OSnews

H.264 is a video compression codec standard. It is ubiquitous - internet video, Blu-ray, phones, security cameras, drones, everything. Everything uses H.264 now.H.264 is a remarkable piece of technology. It is the result of 30+ years of work with one single goal: To reduce the bandwidth required for transmission of full-motion video.Technically, it is very interesting. This post will give insight into some of the details at a high level - I hope to not bore you too much with the intricacies. Also note that many of the concepts explained here apply to video compression in general, and not just H.264.

First up, a bit of clarification. By general purpose OS I'm referring to what most people use for server workloads today - be it RHEL or variants like CentOS or Fedora, or Debian and derivatives like Ubuntu. We'll include Arch, the various BSD and opensolaris flavours and Windows too. By end I don't literally mean they go away or stop being useful. My hypothosis is that, slowly to begin with then more quickly, they cease to be the default we reach for when launching new services.So note that this isn't about desktop workloads, but server workloads.

One of the biggest community and customer benefits of UUP is the reduction you'll see in download size on PCs. We have converged technologies in our build and publishing systems to enable differential downloads for all devices built on the Mobile and PC OS. A differential download package contains only the changes that have been made since the last time you updated your device, rather than a full build. As we rollout UUP, this will eventually be impactful for PCs where users can expect their download size to decrease by approximately 35% when going from one major update of Windows to another. We're working on this now with the goal of supporting this for feature updates after the Windows 10 Creators Update; Insiders will see this sooner.Not earth-shattering or anything, but still a nice improvement.

Plasma Mobile aims to become a complete and open software system for mobile devices. It is designed to give privacy-aware users back the full-control over their information and communication. Plasma Mobile takes a pragmatic approach and is inclusive to 3rd party software, allowing the user to choose which applications and services to use. It provides a seamless experience across multiple devices. Plasma Mobile implements open standards and it is developed in a transparent process that is open for the community to participate in.Great presentation on the website, but the product itself clearly has a long way to go. You can try it out on a Nexus 5 or a OnePlus One.

Based on VS1063 chip, it can playback many music formats in full 16-bit 48Khz audio and additionally mix with the Amiga's native Paula sound. When it is decoding and playing back a MPEGA audio file or various other formats, it frees up the Amiga to do other things. An MHI driver is supplied with the card for AmigaAmp and other various music playing software.I'm continually amazed by the Amiga community.

The first reviews of the new MacBook Pro are in. Note that this only concerns the base 13"model, which does not come with the new Touch Bar.The Verge concludes:While the display, build quality, and looks of the new MacBook Pro are beyond reproach, they're no longer beyond the competition. Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Yoga has a spectacular OLED display. Dell's XPS 13 has great battery life and design. HP's EliteBook Folio has a hinge that folds out to a full 180 degrees, whereas Apple s laptops have always been limited to opening to a little bit beyond vertical. Razer's Blade Stealth has a 4K touchscreen, Thunderbolt 3, and the latest seventh-gen Intel processors, whereas Apple is still using sixth-gen chips. Why does any of that matter? It matters because this new MacBook Pro's compromises are large enough to make me, a loyal and satisfied MacBook user for seven years, look outside the cozy confines of Apple's ecosystem. Apple has built a beautiful computer with all the upgrades I wanted, but it's taken away things that I actually need, and now I'm looking elsewhere.And Ars Technica:Putting aside larger concerns about Apple's stewardship of the Mac as a hardware and software platform, the new MacBook Pro is a very solid design that should serve Apple well over the next few years. Some pros will claim that it isn't "pro" enough, but the 13-inch models have always served as more of a bridge between the consumer MacBooks and MacBook Airs on the low end and the 15-inch Pros and the desktop lineup on the high end. They've never been particularly "pro."

The first reviews of the new MacBook Pro are in. Note that this only concerns the base 13"model, which does not come with the new Touch Bar.The Verge concludes:While the display, build quality, and looks of the new MacBook Pro are beyond reproach, they're no longer beyond the competition. Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Yoga has a spectacular OLED display. Dell's XPS 13 has great battery life and design. HP's EliteBook Folio has a hinge that folds out to a full 180 degrees, whereas Apple s laptops have always been limited to opening to a little bit beyond vertical. Razer's Blade Stealth has a 4K touchscreen, Thunderbolt 3, and the latest seventh-gen Intel processors, whereas Apple is still using sixth-gen chips. Why does any of that matter? It matters because this new MacBook Pro's compromises are large enough to make me, a loyal and satisfied MacBook user for seven years, look outside the cozy confines of Apple's ecosystem. Apple has built a beautiful computer with all the upgrades I wanted, but it's taken away things that I actually need, and now I'm looking elsewhere.And Ars Technica:Putting aside larger concerns about Apple's stewardship of the Mac as a hardware and software platform, the new MacBook Pro is a very solid design that should serve Apple well over the next few years. Some pros will claim that it isn't "pro" enough, but the 13-inch models have always served as more of a bridge between the consumer MacBooks and MacBook Airs on the low end and the 15-inch Pros and the desktop lineup on the high end. They've never been particularly "pro."

In a few hours of testing, I haven't seen any noticeable problems with the graphic or sound recreation on the NES Classic Edition. Even the flickering and slowdown issues that were a forced part of that original NES game design seem to be captured accurately.Colors are rendered brightly and accurately (unlike similar NES emulation on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS), with big, sharp pixels by default. So far, I'm really enjoying the CRT filter, which adds a pleasant fuzziness to the edges of the sprites without being distracting.Sounds like a winner. Too bad the device doesn't include the ability to install additional games.

Never have I wanted a computer as much as the Sony VAIO P.Never have I been so wrong.Sony introduced the VAIO P at CES 2009, the height of the netbook boom, and its stunning design soared high above all competitors racing to the bottom. Look at your laptop; now imagine that the bottom half was nothing but the keyboard, and the top half was dominated by an ultrawide high-resolution screen. That's the VAIO P. It is screamingly beautiful even today.If I could wave a magic wand and bring just one dead form factor back to life, it would be the small, (almost-)pocket clamshell. I have a Psion Series 3, and its size, shape, and keyboard would, in a modern incarnation running, say, Android, be a great, much more capable alternative to a modern tablet. Sure, you can lug around an unwieldy external Bluetooth keyboard, but I'd much rather have an integrated, clamshell solution.Too bad nobody else would buy it.

Did you buy the new MacBook or MacBook Pro? Maybe the Google Pixel? You're about to enter a world of confusion thanks to those new USB-C" ports. See, that simple-looking port hides a world of complexity, and the (thankful) backward-compatibility uses different kinds of cables for different tasks. Shoppers have to be very careful to buy exactly the right cable for their devices!Welcome to the dongle.

Minoca OS, which we talked about this past May, has gone open source.Today we're thrilled to announce that Minoca OS has gone open source. We are releasing the entirety of the Minoca OS source code under the GNU GPLv3. We're excited to build a community of users and developers around this new operating system, and we need help. You can check out the source at https://github.com/minoca/os.Here's a refresher on what Minoca OS is:Minoca OS is a general purpose operating system written completely from the ground up. It's intended for devices looking to conserve power, memory, and storage. It aims to be lean, maintainable, modular, and compatible with existing software.

Redox, a Unix-like operating system written in Rust, recently rewrote its kernel:Since August 13, the kernel is going through a complete rewrite, which makes the kernel space ultra-small (about the size of L4). Everything which can run outside the kernel in practice, will do so.It is almost complete and will likely be merged in the coming week.The reasons cited for the rewrite include memory management, concurrent design, SMP support, and 64-bit by default.

Since I'm sure some of you are already angrily typing comments about my claim that the new MacBook Pros aren't designed for professionals at all - on purpose! - but for affluent regular consumers, here's Mac developer Michael Tsai's summary of the community's responses to the new MacBook Pros.I was really disappointed with today's Apple event. It seems like Apple has either lost its way, that it has lost touch with what (some of) its customers want, or that it simply doesn't care about those customers. Developers are a captive audience, and creative professionals can switch to Windows, I guess. Apple no longer considers them core.There's nothing particularly wrong with what Apple announced. I like Thunderbolt 3. The display looks good. I'm not crazy about Touch Bar, but it does seem potentially useful. The problem is that the MacBook Pro is not a true Pro notebook.I really think this line is the core reason why the Mac is being neglected:It has seemed clear for a while that the CEO doesn't really understand the Mac, or simply doesn't like it that much, and that's a problem for those of us who do.Ding, ding, ding.

Although I can't switch wholesale just yet, I see no real reason why I can't use Elementary for around 80% of the stuff I do - probably even more with a few adjustments on my part.And that, in and by itself, should tell you how much Apple has dropped the ball here.The endless stream of articles and tweets from longtime Apple users now looking elsewhere is staggering.

It's strangeâ-âthere's nothing actually wrong with what Apple announced: USB-C on the Mac is great, a thinner, more powerful machine is intriguing and, while it's too early to say, the Touch Bar could possibly be a gimmick, but it could be useful for helping people discover what shortcuts exist as they use the computer.The thing is, I can't figure out who this is for other than those who are on really old machines. Myself, and everyone else, seems to be wondering what, exactly, is the selling point of this upgrade.That's because unlike what the name of the product implies, the new MacBook Pros aren't intended for professionals at all. They are really expensive consumer laptops. Once you learn to accept that Apple is no longer interested in its traditional professional segment of the market, everything starts falling into place.iOS devices at the lower price point, MacBook Pro and possible upcoming iMacs at the higher price point.Suddenly, the Mac falls into place.

From MacRumors:In a series of tweets sent out last night, and now in an interview with The Verge, developer Steven Troughton-Smith has detailed the inner workings of the MacBook Pro's new retina Touch Bar, describing its T1 chip as "a variant of the system-on-a-chip used in the Apple Watch." This means that the Touch Bar is essentially running watchOS on the T1 chip, which macOS then communicates with through an interconnected USB bridge that "relays multitouch events back to macOS."The developer described this software setup as advantageous for the MacBook Pro's security, since the T1 chip also acts as a layer of protection and "gates access" to the laptop's FaceTime camera and Touch ID sensor. In the series of Tweets he sent out last night, Troughton-Smith also theorized that watchOS could power the Touch Bar alone without relying on macOS to be running on the MacBook Pro, which Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi has now confirmed.You can theorise about the future here. Now that Apple has put an ARM iOS-like device inside every MacBook Pro, you can imagine a future wherein said iOS device takes over more and more functionality from the traditional x86 macOS device, up to a point where macOS only gets called upon when needed.We may actually have just been given a hint of Apple's transition-to-ARM strategy.

With the final major capability for BPF tracing (timed sampling) merging in Linux 4.9-rc1, the Linux kernel now has raw capabilities similar to those provided by DTrace, the advanced tracer from Solaris. As a long time DTrace user and expert, this is an exciting milestone! On Linux, you can now analyze the performance of applications and the kernel using production-safe low-overhead custom tracing, with latency histograms, frequency counts, and more.

Apple today announced the all-new MacBook Pro, confirming that the new computer will come in 13-inch and 15-inch sizes, in both Silver and Space Gray color options. The MacBooks are thinner and lighter than their previous generations, come with a Trackpad that's larger than the ones on the previous MacBooks, and have a redesigned keyboard for better typing. Apple calls it "the most powerful MacBook Pro ever," and the 13-inch model features a 2.9 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3 GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. The 15-inch version has a 2.6 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.5 GHz, 16GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. Both computers reach "up to 2.3 times the graphics performance" of the previous generation. Summary.No new iMacs (more than one year since last update), no new Mac Mini (two years since last update), no new Mac Pro (three years since last update). Apple totally cares about the Mac, folks.

Microsoft held a Windows and Surface event today, and among a number of announcements, the star of the show was the Surface Studio, a downright beautiful all-in-one designed entirely for creative professionals. The huge 28" 4500x3000 3:2 aspect ration display with Adobe sRGB and DCI-P can be tilted downwards to turn the Studio into a huge drawing surface.As the product video demonstrates, this is not a device for the average user, or even for every power user - every aspect of it seems to be designed specifically for designers, graphics artists, possibly video editors, and people of similar profession. I love the Surface Dial, which can be used both on the display and on a desk to control context-specific actions, like changing the colour output of your drawing tool or select thickness of the output, and countless other things.It's got a sxith generation Core i5 or i7, a GTX 965M 2GB (Core i5) or GTX 980M 4GB (Core i7) graphics chip, up to 32GB of RAM, and the usual array of ports and connections. This is clearly a niche device, and the price underlines that: the Surface Studio starts at a whopping $2999. Which is quite a lot, especially taking the video chip into account.Penny Arcade's artist Mike "Gabe" Krahulik has been using a Surface Studio for the past week, and posted his thoughts on his blog.When I first saw the device months ago in that secret room at MS, they asked me what I thought. I said, "Well I have no idea if anyone else will want it, but you have made my dream computer." I recognize that not everyone needs or wants a computer they can draw on. Some people do though and I will tell you that the Surface Studio is without a doubt the best digital drawing experience I have ever tried. I was trying to help Tycho understand why the Studio was so exciting. I spend 6 to 10 hours a day drawing digitally and I have for more than a decade. The Cintiq and the Surface, these are like my tools or my instruments. I am intimately familiar with how it feels to create things on these sorts of devices and the Studio honestly feels like a generational leap forward. If you are a digital artist and you are currently working on a Cintiq you have to go to a MS store and look at the Studio. I've always given you my honest take on this stuff and this time is no different even though I can't think of anything bad to say. If you draw on computers the Surface Studio is something very special.Following Twitter during the unveiling of the Surface Studio was an entirely surreal experience, with a ton of genuine excitement over the product - something I haven't seen in a long, long time in this jaded industry. Specifically remarkable, though, was the response from the Apple and Mac/iOS developer and creative professional community - an endless stream of harsh jabs and words directed at Apple for so blatantly ignoring the creative professional community for years now, while Microsoft seems to be making a power play to win their hearts. It was quite the jarring experience.The general consensus seems to be that Apple really needs to bring more to the table tomorrow than some updated internals and a SideShow ripoff to reconquer the hearts of the creative professionals it seemingly has abandoned.

Hyperion Entertainment is pleased to announce the first official Workbench 3.1 and Kickstart 3.1 updates in over twenty years for Classic Amiga systems. The new versions, which have have been re-built from the original source code, include a number of enhancements and bug fixes and are fully compatible with both real Amiga hardware and Classic Amiga emulation software.An additional update to address some bugs has already been released as well.

Xiaomi just unveiled their copy of the next iPhone, and it looks pretty great.Nothing says sci-fi like a bezel-less screen, and Xiaomi's newly announced Mi Mix Android phablet is very sci-fi with its 91.3 percent screen-to-body ratio. This 6.4-inch device has just been announced as a concept phone by the Chinese company, but weirdly enough, it has a price, ¥3,499 ($516), and a release date of November 4th in its home country.Think of every out-there spec you could cram into a phone and the Xiaomi Mi Mix probably has it. The rear of this handset and its side buttons are both made out of ceramic. The display is curved at the corners - just like that Sharp prototype we recently saw - and all the top-mounted sensors have been removed. The proximity sensor has been replaced by ultrasound, the earpiece has been replaced with a piezoelectric speaker that uses the metal frame to generate sound, and the front-facing camera is relocated to the bottom (though the phone can thankfully be rotated upside down for more flattering selfies).It's quite likely the next iPhone will do away with the top and bottom bezel entirely in favour of a display much like this one. There's also been some talk about a ceramic iPhone, also just like this Xiaomi phone. It's pretty blatantly shameless that Xiaomi is ripping off the next iPhone, and I hope Obama (or Clinton, the next president) bans Xiaomi from shipping this shameless ripoff of the next iPhone from sales in the US to protect Apple's courageous innovation from these foul Asian companies.The shamelessness is just unbelievable here. I can't believe we live in a world that allows Asian companies to copy future Apple products. It makes me sick.

The worldwide smartwatch market experienced a round of growing pains in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16), resulting in a year-over-year decline in shipment volumes. According to data from the International Data Corporation, (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker, total smartwatch volumes reached 2.7 million units shipped in 3Q16, a decrease of 51.6% from the 5.6 million units shipped in 3Q15. Although the decline is significant, it is worth noting that 3Q15 was the first time Apple's Watch had widespread retail availability after a limited online launch. Meanwhile, the second generation Apple Watch was only available in the last two weeks of 3Q16.Only 2.7 million units worldwide? That's a rounding error. Apple experienced a 72% year-over-year decline in sales, to just 1.1 million Apple Watches in Q3 2016. No wonder Apple is refusing to release sales figures for the Apple Watch. Meanwhile, there's no new Android Wear devices coming out this year, and the next big Wear update has been postponed to next year, so Wear is effectively dead. Samsung, Pebble, and the others barely even register.Of course, IDC, etc. etc., but even if these figures are off by, say, 10%, the smartwatch market is still looking like a flop.

I show that there's yet another impossible coin in the game, located in the huge version of Tiny-Huge Island. Specifically, there's a coin spawner there that's intended to spawn 5 coins in a horizontal line on the ground. However, this coin spawner's located under the ground, causing the most uphill coin to not load properly. In particular, this coin spawns about 49 units below the ground, triggering a failsafe that causes the coin to immediately unload. Currently, there's no known way to collect this coin.This video is just all around great. No ifs and buts - just great.

When Google bought the advertising network DoubleClick in 2007, Google founder Sergey Brin said that privacy would be the company's "number one priority when we contemplate new kinds of advertising products."And, for nearly a decade, Google did in fact keep DoubleClick's massive database of web-browsing records separate by default from the names and other personally identifiable information Google has collected from Gmail and its other login accounts.But this summer, Google quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand - literally crossing out the lines in its privacy policy that promised to keep the two pots of data separate by default. In its place, Google substituted new language that says browsing habits "may be" combined with what the company learns from the use Gmail and other tools.The web, by definition, isn't private. The web is like a busy shopping street; you wouldn't shout your secrets for everyone to hear there either. The sooner people accept this fact, the better they'll be for it. Note that I'm not saying I'm happy about this fact - I'm just saying it is what it is. There's nothing any of us can do about it, until authorities or regulators start stepping in.That being said, Google published a statement about this, stating this change is opt-in.Our advertising system was designed before the smartphone revolution. It offered user controls and determined ads' relevance, but only on a per-device basis. This past June we updated our ads system, and the associated user controls, to match the way people use Google today: across many different devices. Before we launched this update, we tested it around the world with the goal of understanding how to provide users with clear choice and transparency. As a result, it is 100% optional - if users do not opt-in to these changes, their Google experiencewill remain unchanged. Equally important: we provided prominent user notifications about this change in easy-to-understand language as well as simple tools that let userscontrol or delete their data. Users can access all of their account controls by visiting My Account and we're pleased that more than a billion have done so in its first year alone.You can opt-out in the Activity Controls section of your Google account settings.

Nintendo just unveiled its new gaming console - it's called the Nintendo Switch, and it allows you to play both on your TV and while on the go, with the same console and controllers. The introduction video shows very well what the console can do, and I have to admit - it looks pretty awesome.As both a console and a portable device, the Nintendo Switch will use cartridges known as Game Cards. The portability is one of the system's most important features; Nintendo's trailer showed people using the Switch in handheld mode on a plane, in a car and on a city rooftop. Nintendo said that people can bring multiple Switch units into the same place for "local multiplayer face-to-face competition."No information on pricing yet, but it should be available March 2017. It's powered by Nvidia hardware, but that's about all we know about its capabilities. I'm quite curious to see if the device takes a performance hit once you undock it and use it on the go.

iMore's Rene Ritchie, linked by Daring Fireball's John Gruber:So, everyone who'd been criticizing Apple and iPhone design immediately called Google out for aping it?Not so much.Except, every Pixel review did call Google out for this.Surely they drew the line at Google's 2016 flagship missing optical image stabilization - not just in the regular-size, but in the Plus XL model as well - stereo speakers, and water resistance - things that were pointed to last year as indicators Apple was falling behind?Turns out, not deal-breakers either.Except, every Pixel review did call Google out for this. Here's a quick cut/paste image job I did yesterday, highlighting how Pixel reviews did, in fact, call out Google and the Pixel for the things Ritchie claims they are not calling them out for.It's almost like the Pixel is being graded on a curve.When you're as deeply enveloped in the Apple bubble as people like Rene Ritchie and John Gruber, reality inside the bubble starts folding in on itself. You sit deep inside your bubble, and when you look outwards, the curves and bends of the bubble's surface twist and turn reality outside of the bubble into ever more grotesque and malformed versions of it.Ever since the unveiling of the Pixel up to and including the reviews published yesterday, everybody in the technology media has been pointing out the exact same things Ritchie claims are not being pointed out. The amount of mental gymnastics and selective perception one must undertake - one could call such exercises flat-out lies - to claim that the major technology media is "against Apple" or "grading [the Pixel] on a curve" is so humongous that I honestly didn't think it was realistically and humanly possible.And I say this as someone who once got a flood of really nasty and angry emails because OSNews had not yet separated the FreeBSD category and its icon from the generic BSD category, so FreeBSD and Dragonfly BSD people alike were furious at me for putting a Dragonfly BSD story in the generic BSD category because it had a FreeBSD icon. I've been around the block when it comes to the kind of reality-warping, deeply idiotic bullshit the technology world can conjure up over absolutely nothing.When I was 17, I went on a trip to Rome, the most beautiful city in the world. As I stood atop the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, looking down upon the countless tourists swarming St. Peter's Square, I realised how easy it would be to lose touch with the people down there if you spent most of your time up here.The bubble is no different. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...

A couple of weeks ago we announced that a developer preview of Android 7.1 Nougat was on the way. You can get started with this new release today by downloading the SDK and tools. To get the 7.1 release on your eligible device, enroll your device in the Android Beta program. If your device is already enrolled, you'll receive the update automatically.I got the update on my Nexus 6P late last night, and it installed without any issues.

When it was revealed last week that police used a social media monitoring program to track protestors, it inspired outrage, and major tech companies immediately cut off API access for the tool. But at least one of those companies had prior opportunity to know what the tool, Geofeedia, was capable of. According to three former Geofeedia employees who spoke with The Verge, Facebook itself used the tool for corporate security. Facebook, according to two of the sources, even used Geofeedia to catch an intruder in Mark Zuckerberg's office.Social media companies like Facebook are weird - and incredibly pervasive. Someone I know - I'm not going to be too specific here - once proudly said he/she does not want Facebook to know where he/she lives, so he/she did not fill in that field in his/her Facebook account. I smiled internally and thought to myself "Facebook knows you are at a specific address between the hours of 18:00 and 8:30 every workday and during the weekend - I'm pretty sure Facebook knows where you live".Comfort levels with social media and technology companies usually come down to fooling ourselves.

Microsoft is now hard at work developing the next major update for Windows 10. Codenamed 'Redstone 2', this next update is rumored to launch in the Spring of 2017 and will focus on productivity improvements for the desktop, and will bring much-needed features and enhancements to Windows 10 Mobile users.

Marco Arment:Y Combinator is extremely influential in tech startups and startup culture.Peter Thiel, an investor who often participates in Y Combinator, is donating $1.25 million to Donald Trump's political efforts, which has incited outrage among the tech community with many calling for Y Combinator to sever ties with Thiel.Y Combinator has apparently decided not to. President Sam Altman defended this position in a blog post, framed as a Clinton endorsement, that begins with a partial overview of how reprehensible and dangerous Trump is, but ends with a defense of continuing Thiel's involvement in Y Combinator that's effectively framed as a free-speech or tolerance issue.I completely agree with Arment.One thing doesn't sit entirely right with me about this, though. Y Combinator is getting a decent amount of flack for this, and rightly so - a sexual assaulter like Trump should be in prison, not in the White House. However, where's all the outrage about Tim Cook organising fundraisers for Donald Trump's political party? Why is that fact almost silently swept under the rug and brushed aside, but Y Combinator gets skewered for doing the same thing? Why is Tim Cook supporting Donald Trump okay, but Y Combinator not cutting ties with someone supporting Donald Trump not okay?Is it, perhaps, because Apple and Tim Cook get graded on a curve, to use a phrase popular in the Apple blogosphere?It's almost as inconsistent as iOS. I guess that runs deeper than I thought.

The Google Pixel reviews are coming in, and they are quite positive.The Verge's Dieter Bohn:This is Google's first phone, and for a first effort it is remarkably good. By almost every metric I can think of - speed, power, camera, smart assistant, you name it - it matches or exceeds the best phones available on the market today. And though the design is far from groundbreaking, it's certainly approachable. The whole package is pretty incredible, and if you're not put off by the premium price, you'll be very happy with this premium phone. I prefer the XL, which isn't huge and seems to get notably better battery lifeWalt Mossberg, also for The Verge:If you're an Android fan, willing to buy a premium phone, the Pixel is your answer. To repeat: itâs simply the best Android phone I've tested. If you're an iPhone user thinking of switching, the Pixel will seem physically familiar, but you'll have to overcome the sticky links you've developed with fellow iPhone users, things like iMessage (which Google can't match yet) and iCloud Photo Sharing (which Google is trying to copy). You'll also have to do without the comfort of your neighborhood Genius Bar.But my main message, dear readers, is this: Google has come out of the gate with a top-flight phone and suddenly, thereâs no longer an Apple-Samsung duopoly in premium handsets.Joanna Stern for The Wall Street Journal:Android people, please step forward. Good news! Your next phone-buying decision just got a heck of a lot easier. The Google Pixel is now the best Android smartphone you can buy. The other leading contender was disqualified due to spontaneous combustion. iPhone people, it's your turn. Ask yourself: Why do I have an iPhone? Is it because of its software, services and privacy policies? Or is it because it's a very good phone for things like Google Maps, Gmail, Spotify and Facebook Messenger? If you've answered yes to the latter, the Pixel may be for you, too.Lastly, the Android Central review:The Google Pixel XL is my new daily driver. As for the smaller Pixel, I know it's going to take a lot to tear Daniel Bader away from this compact Android powerhouse. Both are excellent smartphones which we can wholeheartedly recommend, even with their sky-high price tags. The question of whether a smartphone can be worth $700 to $1,000 in 2016 is a debate altogether. But if any phone is worth that amount of cash, the Pixels are. Just as that same argument can be made for the iPhone 7 or Galaxy S7.Interesting how all the American reviewers mention iMessage so often as a barrier to switching. Living in a country where WhatsApp has a 100% market share and iMessage is entirely unused, it's just an annoying junk app to me.

The KDE Restoration Project was a personal pet project which was born around last QtCon, and I took as a letter of love for the project that basically formed my professional life.What you're seeing here is the last KDE 1 release running on a modern system from 2016!This is amazing.

It's the tale of an extremely difficult, user-unfriendly game reaching untold heights of success. It's the story of a company that has remained committed to listening to and interacting with its fans even as it at has grown exponentially. More than anything, it's the story of two best friends who liked playing video games and decided one day to make their own.Riot is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, but to really know how one of the world's biggest development studios got started, you need to go back to Los Angeles in the early aughts. You need to find two University of Southern California business students who formed a bond unrelated to their studies.More than a hundred million people play League of Legends every month now. For a game as uninviting and complex as this, that's an absolutely astonishing number of people. It's also quite amazing to compare the early years of League to today, and see just how much the game has changed over the years. I don't think many people realise just how different today's League is to that of only a few years ago.I play League pretty much every day, as a great way to unwind after a day's work. I'm not always happy with every single change Riot implements - anyone remember the tank meta? - but when push comes to shove, I think the company is doing quite a good job of keeping League fresh with interesting new content, gameplay changes, and balance adjustments. They failed spectacularly in the area of communication these past few years, but they seem to have turned that ship around in the second half of this year, with more openness and better communication about the state of the game, their choices, and their reasoning - and, of course, they are finally fulfilling some long-standing player requests and their own promises.

Apple Inc. has drastically scaled back its automotive ambitions, leading to hundreds of job cuts and a new direction that, for now, no longer includes building its own car, according to people familiar with the project.Hundreds of members of the car team, which comprises about 1000 people, have been reassigned, let go, or have left of their own volition in recent months, the people said, asking not to be identified because the moves aren't public.I never quite understood why Apple was building a car when you look at the state of their software and their hardware (except for the iPhone's hardware). Fix that stuff first, before designing and building something that can actually quite easily kill people.

Yes, Siri can usually place a call or send a text. It can tell you sports standings, Yelp restaurant reviews and movie times - features Apple added years ago. And it must be said that all of its competitors have their own limitations and also make mistakes.But in its current incarnation, Siri is too limited and unreliable to be an effective weapon for Apple in the coming AI wars. It seems stagnant. Apple didn't become great by just following the data on what customers are doing today. It became great by delighting customers with feats they didn't expect. The AI revolution will demand that.'Stagnant'?Seems to be the default state of Apple's software these days.

Ubuntu, the platform used in the majority of cloud deployments worldwide, today released version 16.10 with hybrid cloud operations, bare-metal cloud performance, the ability to lift-and-shift 80% of Linux VMs to machine containers, Kubernetes for world-leading process-container coordination, full container support in OpenStack, and telco-grade networking latency enhancements....this isn't really about the desktop anymore, is it?

Last week, I ragged on the Verizon models of the Google Pixel, so in the interest of fairness - here's Verizon and Google responding to the criticism levelled at the usual role carriers in the US play in delaying updates and adding tons of crapware. Verizon told Ars:First and foremost, all operating system and security updates to the Pixel devices will happen in partnership with Google. In other words, when Google releases an update, Verizon phones will receive the same update at the same time (much like iOS updates). Verizon will not stand in the way of any major updates and users will get all updates at the same time as Google.Also, the Verizon version of the Google Pixel is carrier unlocked, so you can use it where ever you like. Finally, we have three apps pre-installed on the phone Go90, My Verizon (which is your account management tool) and Verizon Messages (your messaging app). As you noted, all three can easily be uninstalled by the user.Google further confirmed that that updates will not be held back by Verizon. Google told Ars:OS updates and monthly security patches will be updated on all Pixel devices (Verizon and non-Verizon versions) simultaneously.That's excellent news.

Today, we're taking the wraps off of Android 7.1 Nougat, the latest version of the platform. You probably saw a sneak peek of it at last week's event. It's an incremental update based on Android 7.0 but includes new features for consumers and developers - from platform Daydream VR support and A/B system updates to app shortcuts and image keyboard support.The first developer preview will hit later this month.

Samsung Electronics Co. is ending production of its problematic Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, taking the drastic step of killing off a smartphone that became a major headache for the South Korean electronics maker.After halting sales of the new versions of the large-screen smartphone that failed to fix exploding batteries, Samsung finally pulled the plug on a key product that was supposed to compete with Apple Inc.'s iPhones and other high-end smartphones during the U.S. holiday shopping season.Production will stop, Samsung said in a statement Tuesday.The only right decision.

Remember Dash, which we talked about late last week? Apple released a press statement to its various blogger sites today, claiming:"Almost 1,000 fraudulent reviews were detected across two accounts and 25 apps for this developer so we removed their apps and accounts from the App Store," Apple spokesperson, Tom Neumayr, said in a statement provided to The Loop on Monday. "Warning was given in advance of the termination and attempts were made to resolve the issue with the developer but they were unsuccessful. We will terminate developer accounts for ratings and review fraud, including actions designed to hurt other developers. This is a responsibility that we take very seriously, on behalf of all of our customers and developers."Case closed, right? Well... Not entirely. This was just Apple's word, without any proof, posted on blogs that often let themselves be used for saccharine Apple PR. Without any proof, how can we know Apple is telling the truth? Do we just believe them because... Because?The developer in question, Bogdan Popescu, quickly replied in a blog post, and his story is entirely different - and his story is backed up by recordings of telephone calls between him and Apple (which is legal in Romania). I'm not making this up.What I've done: 3-4 years ago I helped a relative get started by paying for her Apple's Developer Program Membership using my credit card. I also handed her test hardware that I no longer needed. From then on those accounts were linked in the eyes of Apple. Once that account was involved with review manipulation, my account was closed.I was not aware my account was linked to another until Apple contacted me Friday, 2 days after closing my account. I was never notified of any kind of wrongdoing before my account was terminated.What Apple has done: on Friday they told me they'd reactivate my account if I'd make a blog post admitting some wrongdoing. I told them I can't do that, because I did nothing wrong. On Saturday they told me that they are fine with me writing the truth about what happened, and that if I did that, my account would be restored. Saturday night I sent a blog post draft to Apple and have since waited for their approval.Tonight Apple decided to accuse me of manipulating the App Store in public via a spokesperson.The recorded phone calls leave nothing to the imagination - they do not line up with Apple's PR speak at all.In the recorded phone call, Apple admits that they never notified him at all, despite Apple's claims to the contrary. Then, they tried to coerce Popescu into publicly admitting wrongdoing - even though he did nothing wrong. After Popescu told Apple he was not going to do that, Apple tells him that he can tell the truth, but that Apple wants to approve the story before posting it. Popescu complies, sends in the story - and a few days later, Apple sends in its blogger army, by falsely accusing Popescu of manipulating App Store reviews.And the Apple blogger army - and large swaths of the Apple developer community, which I follow on Twitter - immediately crucified him, believing Apple's every word, without questioning them, even if Apple didn't offer any proof. Brian Gesiak's take says it all: "Good to know: if it's ever my word against Apple's, I know who the 'community' is going to trust."Maybe Apple's bloggers will learn a valuable lesson from this. Most likely, they will not.

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE. This is the first release of the stable/11 branch.Some of the highlights:OpenSSH DSA key generation has been disabled by default. It is important to update OpenSSH keys prior to upgrading. Additionally, Protocol 1 support has been removed.OpenSSH has been updated to 7.2p2.Wireless support for 802.11n has been added.By default, the ifconfig(8) utility will set the default regulatory domain to FCC on wireless interfaces. As a result, newly created wireless interfaces with default settings will have less chance to violate country-specific regulations.The svnlite(1) utility has been updated to version 1.9.4.The libblacklist(3) library and applications have been ported from the NetBSD Project.Support for the AArch64 (arm64) architecture has been added.Native graphics support has been added to the bhyve(8) hypervisor.Broader wireless network driver support has been added.The release notes provide the in-depth look at the new release, and you can get it from the download page.

Samsung Electronics Co. has temporarily suspended production of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, an official at a supplier for Samsung said Monday, amid a series of media reports that some Note 7 replacements have caught fire.The halt is in cooperation with consumer safety regulators from South Korea, the United States and China, the official said on the condition of anonymity.It's high time regulators around the world initiate a deep investigation into this whole debacle. Samsung's behaviour has been inexcusable, and borders on gross negligence.

The end may be in sight for software patents - which have long been highly controversial in the tech industry - in the wake of a remarkable appeals court ruling that described such patents as a "deadweight loss on the nation's economy" and a threat to the First Amendment's free speech protections.There's so much good stuff in the actual ruling (I urge you to read the whole damn thing!) that I don't even know where to start, middle, and end. I think this is the best part?It is well past time to return software to its historical dwelling place in the domain of copyright. See Benson, 409 U.S. at 72 (citing a report from a presidential commission explaining that copyright is available to protect software and that software development had "undergone substantial and satisfactory growth" even without patent protection (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)); Oracle Am., Inc. v. Google Inc., 750 F.3d 1339, 1380 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (noting that "several commentators" have "argue[d] that the complex and expensive patent system is a terrible fit for the fast-moving software industry" and that copyright provides "[a] perfectly adequate means of protecting and rewarding software developers for their ingenuity" (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)); Peter S. Menell, An Analysis of the Scope of Copyright Protection for Application Programs, 41 Stan. L. Rev. 1045, 1076 (1989) (explaining that patents were historically "not seen as a viable option for the protection of most application program code" and that many software programs "simply do not manifest sufficient novelty or nonobviousness to merit patent protection").Reading this gives me tinglies in my tummy.I have no idea about the level of importance of this decision, how many different appeals could wreck it, or even if it is very relevant to begin with - but my god is this an absolutely amazing read that echoes everything I and many, many other people have been saying about software patents for so many years now.Software need not have more protection than copyright on the written code itself. Anything beyond that is destructive.

Long before Linus Torvalds wrote Linux, Microsoft was the king of Unix world. The company, somehow, developed Xenix, the most popular version of Unix of its time. However, IBM's decision to go ahead with MS-DOS in its PCs acted as a death blow to Xenix and Microsoft lost interest in the OS.The article's light on details and content, but I figured it'd be an interesting excuse to ask if any of you ever used Xenix in any serious fashion. So, did any of you?

Monthly security updates will come from Google (for all models), and system updates will be managed by Verizon for Verizon models, and Google for unlocked models bought from Google Store.Pixels bought at Best Buy are the Verizon models, so system updates for those, too, will be managed by Verizon. Combined with the news that Verizon models will have a locked bootloader and come with Verizon crapware, it's pretty clear that Americans among us should really, really opt to buy the Pixel outright from the Google Store. Yes, that means higher upfront costs, but you'll have lower monthly expenses, proper updates, and an unlocked bootloader.Anybody with even an ounce of common sense should avoid Verizon Pixels like the plague.

A big challenge in sharing digital information around the world is "tofu" - the blank boxes that appear when a computer or website isn't able to display text: â¯. Tofu can create confusion, a breakdown in communication, and a poor user experience.Five years ago we set out to address this problem via the Noto - a.k.a. "No more tofu" - font project. Today, Google's open-source Noto font family provides a beautiful and consistent digital type for every symbol in the Unicode standard, covering more than 800 languages and 110,000 characters.A single font with a uniform style covering 110000 characters - this is quite impressive.

Earlier today, Apple cancelled my developer account and has removed Dash from the App Store.Dash is quite a popular application from a lauded developer, Bogdan Popescu, and yesterday, when he broke the news, he had no idea what the reasoning was. Other famous Apple developers expressed their worries, and now we have an update from Popescu, with Apple's explanation:Apple contacted me and told me they found evidence of App Store review manipulation. This is something I've never done.Apple's decision is final and canât be appealed.I can't update Dash for iOS anymore and I can't distribute it outside of the App Store.Dash for macOS will continue to be supported outside of the App Store. If you purchased Dash on the Mac App Store, you should migrate your license as soon as possible. At the moment you are not able to download Dash from your App Store's Purchases tab anymore, so if you lose access to your currently activated version of Dash you won't be able to migrate your license anymore.Apple has pretty much nuked his entire account from orbit. Even people who own Dash can no longer install it from the Mac App Store - they'll have to migrate their license. Dash for iOS can't be distributed this way, of course, and is pretty much done.Dash is quite a popular tool among Apple developers, and it seems incredibly unlikely that its developer would need to resort to manipulate App Store reviews, but obviously, none of us know the whole story. For all we know, a competitor manipulated the reviews.In any event, all this - again, sadly - illustrates what I've been saying for years: building your business atop Apple's iOS or Mac App Store is a terrible business decision. You are completely and fully at Apple's whim, and while you may have some recourse if you're favoured by Apple's popular bloggers who can bring your case to the limelight, if you're not... Well, too bad for you.

Google, of Android operating system fame, released its first Pixel smartphones Tuesday to replace its Nexus lineup. HTC has been selected to assemble the device, becoming for Google what Foxconn is to Apple. "Google has done the design work and a lot of the engineering," the Mountain View-based company's hardware chief Rick Osterloh told Bloomberg News.Ouch! That's gotta hurt. After spending years building its design and engineering chops, HTC has been demoted to water boy. Supplying Google with smartphones isn't a victory -- it's an embarrassing end to HTC's decade-long campaign to break out of that contract-manufacturing business and stand on its own two feet.Sure, sure, I see your point - or, and bear with me here, because this might shock you, but maybe, just maybe, being a manufacturer of someone else's phones might actually be a more stable, more profitable, and wiser business decision in the long term.

We've seen Google put out job listings for a position that would indicate they wanted to create custom chips, and we have even seen this backed up by additional reports as well. We received confirmation that Google is indeed building custom silicon, but we aren't told the extent to which Google will customize their own chips (whether it will be custom a CPU, GPU or both). At least we get an idea as to what Google is working on.Google is taking this Pixel endeavour quite seriously.

Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter.The company complied with a classified U.S. government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said two former employees and a third person apprised of the events.Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.Ars Technica contacted various technology companies to ask them if they were ever subjected to the same FBI demands:A spokeswoman for Microsoft, Kim Kurseman, e-mailed Ars this statement, and also declined further questions: âWe have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported today about Yahoo.âFor its part, Google was the most unequivocal. Spokesman Aaron Stein e-mailed: "We've never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: 'no way.'"