Khronos launched the Vulkan 1.0 specification on February 16th, 2016 and Khronos members released Vulkan drivers and SDKs on the same day. Below you will find everything you need to come up to speed on Vulkan and to forge ahead and explore whether Vulkan is right for your engine or application.
Microsoft has announced the Lumia 650, and there's already a review of the thing.
This is such a shame, as this would have been a great Windows phone if only it had a decent processor inside it. Battery life was very respectable at 11h 36m in our continuous video playback test with the screen brightness set to 170cd/m2, and its screen and build quality are practically second to none in its price range. However, when it's so crippled by its bad choice of chipset, the Lumia 650 just can't measure up to its infinitely superior predecessor. If you're looking for a cheap Windows handset, the Lumia 640 is still your best choice, as you can now pick one up for £120 SIM-free or £90 on pre-pay. The only silver lining is that this could be the basis for a great mid-range Windows phone just around the corner.
I have no idea what Microsoft is doing with Windows Phone at this point. Nobody wants an underperforming Windows Phone device, and those that buy one without being aware of the bad chipset will just feel bitten.
Either give Windows Phone the proper love and attention it so badly needs in both software and hardware, or just kill it with dignity. What Microsoft is and has been doing to Windows Phone is a travesty.
Tails (The amnesic incognito live system) is a live OS based on Debian GNU/Linux which aims at preserving the user's privacy and anonymity by using the Internet anonymously and circumventing censorship. Installed on a USB device, it is configured to leave no trace on the computer you are using unless asked explicitly.
As of today, the people the most needy for digital security are not computer experts. Being able to get started easily with a new tool is critical to its adoption, and even more in high-risk and stressful environments. That's why we wanted to make it faster, simpler, and more secure to install Tails for new users.
One of the components of Tails, the Tails Installer is now in Debian thanks to the Debian Privacy Tools Maintainers Team.
On a related note, Tails 2.0.1 was released a few days ago as well.
A team of scientists announced on Thursday that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
That faint rising tone, physicists say, is the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago. (Listen to it here.) It completes his vision of a universe in which space and time are interwoven and dynamic, able to stretch, shrink and jiggle. And it is a ringing confirmation of the nature of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits from which not even light can escape, which were the most foreboding (and unwelcome) part of his theory.
More generally, it means that a century of innovation, testing, questioning and plain hard work after Einstein imagined it on paper, scientists have finally tapped into the deepest register of physical reality, where the weirdest and wildest implications of Einstein’s universe become manifest.
The entirety of today I've been in awe over just how far science has come. The idea of measuring a ripple in spacetime at 1/100,000 of a nanometer, about the width of an atomic nucleus, using lasers and mirrors - I don't know, it's just awe-inspiring what we, as humans, can do when we get together in the name of science, instead of fighting each other over endless strings of pointlessness.
Microsoft has tried a variety of different Start menus over the years, but the Windows 10 version is the best combination of the modern ideas the company has attempted and the classic menu. The Start menu is iconic, and it's the identity of Windows. As long as Microsoft doesn't have any crazy ideas, it's probably here to stay for many, many more years.
Twenty years is a long time for any software, so let's take a look at how exactly the Start menu, and by extension, Windows itself, has changed since Windows 95.
I am still a huge fan of the original Start menu as it existed in Windows 95 through 2000 (and as an option in XP): a simple, straightforward menu that you could organise yourself. It may not have been very pretty or user-friendly (we've all run into those people who never organised their Start menu), but for me personally, it was really, really great.
I'm really not a fan of the thing we have now in Windows 10, where you can't even do any organisation, and the "All apps" button just gives you an endless alphabetical list of crap. Search obviously helps a little bit here, but applications' Start menu folders often contain other useful tools that you might not know the name of.
In any event, it's definitely an iconic piece of UI.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) are introducing a bill today to effectively override bad state-level encryption bills. The ENCRYPT Act of 2016, or by its longer name, the Ensuring National Constitutional Rights of Your Private Telecommunications Act, would preempt state and local government encryption laws. The two men said today they are "deeply concerned" that varying bills surrounding encryption would endanger the country as well as the competitiveness of American companies. The argument is that it wouldn't be easy or even feasible to tailor phone encryption capabilities for specific states.
We're going to need a lot of these laws - all over the world.
Community mapping applications come in all shapes and sizes. There are apps to help drivers avoid speed traps, maneuver around traffic jams, and find cheap gas. And now there's one that helps people avoid being pulled from their car by the Ershad - Iran's morals police.
Anonymous developers in Iran recently released an Android app that is intended to help young Iranians share intelligence about Ershad checkpoints. Called "Gershad," the app depends on crowdsourced reports from users to help others avoid being stopped, harassed, or even possibly beaten or arrested for failing to adhere to the Ershad interpretations of Islamic morality.
Fascinating what technology can do for people.
But in bounding after large screens, phone makers seemed to ignore the usability issues that accompany them. Small studies have shown before that 4.3 inches is about as big as a phone can get before people start struggling to use it. The time to operate the phone slows down significantly because one-hand use is awkward - and that's for average men's hands. Assuming a normal distribution, for half of men and most women, a phone bigger than 4.3 inches - like the current smallest iPhone - is too big.
The increasing size of smartphones is one of the big mysteries of the technology world. The mystery lies not in phones getting larger - a lot of people prefer it - but in smaller phones, which a lot of people also prefer, disappearing, or being treated as second-class citizens.
Such an odd development.
Major desktop browsers push automatic security updates directly to users on a regular basis, so most users don't have to worry about security updates. But Linux users are dependent on their distributions to release updates. Apple fixed over 100 vulnerabilities in WebKit last year, so getting updates out to users is critical.
This is the story of how that process has gone wrong for WebKit.
I've often predicted the current crop of smartwatches - be they Wear or the Apple Watch - are designed to end up in drawers, forgotten, unloved. However, I had no idea that even Marco Arment would eventually realise the same thing.
Shortly before Christmas, I accidentally found the first mechanical watch that infected my mind so much that I actually wanted - quite badly - to own it. I had many doubts: Would I look ridiculous wearing it? Would I hate setting or winding it? Would I miss notifications, activity tracking, and weather on my watch? Would I wear it briefly but then run back to my Apple Watch and let the mechanical rot in a drawer?
Nope.
Well worth a read. Turns out that even an ardent Apple fan's smartwatch ends up in a drawer, replaced by a real watch.
The latest FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report is out.
Efforts to bring our BSD high standards to new architectures continue, with impressive work on arm64 leading to its promotion to Tier-2 status and a flurry of work bringing up the new RISC-V hardware architecture. Software architecture is also under active development, including system startup and service management. A handful of potential init system replacements are mentioned in this report: launchd, relaunchd, and nosh. Architectural changes originating both from academic research (multipath TCP) and from the realities of industry (sendfile(2) improvements) are also under way. It is heartening to see how FreeBSD provides a welcoming platform for contributions from both research and industry.
Everything you need to know to be up to date with FreeBSD.
Evidence has been mounting over the last few days and it looks like it's finally happening: Android 6.0 for Wear is starting to roll out. Googler Wayne Piekarski just announced on his Google+ feed that OTAs have begun and should continue over the next few weeks.
An official blog post by Google lists some of the new features we can expect in the new firmware, including: newly navigation gestures, audio support on speaker-equipped watches, and expanded support for messaging clients.
The update itself seems a bit 'eh', but the interesting thing here is that all Android Wear devices will be getting this update to Marshmallow, even the first generation Wear smartwatches.
Goes to show that Google does, in fact, know how to do this - now they just need to apply this to phones and tablets.
I'm pleased to announce that Microsoft has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire SwiftKey, whose highly rated, highly engaging software keyboard and SDK powers more than 300 million Android and iOS devices. In this cloud-first, mobile-first world, SwiftKey's technology aligns with our vision for more personal computing experiences that anticipate our needs versus responding to our commands, and directly supports our ambition to reinvent productivity by leveraging the intelligent cloud. SwiftKey estimates that its users have saved nearly 10 trillion keystrokes, across 100 languages, saving more than 100,000 years in combined typing time. Those are impressive results for an app that launched initially on Android in 2010 and arrived on iOS less than two years ago.
The 'saved nearly 10 trillion keystrokes' thing sent shivers down my spine.
Two very interesting articles about Android's future that are strongly related. First, Vlad Savov wonders why Android OEMs continue to make Android phones when there's little to no profit to be gained.
It's no secret that Android OEMs are facing hard times, and since there are no alternatives people are willing to buy, they really don't have anywhere to go... Except exit the smartphone business.
Interestingly enough, that's where the second article, from Ars Technica, comes into play.
A report from The Information (subscription required) states that Google wants to take "greater control" over the design and building of Nexus phones. Currently, a Nexus device is a co-branded partnership between Google's Android team and an OEM, but this report says Google wants to move to a more "Apple-like" approach.
The report says that in the future, "hardware makers will be much more like order-takers, similar to the way contract manufacturers like Hon Hai (Foxconn) follow Apple's directions for producing the iPhone." Apple designs its phones, SoC, and other parts and then ships the plans off to third-party factories to have them built.
I'm sure Google is looking at the massive profits Apple is raking in with its iPhone, as well as the tight control Apple gets to exert over its hardware, and thinking to itself: why aren't we doing this? Looking at the complete failure of OEMs to properly update phones, I can't do anything but strongly applaud Google taking the Nexus program closer to its chest, and build true Google phones.
When we talk about laptops still being popular and important, we tend to talk about things like the precision of the mouse and the power and flexibility of a desktop operating system. We talk about all the things they can do better than a phone or a tablet. We talk about more. But it's worth talking about the power of technology that strives to do less - much less. The thousand dollars I spent on a Pixel didn't buy my mom crazy extensibility, or the ability to run powerful apps like Photoshop or Excel. It didn't even buy her that much storage. But it did buy her a beautiful, well-designed product. And most importantly, it bought her focus, and the ability to spend her time using her computer instead of trying to learn how to use it.
That's a lesson I think Steve Jobs would have liked very much.
There's something happening with Chromebooks that seems to take place much outside of the sphere of the technology press - in schools now, but once kids have them, they'll find their way elsewhere. We may indeed be entering a post-PC world, but it's not based on tablets.
It's Chromebooks.
The Turing Phone, a fancy Android phone promising to be extra secure and which sports an unusual casing and design, has just announced that it's switching from Android... To Sailfish OS.
Many of you have asked numerous times through our Facebook fan page as well as emailed us about our OS development. We can now confirm that TRI has chosen to drop Android and use Jolla's Sailfish OS. Sailfish OS is now running perfectly on the Turing Phone and we have started the final OS software testing phase.
Sailfish OS runs exceptionally fast on the Turing. You will not have to worry about performance issues with Turing's Snapdragon 801 because Sailfish OS has been optimized to run fast on your Turing Phone. The Turing Phone will still be able to run Android Apps on the Sailfish OS without issue. An Android application store will be available for you to download your favorite apps.
This seems like an... Odd choice, to say the least. The device's preorders have been filled months ago, so users expecting a fancy Android phone will now be getting a Sailfish phone. And while I applaud the idea of more non-establishment phones and operating systems, it seems a bit dishonest (is that too strong a word?) to shift platforms on products already sold on the promise of a different platform.
On top of that, Sailfish is, by no means, in any way, shape, or form, or by any stretch of the imagination, a full-on replacement for Android. The operating system itself is unfinished, often unstable, lacks any form of applications more serious than crappy puzzle games, and the Android compatibility is slow and buggy, at best. I'm not so sure Turing buyers who're expecting Android will turn out to be thrilled with Sailfish.
That being said, it's a little bright spot for the very much troubled Jolla, and that's something we can all be happy about.
After the EU's highest courts rejected the standing safe habour agreement between the EU and the US, the two superpowers had to come up with a new one. They just did:
The EU-US Privacy Shield reflects the requirements set out by the European Court of Justice in its ruling on 6 October 2015, which declared the old Safe Harbour framework invalid. The new arrangement will provide stronger obligations on companies in the U.S. to protect the personal data of Europeans and stronger monitoring and enforcement by the U.S. Department of Commerce and Federal Trade Commission (FTC), including through increased cooperation with European Data Protection Authorities. The new arrangement includes commitments by the U.S. that possibilities under U.S. law for public authorities to access personal data transferred under the new arrangement will be subject to clear conditions, limitations and oversight, preventing generalised access. Europeans will have the possibility to raise any enquiry or complaint in this context with a dedicated new Ombudsperson.
I'm assuming the new agreement is incredibly complex and full of intricate legalese, so we'll have to wait until the agreement is ever tested in courts or otherwise comes under scrutiny from independent experts before we can reach an conclusions about its effectiveness.
Public service announcement: as announced October last year, Windows 10 is now a recommended upgrade in Windows Update, meaning the installation will automatically start.
As announced last October, the free Windows 10 update has been promoted from an "optional" update to being a "recommended" one. This means that with the default Windows Update settings, the new operating system will be downloaded automatically, and its installer will be started.
The operating system will not actually install itself unattended; Microsoft says that users will be able to reject the upgrade or reschedule it for a time that's more convenient. The company has also described a variety of registry settings that suppress the upgrade.
Windows 10 will be the most popular Windows version of all time! Just look at all those people upgrading!
Speaking with The Economic Times of India, Damian Tay (Senior Director for Product Management, BlackBerry Asia Pacific) described the new Priv as "essentially our transition to Android ecosystem. As we secure Android, over a period of time, we would not have two platforms, and may have only Android as a platform . But for now, we have BB10 and Android platforms for our smartphones."
If those comments somehow left you in any doubts about the company's intentions, Tay continued: "The future is really Android. We went for Android essentially for its app ecosystem. In addition, all the enterprise solutions that we have been doing have been cross-platform for a long time now. So it's a natural progression towards Android."
Just in case you thought BB10 had a future.
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