In a press release today, Samsung has announced memory modules based on the CXL standard, bringing together PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 for AI and high-performance computing work in data centers.
(Image credit: Samsung)
CXL is an open standard first mooted in 2019, with a view to bringing high-speed, low latency communication between a CPU and its RAM, accelerator cards, and other devices, while expanding memory capacity and bandwidth greatly. CXL is based upon the industry supported PCIe 5.0 interface. With the new standard, which removes the limitations of limited memory channels, Samsung foresees RAM capacity scaling to multiple terabytes.
The Compute Express Link Consortium includes Samsung, AMD, ARM, IBM, Intel, Broadcom, Micron, and Nvidia among many others. It has previously been seen in Agilex FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) made by Intel via its purchase of Altera Corporation.
It’s not just the new standard that marks these new memory modules out. Samsung has added new controller technologies such as memory mapping, interface converting and error management to the mix, and the new module has been successfully validated on next-generation server platforms from Intel.
Dr Debendra Das Sharma, an Intel Fellow and Director of I/O Technology and Standards at Intel, said, “Data center architecture is rapidly evolving to support the growing demand and workloads for AI and ML, and CXL memory is expected to expand the use of memory to a new level. We continue to work with industry companies such as Samsung to develop a robust memory ecosystem around CXL.”
Matthew Wilson 7 hours ago Featured Tech News, Software & Gaming
We’ve known for a few years now that Bethesda Game Studios has two major games in the works – Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI. As it turns out, BGS has third, unannounced project in the works as well.
Bethesda Game Studios is currently hiring for a new server engineer, who will be joining the company’s “experienced team of developers who have a legacy of creating AAA games”.
Interestingly, the job listing states that this role is to “improve systems for an unannounced title”, meaning it is separate from Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6, which were both announced in 2018. Currently, Bethesda is working to ship Starfield within the next 18 months and after that, the team will begin working on the next Elder Scrolls game.
This particular unannounced project is in the works at Bethesda Game Studios Austin, which is separate from the company’s main Maryland studio. Bethesda Austin has been responsible for maintaining Fallout 76 and developing its expansions. With that in mind, the studio could be familiar enough with the IP at this point to begin work on the next Fallout game.
KitGuru Says: Could this be the beginning of work on Fallout 5, or is Bethesda cooking up another new IP? Which would you prefer to see?
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Tags bethesda Bethesda Game Studios Fallout 5 news Starfield the elder scrolls 6 Unannounced Game
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Matthew Wilson 3 days ago Featured Tech News, Software & Gaming
Two days ago, Blizzard accidentally leaked a June 1st launch date for WoW Classic: Burning Crusade. At the time, we didn’t know if this was the final release date or a placeholder, but that changes today, with Blizzard officially confirming the launch.
The Burning Crusade is coming to World of Warcraft Classic on the 1st of June, raising the Classic level cap to 70 and adding in blood elves and draenei as playable races.
Blizzard will be rolling out a pre-expansion patch on the 18th of May, which will have players choose whether to continue their journey on to the new expansion, or transfer to a new server to keep playing WoW Vanilla.
Blizzard has also revealed unlock times for The Burning Crusade on WoW Classic. The expansion goes live at 10PM BST on the 1st of June.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
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After more than a year of iOS exclusivity, social audio platform Clubhouse is releasing its Android app. It will be available in beta on Google’s mobile OS today in the US, allowing users to sign up and participate in its audio-only chat rooms.
“Our plan over the next few weeks is to collect feedback from the community, fix any issues we see and work to add a few final features like payments and club creation before rolling it out more broadly,” the company said in a blog post.
The Android app, which the company says has been the top request from its community by far, will roll out to other English-speaking markets and the rest of the world in the days and weeks ahead, the company said. Users outside the US will be able to pre-register for access via the Clubhouse page in the Google Play store, to be notified when the Android app is available in their area.
However, Clubhouse says the platform will remain invite-only for now, meaning it’s still not open to just anyone, “as part of the effort to keep the growth measured,” the company said in a statement. Over the summer, the company plans to begin migrating what it says are millions of iOS users who have been waitlisted while the company built the app’s infrastructure.
Clubhouse
Despite limited access Clubhouse has generated significant buzz, thanks in part to its early popularity with the venture-capital crowd dotted around Silicon Valley. The company was recently valued at $4 billion after a new funding round.
However, this early excitement has meant multiple big tech firms are interested in launching similar audio features of their own. Twitter has already rolled out its own Spaces feature, Discord has added Stage Channels, and Facebook, Spotify, Slack, LinkedIn, and Reddit are all at varying stages of adding similar audio-only features to their services.
The company acknowledged in its post announcing the Android app that the platform had grown faster than expected. “This had its downsides, as the load stressed our systems—causing widespread server outages and notification failures, and surpassing the limits of our early discovery algorithms,” the post stated. “It made us shift our focus to hiring, fixing, and company building, rather than the community meetups and product features that we normally like to focus on.”
With more than a year under its belt, Clubhouse has turned its attention to attracting creators to its platform, and recently announced the results of an accelerator program which will see it fund 50 audio shows on the platform. Now, with its release on Android, Clubhouse is finally letting US users with an invite on the biggest smartphone OS in the world get involved.
The Mercury Research CPU market share results are in for the first quarter of 2021, which finds AMD scoring its highest single-quarter market share increase in the server market since 2006, leading to record revenue as it steals more sockets from Intel. Those share gains are isolated, though, as AMD lost share in the notebook segment and overall market share while remaining flat in desktop PC chips. Those regressions might not be as problematic as they appear on the surface, though, due to AMD’s shift to producing pricier chips that generate more profit. (We have the full breakdown for each segment at the end of the article).
“While we don’t often discuss average selling prices, we note that this quarter saw unusually strong price moves for AMD — as AMD shipped fewer low-end parts and more high-end parts, as well as shipping many more server parts, the company’s average selling price increased significantly,” said Dean McCarron of Mercury Research.
It’s clear that AMD has prioritized its highest-end desktop PC models and its server chips during the pandemic-induced supply chain shortages. These moves come as the CPU market continues to move at a record pace: Last quarter marked the second-highest CPU shipment volume in history, second only to the prior quarter. Also, the first quarter usually suffers from lower sales volume as we exit the holiday season, but the first quarter of 2021 set yet another record – the 41% on-year gain was the highest for the CPU market in 25 years.
These developments benefit both companies, but AMD has clearly suffered more than Intel from the crushing combination of supply shortages and overwhelming demand. AMD actually recently lost share to Intel in both notebooks and desktop PCs for the first time in three years, but it reminded at a flat 19.3% of the desktop PC market during the quarter, meaning it stopped the slide despite supply challenges.
However, Intel’s Rocket Lake processors landed right at the end of the quarter, and they’re particularly competitive against AMD’s Ryzen 5000 in the lower end that tends to move the most volume. Additionally, these chips are widely available at retail at very competitive pricing while AMD’s chips are still a rarity on shelves at anywhere near the suggested selling price. That will make the results of the next quarter all the more interesting.
Both Intel and AMD set records for the number of units shipped and revenue during the quarter for mobile chips. AMD couldn’t stop the slide in notebook PC chips, but as McCarron points out, the company has prioritized higher-priced Ryzen “Renoir” 5 and 7 models while Intel has grown in its lower-margin and lower-priced Celeron chips. AMD slipped 1 percentage point to 18% of the notebook PC unit share.
Most concerning for Intel? It lost a significant amount of share to AMD in the profitable server market. AMD notched its highest single-quarter gain in server CPU share since 2016 at a growth of 1.8 percentage points, bringing the company to 8.9% (a few caveats apply, listed below).
While a 1.8 percentage point decline doesn’t sound too severe, it is concerning given the typically small changes we see in server market share. Intel’s data center revenue absolutely plummeted in the first quarter of the year, dropping 20% YoY while units shipped drop 13%, but Intel chalked that up to its customers pausing orders while ‘digesting’ their existing inventory. However, AMD’s financial results, in which the company’s server and semi-custom revenue jumped 286%, imply that Intel’s customers were actually digesting AMD’s chips instead.
AMD’s strong gains in server CPU share during the quarter occurred before its newest AMD EPYC Milan chips and Intel’s newest Ice Lake chips had their official launch, but both companies began shipping chips to their biggest customers early this year/late last year. Additionally, samples of these chips are in customers’ hands long before general availability, so large volume purchases are often decided long before server CPUs hit the shelves.
AMD’s big supercomputer wins with its EPYC Milan chips foretold strong buy-in from those seeking the highest performance possible, and it appears that momentum has carried over to the broader server CPU market. Given that most of these customers already know which company they’ll use for their long-term deployments, it is rational to expect that AMD’s server charge could continue into the next quarter.
Finally, AMD lost 1 percentage point in the overall x86 CPU market share, receding to 20.7%. Again, this comes as the company struggles from pandemic-induced supply chain shortages that it is minimizing by prioritizing high end chips. Meanwhile, Intel is leveraging its production scale to flood the lower-end of the market and gain share, but that comes at the expense of profitability.
Below you’ll find the specific numbers for each segment, complete with historical data.
1Q21
4Q20
3Q20
2Q20
1Q20
4Q19
3Q19
2Q19
1Q2019
4Q18
3Q18
2Q18
1Q18
4Q17
3Q17
2Q17
1Q17
4Q16
3Q16
AMD Desktop Unit Share
19.3%
19.3%
20.1%
19.2%
18.6%
18.3%
18%
17.1%
17.1%
15.8%
13%
12.3%
12.2%
12.0%
10.9%
11.1%
11.4%
9.9%
9.1%
Quarter over Quarter / Year over Year (pp)
+0.1 / +0.7
-0.8 / +1.0
+0.9 / +2.1
+0.6 / +2.1
+0.3 / +1.5
+0.3 / +2.4
+0.9 / +5
Flat / +4.8
+1.3 / +4.9
+2.8 / +3.8
+0.7 / +2.1
+0.1 / +1.2
+0.2 / +0.8
+1.1 / +2.1
-0.2 / +1.8
-0.3 / –
+1.5 / –
+0.8 / –
–
1Q21
4Q20
3Q20
2Q20
1Q20
Q419
3Q19
2Q19
1Q2019
4Q18
3Q18
2Q18
AMD Mobile Unit Share
18.0%
19%
20.2%
19.9%
17.1%
16.2%
14.7%
14.1%
13.1%
12.2%
10.9%
8.8%
Quarter over Quarter / Year over Year (pp)
-1.0 / +1.1
-1.2 / +2.8
+0.3 / +5.5
+2.9 / +5.8
+0.9 / +3.2
+1.5 / +4.0
+0.7 / +3.8
+1.0 / +5.3
+0.9 / ?
AMD bases its server share projections on IDC’s forecasts but only accounts for the single- and dual-socket market, which eliminates four-socket (and beyond) servers, networking infrastructure and Xeon D’s (edge). As such, Mercury’s numbers differ from the numbers cited by AMD, which predict a higher market share. Here is AMD’s comment on the matter: “Mercury Research captures all x86 server-class processors in their server unit estimate, regardless of device (server, network or storage), whereas the estimated 1P [single-socket] and 2P [two-socket] TAM [Total Addressable Market] provided by IDC only includes traditional servers.”
There are a number of different options available to move files between your desktop and mobile devices. The most common method is to use a USB cable, but this only works if you have access to the correct cable. What if we could send files between devices on the same network using nothing more than a QR code? For that we need qrcp.
Available for Linux, Windows or macOS, Qrcp works by binding a web server to the machine’s IP address along with a random port number. It then generates a unique QR code that provides the relevant information. You can then read the QR code on your mobile device, which will automatically take you to the decoded URL. The web server automatically stops once the download is completed.
How to Install qrcp
Qrcp is available for Windows, Mac and Linux machines including the Raspberry Pi. Our tutorial is centered on Linux and Qrcp produces deb and rpm package files for 32- and 64-bit machines as well as ARM, should you wish to install qrcp on a Raspberry Pi. But it’s quite easy to install from the source tarball.
1. Download the latest source release for your machine. At the time of writing, this was version 0.8.4.
2. Extract the downloaded file into a new directory called qrcp in your Downloads directory.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
3. Open a terminal / command prompt and navigate to the newly created qrcp directory.
$ cd ~/Downloads/qrcp
4. Move the extracted qrcp script into the /usr/local/bin directory. This enables the command to be used from any location. Windows users can copy the qrcp file to their Windows directory, enabling the command to be used from any location.
$ sudo mv qrcp /usr/local/bin/
Transferring Files to Mobile Devices
The default qrcp configuration should suffice for most users. As soon as you specify the file you wish to transfer, qrcp will create a unique URL from which the file can be downloaded. Not only that, but the utility generates a QR code which you can scan from your mobile device. When you then navigate to the decoded URL, the file will be automatically downloaded to your mobile device.
We’ll be using Google Lens as the QR code scanner, but you can use an alternate app if you so prefer. The commands to use qrcp are identical between Windows, Mac and Linux.
1. From the terminal / command prompt, navigate to the directory which contains the file you wish to share. In our case we have a PDF on our desktop that we wish to send to our mobile device.
$ cd ~/Desktop
2. Use qrcp to prepare the file for transfer. Qrcp has generated a QR code, as well as a URL.
$ qrcp Technical-Specs.pdf
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
3. On your mobile device, open a QR code scanner, such as Google Lens and scan the QR code on the screen.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
4. Tap on the decoded URL, the file transfer will automatically begin and the connection will close once the transfer is complete.
Transferring Multiple Files With qrcp
You can similarly use qrcp to transfer multiple files, via a zip file comprising all of the specified files.
$ qrcp filename1 filename2 filename3
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Transferring files from mobile device to desktop
You can just as easily use qrcp to transfer files to the desktop.
1. On your computer open a terminal and set qrcp to receive a file.
qrcp receive
2. Using your mobile device, scan the generated QR code and tap the decoded URL.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
You’re taken to a page where you are asked to choose the files that you wish to transfer.
3. Select the files you want to send, tap the Transfer button at the bottom of the page, and the specified files will immediately be downloaded.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
By default qrcp receive will download files to the current directory but you can also specify the directory you wish to receive the files in.
qrcp receive --output=/path/to/directory
Configuring qrcp
Although qrcp’s default configuration should suffice for most users, you can run the qrcp config command to set some useful defaults. The command will ask a series of questions, such as the default network interface to use, the default port, the default directory for received files, whether to use HTTPS for transfers, etc. The process is fairly straightforward and easy to follow. When done, the configuration is written in the config.json file under the ~/.config/qrcp directory (Linux version location).
With the ongoing pandemic and chip shortages still making headlines semiconductor revenue totalled $464 billion in 2020 and will top $522 billion 2021, according to IDC. Despite widespread shortages, sales of chips are going to grow further this year as more devices are getting smarter and more chips are consumed overall. Fuelled by home working and education computing is set to be the main driver of growth as each PC uses dozens of chips many of which are made using an advanced process technology. Meanwhile, shipments of chips for smartphones, consumer electronics, and automotive applications will also be strong.
Global semiconductor revenue increased by 10.8% last year to $464 billion and will grow another 12.5% this year to $522 million because of growth in consumer, computing, 5G, and automotive semiconductors, a new report from IDC says. Shortages of chips will continue through 2021, but since the industry will adopt more expensive chips for a wide variety of applications, sales of semiconductors are destined to grow once again.
Semiconductors for PCs and servers outpaced the overall chip market and grew 17.3% year-over-year to $160 billion in 2020. There were several factors that drove sales of PC and server chips to new heights. Demand for PCs grew rather dramatically last year, which caused shortages. Meanwhile, CPUs and GPUs are made using sophisticated fabrication technologies and therefore are rather expensive. Finally, supply constraints allowed manufacturers to further increase prices of their products. IDC predicts that sales of semiconductors for computing will grow 7.7% to $173 billion in 2021.
“Demand for PC processors remains strong, especially in value-oriented segments,” said Shane Rau, research vice president, Computing Semiconductors. “The PC processors market looks strong through the first half and likely the whole year.” IDC forecasts computing systems revenues will grow 7.7% to $173 billion in 2021.
Chips for smartphones have been a major semiconductor revenue driver for about a decade since the market of handsets was growing rapidly. Last year unit shipments of smartphones dropped by 10%, but since new 5G devices use more expensive SoCs and more chips in general, smartphone semiconductor revenue increased 9.1% year-over-year. IDC believes that sales of chips for mobile phones will grow by 23.3% in 2021 to $147 billion.
“2021 will be an especially important year for semiconductor vendors as 5G phones capture 34% of all mobile phone shipments while semiconductors for 5G phones will capture nearly two thirds of the revenue in the segment,” said Phil Solis, research director for Connectivity and Smartphone Semiconductors.
Chips for consumer electronics totalled $60 billion in 2020, up 7.7% year over year as sales of devices like game consoles, tablets, wireless headsets, smart watches, and set-top-boxes were strong.
“New gaming consoles from Microsoft and Sony, continued strong sales of wearables from Apple, and the rise in smart home networks managed by Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant will accelerate growth in 2021 to 8.9% year over year,” said Rudy Torrijos, research manager, Consumer Semiconductors.
Shipments of chips for automotive applications recovered in the second half of 2020, but many semiconductors for cars are in tight supply now, a situation that will persist throughout 2021, according to IDC. Nonetheless, automotive semiconductors revenue is expected to grow 13.6% year-over-year, the analysts note.
“Overall, the semiconductor industry remains on track to deliver another strong year of growth as the super cycle that began at the end of 2019 strengthens this year,” said Mario Morales, program vice president, Semiconductors at IDC.
Kingston has sent over the brand’s overclockable DDR5 memory modules to its motherboard partners for qualification. The company plans to ship the new DDR5 products in the third quarter of this year to compete with the best RAM on the market.
Kingston’s DDR5 memory is equipped with a XMP profile for an easy and fast setup. In addition, the memory modules feature a programmable PMIC (power management integrated circuit) so motherboard partners can have some fun with them. The standard operating voltage for DDR5 is 1.1V, however, an adjustable PMIC would allow vendors to overclock the memory modules beyond JEDEC’s baseline.
DDR5 not only pushes the speed limit, but also the capacity envelope. Some memory vendors are already on the drawing board to develop DDR5 that runs at 10,000 MHz, while others are aiming for 512GB memory modules. We’ve already gotten a first taste of what DDR5 brings to the table in some early RAM benchmarks, and it looks very promising.
Intel’s 12th Generation Alder Lake processors are rumored to be the first consumer chips to embrace DDR5. Although the chipmaker hasn’t commited to a specific date, Alder Lake production is scheduled to ramp up in the second half of this year. If we’re optimistic, the first Alder Lake chips could land in late 2021 or maybe early 2022. So while Kingston expects to ship DDR5 memory modules in the third quarter of the year, consumers might not be able to exploit them until later in the year, barring any setbacks.
The server and data center market, on the other hand, will welcome DDR5 with open arms. Intel’s looming 4th Generation Xeon Scalable (Sapphire Rapids) will arrive with DDR5 support. AMD’s next generation of EPYC chips (Genoa) will launch this year as well. AMD has stated that Genoa will support “new memory,” likely referring to DDR5.
As first reported by Android Police, some users have reported that the desktop and mobile versions of YouTube have begun showing options for automatic translation of titles. The videos spotted by users displays the titles, descriptions, and closed captions all translated automatically.
YouTube titles auto-translated into Spanish
Those users who submitted these screenshots to Android Police have so far only confirmed that auto translation on YouTube is being tested for users with their primary languages set to either Portuguese, Spanish, or Turkish. A video with translated titles shows a small translation icon that precedes the title.
YouTube Videos translated into Portuguese and Turkish
The change appears to be happening on the server end, so updating the app likely won’t have an effect on enabling the auto-translate feature. Automatic translation of videos in English gives videos the potential to reach more audiences and opens accessibility for English videos to non-English speakers.
Adobe Flash is reaching the very end of its life. The final nail in its coffin comes from Microsoft. Even after Adobe officially ended support for Flash on the very last day of 2020, Flash remains a component of Windows 10, that is until Microsoft releases the 21H1 update for Windows 10. Rollout for this update begins this month and it will remove the Flash component from the operating system.
The Verge cited this change by an update posted to the Windows Blog. Titled the “Update on Adobe Flash Player End of support”, it outlines that a component called ‘Update for the removal of Adobe Flash Player’ will be included in Windows 10 cumulative update version 1507 starting in July. Machines on Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Embedded 8 Standard will also receive this component via its Monthly Rollup and Security Only Update.
Additionally, please note that when you update to Windows 10, version 21H1 or later, Flash will be removed. More information on Windows 10,
Adobe Flash was once used to run interactive multimedia applications like games or programs right from the web browser in the late 90s and early 2000s. Open web standards like HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly all became replacements for Flash player. This, in addition to increasing security vulnerabilities led to the obsoletion of the once popular web platform for multimedia.
Matthew Wilson 15 hours ago Featured Tech News, General Tech, Operating Systems
Microsoft has revealed plans to start removing Adobe Flash from Windows 10 this year. Flash officially reached End of Life status on the 31st of December 2020, but remnants of it still remain in Windows to this day.
Starting in June, Microsoft will be issuing Windows 10 update KB4577586, which will begin the process of removing Adobe Flash Player from Windows 10 version 1809. Then in July, Flash Player will also be removed from Windows 10 versions 1607 and 1507.
In future versions of Windows 10, including the upcoming 21H1 update, Flash will no longer be present at all. Microsoft will also be updating older versions of Windows to remove Flash, including Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012.
While Adobe Flash is now technically dead, old Flash content has been archived and is still accessible today, so if you’re ever in the mood for a bit of nostalgia, you can use the Flashpoint emulator, or find old Flash games on the Internet Archive.
KitGuru Says: This is a necessary step for the sake of security on Windows PCs. What was your favourite Flash game or animated short?
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Matthew Wilson 2 days ago General Tech, Professional
Synology has a new pair of professional-grade storage racks launching this week. The 12-bay RackStation RS2421+ and RS2421RP+, and 16-bay RS2821RP+ will be available starting this month, built to excel in large-scale infrastructure backups, business-level file serving and private cloud services.
Speaking on the new racks, Julien Chen, product manager at Synology, explained that both new RackStation products support “essential remote work applications” and well as offering a path for mass storage upgrades with redundant power to ensure file servers are protected in the event of a surge or outage.
In the table below, you can see the specs and features for both new RackStations:
RS2421+ RS2421RP+
RS2821RP+
CPU
Quad-core AMD V1500B
Memory
4 GB ECC DDR4 (max. 32 GB)
Form Factor
2U
3U
Drive Bays6
12 (max. 24)
16 (max. 28)
iSCSI 4K random read IOPS
106K
105K
iSCSI 4K random write IOPS
59K
59K
SMB Seq. 64K read
2200 MB/s
2200 MB/s
SMB Seq. 64K write
1154 MB/s
1164 MB/s
Network Interface
4 x Gigabit RJ-45
PCIe Slots
1 x Gen 3.0 8x slot
Redundant Power Supply
RP+ model only
Yes
Warranty7
5-year limited warranty
Both new RackStation units boast higher performance than their predecessors. The RS2421(RP)+ gets a 103% and 161% boost to random write and read IOPS speeds, while the RS2821(RP)+ delivers 115% and 162% higher random write/read IOPS.
Both devices can be fitted with a dual-port Synology 10GbE or 25GbE NIC for better throughput, or a Synology M.2 adapter card and NVMe SSDs to create a speedy cache. Each rackmount also comes with a three year warranty, which can be extended to five years.
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Microsoft will begin removing Adobe Flash from Windows next month
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Matthew Wilson 2 days ago Featured Tech News, Software & Gaming
While it looked like Microsoft may acquire Discord in recent months, those negotiations unceremoniously ended and now, it looks like Discord has chosen to partner up elsewhere. In a surprising announcement last night, Sony announced that it has invested in Discord and plans to integrate the app with PlayStation consoles.
In an announcement straight from Sony Interactive Entertainment head, Jim Ryan, we learned that starting next year, Discord will integrate with PlayStation consoles, a move that will include Discord friends lists, group chats and server communities accessible on console:
“Together, our teams are already hard at work connecting Discord with your social and gaming experience on PlayStation Network. Our goal is to bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile starting early next year, allowing friends, groups, and communities to hang out, have fun, and communicate more easily while playing games together.”
Sony also has a minority stake in Discord moving forward, although the exact investment amount has not been disclosed yet. We could be moving towards a future where Sony’s PlayStation social features are replaced by Discord.
There is no reason why these integrations couldn’t also come to Xbox. Discord already has basic integration with Xbox, allowing your account to be linked to Discord to display games being played on Xbox consoles.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru Says: Discord integration on consoles is something I’ve been hoping to see for a while. Xbox and PlayStation party chat was good enough back in the day, but nowadays, it is lacking compared to PC offerings like Discord.
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The $4 Raspberry Pi Pico may be great value, but it had to lose something in order to keep the price low, and that was WiFi. Sure, we can hack our own solution, but Pimoroni’s upcoming Pico Wireless board, demonstrated by Pimoroni employee Phil Howard (better known as @Gadgetoid), is shaping up to serve all of our WiFi needs.
Armed with a chonky @TPLINKUK access point, some borrowed code and a little glue, magic and wishes…. I’ve got Pico Wireless serving an HTML file from an SD card! pic.twitter.com/cXf4cUytmjMay 5, 2021
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Pico Wireless is an ESP32 powered “pack,” a term coined by Pimoroni to identify a board that connects to all 40 of the GPIO pins of a Pico, as if it were a backpack. In reality, it requires only a few GPIO pins for an SPI interface and others for basic connectivity. In the tweet we see Howard using the Pico Wireless next to a Raspberry Pi Pico via a Pico Omnibus, a board that breaks out the GPIO for use with multiple add ons at once. Howard is using the boards to set up a basic web server, which is serving a static HTML page.
The ESP32 at the heart of Pico Wireless is itself a powerful micro-controller, with a dual-core 32-bit LX6 microprocessor running at up to 240 MHz. For Pico Wireless, its sole purpose is to provide wireless communication, and for this it provides WiFi 802.11b/g/n and up to 150 Mbps (802.11n) and Bluetooth 4.2, including Bluetooth LE. The PCB antenna is more than capable of providing good communications over a fair distance.
Image 1 of 2
(Image credit: Phil Howard @Gadgetoid)
Image 2 of 2
(Image credit: Phil Howard @Gadgetoid)
Interfacing between the Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico Wireless happens via SPI, and it’s highly likely that Pimoroni will add a module to its custom MicroPython firmware, just as the company has done for previous accessories. CircuitPython users already have this feather, as Adafruit has its own Featherwing board that provides this functionality.
Pico Wireless also has three extra features: a micro SD card slot, an RGB LED and a push button. The micro SD card slot should also be an SPI device, and it can be used to store files and record data that can be served by Pico Wireless as if it were a micro web server. The RGB LED is most likely the same as that used on Pico Display, a simple RGB LED that uses PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) to mix red, green and blue to produce a variety of colors, useful as a status LED for a project and to show that your Pico Wireless is working. The final feature, the push button, could be a reset button, something omitted from the Pico, but added via another Pimoroni add-on. Or it could be a user-programmable button.
How much will it be, and how soon will it arrive? Right now we have no idea, but looking at the Pico Wireless board, it already has the correct silkscreen printing and no “bodge wires” used to fix mistakes, so it could be with us very soon.
A new type of malware, dubbed ‘Panda Stealer’ by researchers, is spreading through spam emails and malicious Discord links, and has its sights set firmly on your ever valuable cryptocurrency. According to Trend Micro, the phishing emails appear as business quote requests, with an XLSM file attached that’s loaded with malign macros.
(Image credit: Rūdolfs Klintsons from Pexels)
Panda Stealer appears as an innocent XLSM file with macros that once enabled download a “loader” which executes the main “stealer” application. Alternatively, an XLS file may be downloaded, containing a formula that hides a Powershell command that accesses paste.ee, a Pastebin alternative, to download a further PowerShell command. Once running, Panda Stealer tries to detect keys, addresses, and other data associated with cryptocurrency transactions and wallets holding funds including Dash, Bytecoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. Right now we are unsure if the latest cryptocurrency, Chia is affected. It will also attempt to steal credentials from other applications such as NordVPN, Telegram, Discord, and Steam. It’s capable of taking screenshots of the infected computer, and sucking data from browsers like cookies, passwords, and cards.
Panda Stealer seems to be a variant of Collector Stealer, a cracked build of which is freely available online. While there’s no evidence yet of a particular criminal group behind Panda Stealer, Trend Micro was able to identify an IP address being used by the malware for command and control. It led to a rented Shock Hosting virtual server, and having been reported, the server has been suspended.
This may not be enough to quell the threat, however, as VirusTotal found 264 similar files in its database, calling home to 140 C&C servers and from more than 10 download sites, some of them from Discord, which may be being used to share the malware between criminals.
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