Beeper is a new universal chat app that’s an attempt to unify 15 different chat platforms into a single interface. The app is the work of a team that includes Eric Migicovsky, the CEO and founder of former smartwatch manufacturer Pebble, who announced its launch on Twitter. Beeper’s site notes that the project was previously known as NovaChat, and requires a $10 per month subscription.
Although Beeper integrates with world’s most popular messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Slack, Twitter, Discord, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger, it’s the support for Apple’s iMessage that’s perhaps most interesting. iMessage is only officially available on Apple devices, and it’s often cited by users as something that prevents them switching to Android. Migicovsky says Beeper should allow iMessage to work on Android, Windows, and Linux, but admits that it’s “using some trickery” in doing so.
And yes, iMessage works even on Android, Windows and Linux using some trickery 🙂
— Eric Migicovsky (@ericmigi) January 20, 2021
An FAQ on Beeper’s website gives a more in-depth explanation of exactly what this trickery involves. If you’ve got an always-online Mac, then you can install the Beeper Mac app to act as a bridge, similar to the approach AirMessage uses. But things get really wild if you don’t have access to a Mac, at which point Beeper says it’ll literally send each of its users a “Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed” in order to act as a bridge. At this point we should probably mention that using Beeper involves paying a $10 a month subscription, which may or may not include the cost of the iPhone.
Just in case you thought Beeper was joking, in a followup tweet, Migicovsky said that he currently has 50 old iPhone 4S’s at his desk, ready to be upcycled for use with Beeper.
If the workaround works as Beeper claims, then the result should be a universal chat app that works across MacOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android, offering a unified inbox, and the ability to search across messages from each of the 15 services. It’s built on the open source Matrix messaging protocol (Migicovsky previously described NovaChat’s relationship to Matrix as akin to Gmail’s relationship with email), and although the client app itself isn’t open source, the bridges connecting it to other chat services are.
Oh, and there’s a dark mode coming in Beeper’s next update, naturally.
Beeper’s interface can include chats from multiple different services.Image: Beeper
While the short-term aim is to make it easier to chat to people across different chat apps, eventually Migicovsky has talked about the prospect of everyone using Matrix itself to chat with friends and colleagues, rather than simply using it as a bridge between services.
Although Migicovsky says he’s been using Beeper as his default chat client for the past two years, it doesn’t appear to be widely available just yet. Instead, Beeper asks prospective users to fill out a form on its website for an invitation.
Here’s the full list of chat services that Beeper currently supports:
Intel’s next-generation minicomputer is equipped with both the company’s own integrated Xe graphics driver and NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card.
Intel’s processor announcements at the CES 2021 virtual fair ignored many smaller releases. One of these was the company’s next-generation Phantom Canyon NUC computer.
Phantom Canyon’s official name is NUC 11 Enthusiast Mini PC that follows more traditional lines as a ready-made configuration instead of the NUC 9 Extreme’s modular design. As expected, the minicomputer is equipped with the company’s latest generation of iron.
NUC 10 At the heart of the Enthusiast is a 4-core Core i7 based on Intel’s Tiger Lake architecture – 1165 With the G7 Xe graphics driver. The company has chosen NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2060 as a separate video card. The computer will be available as well as the so-called. Barebone putty that fully equipped 11 with GB memory (2x 8 GB DDR4 – 3200), Optane Mem H 11 hybrid SSD drive (32 Gt Optane + 512 Gt SSD) and Windows 10 Home license. GeForce RTX 2060 is also part of the Barebone version.
Intel has also made slightly more special solutions in its new minicomputer. Although the video card chosen by the company only supports the PCI Express 3.0 standard, it is connected to the processor’s PCIe 4.0 lines, making only PCIe 3.0 lines available for M.2 drives. The computer has two M.2 ports, the first supporting only NVMe drives and the second supporting both NVMe and SATA drives.
On the interface side, there are two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, which are also the only USB Type-C connectors in the configuration. In addition to Thunderbolt, the computer has two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A connectors on the front panel and four on the back panel and an SDXC UHS-II card reader. One of the front panel USB connectors supports fast charging. Intel 2.5 Gbps 512 – LM network controller and Wi-Fi 6 AX 3200 is responsible for network connections , which supports both Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. There are two or four display connections, depending on the calculation method. One mini-DP 1.4 connector and an HDMI 2.0b connector are connected to the separate video card, but the Thunderbolt 4 connectors connected to the integrated Xe graphics driver also support the DisplayPort 1.4a standard.
Intel NUC 10 The strategic dimensions of the Enthusiast Mini PC are 221 x 142 x 42 mm and 1.3 liters. The housing cover is equipped with RGB lighting and is replaceable. Price information is not yet official, but according to AnandTech, SimplyNUC sells a partially customized configuration 128 on a GB NVMe SSD and 16 with GB memory 1349 for a dollar pre-order price and another anonymous store Barebone version 1130 for the dollar price. Deliveries of SimplyNUC pre-orders will begin in March
In the current version of the VLC Player, the developers have closed several security holes.
(Image: Tatiana Popova / Shutterstock.com)
The media player VLC Player has been released in a secured version. Users should update the application quickly. If attacks are successful, in the worst case scenario attackers could execute malicious code.
In a security warning, the developers write of several vulnerabilities, but do not mention CVE numbers and risk classifications. If a victim opens media files prepared by an attacker, this can lead to storage errors. The application then crashes. But it could also happen that attackers execute malicious code with the rights of the victim, warn the developers.
So far they have According to their own statements, no attacks were observed. The version equipped against such attacks VLC 3.0. 12 has been released for Linux, macOS and Windows. A security researcher from NSFOCUS discovered the vulnerabilities.
A new Linux port allows Apple’s M1 Macs to run Ubuntu for the first time. Corellium, a security firm that offers a virtualized version of iOS for security testing, has successfully ported Ubuntu over to M1 Macs and released a tutorial for others to follow. The modified version of Ubuntu boots into the regular user interface and includes USB support.
The team at Corellium have detailed exactly how they managed to get Ubuntu running, and it’s a good in-depth read if you’re interested in the details. While a number of M1 components are shared with Apple’s mobile chips, the non-standard chips made it challenging to create Linux drivers to get Ubuntu running properly.
Apple hasn’t designed its M1 Macs with dual-boot or Boot Camp in mind. Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, has previously ruled out official support for natively booting alternate operating systems like Windows or Linux. Virtualization seems to be Apple’s preferred method, but that hasn’t stopped people from making their own ports.
Linux is now completely usable on the Mac mini M1. Booting from USB a full Ubuntu desktop (rpi). Network works via a USB c dongle. Update includes support for USB, I2C, DART. We will push changes to our GitHub and a tutorial later today. Thanks to the @CorelliumHQ team ❤️ pic.twitter.com/uBDbDmvJUG
— Chris Wade (@cmwdotme) January 20, 2021
Hector Martin, a developer who regularly gets Linux running on a variety of hardware, is also porting Linux to M1 Macs. Developers seem to be enticed by the performance benefits offered by Apple’s M1 chips, and the ability to run Linux on a silent ARM-based machine. “I’ve been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time,” said Linux creator Linus Torvalds back in November. “The new Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS.”
Corellium CTO Chris Wade describes this new port as “completely usable” on a Mac Mini M1, and it works by booting the full Ubuntu desktop from USB. You will need a USB-C dongle to get networking working, though, and the process to get the port running will require some familiarity with Linux and custom kernels. Corellium has posted a tutorial on the process, if you’re interested in trying this beta project out.
Corellium has some experience in working around Apple’s operating system protections. Corellium offers security researchers a virtual iPhone to help with vulnerability exploration. It’s a process that has angered Apple enough to file lawsuits against Corellium. Apple lost an early challenge against Corellium late last year, after initially filing a lawsuit against the company on copyright grounds back in August 2019. Apple later alleged DMCA violations in January 2020, and a judge dismissed the copyright infringement claims in December. A ruling on the separate DMCA allegations has been deferred.
The network equipment supplier Cisco has closed security gaps in several products.
Cisco hardware and software admins should install the latest security patches. Otherwise, attackers could attack networks and, in some cases, execute malicious code and thus take complete control.
Specific information on threatened versions and security updates can be found in the security warnings linked below this message
Execute commands as root As ” critical “classified vulnerabilities affect DNA Center Command Runner, SD-WAN and Smart Software Manager. In the case of SD-WAN, attackers could attack vEdge routers and vManage software, for example.
The error can be found in the web-based management interface. Due to a lack of verification, attackers could trigger errors by sending prepared input. Successful exploitation of the gaps (CVE – 1301 – 1260, CVE – 2021 – 1261, CVE – 2021 – 1262), Cisco claims that attackers could perform actions with root privileges.
Via two further loopholes (CVE – 2021 – 1300, CVE – 2021 – 1301) it is conceivable that attackers trigger a memory error by means of manipulated IP data traffic and thus execute malicious code with root rights on devices.
The holes in DNA Center Command Runner and Smart Software Manager can also leak malicious code onto systems: Cisco Expressway Software TURN Server Configuration Issue.
Other vulnerabilities With the severity ” high “ins tufte security gaps affect, among other things, Data Center Network Manager and Web Security Appliance. If attacks are successful, this can lead to DoS states, for example. In addition, attackers could log into Smart Software Manager using static access data.
In addition, Cisco gives tips in an article on how administrators can effectively protect Expressway from external access.
List sorted in descending order according to threat level:
SD-WAN Command Injection SD-WAN Buffer Overflow DNA Center Command Runner Command Injection Smart Software Manager Satellite Web UI Command Injection SD-WAN vManage Authorization Bypass Data Center Network Manager Server-Side Request Forgery Data Center Network Manager SQL Injection SD-WAN Denial of Service Smart Software Manager Sat ellite Static Credential Advanced Malware Protection for Endpoints and Immunet for Windows DLL Hijacking DNA Center Information Disclosure Data Center Network Manager Certificate Validation DNA Center Cross- Site Request Forgery Data Center Network Manager Authorization Bypass Smart Software Manager Satellite SQL Injection SD-WAN vManage Cypher Query Language Injection Unified Communications Products Data Center Network Manager REST API Data Center Network Manager SD-WAN vManage SQL Injection StarOS IPv4 Denial of Service SD-WAN vManage Information Disclosure Data Center Network Manager Information Disclosure SD -WAN vManage Software Path Traversal Elastic Services Controller Denial of Service Umbrella Dashboard Packet Flood Email Security Appliance, Cisco Content Security Management Appliance, and Cisco Web Security Appliance Information Disclosure Web Security Appliance Stored Cross-Site Scripting Smart Software Manager Satellite Open Redirect SD-WAN Information Disclosure DNA Center Privilege Escalation (of)
A first for Raspberry Pi, the Pico microcontroller provides an affordable and simple way to control lights, motors, sensors and other electronic components.
For
Low cost
Small size
Ease of use
Built-in ADC
Against
C workflow is tricky
No built-in wireless
No 5V output
Raspberry Pi has a history of disrupting the status quo. In 2012, the first $35 Raspberry Pi offered a low cost entry into a market of single-board computers that was dominated by boards costing in excess of $100+. The Raspberry Pi Pico, the latest board in the range, disrupts a different part of the electronics market, taking on microcontroller boards like Arduino.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Available for an MSRP of just $4, the Pico is powered by Raspberry Pi’s own custom silicon, the RP2040 SoC, which features an Arm Cortex M0+ processor running at up to 133 Hz, with 264K of SRAM and 2MB of onboard storage. A great choice for robots, weather stations or other electronics projects, the board doesn’t run a full operating system, but instead launches programs you write in either MicroPython or C on a host computer (that could be a PC, a Mac or a regular Pi) and upload to it.
Perhaps even more important than the Pico itself is Raspberry Pi Foundation’s first foray into making its own silicon. We wanted to learn more about the RP2040 so we asked James Adams, Chief Operating Officer at Raspberry Pi Trading to tell us how “Pi Silicon” was created.
“We couldn’t see a way to offer something differentiated in the microcontroller space using existing third-party silicon, so we set out to build our own,” Adams said. “The RP2040 chip has been a long time in the making – we started initial work at the back end of 2016, we had some test silicon in our hands in September 2018 which we then reworked into the final device we use on the Raspberry Pi Pico board. The device has evolved substantially since those early days. We learned a lot from our first test silicon and I think, although it has taken a while, what we’ve ended up with is very exciting (in terms the architecture and performance per $) – it’s a superb bit of engineering. The RP2040 chips are fabricated at TSMC on their 40nm process.”
Adams outlined some of the advantages of the custom silicon.
“We are offering some really unique features with the RP2040 chip – a dual core device (I’m not aware of other dual core microcontrollers at this price point) coupled to a high-performance bus matrix, meaning you can get full performance on both cores concurrently, and plenty of high-bandwidth RAM,” he said. As well as the usual fixed peripherals (UARTs, I2C, SPI etc.) we also have a special bit of hardware called the PIO (Programmable I/O) unit, which is basically a very small, specialised, programmable state machine that can do high-speed, cycle accurate “bit banging” of I/O – this block can be used to offload many kinds of timing-critical pin-waggling tasks from the CPU(s) – we’ve had it emulating interfaces such as SD card, VGA and driving WS2812B LEDs. We’ve also added other goodies like optimised floating-point libraries to the boot ROM, and a USB core which can be used in either master or slave mode.”
Could the Raspberry Pi Pico be the start of a new range of boards based upon the RP2040? Adams said the Foundation is waiting to see how things go with the first board.
Raspberry Pi Pico Hardware Specifications
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
System on Chip
RP2040 microcontroller chip designed by Raspberry Pi in the United Kingdom. Dual-core Arm Cortex M0+ processor, flexible clock running up to 133 MHz. 264KB of SRAM, and 2MB of on-board Flash memory
On paper the Raspberry Pi Pico is not even a rival for the Raspberry Pi Zero, which itself costs only $5, , but the key difference between the two is that the Pico is not a Linux computer, rather it is a microcontroller like Arduino and is better for many projects. It could even work in conjunction with a regular Pi. Just like the larger Raspberry Pis and newer Arduino boards, the Pico uses a 3.3V GPIO. This could be seen as a con, but many components can be used with 3V and 5V voltages, and those designed for 5V can still be used with 3V via a voltage divider or a logic level converter board.
The Raspberry Pi Pico is an efficient board for embedded projects. Compared to a typical Raspberry Pi, the Pico consumes much less current, granted it is a microcontroller with none of the overheads that a computer brings. In our test we powered a Raspberry Pi Pico running 12 Neopixel LEDS at full brightness from a 5V power supply. We recorded 140mA current draw, 0.7W! This is remarkable, a Raspberry Pi 4 running idle with nothing connected would run at 4-5W. So compared to Raspberry Pi, the Pico sips power!
Talking of power, we can power the Raspberry Pi Pico via the micro USB port, or we can use the VSYS GPIO pin to provide power between a range of 1.8V to 5.5V. There is no battery charging available via the Pico, so an external circuit would need to be used, page 18 of the Raspberry Pi Pico Datasheet goes into great detail on how to achieve this.
Design of the Raspberry Pi Pico
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What strikes us at first glance is that the Raspberry Pi Pico resembles a newer Arduino microcontroller, an Adafruit Feather or a Teensy board. The Pico is not your typical Raspberry Pi as it eschews from the design and user experience of a typical Pi. It looks and behaves like a typical microcontroller. Measuring 2 x 0.8 inches (51 x 21mm) the Raspberry Pi Pico is smaller than the Raspberry Pi Zero.
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Designed for use with breadboards and surface mount carrier boards, the 40 pins of the Raspberry Pi Pico come unsoldered and so for use we need to break out the soldering iron. We can solder our own header pins to the Pico, or if we intend to embed the Pico into a project we can choose to solder the casellations to pads on the carrier board.
Using the Raspberry Pi Pico with a breadboard requires a half size or larger breadboard, so those mini breadboards are not much use.
James Adams tells us more about the Raspberry Pi Pico design. “The Pico has been designed to be as small and low cost as possible while still being very flexible and friendly to beginners. The board is the same length and one 0.1” pitch wider than a standard 40 pin DIP (Dual Inline Package), and we see it as a component in itself (as it can be soldered down as an SMT module using the castellated edge pads), as well as a development board.
Could the Pico bring about its own add on standard, in a similar vein to the Raspberry Pi HAT or Arduino Shield standards? It seems likely that the Pico is most likely to be integrated into carrier boards,one of which is already in use internally at Raspberry Pi and others are currently in development with third parties, these carrier boards would provide extra functionality dependant on their intended use.
Using the Raspberry Pi Pico
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
With no USB ports, HDMI or other ports to speak of, the Raspberry Pi Pico needs a computer in order to be useful. The Raspberry Pi Pico is platform agnostic and it will work with Windows, Mac and Linux machines. In our tests we used Windows 10 and followed the official documentation to get started.
The documentation is split into two languages, C and MicroPython. We first tested MicroPython, a version of Python 3 developed by Damien George for microcontrollers.As we explain in our detailed tutorial how to up a Raspberry Pi Co, iInstallation of MicroPython requires a UF2 file to be copied to the Pico. By pressing the BOOTSEL button as we insert the micro USB cable to the computer we see a drive pop up. After copying the file we can then access the Raspberry Pi Pico as a serial device which provides access to the Python Shell.
To write code and save files to the Pico we needed an editor and for the official choice for beginners is Thonny. Installation was a breeze and we were soon writing code to flash an LED and react to input from a PIR sensor.
Two features that are new to the Raspberry Pi world are Programmable IO (PIO) and analog inputs. PIO is a versatile hardware interface that can be used to create interfaces such as I2C, SPI, I2S and even VGA / DPI if you are feeling adventurous and know your electronics.
We tested a number of the official examples including a PIO project to control a chain of Neopixels which saw us create a decorator and function which was used to communicate with WS2812 “Neopixels” to create an animation sequence. The creation of the decorator and function requires the knowledge of how Neopixels work, and if we are going to use PIO then we would ultimately need to understand how our intended configuration would work. PIO can be as easy or as difficult as we require, but the Neopixel example illustrated the concept quite well and it was easy to wire up our test project. There are three analog inputs, which share the same GPIO pins as digital pins but using the ADC class from the machine library we can configure them to read the voltage of those pins. Analog inputs are useful for certain types of electronics such as potentiometers, joysticks and temperature sensors.
So how is C on the Raspberry Pi Pico? Well the best way to describe right now is “tricky”. Following the official user guide, we jumped through a number of hoops to install the applications, libraries and fixes in order to flash an LED and to send text to the serial console.
While this worked and we were pleased with the results, it required much more time to reach this stage, something that we fear may put some off. To use C we need to go hands on at the command line, or use Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code. Both of these approaches have their pros and cons, but our top tip is to read chapter six of the Getting started with Raspberry Pi Pico and follow the steps to the letter. If not, then you will waste a lot of time. We’ll revisit the C workflow once the board is officially released when we hope the process is refined and simplified.
Adams said that MicroPython is the “preferred” language, but pointed out that C is the language for low-level embedded chips. He also noted that one could use the Arm assembler.
Use Cases for the Raspberry Pi Pico
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The Raspberry Pi Pico is made to be embedded into a project. The price, size and design of this board lend make it a viable Arduino alternative . Robots, Neopixel powered light displays and learning electronics are all made possible with the Pico.
While a full-fledged Raspberry Pi like the Zero is more powerful, there are many reasons why you’d want the Pico for certain projects. It boots quickly and doesn’t require a safe shutdown when powering off so you can just turn it on and go. It uses considerably less power than a Raspberry Pi and it has on-board analog-to-digital conversion, something all other Pis lack.
Where the Pico falls short is wireless connectivity. There is a complete lack of WiFi / Bluetooth with the Pico and this limits what can be achieved. Sure we can add wireless connectivity via an external component, but that would require a little more knowledge to get working. The ESP32 and ESP8266 run at a similar price point and they feature WiFi, so if we really need WiFi, perhaps they are still the boards to look to, for now.
Bottom Line
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The Raspberry Pi Pico is an interesting piece of kit. It is more Arduino than Raspberry Pi and so the lines are a little blurry. If you need a Raspberry Pi in a small space with Wi-Fi / Bluetooth, buy a Raspberry Pi Zero W. If you want to embed a control board into a project and have it work quickly and reliably then the Pico is for you.
For an official and well supported entry into Arm Cortex M0+ boards, the Raspberry Pi Pico is hard to beat.
Google has pushed out v88 of Chrome for desktop, which includes a handful of important changes.
The browser will now check if your saved passwords have been compromised, a feature standard to most dedicated password managers. If it finds a compromised password, it will then provide you with an alert to change it to something more secure.
v88 also adds the tab search feature that was previously found in v87 on Chrome OS. If you have too many open tabs, you can use this to search for any of the open tabs. However, the feature isn’t readily available yet and has to be enabled by toggling a Chrome flag, which can be found at chrome://flags/#enable-tab-search.
The browser also slightly improves support for dark mode on Windows, by turning its scroll bars dark on its settings pages if you have dark mode enabled in Windows. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only place where it does this, and actual web pages, even those that have a dark mode, still use the older scroll bar.
A few things have also been removed. There’s no more support for Adobe Flash, which is to be expected. The browser is also getting rid of FTP support, so you can’t open FTP pages within the browser anymore. Support for macOS Yosemite is also being dropped. Lastly, v88 also drops support for Legacy Browser Support (LBS).
Our desperate plea for a Muppets adaptation of The Great Gatsby has been answered: documentary filmmaker Ben Crew has taken the public domain novel and turned it into a downloadable 104-page fan-made script that marries Muppet antics with existential angst. My request for an adaptation may have been ridiculous, but this script seriously vindicates me.
Crew’s script, “Muppets Present ‘The Great Gatsby,’” may be a silly mashup of a novel you’re forced to read in high school and a puppet comedy variety show, but he said it became a meaningful project when January’s news cycle became too much to bear. “I knew that there was nothing I could do about what was happening in D.C. and that if I didn’t distract myself I was just going to waste away in front of the news again,” Crew wrote in an email to The Verge. “That’s when I dedicated myself to writing this script.”
A mockup of the Muppet adaptations poster.Image: Benjamin Crew
The final product is a script that plays to a lot of the Muppets’ strengths, while tossing in some fun additions original to Crew. Miss Piggy does karate, Gonzo and Fozzie Bear break the fourth wall frequently, and Kermit… well, Kermit is as exactly as good-natured as we expect. Since every good Muppets movie needs human characters, Crew imagines casting Tom Holland as narrator Nick Carraway and Taron Egerton as the abusive Tom Buchanan. The script also leans frequently into the meta-humor The Muppets is known for and, of course, features plenty of musical numbers.
Crew pulled on his knowledge of The Muppets to write the script, which he says he built over years, bonding with his older brother over VHS tapes of The Muppet Show. That personal connection and a belief that there’s something genuinely, morally good about the characters made the script feel like an antidote to the anxiety that was ailing Crew. And based on the positive responses to his Reddit post sharing the script, it helped others, too. You can read an excerpt from the full script below:
NICK CARRAWAY (CONT’D)
I wonder what kind of a man Mr. Gatsby is.
GONZO
Technically he’s a frog.
Nick’s eyes zero in on the massive windows of Gatsby’s home. A lone curtain is drawn open, could someone be watching?
NICK CARRAWAY (V.O.)
All this money, all this property – but are you in there alone right now, do you have anyone to share it with?
RIZZO
He’s inner monologuing again.
GONZO
Just unpack, we’ll snap him out of it if he’s still going by dinner.
So the wheels are in motion. There’s a script written, a poster made, and a new subreddit (r/muppetgreatgatsby) devoted to the project. Disney could step in and make things official at some point, but we’ve gotten pretty far on sheer willpower and ridiculous demands alone, so let’s make another: we need this script to be made into a movie.
A big thank you to ASRock for providing the review sample and Kingston for providing the system memory and SSD.
ASRock has become a significant provider of motherboards and graphics cards since its formation in 2002. The company has stuck to their 3C design concept of “Creativity, Consideration, Cost-effectiveness,” which has taken them from humble beginnings to enthusiast favorite. Over time, their product portfolio has also expanded from simple motherboards to high-end offerings, alongside graphics cards, routers, components, mini-PCs, and industrial systems.
Today, I look at the ASRock NUC BOX-1165G7 barebones system with an Intel i7-1165G7 at its core. The processor is an Intel 10 nm 4-core, 8-thread Tiger Lake offering with the company’s Iris Xe Graphics, which has 96 execution units. Overall, the CPU has a maximum turbo frequency of 4.7 GHz with a base clock of 2.8 GHz. Meanwhile, it can support up to 64 GB of DDR4-3200. To test the system, Kingston provided both 16 GB (2x 8 GB) and 32 GB (2x 16 GB) kits of DDR4 3200 MHz memory, which retail for $80 and $160 respectively as I am writing this, along with a 500 GB KC2500 M.2 NVMe SSD, which retails for $107. To be thorough, I have tested both sets of memory to see if going big has any tangible benefits.
Big discount, just under 50% on the official price list, for MIcrosoft 365 Family that allows you to equip up to 6 Microsoft users of the Office package and each of 1TB of storage space via OneDrive
of Editorial published on 20 January 2021 , at 16: 09 in the Software channel Microsoft Microsoft 365 OneDrive
Microsoft 365 is the package so ftware known until a few months ago with the name of Office 365, thanks to which it is possible to acquire a user license that includes the use for one year of the Office suite applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook.
The peculiarity of Microsoft 365 is to offer the possibility of installing your license, linked to your Microsoft account, on multiple personal devices . In addition to this, its users are combined with a cloud storage space of 1TB through Microsoft’s OneDrive service, accessible both from PC with Windows operating system as from mobile devices based on Android or iOS OS thanks to the appropriate APP provided by Microsoft in the respective stores.
Microsoft 365 is offered to end users in a Personal version , which provides a license for a single person, or in the richer Family that can be shared with a maximum of 6 people . By purchasing one of these licenses, therefore, the user not only gains access to their own 1TB storage space with free use of the Office package applications but can share everything up to 6 people, each able to receive on their own Microsoft account not only the Office APPs that can be installed on their personal devices (personal computers, smartphones and tablets) but also their own 1TB cloud storage space via Onedrive.
Microsoft 365 Family is on promotion on Amazon, with a price that is equal to 54, 99? ? at this time against the 99? ? to which it is typically proposed. Difficult to miss this opportunity, which with less than 10 ?? per user per year, it allows you to install the applications of the Office package on the personal devices of 6 users with Microsoft accounts as well as having 1TB storage space available in the cloud with OneDrive. This last feature alone pays off the cost, which is extremely competitive and interesting.
We recently talked about a vulnerability in the NTFS file system that could lead to partial file system corruption , something that Windows 10 I would try to correct by analyzing the disk , and that may or may not cause problems with subsequent booting of the operating system. this time, it is a bug in Windows 10 which causes that, when accessing a specific route, a blue screen is generated and we lose all work in progress.
As we can see in the video, access \. globalroot device condrv kernelconnect will cause a blue screen due to because this path corresponds to a device path that requires some parameters, for example “attach” , and to access the path directly, these parameters are not attached, causing an exception that ends up taking the system ahead.
It is expected that Microsoft will solve this bug quickly in a future update, because although it is true that it does not pose any greater risk, yes that there are ways to cause a blue screen on each computer startup through this method , something that can prevent access to the computer by the user due to malware that try to access this path at system startup.
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Jordi Bercial
Avid enthusiast of technology and electronics. I messed around with computer components almost since I learned to ride. I started working at Geeknetic after winning a contest on their forum for writing hardware articles. Drift, mechanics and photography lover. Don’t be shy and leave a comment on my articles if you have any questions.
Samsung introduced the SSD 870 EVO SATA which comes with hereby among the best-selling consumer drives in recent years. According to the manufacturer’s assurances, the medium is to combine good performance with high reliability, making it a universal solution for a wide range of PC users and IT professionals. The new drive is equipped with the latest proprietary V-NAND controller that allows for SATA reading and sequential write of 560 and 530 MB / s, thus taking full advantage of the SATA III standard. Thanks to the use of a large, SLC buffer, Intelligent TurboWrite technology helps maintain maximum disk performance. Disk 870 EVO is also supposed to provide almost 38% increase in random read speed compared to model 860, which will increase the comfort of use in everyday work with the computer.
Samsung introduced a series of SSDs 870 EVO SATA drives successors to the very well-received EVO model 860. The new drives will offer approximately 30% higher performance and capacity up to 4 TB.
Samsung SSD test 860 EVO and 860 PRO – Two Killers
According to the manufacturer’s assurance, Samsung disk 870 EVO will offer about 30% higher performance compared to 860 EVO, plus best-in-class reliability in terms of 2 TBW 400 TB or 5-year limited warranty on the 4 TB model. SSD disk 870 EVO ensures compatibility with devices equipped with 2.5 inch SATA interface. In addition, thanks to the energy-saving sleep mode, it is compatible with devices that support the Windows Modern Standby function, offering additional functionality to PC users.
Samsung SSD Test 860 QVO – QLC NAND Romance
Samsung Drive 870 EVO will be available at a suggested retail price of 329 PLN for the model with a capacity 500 GB. More details are available on the official product website (CLICK), and below you will find the most key elements of the specification:
With Chrome 88 Google has finally banned Flash from its browser. This means that even corporate customers are no longer able to access or offer Flash content – Google has been advising them to switch since 2017. Adobe itself has ended support for Flash.
In addition, FTP support is to end. According to Google, usage is extremely low and the protocol too insecure. This step was announced last year. It was also said that the switch to FTPS was not worthwhile. There are also enough alternatives. However, it does not seem to be uniform for all users, at least there are reports that FTP support is still running. However, Google says that it is disabled by default for all users. FTP can be selected with version 88 at least in the experimental settings, i.e. under chrome: flags and “Enable support for FTP URLs”.
Extended functions for more Chrome users The new version gets an expanded dark mode. What is new is that scroll bars are dark and web developers can also create a color scheme for their pages. Some users, the author is not one of them, have also received a new tab function with Chrome 88, which was already introduced for Chromebooks. If you have opened a lot of tabs, a small arrow appears next to the address line. If you click on it, a drop-down menu opens and lists the tabs that can be accessed via this. Tab throttling was already introduced in Chrome with the last version – and with it a higher performance.
The change to the address line was also included Chrome 86 announced and should now be moved to even more users. URLs are thus shortened to only the domain; the full URL is only displayed when you mouse-over. Google’s own password manager now warns even more people about too simple and compromised passwords. You can now find it directly via the profile photo if you are logged in. As well as the saved locations and payment methods.
Google closes in Chrome 88 in total 36 Vulnerabilities, most of which are rated “high”, one even as “critical”. The new version has been released for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Google is releasing a new version of Chrome this week that will improve its dark mode support, alongside removing FTP and Adobe Flash support. The dark mode improvements can be found on both Windows and Chrome OS. There are refinements to both the light and dark modes in Chrome OS, with the themes updated for the app launcher, quick settings, and shelf parts of Chrome OS.
How To Geek also reports that the Windows 10 dark mode is improved with Chrome 88, with scroll bars finally appearing dark. Unfortunately, these are currently limited to the settings, bookmarks, history, and new tab pages of Chrome 88 and not across all websites with dark themes.
Elsewhere, Google is also removing some old web technology in Chrome 88. The File Transport Protocol (FTP) is officially disabled with this latest version, removing support for a protocol that has been used for decades to send files across the web.
Chrome’s new tab search feature.
Adobe Flash is also being fully removed from Chrome 88, after being initially blocked and then disabled in recent years. The removal of Flash from Chrome marks the end of an era, following Adobe’s discontinued support on December 31st.
Google is also experimenting with some new features for Chrome. Both tab search and less intrusive website permission requests can be found hidden away in Chrome 88. You’ll need to enable the new tab search using chrome://flags/#enable-tab-search, and it will appear as a new drop down arrow in the Chrome tab UI. Smaller permission prompts can also be enabled from chrome://flags/#permission-chip.
Matthew Wilson 15 mins ago Featured Tech News, Software & Gaming
Microsoft’s first exclusive of 2021, The Medium, is coming to PC and Xbox Series X/S next week and like all other Microsoft exclusives, it will also be available through Game Pass on day one. With just over a week left to go until release, Blooper Team has unveiled the PC system requirements for the game, broken down for 1080p, 1440p, 4K and ray-tracing.
The Medium is a horror-mystery with a bit of a Stranger Things vibe. Players will switch between the real world and the much more dangerous ‘spirit realm’. Over time, you’ll gain new abilities and unravel the mystery.
Now as for system requirements, each category targets 30 frames per second, which is a tad worrying but hopefully the final game will support higher frame rates. Here are all of the system requirements:
Minimum (1080p/low):
CPU: Intel Core i5-6600 or AMD Ryzen 5
GPU: GeForce 1650 Super or GTX 1060, or AMD R9 390X
RAM: 8GB
Recommended (1080p/medium):
CPU: Intel Core i5-9600 or AMD Ryzen 3700 X
GPU: GeForce GTX 1660 Super or AMD RX 5600XT 6GB
RAM: 16GB
High (1440p/high):
CPU: Intel Core i5-9600 or AMD 3700 X
GPU: GeForce RTX 2060 Super or AMD 5700 XT
RAM: 16GB
Ultra (4K UHD/high):
CPU: Intel Core i7-9700 or AMD Ryzen 7 3700 X
GPU: GeForce RTX 2080 8GB or RTX 3060 Ti, or AMD RX 6800 16GB
RAM: 16GB
Raytracing Minimum:
CPU: Intel Core i5-9600 or AMD Ryzen 7 3700 X
GPU: GeForce RTX 2060 Super 8GB or AMD RX 6800 16GB
RAM: 16GB
Raytracing Recommended:
CPU: Intel Core i7-9700 or AMD Ryzen 7 3700 X
GPU: GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or RTX 2080 8GB, or AMD RX 6800 16GB
RAM: 16GB
Raytracing High:
CPU: Intel Core i7-9700 or AMD Ryzen 7 3700 X
GPU: GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD RX 6800 XT 16GB
RAM: 16GB
The Medium supports both DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 and requires at least 50GB of storage space on PC. In terms of OS support, only Windows 10 64-bit is listed. The Medium comes to PC, Xbox Series consoles and Game Pass on the 28th of January.
KitGuru Says: I’m looking forward to checking this one out myself next week. Are many of you planning on giving this one a go?
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