association and in common with other MPA and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment lawsuits, his testimony supports the allegations against Johnson. However, the defense considers this improper, describing his statements as “inaccurate” and supported by “biased opinions”.

“The declarant, Van Voorn, however, cannot be an expert as he is not an independent third-party. He is an investigator with the Motion Picture Association who is not a party to this case but who is admittedly interested in this litigation,” the response notes, adding that speculation by the plaintiffs and Van Voorn that Johnson is the owner of several IPTV-related domains isn’t supported by evidence.

The response also criticizes a declaration submitted by Steve Kang, Vice President of Creative Content Protection at NBCUniversal Media, for either making claims that are “outside his realm of knowledge” or failing to provide sources for those claims.

Needless to say, the plaintiffs frame things quite differently.

Plaintiffs Say They Are Prepared to Settle

According to the studios, Johnson has twice asked for a hearing date to be pushed back but in the meantime they remain willing to “engage in meaningful discussions” to explore options for resolving the matter entirely. However, they say there is a threat that Johnson will continue to infringe their rights if not restrained.

The studios reveal that Johnson’s counsel approached them with a proposal for a stipulated preliminary injunction and negotiations took place in good faith. However, one of the conditions of the proposal was that only Johnson’s personal conduct would be enjoined from operating or doing business as AllAccessTV and Quality Restreams.

The studios felt that would be insufficient to prevent further infringement and they say that concern was well-founded.

“Days after Plaintiffs filed their Complaint, the public registry information for one domain that is subject to this lawsuit, allaccessiptv.com, was changed so that it no longer lists Defendant as the registrant, but instead makes all registrant information private,” the studios write.

“[P]laintiffs could suffer very real harm in the absence of injunctive relief that applies not just to Defendant, but to those individuals or entities, who, along with him, own or operate AllAccessTV and Quality Restreams or were or are acting in active concert or participation with Defendant and those business entities..”

The studios conclude by repeating their offer to resolve the case with Johnson but insist that a preliminary injunction is warranted to protect their rights.

The related court filings can be found here (1,2, pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

PCIe 5.0 SSDs promising up to 14GB/s of bandwidth will be ready in 2024

Silicon Motion’s PCIe 5.0 controller will show up in plenty of drives.

PCIe 5.0 SSDs promising up to 14GB/s of bandwidth will be ready in 2024

Enlarge (credit: Silicon Motion)

Most companies still haven't shifted their entire NVMe SSD lineups to use PCI Express 4.0, but PCIe 5.0 SSDs for PCs are already on the horizon.

Storage company Silicon Motion said in a recent earnings call that it expects its PCIe 5.0-capable SSD controllers for consumer SSDs will be available sometime in 2024, opening the door to a wide variety of high-performance drives from different manufacturers. SSD manufacturer ADATA teased some PCIe 5.0 SSDs at CES last month (albeit without an expected release date), boasting of read speeds up to 14GB/s and write speeds of up to 12GB/s using a Silicon Motion SM2508 controller. Current high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs like Samsung's 980 Pro top out at roughly half those speeds.

Other reports have suggested that these PCIe 5.0 consumer SSDs are coming later in 2022, but according to the call transcript, that only applies to the latest version of Silicon Motion's PCIe 5.0 controller for enterprise SSDs—the products that end up in servers and data centers, not what typically ends up in the PC on your desk or lap. Early PCIe 4.0 SSDs for consumer PCs were also demonstrated at CES a couple of years before they became products that you could actually buy.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

PCIe 5.0 SSDs promising up to 14GB/s of bandwidth will be ready in 2024

Silicon Motion’s PCIe 5.0 controller will show up in plenty of drives.

PCIe 5.0 SSDs promising up to 14GB/s of bandwidth will be ready in 2024

Enlarge (credit: Silicon Motion)

Most companies still haven't shifted their entire NVMe SSD lineups to use PCI Express 4.0, but PCIe 5.0 SSDs for PCs are already on the horizon.

Storage company Silicon Motion said in a recent earnings call that it expects its PCIe 5.0-capable SSD controllers for consumer SSDs will be available sometime in 2024, opening the door to a wide variety of high-performance drives from different manufacturers. SSD manufacturer ADATA teased some PCIe 5.0 SSDs at CES last month (albeit without an expected release date), boasting of read speeds up to 14GB/s and write speeds of up to 12GB/s using a Silicon Motion SM2508 controller. Current high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs like Samsung's 980 Pro top out at roughly half those speeds.

Other reports have suggested that these PCIe 5.0 consumer SSDs are coming later in 2022, but according to the call transcript, that only applies to the latest version of Silicon Motion's PCIe 5.0 controller for enterprise SSDs—the products that end up in servers and data centers, not what typically ends up in the PC on your desk or lap. Early PCIe 4.0 SSDs for consumer PCs were also demonstrated at CES a couple of years before they became products that you could actually buy.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

A simple mathematical model can account for lizard’s green-and-black pattern

Tried-and-true Ising model can describe how scales color-switch as the lizard ages.

The patterns of the ocellated lizard are predictable by a mathematical model for phase transitions.

Enlarge / The patterns of the ocellated lizard are predictable by a mathematical model for phase transitions. (credit: UNIGE / Michel Milinkovitch)

Zebras and tigers have stripes, cheetahs and leopards have spots, and the ocellated lizard (Timon lepidus) boasts a labyrinthine pattern of black-and-green chains of scales. Now researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland have demonstrated with a simple mathematical equation the lizard's complex patterns, according to a recent paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

“These labyrinthine patterns, which provide ocellated lizards with an optimal camouflage, have been selected in the course of evolution," said co-author Michel Milinkovitch, a theoretical physicist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. "These patterns are generated by a complex system, that yet can be simplified as a single equation, where what matters is not the precise location of the green and black scales, but the general appearance of the final patterns."

As we've reported previously, a common popular (though hotly debated) hypothesis for the formation of these kinds of animal patterns was proposed by Alan Turing in 1952, which is why they are sometimes referred to as "Turing patterns." Turing's seminal paper focused on chemicals known as morphogens. His proposed mechanism involved the interaction between an activator chemical that expresses a unique characteristic (like a tiger's stripe) and an inhibitor chemical that periodically kicks in to shut down the activator's expression. The key is that the inhibitor diffuses at a faster rate than the activator, creating periodic patterning.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

A simple mathematical model can account for lizard’s green-and-black pattern

Tried-and-true Ising model can describe how scales color-switch as the lizard ages.

The patterns of the ocellated lizard are predictable by a mathematical model for phase transitions.

Enlarge / The patterns of the ocellated lizard are predictable by a mathematical model for phase transitions. (credit: UNIGE / Michel Milinkovitch)

Zebras and tigers have stripes, cheetahs and leopards have spots, and the ocellated lizard (Timon lepidus) boasts a labyrinthine pattern of black-and-green chains of scales. Now researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland have demonstrated with a simple mathematical equation the lizard's complex patterns, according to a recent paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

“These labyrinthine patterns, which provide ocellated lizards with an optimal camouflage, have been selected in the course of evolution," said co-author Michel Milinkovitch, a theoretical physicist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. "These patterns are generated by a complex system, that yet can be simplified as a single equation, where what matters is not the precise location of the green and black scales, but the general appearance of the final patterns."

As we've reported previously, a common popular (though hotly debated) hypothesis for the formation of these kinds of animal patterns was proposed by Alan Turing in 1952, which is why they are sometimes referred to as "Turing patterns." Turing's seminal paper focused on chemicals known as morphogens. His proposed mechanism involved the interaction between an activator chemical that expresses a unique characteristic (like a tiger's stripe) and an inhibitor chemical that periodically kicks in to shut down the activator's expression. The key is that the inhibitor diffuses at a faster rate than the activator, creating periodic patterning.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Daily Deals (2-03-2022)

Woot is running a sale on refurbished Amazon Kindle eReaders and Fire tablets, which means you can pick up a fairly recent Kindle for as little as $35 or a previous-gen Fire HD 10 for $70. But since Amazon’s tablets ship with a fork of Android called Fire OS, you’ll need to perform a bit […]

The post Daily Deals (2-03-2022) appeared first on Liliputing.

Woot is running a sale on refurbished Amazon Kindle eReaders and Fire tablets, which means you can pick up a fairly recent Kindle for as little as $35 or a previous-gen Fire HD 10 for $70. But since Amazon’s tablets ship with a fork of Android called Fire OS, you’ll need to perform a bit of brain surgery to convince them to run the Google Play Store.

Don’t want to go through the hassle? You can also pick up a refurbished Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite for $100 today, which is $60 off the list price for this tablet. It features a MediaTek MT8768N processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and ships with Android 11 software and full support for Google Play, no hacks required.

Here are some of the day’s best deals.

Tablets & eReaders

Laptops

Other

The post Daily Deals (2-03-2022) appeared first on Liliputing.