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In Deutschland ist der Streit entbrannt, wer als erstes Verzicht üben soll, sollte russisches Gas nicht mehr fließen. Zu wählen ist zwischen kaltem Wasser und Massenarbeitslosigkeit.
In new data, CDC notes none of the first 9 cases had history of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Enlarge / Liver lesions in patient with chronic active hepatitis C. (credit: Getty | BSIP)
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has ruled out the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, as a possible cause of the puzzling, international outbreak of severe hepatitis (liver inflammation) in children, according to a statement released Friday.
The outbreak has sickened more than 170 children in more than a dozen countries in recent months, with case counts ticking up by the day. Around 10 percent of the children—mostly under the age of 10—have required liver transplants. The World Health Organization has reported one death.
In the US, officials in at least five states have reported at least 25 confirmed or possible cases: Alabama (9), North Carolina (2), Wisconsin (4), Illinois (3), and California (7). At least three of the US cases have required liver transplants and officials in Wisconsin are investigating a possible death linked to the outbreak.
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Wegen der Korrosionsprobleme müssen immer neue Atomkraftwerke abgeschaltet werden, die Kapazität ist mit 28 Gigawatt nun so niedrig wie nie zuvor
Valve’s latest beta software update for the Steam Deck brings experimental support for controlling the screen refresh rate in games and allows the Linux-based operating system to control the fan speed as well as when the fan activates in the first place, which can cut down on unwanted noise in some circumstances. Unfortunately there’s also […]
The post Lilbits: Steam Deck software update, beginning of the end for the Pixel 3a, and Audacity in the Microsoft Store appeared first on Liliputing.
Valve’s latest beta software update for the Steam Deck brings experimental support for controlling the screen refresh rate in games and allows the Linux-based operating system to control the fan speed as well as when the fan activates in the first place, which can cut down on unwanted noise in some circumstances.
Unfortunately there’s also a hardware issue affecting some Steam Deck units that causes a whining noise when the fan is running, and software updates alone will never resolve that issue. Some users have taken things into their own hands with a DIY fix, but Valve advises against taking that approach since it’s unknown what long term impact it could have on cooling performance. It’s possible that you may one day be able to buy a replacement fan that doesn’t whine though.
Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.
Steam OS 3.2 Beta update brings support for controlling the fan speed, experimental support for changing in-game screen refresh rates between 40 and 60 Hz and automatically bringing up the keyboard in desktop mode when needed. https://t.co/vZZ5Aa6u7K
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) April 29, 2022
Valve ships Steam Decks with one of two fans, and models with one of those fans makes an annoying whining noise in some units. A DIY fix involving some electrical tape inside the case seems to fix the issue, but it’s unclear if there are any side effects. https://t.co/XCr4uDeaj8
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) April 29, 2022
Google’s Pixel 3a and 3a XL will most likely get their final security update next month, bringing an end of support to some of the company’s most successful phones to date thanks to their solid specs & software and affordable price tags. https://t.co/97y6L40iOJ
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) April 29, 2022
Windows 11 Preview Build 22610 no longer shows build watermark, disables the tablet-optimized taskbar feature (for now), features an updated Task Manager with a heatmap based on your accent color, File Explorer context menu tweaks, and more. https://t.co/3PryXq1UbW
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) April 29, 2022
Free and open source audio editor Audacity is now available from the Microsoft Store (at least in part to cut down on fake versions distributed in the Windows app store). https://t.co/ypeBZ6mErd
— Liliputing (@liliputingnews) April 29, 2022
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: Steam Deck software update, beginning of the end for the Pixel 3a, and Audacity in the Microsoft Store appeared first on Liliputing.
The mirror is now working with all five instruments, and limited only by physics.
Enlarge / A very detailed view of one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies. (credit: NASA/STScI)
In mid-March, NASA released an image from the Webb Space Telescope that demonstrated that its primary mirror reached the point where it focused light as finely as physics would allow for hardware of its size. That was a critical milestone, but it only applied to one of the five instruments carried by the telescope. On Thursday, NASA announced that the next milestone had been reached: All the instruments were now equally in focus.
Webb's instruments include two spectrographs, two imaging cameras, and the fine guidance sensor that helps with pointing the telescope. Each of these has had to be aligned individually to the primary mirror to ensure focus, a process that has taken several weeks. But now, the focus for each of them is about as good as physics will allow.
That limit is set by diffraction, the process by which light interferes with itself and diffuses when it reaches an edge or corner. While it's possible to beat the diffraction limit if you have complete control of the photons and play quantum mechanical tricks with them, that isn't the case with telescopes. So, diffraction-limited is the best we can hope for from a telescope. And, according to NASA, it's somewhat better than we had planned for: "The optical performance of the telescope continues to be better than the engineering team’s most optimistic predictions."
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Epic bought Bandcamp last month. Now Bandcamp is a weapon against app store owners.
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)
Epic and Google are gearing up for another legal battle. You might recall that Google has an in-app billing crackdown coming to the Play Store soon. The new rules require all apps selling digital goods to use Google Play Billing by March 31, so Google gets a cut of the sales. Any app in non-compliance has been unable to ship updates since March 31, but the real deadline is June 1, when these apps will be removed from the Play Store. Epic Games bought the popular independent music site Bandcamp in March, and it's already taking Google to court over its newest acquisition. Bandcamp isn't in compliance with the billing rules, so it's due for a ban in June. As part of its antitrust case against Google, Epic is filing a motion for a preliminary injunction to block Bandcamp's de-listing from the Play Store.
Epic has attacked Google and Apple over their app store rules and what Epic says are excessive fees. In March, there were a lot of questions surrounding why the creator of Fortnite and the Unreal Engine would buy an independent music site. One line of commentary from Music Business Worldwide founder Tim Ingham seems to have nailed Epic's strategy. Ingham notes that Epic failed to get Apple to reduce its 30 percent app store cut, in part because the alternative model Epic could demonstrate to the court, the Epic Games Store and its 12 percent fee, wasn't profitable. Apple's lawyers argued the unprofitability of Epic's Games Store justified Apple's 30 percent fees.
Bandcamp is a profitable digital content business, though. Bandcamp has a searchable content store, and it hosts and delivers the content by charging artists a 10 to 15 percent commission. Ingham predicted Epic would hold up Bandcamp's business model as a viable alternative to Apple and Google's app store fees, and that Epic would use its new acquisition to attack app store owners. It looks like we're seeing the first actions of that plan.
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In response to DMCA takedown requests, Bing removed more than 143 million links from its search engine in 2021. This represents a small increase compared to a year earlier. Interestingly, those piracy-related removals in Bing also impact the results of other search engines.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Bing has a relatively small market share but that doesn’t mean that it’s being ignored by copyright holders.
Microsoft’s search engine processes millions of takedown requests per week on average and these numbers add up quickly.
Bing’s latest transparency report was published last week, allowing us to take a closer look at the latest trends. The data show that, in 2021, Bing was asked to remove more than 144 million URLs.
More than 99% of these requests were valid and accepted, which ultimately resulted in the removal of 142,855,667 URLs. This is a small increase compared to the 125 million URLs that were taken down a year earlier.
Looking more closely at the data, we see that there was a sharp drop in removal requests in the second half of the year. The number of reported URLs dropped from 103 million in the first six months to 41 million in the months after.
The drop in takedown volume can largely be explained by a single takedown sender. More specifically, it’s caused by the absence of requests from “Remove Your Media” toward the end of the year.
Remove Your Media works with various ‘Manga’ copyright holders and sent Bing over 50 million takedown requests in the first half of 2021. In the second half, this dropped to a measly 46k.
With over a third of all reported URLs, the company was still the top sender in 2021, followed by the UK music group BPI and Marketly with 31 million and 11 million reported URLs respectively.
When we look at the most reported domains, manga-related sites are on top as well. Mangapark.net was targeted more than 2.5 million times, followed by related domains such as Mangafox and Ninemanga.
As we learned recently, these removals also appear to affect other search engines that rely on Bing’s data. These include DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Qwant, and Ecosia.
To give an example, one of our news articles about a Game of Thrones leak was removed from Bing’s search results due to erroneous takedown requests. As a result, that article was nowhere to be found in the other search engines either.
After we covered this mistake, the article reappeared in Bing. Unsurprisingly, it reappeared in Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and other search engines as well. However, other removed news articles that we didn’t mention, including this article about several movie screener leaks, are still unfindable at the time of writing.
This takedown spillover effect saves copyright holders a lot of time and effort. However, for those who are targeted by takedown mistakes, it just adds insult to injury.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In response to DMCA takedown requests, Bing removed more than 143 million links from its search engine in 2021. This represents a small increase compared to a year earlier. Interestingly, those piracy-related removals in Bing also impact the results of other search engines.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Bing has a relatively small market share but that doesn’t mean that it’s being ignored by copyright holders.
Microsoft’s search engine processes millions of takedown requests per week on average and these numbers add up quickly.
Bing’s latest transparency report was published last week, allowing us to take a closer look at the latest trends. The data show that, in 2021, Bing was asked to remove more than 144 million URLs.
More than 99% of these requests were valid and accepted, which ultimately resulted in the removal of 142,855,667 URLs. This is a small increase compared to the 125 million URLs that were taken down a year earlier.
Looking more closely at the data, we see that there was a sharp drop in removal requests in the second half of the year. The number of reported URLs dropped from 103 million in the first six months to 41 million in the months after.
The drop in takedown volume can largely be explained by a single takedown sender. More specifically, it’s caused by the absence of requests from “Remove Your Media” toward the end of the year.
Remove Your Media works with various ‘Manga’ copyright holders and sent Bing over 50 million takedown requests in the first half of 2021. In the second half, this dropped to a measly 46k.
With over a third of all reported URLs, the company was still the top sender in 2021, followed by the UK music group BPI and Marketly with 31 million and 11 million reported URLs respectively.
When we look at the most reported domains, manga-related sites are on top as well. Mangapark.net was targeted more than 2.5 million times, followed by related domains such as Mangafox and Ninemanga.
As we learned recently, these removals also appear to affect other search engines that rely on Bing’s data. These include DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Qwant, and Ecosia.
To give an example, one of our news articles about a Game of Thrones leak was removed from Bing’s search results due to erroneous takedown requests. As a result, that article was nowhere to be found in the other search engines either.
After we covered this mistake, the article reappeared in Bing. Unsurprisingly, it reappeared in Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and other search engines as well. However, other removed news articles that we didn’t mention, including this article about several movie screener leaks, are still unfindable at the time of writing.
This takedown spillover effect saves copyright holders a lot of time and effort. However, for those who are targeted by takedown mistakes, it just adds insult to injury.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Huawei’s new Mate Xs 2 is a foldable phone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, support for up to 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, and single foldable AMOLED display that wraps around the device when folded or works like a tablet-sized screen when unfolded. The Huawei Mate Xs 2 is available in China with […]
The post Huawei Mate Xs 2 smartphone has a single foldable display that wraps around the front and back appeared first on Liliputing.
Huawei’s new Mate Xs 2 is a foldable phone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, support for up to 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, and single foldable AMOLED display that wraps around the device when folded or works like a tablet-sized screen when unfolded.
The Huawei Mate Xs 2 is available in China with prices starting at around 10,000 CNY, or about $1,500.
The starting price is for a model with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a 4,600 mAh battery, but Huawei also offers higher-priced configurations with up to 12GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 4,880 mAh battery.
No matter the configuration, it’s the foldable display that’s the star of the show. When unfolded, it’s a 7.8 inch, 2480 x 2200 pixel AMOLED display with a 120 Hz refresh rate. But if you fold the device in half to hold as a phone, you’re left looking at a section of display that function as a 6.5 inch, 2480 x 1176 pixel display.
This sort of design eliminates the need for a secondary cover display, but it also means that the screen will always be exposed, even if the phone is used with some sort of bumper case. While that may not present much of a problem with traditional phones, foldable screens tend to be a bit easier to scratch, so I’d be wary to put a phone like this in my pocket.
Other features include a camera system that includes a 50MP primary camera, a 13MP ultra-wide camera, and an 8MP telephoto camera, a 10.7MP front-facing ultra-wide camera, support for a removable storage card for up to 256GB of additional storage, and support for 66W fast charging.
While the phone’s Snapdragon 888 processor may not be the fastest chip around, it’s still an upgrade over the Kirin 990 chip used in the first-gen Mate Xs. And while the phone supports WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, mobile data tops out at 4G speeds, which I suppose may be less of an issue for a phone that’s currently only available in China than it would be for a global model.
via NotebookCheck, GSM Arena, and xda-developers
The post Huawei Mate Xs 2 smartphone has a single foldable display that wraps around the front and back appeared first on Liliputing.
Lawsuits allege USPS purchase of inefficient vehicles violates environmental law.
Enlarge / The USPS's new mail truck. (credit: United States Postal Service)
The US Postal Service is facing lawsuits from 16 states and several environmental groups challenging its decision to buy tens of thousands of gasoline-powered delivery vehicles instead of electric vehicles.
As previously reported, the Environmental Protection Agency says the gas-powered trucks being ordered by the USPS "are expected to achieve only 8.6 miles per gallon (mpg), barely improving over the decades-old long-life vehicles that achieve 8.2 mpg." The USPS countered that the vehicles get 14.7 mpg when air conditioning isn't being used and that the trucks' size will make it possible to deliver the same amount of mail in fewer trips.
The USPS plan is to buy 50,000 to 165,000 vehicles over 10 years. Of those, at least 10 percent are slated to be battery-electric vehicles (BEV). Amid controversy, the USPS last month said its initial order of 50,000 trucks for $2.98 billion would include over 10,000 BEVs for "specific delivery routes that present the best initial application for electric vehicles."
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