The Fedora Workstation edition is a fabulous operating system that includes everything a developer needs. But it’s also a perfect solution for anyone who wants to be productive online with their desktop or laptop computer. It features a sleek interface and an enormous catalog of ready-to-install software. Recently, Christian Schaller shared information about what’s coming in the Workstation for Fedora 31.
Fedora 31 is currently scheduled for release in late October 2019. With it, as usual, will come an assortment of new and refreshed free and open source software. This includes the GNOME desktop which is planned to be updated to the latest 3.34.
Under the hood of the desktop, many intrepid open source developers have been toiling away. They’ve been working on things like:
The Wayland desktop compositor
Working with NVidia to provide better driver support
PipeWire, for better audio and video handling
Expanded Flatpak support and features
A container toolbox
…and much more!
Long-time and keen readers of the Magazine probably know that Christian is deeply involved in the Workstation effort. He heads up the desktop engineering groups at Red Hat. But he’s also involved heavily in the community Workstation Working Group, which guides these efforts as well. As an experienced developer himself, he brings his expertise to the open source community every day to build a better desktop.
For all the details, check out Christian’s detailed and informative blog post on Fedora 31 Workstation. And stay tuned to the Magazine for more about the upcoming release in the next few months!
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-28-2019, 08:39 AM - Forum: Windows
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How AI, drones and cameras are keeping our roads and bridges safe
“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet,
there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Europe’s roads are the safest in the world. Current figures show that there are 50 fatalities per one million inhabitants, compared to the global figure of 174 deaths per million. Despite this, each loss remains a tragedy. In 2017, 25,300 people lost their lives on European roads.
The cause of these accidents can vary from human error and weather conditions, to damaged structures and surfaces. While some things are beyond the realms of control, road and bridge conditions are a variable which can be governed.
As soon as a road is paved, a combination of traffic and weather conditions begin to degrade and erode the surface. Undetected cracks, abrasions or defects can quickly lead to bigger problems, such as costly repairs, major traffic delays, and in the worst cases, unsafe condition. These problems are also shared by bridges, particularly when concrete is critical in maintaining the integrity of the structure. The earlier faults are detected, the sooner they can be addressed, saving time and money, while minimising disruption. Ultimately, this helps ensure that the roads themselves are safer for those travelling on them.
The detection of these faults, however, can be very difficult to carry out manually, especially as early-forming cracks are hard to spot with the naked eye. Predicting where faults are likely to occur ahead of time so that appropriate measures can be taken in advance also possess a massive challenge. Thankfully, technology is here to help.
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Building bridges Built more than 20 years ago, the Great Belt Bridge is a suspension bridge which connects the Danish islands of Zealand and Funen. Holding company Sund & Bælt, which is responsible for the maintenance of the bridge, has worked with Microsoft to deploy an innovative solution which combines the flexibility of drones, with the power of artificial intelligence (AI.)
The drones are used to fly around the bridge and capture thousands of pictures of the concrete structure – a method that’s far safer and faster than tasking a worker to dangle 200 metres above the surface to take pictures manually. The expertise and experience of these workers is instead used to help train a machine learning algorithm which can automatically detect cracks in the surface of the concrete, after the photos have been uploaded to Microsoft’s Azure cloud. After the AI creates a list of areas with cause for concern, the same experts are used to select the areas which need maintenance and repair.
Sabih Khan promoted to Apple’s senior vice president of operations
By Mike Wuerthele Thursday, June 27, 2019, 02:03 pm PT (05:03 pm ET)
In a move late on Thursday afternoon, Apple announced that long-time executive Sabih Khan has been promoted to the company’s executive team as senior vice president of operations.
Sabih Khan, Apple’s new senior vice president of operations
Khan earned bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Mechanical Engineering from Tufts University and a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He worked as an applications development engineer and key account technical leader at GE Plastics, prior to joining Apple in 1995.
“Sabih leads our Ops team with heart,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook regarding the move. “He and his entire worldwide team are committed to delivering unmatched experiences to our customers, treating workers everywhere with dignity and respect, and protecting the environment for future generations.”
Apple notes that Khan is in charge of the team that developed a new alloy that enables the use of 100% recycled aluminum in the MacBook Air and Mac mini. Furthermore, the operations department is the division spearheading supplier partnerships for “green” manufacturing.
According to Apple, Khan is responsible for “ensuring product quality and overseeing planning, procurement, manufacturing, logistics and product fulfillment functions.” Khan’s role is most similar to Tim Cook’s role, prior to Cook’s ascendance to Apple’s CEO.
Khan continues to report to Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer.
“I’ve been privileged to work with Sabih for more than 20 years, and you won’t find a more talented operations executive anywhere on the planet,” said Williams. “He is a world-class leader and collaborator, and I have no doubt that he will be the best leader of the Ops team in Apple’s history.”
The amount of stuff I’ve had to pack into today’s update pretty much sums up our week in general. Between Harry Potter, the exploding Auto Chess craze plus all of the usual suspects, we’ve been kept very busy. Doesn’t look like Niantic’s Pokémon GO successor is taking off quite as much as many thought it would – we’ve got one or two more articles in the pipeline, but I think I’ll take a step back and evaluate after that.
Auto Chess now… you guys really seem to be enjoying that, and I’m glad because it fits our sensibilities a bit better. Might be a bit slower to the punch than other websites but expect to see more coverage on that over the next week or two as well. I’ve also switched a bunch of the guys over to review-work for the short term, just to make sure we’re keeping on top of that.
Clearly, the only thing that could make a game about managing a spaceship on its way to Mars even better is if everything was going wrong from the start and your job was actually just to make the most of an increasingly dire situation. Choice Provisions know this, and now you can know it as well with this space-themed turn-based strategy game.
Using board-game inspired dice-mechanics, you can only do what your dice-rolls allow you to achieve in any given turn. It’s going to be difficult and there will be losses, but as long as you can make it to the Red Planet, I’m sure all those sacrifices won’t have been in vain. And hey, there’s always cannibalism, right?
Void Tyrant (iOS Universal) – Full Review Coming Soon!
Oh look, another rogue-like deck-building game! To be fair, we’ve been waiting on this game since last year so it’s not like Armor Games are yet another mobile studio jumping on a popular trend. Unlike other recent releases in this niche, Void Tyrant bases its card mechanics on the principles of Blackjack and uses a ‘stick or twist’ system for its core gameplay.
This is a single-player experience with over 500 cards and three classes. You can play it completely free with ads, or, pay a single $5 IAP to unlock the ad-free version of the game.
The only release this week of note on both platforms, Graveyard Keeper is a medieval management sim in a similar vein as Stardew Valley, except not really accurate at all and with a wonderfully macabre twist. You’re mainly running your own cemetery but can expand into other ventures as well and will probably need to find shortcuts in order to save money. I mean, those dead bodies aren’t being used anymore, right?
If you thought that Stardew Valley was a bit too serious and were up for something more bonkers/suited to your weirder tastes, this may be the alternative you never knew you needed. It also sports “proper” quests, crafting and a love story, so we’re told. Look out for our review either end of next week or start of the week after.
Also going to drop a quick note saying that Harry Potter: Wizards Unite has now been rolled out to more territories since its debut last week. TouchArcade has a really comprehensive list of known countries, in case you need to look yours up.
News You Can Use
This might become a regular addition, it might not… there’s just a fair few ‘news-y’ thing I haven’t gotten around to looking at this week, and instead of letting them drift away into oblivion might as well summarise them her:
New Games of Thrones game Beyond the Wall
This actually sounds quite neat, in the same way Ubisoft’s Elite Squad announcement from E3 seemed to kind of be touching on the strategy/RPG mobile space (although I’m telling you, auto-battlers is the way to go). Beyond the Wall puts you in charge of the Night’s Watch, manning one of the castles along the wall. You need to recruit (read ‘collect’) characters and form a ‘squad’ that you use in PvE battles beyond the wall, or in an as-yet undefined PvP mode. Pocket Gamer has a full interview if you want to read more about it, although we suspect this will be free-to-play. Pre-registration is open now via the official website.
Meteorfall Sequel Krumit’s Tale
One of our favourite card/roguelike games Is getting a sequel! Meteorfall: Krumit’s Tale will we imagine be more of the same gameplay we know and love, but with new dungeons and new settings. It’s coming to Steam early access first, so we don’t know what the timetable for a mobile release is.
Battle Chasers: Nightwar Pre Order
Looks like we’re getting another decent turn-based RPG soon as well. Battle Chasers: Nightwar may not have the most inspiring name, but it’s earned a decent reputation for itself on consoles. Now it’s coming to mobile as a premium offering. It’s available for pre-order now on iOS, and pre-registration on Google Play.
Action-RPG Titan Quest has received an update this week. Additional localisation has been rolled out for Japanese, Chinese, Korean and then Ukrainian and Czech. For iOS users, full screen support for iPhone X or similar is now a thing, and some bugs with iOS 12 and up have also been fixed.
Star Traders’ latest update hasn’t quite rolled out to both platforms yet, but it’s out on Android at least. As well as some additional AI updates to prepare it to use carriers, the team have also included some neat quality of life UI changes to help legal traders do their job more efficiently. There’s also some new outfits.
There’s been a big update rolled out to Auto Chess’ official mobile version. A new race called ‘God’ has been introduced, with two pieces – Mars and Zeus. There’s four new items and two new modes (at least one of which is only available Friday till Sunday). You can also create Custom Games which can help you train against bots (although there is a crash bug with that still). There’s also been a massive pass at optimising certain mechanics to make them less fiddly, especially around synergies and levelling up pieces.
There’s also been a minor update for Auto Chess’ chief rival, Dota Underlords which looks at bug fixing and the UI. Don’t forget to check out the tips guide we released at the start of the week!
Sales
And if the above wasn’t enough, there’s quite a few summers sales happening this week as well, especially in the world of board games. We’ll try and recap some of the more interesting ones:
The Holy Potatoes! games are currently enjoying a discount, so make sure you check them out if you haven’t already.
2K have discounted both XCOM: Enemy Within and Civilization Revolution 2 to $1.99 on both iOS and Android. Absolute steal!
Acram digital have discounted a bunch of their digital board games on iOS and Android, including the DLC!
Same is true for Asmodee Digital on iOS and Android. A great day if you’re a digital board gamer.
The latest Kingdom Rush game, Kingdom Rush: Vengeance is currently discounted, as are all of Ironhide’s past games on iOS and Android.
Back in April Unity launched Unity Learn, a completely free online learning portal for learning various aspects of using the Unity game engine. Today they have announced Unity Premium, a paid expansion of Unity learn. Unity Learn Premium costs 15$ a month, and is included in current Unity Pro subscriptions. There is a 30 day free trial available.
We believe that everyone should have access to high-quality, free learning resources for Unity, and we will continue to add to and maintain the free courses, projects, and tutorials on Unity Learn. More in-depth and advanced resources for serious hobbyists and professionals who want to specialize in an industry or get direct guidance will be available through Unity Learn Premium.
If you have a Unity Plus or Unity Pro license, you can access Unity Learn Premium for free with your current subscription. Just log in with your Unity ID and go to Unity Learn Premium to start learning!
Otherwise, you can try Unity Learn Premium for 30 days, free. After that, you can continue accessing all the great resources and interactive learning on Unity Learn Premium for $15 a month.
In addition to content from Unity, Learn Premium also includes courses from partners such as Udemy and Pluralsight. They are also offering bi-weekly online interactive sessions as well as Streaming Labs, quick start courses in a web hosted Unity Editor.
Check out the contents of Unity Premium in the video below.
The official videogame of the 2019 FIA Formula One World Championship, F1 2019 challenges you to Defeat your Rivals in the most ambitious F1 game in Codemasters' history. The game is released a full two months earlier during the Formula 1 myWorld Grosser Preis von Osterreich 2019 weekend and, unlike previous iterations, ahead of the British, German and Hungarian races.
F1 2019 features all the official teams, drivers and all 21 circuits from the 2019 season. This year sees the inclusion of F2 with players being able to complete the 2018 season with the likes of George Russell, Lando Norris and Alexander Albon. The 2019 F2 season content will be made available as a free digital update during the season.
Having established itself as one of the highest rated racing franchises of all time, F1 2019 builds on the success of previous iterations and delivers an experience that rivals the quality and production values of its real-life race counterpart. With greater emphasis on graphical fidelity, the environments have been significantly enhanced, and the tracks come to life like never before. Night races have been completely overhauled creating vastly improved levels of realism and the upgraded F1 broadcast sound and visuals add further realism to all aspects of the race weekend.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-28-2019, 02:32 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Pokemon Masters Release Date Window Revealed--And It's Soon
Pokemon Sword and Shield might be launching for Nintendo Switch in November, but there'll be another new Pokemon game coming before then. Pokemon Masters, which was announced just ahead of E3, is a new title coming to iOS and Android, and we now know it will launch in "Summer 2019." You can watch a new trailer below.
The Pokemon Company shared more details about the upcoming game in a recent livestream, which you can re-watch below; it's just over eight minutes long. The game appears to be a battle-focused, story-driven title in which your Pokemon are pitted against famous trainers from previous games in the series. It will be "free-to-start with purchasable items," though which items will be purchasable was not elaborated on.
The game takes place in a new region, an island named Pasio. You'll embark on an adventure in a similar vein to those seen in mainline games, traveling the region to collect gym badges. However, rather than controlling one trainer, you'll take charge of three, each with their own Pokemon partner. You'll control these "sync pairs," as they're called, in three-on-three battles against AI opponents throughout the story.
Contrary to the turn-based mainline games, Masters' three-on-three battle system works in real-time using a move gauge that fills up over the course of the battle and is depleted when you fight. In another Pokemon first, trainers also have moves in Masters: "Trainers provide support in battle by using moves that heal Pokemon or raise their stats," said the game's producer, Yu Sasaki.
Masters is being developed DeNA, which previously made Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, and Miitomo. The Pokemon Company will publish the title, which will come to the App Store and Google Play this summer.
God Of War Reboot Considered Dropping Kratos For Being "Annoying"
The God of War reboot for PlayStation nearly cut Atreus, and now game director has confirmed that there were discussions about doing away with the main hero as well. In an appearance at Gamelab in Spain this week, Barlog said people were telling him that Kratos had to go.
"Early in discussion, people were saying we had to get rid of Kratos," Barlog said, as reported by Eurogamer. "It was like, 'He's annoying, he's done.'"
Barlog went on to say that Kratos was purposefully designed at the start of the series to be unlikeable. Some people on the team thought it was time for him to go, Barlog said. Developers suggested they create a new protagonist.
In the end, Barlog got his way in part because he came up with a story about Kratos' evolution and rescuing himself from his dark desires.
Kratos does star in the new God of War for PS4, and his relationship with Atreus was among the most meaningful and interesting elements of the title. "It took a lot of convincing to make them think it was a good idea," Barlog said about bringing Kratos back.
As we already knew, some people at Sony Santa Monica also wanted to cut Atreus as well. Barlog said it came down to budget concerns, with animators and programmers finding it difficult to "make sense of" Atreus' part in the story, according to Eurogamer. Barlog said he went as far as to write another story without Atreus "as a back-up."
For more on God of War, you can check out the GameSpot Audio Logs episode where Barlog breaks down one of the most impactful scenes that almost didn't happen. Check it out in the video embed above.
Weekly Famitsu Drops The 3DS From Its Release Schedule Section
One noticeable difference at this year’s E3 was the absence of the 3DS. Although the five-in-one Atooi Collection was announced for the platform during the Limited Run presentation, Nintendo did not showcase any new games for its 3D device.
If it wasn’t already evident the handheld system has come to the end of its life, Japan’s Weekly Famitsu magazine has now removed the 3DS release schedule from its pages. This happened in issue no. 1595 and follows on from the cancellation of Mixi’s Mobile Ball last week.
During a phone interview with TIME at E3 2019, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser said the company had “no games to announce” for 3DS because the focus was on the Switch. In saying this, as long as there’s consumer demand, Nintendo will supposedly continue to support the system.
Nintendo’s Bill Trinen added to this during a chat with GameXplain, saying how the portable unit was “still an important device” for the company, but there were no current plans to announce additional games for it.
Have you moved on from the 3DS yet? Leave a comment below.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-27-2019, 08:08 PM - Forum: Windows
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How AI could boost GDP and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions
The application of AI technologies in four areas – agriculture, water, energy and transport – have the potential to increase global GDP by up to $5.2 trillion by 2030, according to a new report from Microsoft and Pricewaterhouse Coopers. That is an increase of 4.4% in global GDP over the next 11 years, relative to business as usual.
At the same time, these technologies could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by up to 4%. That is equivalent to the predicted 2030 annual emissions of Australia, Canada and Japan combined.
This map shows where those changes could occur.
Summary of regional GDP and GHG impacts relative to the baseline by 2030 in the “Expansion” Scenario
Europe could see the greatest rise in GDP – an increase of 5.4%, while the United States could see the greatest fall in greenhouse gas emissions – a drop of 6.1%.
The report also predicts that, without addressing some of the blockers to technology and AI adoption and readiness, the impact of AI will be felt less in some parts of the world. If progress is made on those blockers, however, these regions could benefit greatly from low-carbon, sustainable economic growth.
Of the four sectors detailed in the report, the impact of AI within the energy and transport sectors is predicted to contribute most to the rise in GDP and to the fall in harmful emissions. The following shows the changes forecast in each of the sectors.
Key sectoral results – impact on GDP and GHG emissions by 2030 in the “Expansion” scenario
The high potential of transformation within energy and transport sectors is due to an array of innovations, some of which are already being realized including traffic optimization systems, vehicle-sharing services, increased efficiency of renewables and the smart management of energy consumption, in two heavy-emitting industries.
For more on AI innovations at Microsoft follow @MSFTIssues on Twitter.
