Having reached this stage, after seeing how to manipulate folders/directories, but before flinging ourselves headlong into fiddling with files, we have to brush up on the matter of permissions, users and groups. Luckily, there is already an excellent and comprehensive tutorial on this site that covers permissions, so you should go and read that right now. In a nutshell: you use permissions to establish who can do stuff to files and directories and what they can do with each file and directory — read from it, write to it, move it, erase it, etc.

To try everything this tutorial covers, you’ll need to create a new user on your system. Let’s be practical and make a user for anybody who needs to borrow your computer, that is, what we call a guest account.

WARNING: Creating and especially deleting users, along with home directories, can seriously damage your system if, for example, you remove your own user and files by mistake. You may want to practice on another machine which is not your main work machine or on a virtual machine. Regardless of whether you want to play it safe, or not, it is always a good idea to back up your stuff frequently, check the backups have worked correctly, and save yourself a lot of gnashing of teeth later on.

A New User

You can create a new user with the useradd command. Run useradd with superuser/root privileges, that is using sudo or su, depending on your system, you can do:

sudo useradd -m guest

… and input your password. Or do:

su -c "useradd -m guest"

… and input the password of root/the superuser.

(For the sake of brevity, we’ll assume from now on that you get superuser/root privileges by using sudo).

By including the -m argument, useradd will create a home directory for the new user. You can see its contents by listing /home/guest.

Next you can set up a password for the new user with

sudo passwd guest

Or you could also use adduser, which is interactive and asks you a bunch of questions, including what shell you want to assign the user (yes, there are more than one), where you want their home directory to be, what groups you want them to belong to (more about that in a second) and so on. At the end of running adduser, you get to set the password. Note that adduser is not installed by default on many distributions, while useradd is.

Incidentally, you can get rid of a user with userdel:

sudo userdel -r guest

With the -r option, userdel not only removes the guest user, but also deletes their home directory and removes their entry in the mailing spool, if they had one.

Skeletons at Home

Talking of users’ home directories, depending on what distro you’re on, you may have noticed that when you use the -m option, useradd populates a user’s directory with subdirectories for music, documents, and whatnot as well as an assortment of hidden files. To see everything in you guest’s home directory run sudo ls -la /home/guest.

What goes into a new user’s directory is determined by a skeleton directory which is usually /etc/skel. Sometimes it may be a different directory, though. To make check which directory is being used, run:

useradd -D

GROUP=100 HOME=/home INACTIVE=-1 EXPIRE= SHELL=/bin/bash SKEL=/etc/skel CREATE_MAIL_SPOOL=no

This gives you some extra interesting information, but what you’re interested in right now is the SKEL=/etc/skel line. In this case, and as is customary, it is pointing to /etc/skel/.

As everything is customizable in Linux, you can, of course, change what gets put into a newly created user directory. Try this: Create a new directory in /etc/skel/:

sudo mkdir /etc/skel/Documents

And create a file containing a welcome text and copy it over:

sudo cp welcome.txt /etc/skel/Documents

Now delete the guest account:

sudo userdel -r guest

And create it again:

sudo useradd -m guest

Hey presto! Your Documents/ directory and welcome.txt file magically appear in the guest’s home directory.

You can also modify other things when you create a user by editing /etc/default/useradd. Mine looks like this:

GROUP=users HOME=/home INACTIVE=-1 EXPIRE= SHELL=/bin/bash SKEL=/etc/skel CREATE_MAIL_SPOOL=no

Most of these options are self-explanatory, but let’s take a closer look at the GROUP option.

Herd Mentality

Instead of assigning permissions and privileges to users one by one, Linux and other Unix-like operating systems rely on groups. A group is a what you imagine it to be: a bunch of users that are related in some way. On your system you may have a group of users that are allowed to use the printer. They would belong to the lp (for “line printer“) group. The members of the wheel group were traditionally the only ones who could become superuser/root by using su. The network group of users can bring up and power down the network. And so on and so forth.

Different distributions have different groups and groups with the same or similar names have different privileges also depending on the distribution you are using. So don’t be surprised if what you read in the prior paragraph doesn’t match what is going on in your system.

Either way, to see which groups are on your system you can use:

getent group

The getent command lists the contents of some of the system’s databases.

To find out which groups your current user belongs to, try:

groups

When you create a new user with useradd, unless you specify otherwise, the user will only belong to one group: their own. A guest user will belong to a guest group and the group gives the user the power to administer their own stuff and that is about it.

You can create new groups and then add users to them at will with the groupadd command:

sudo groupadd photos

will create the photos group, for example. Next time, we’ll use this to build a shared directory all members of the group can read from and write to, and we’ll learn even more about permissions and privileges. Stay tuned!

Learn more about Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.

Many of us play different roles throughout the day, moving from work or school to home and everywhere in between. Our team designs every Surface to adapt to that dynamic lifestyle, to strike a balance between performance and versatility, form and function. Our products don’t do just one thing because people don’t do just one thing.

We pioneered categories like the 2:1 to provide the mobility of a tablet with the performance of a laptop, inspiring new ways of creating. As you pursue your passions, connect with friends and family, and work with your team, the products you’re able to take on the go with you are the ones that can keep up with the huge range of things you want to accomplish. This is true whether you’re a parent and a product-maker like me or a student and amateur photographer like my daughter.

That’s the idea behind the design of Surface Go – our smallest, lightest, and most affordable Surface yet. When we designed this device, we had to ask ourselves what people want and need from a 10” Surface. The answers seem obvious – lightweight, productive, and accessible to more people. I’m pumped to introduce you to Surface Go, because it’s all those things, and so much more.

The power and connectivity in a device this small gives you the style and productivity Surface is known for in a more convenient package. At just 1.15 pounds and 8.3 mm thin, Surface Go packs portable performance into a 10” device. Starting at $399 MSRP, it represents a new entry point for the Surface family, while keeping the premium qualities that have come to define it.

Surface Go offers a stunning, custom-built high-resolution PixelSense Display that supports Surface Pen with 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity, low pen parallax, low latency, and precision for accurate note taking, drawing and computer-aided design. The custom calibrated 3:2 display is soft on your eyes while you’re working and vibrantly high-contrast when you want to watch videos, create art, or edit photos.

In portrait mode, the screen was designed to render the page to the scale of most school textbooks, and in landscape mode, it can render pages side by side as if you were holding a paperback book in hand. At the approximate size of a composition notebook, writing on the screen feels natural and intuitive.

Since my two youngest daughters have started using Surface Go, I see them watching movies, reading, and drawing on it every day. It’s the perfect device for them. And for me, whether I’m at home, in the office, or on a plane, putting my Surface Pen on the screen and letting my thoughts flow is a necessary step in my creative process. It’s how I work. It’s so easy to carry Surface Go with me so I can capture those moments, instantly.

Surface Go is small and mighty, giving you the performance you need to be productive. A device powered by the 7th Generation Intel Pentium Gold Processor 4415Y, in a fanless design, offering up to nine hours of battery. Our team worked closely with Intel to optimize power, performance, and battery for the most critical tasks people perform every day.

Being able to run Office apps on this device with its portability is one of the things that was critical to the experience we had in mind when we designed Surface Go – the productivity of having the apps you use for work and school with the flexibility to relax and read or watch a show on Netflix or Hulu.

Our new Surface Go Signature Type Cover is custom-made for Surface Go integrating design features that give the user the best typing experience possible, with ergonomic key pitch and exceptional key travel. It also has high precision tuning and Windows Precision Trackpad that supports five-point multi-finger gestures, and you can connect the new Surface Mobile Mouse to work the way that you want.

A built-in kickstand with full friction hinge that extends to 165 degrees helps you stay in your flow from tablet to studio mode, and a Windows Hello camera allows for familiar, quick, and secure sign-in using face recognition.

Surface Go also has the ports you need, including Surface Connect for charging and docking; USB-C 3.1 for data, video, and charging; a headphone jack; and a MicroSD card reader for storage expansion. All designed to help you be more productive whether you’re studying in a library, working on a plane, or sharing your content in a boardroom on a 4K monitor.

Surface Go with Wi-Fi will be available for pre-order tomorrow, July 10 in select countries*, with products beginning to hit shelves on August 2. We’re also happy to share that an LTE model will be arriving later this year.

For a family at home or on the move, an expert on the front line of a business interacting with customers, or a school that wants to provide its students with the most versatile tools for learning, this device offers a premium experience with incredible value.

Wherever the day takes you, and whatever unique tasks await you along the way, Surface Go moves with you.

Meet Surface Go, starting at $399 MSRP, it’s the smallest and most affordable Surface yet

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Oschner Health is one example of a company using AI to revolutionise healthcare. Its system is able to accurately track patients who are at risk of cardiac arrest, and can determine when there is a decline in their condition. This allows them to be admitted into intensive care hours earlier than they otherwise would have been. They are provided with potentially life-saving care, before their condition deteriorated to the point where medical care would have been less effective.

Project InnerEye, in use at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, is another solution which uses machine learning and computer vision for the analysis of radiological images. Designed to identify tumours, it improves the delivery of treatments such as radiotherapy, by precisely distinguishing between cancerous and healthy tissues. It can also better monitor disease progression during chemotherapy, so that treatment can be adjusted in line with how patients respond.

These AI solutions allow medical professionals to improve patient care and admittance time, thanks to their improved precision. This, in turn, reduces financial and manpower strain, improving the healthcare experience in the areas where this technology is being used.

This is supported by data from the World Health Organization (WHO), which shows that between 30 and 50 percent of cancer deaths could be avoided with prevention, early detection and treatment. With cancer costing the global economy an excess of an estimated $1.16 trillion a year, the impact of technology such as AI, is game-changing.

In the UK alone, for example, there are only 4.7 radiologists per 100,000 population, and this number will need to almost double by 2022 to meet demand. Because of this shortage, the NHS spent nearly £88 million in 2016 paying for backlogs of radiology scans to be reported – the same amount could have paid for over 1,000 full-time consultants.

“We are drowning in data in hospitals,” Kos states. “We don’t have enough human brainpower to deal with it all in a timely manner – which in healthcare, is vital.”

Using technology such as AI can therefore substantially decrease strain on healthcare systems, while simultaneously improving patient care and reducing costs, allowing doctors to spend their time on more complex medical diagnoses. Or, indeed, spending more time connecting with patients.

The human factor
Introducing AI to healthcare isn’t removing the humanity from medicine. On the contrary, it’s increasing it.

A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that doctors spend nearly twice as much time doing administrative work (49 percent) as they do with their patients (27 percent). In other words, doctors are spending more time crunching through data, sifting through and updating records, and analysing scans, than they are speaking to their patients.

In a profession where people are dealing with often traumatic, life-changing developments, this personal, human touch, is vital for the emotional well-being of patients and their loved ones. By using tools such as AI to free up more of their time, healthcare professionals can focus more on patient interaction, offering reassurance, providing guidance, and answering more questions.

Culture, and the challenges of change
Motivated by the lack of technology during his critical care period, Kos spent eight years crusading to introduce electronic medical record systems into hospitals. But nothing improved.

“We digitized, but we digitized all of the mistakes too. Then it dawned on me – digitization is important, but it’s not transformation.”

Without the supportive technology of cloud storage, or the data analysis powers of AI and machine learning, the full potential of these digitized records weren’t even close to being reached. Only years after, when cloud technology was accepted on a wider scale, and when collaborative tools such as Skype or real-time document editing in the cloud were established – could this initial digitization move on to the next level.

Research has shown that an organisation with the most advanced technology still won’t be as effective if it lacks the right company culture. Employees must be willing to embrace their new tools, while leaders must encourage a culture of learning. Only then, can the new tools be as effective as possible.

In the world of medicine, however, adopting the right culture for technological change can prove to be a challenge.

“Healthcare professionals are rather inward-looking,” says Kos. “Doctors listen to doctors. It’s a very top-down, hierarchical environment. You could have the best technology in the world, but if the culture isn’t ready to embrace it with a willingness to learn, it’s just not going to work.”

Newsbrief: Game Freak’s free-to-play blocky brawler Pokemon Quest has surpassed 7.5 million worldwide downloads across all platforms.

While it won’t surprise devs that a free-to-play Pokemon game has attracted a fair bit of attention, 7.5 million downloads is still a decently impressive pull since Pokemon Quest itself only launched roughly a month ago on Switch and arrived on Android and iOS just last week. 

Pokemon Quest has rapidly been crossing download milestones since its first release on the Switch; the title grabbed over 1 million downloads in its first two days and hit 2.5 million on Switch alone by late June.

While the companies behind the game haven’t detailed how much revenue the game itself has pulled across all of those platforms since release, the free-to-play title did rake in a whopping $3 million in revenue on mobile devices during just its first week out. 

We know you’re busy and might miss out on all the exciting things we’re talking about on Xbox Wire every week. If you’ve got a few minutes, we can help remedy that. We’ve pared down the past week’s news into one easy-to-digest article for all things Xbox! Or, if you’d rather watch than read, you can feast your eyes on our weekly video show above. Be sure to come back every Friday to find out what’s happening This Week on Xbox!

Showtime, Amblin Television and 343 Industries Bring Halo to Television
It’s a big day for Halo – today, Showtime president and CEO David Nevins announced the network has ordered a 10-episode season based on the legendary video game franchise! In its adaptation for Showtime, Halo (working title) will take place in the universe that first came to be in 2001… Read more

New Games with Gold for July 2018
Welcome to another Games with Gold reveal for Xbox One and Xbox 360! In July on Xbox One, blast your way through robot hordes in Assault Android Cactus, then experience one of the most innovative and humorous co-op puzzlers in Death Squared. On Xbox 360 and Xbox One via Backward Compatibility… Read more

State of Decay 2 Celebrates 3 Million Players with Today’s Release of the Independence Pack
In advance of the 4th of July holiday, we are celebrating that the State of Decay 2 community now exceeds three million players. This, along with the recent news that fans made State of Decay 2 the best-selling game of May, puts us in a festive mood. To celebrate, we are revealing our first post-launch content… Read more

Xbox Game Pass: Warhammer: Vermintide 2, DiRT 4, Zombie Army Trilogy and More Coming in July
Hello, gamers! Welcome to your July Xbox Game Pass update. Hungry for some more gaming news after E3? Not to worry as Xbox Game Pass is here with an action-packed July update to satisfy that gaming appetite! After announcing earlier this month that Fallout 4, The Division, and The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited… Read more

10 Tips for NieR:Automata Become as Gods Edition, Available Now on Xbox One
It’s time to bring glory to mankind as NieR:Automata Become as Gods Edition is out now exclusively on Microsoft Store! In the world of NieR:Automata, thousands of years have passed since humans were driven to the moon. Now with your help, we can break the deadlock in this war… Read more

NBA Live 19 Debuts Cover Athlete Joel Embiid and New Features
As NBA Live gears up for its next edition, so does new cover athlete Joel Embiid. Launching on September 7 on Xbox One, NBA Live 19 boasts several new features for fans to take advantage of and elevate their gaming experience to another level. Embiid, one of the NBA’s greatest big men, who has also taken the league by storm… Read more

Crash Bandicoot and Future Tense Make the Leap to Xbox One
Vicarious Visions is so excited to bring the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy to Xbox One today on June 29. Not only that, but we are fortunate enough to have been able to use this opportunity to give fans an entirely new level, which has been added to Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped! The new level, Future Tense, comes straight out of the twisted minds of designers Ben Dorsey and Stephen…. Read more

Next Up Hero Available Now on Xbox One and Xbox Game Pass
Hello, heroes! Our new game Next Up Hero launches today on Xbox One and Game Pass, and for those of you jumping in for the first time, we have words of wisdom to guide you on your journey. First thing’s first. You’re going to die. A lot. This game is meant to be hard, like old-school quarter-muncher hard… Read more

E3 2018: Ori and the Will of the Wisps Hands-on Experience
The successor to Ori and the Blind Forest seamlessly follows the 2015 fairy tale platformer, a challenging and highly rousing Xbox One game under an enchanting cover that amazes us right from the start. It is a wonderful painting of orange and red that comes to life on a dozen screens on the stage of the Microsoft Theater… Read more

Online FPS Warface is Coming Soon to Xbox One
Dear friends! We’re thrilled to announce that the critically-acclaimed online free-to-play FPS Warface is well on its way to Xbox! Welcome to a massive community with millions of fans all over the world and get ready for a fight! How did we earn this recognition? There’s no universal answer, as each individual… Read more

The Sims 4 Cats & Dogs Arriving on Xbox One July 31
Get ready for some furballs, because something new is coming to Xbox One. It’s The Sims 4 Cats & Dogs expansion pack and it will be available July 31, 2018! In this pack, you’ll get the Create-A-Pet tool, a new world, and the tools to make your Sims’ households complete with furry friends. And, if you want… Read more

Witness the Locust Ascension in the Gears of War: The Rise of RAAM Graphic Novel
Long before Kait, JD and Del united to take on The Swarm in Gears of War 4, Marcus Fenix and the COG Army faced the barbaric tyranny of General RAAM and the Locust uprising on Emergence Day. Now, for the first time, witness his swift and brutal ascent to general of the Locust army in the graphic novel collection of Gears of War: The Rise of RAAM… Read more

Dungeon Defenders II: Protean Shift Expansion Available Now on Xbox One
Our free Protean Shift expansion for Dungeon Defenders II is now available to download on Xbox One. Protean Shift brings tons of new weapons for every hero, new systems that enable players to keep the items that they like throughout the games progression by using new materials to upgrade their strength, evolve them to higher tiers… Read more

Xbox One Storytellers: Cyanide on Call of Cthulhu
It’s hard to match the narrative scope and immersive experience that a compelling story-driven game has over other storytelling mediums, allowing players not only to fall into the world of a well-crafted story but to experience it firsthand. These types of games can empower someone with a new perspective or let us live a double-life as a superhero… Read more

Explore an Entirely New Planet in Trove – Geode on Xbox One
We are incredibly excited to launch Trove – Geode on Xbox One today! We created Geode with the goal of introducing entirely new ways to play and interact with the Trove universe. This vision led us down two unique paths: cave exploration and problem solving beneath the surface of a besieged planet, and a fun, fast, and frenetic competitive multiplayer game… Read more

Slimetastic Platformer Slime-san: Superslime Edition Available Now on Xbox One
My name’s Fabian Rastorfer and I’m the founder and lead designer behind Slime-san, a platformer about a little slime that gets swallowed whole by a giant worm and whose goal is to escape the worm’s innards before getting digested. When we initially started the development of Slime-san we had one particular goal in mind: Make the gameplay easy to learn but hard to master… Read more

Designing the Gunner Class in TERA, Available Now on Xbox One
TERA is the only MMORPG with true action combat and starting today that action combat gets taken up a few notches with the introduction of a new playable character class on Xbox One: the gunner. To celebrate the launch of the gunner on Xbox One, I asked our development team some questions about the concept and design challenges of the class… Read more

Play Unravel Two Free for a Limited Time on Xbox One
Great things come in pairs: two Unravel games, two magical creatures, two levels you can try for free. Starting today, June 26 for a limited time only, you get to sample the first two levels of Unravel Two without spending a cent! The Unravel Two trial gets you a full 10 hours to play these opening levels to the game… Read more

Discover a New World in World of Tanks: Mercenaries
War has raged for far too long. As the dust begins to settle, soldiers and civilians alike forsake the loyalties to which they once held and decide to fight for themselves. In a world governed by lawlessness where history has been changed forever, it’s time to be your own hero. After months of secrecy, Wargaming is finally ready to launch World of Tanks: Mercenaries… Read more

The Crew 2 Out Now on Xbox One
Get ready to explore the entire US by land, air, and sea, because The Crew 2 is out now on Xbox One for Gold Edition owners. Standard Edition owners will have access to the full game on June 29. Setting players loose to build a motorsports career in a gigantic, open-world re-creation of the US, The Crew 2 takes a nonlinear approach to stardom… Read more

No, it’s not April Fools; it’s just Devolver Digital making a post on its Twitter account again. Borrowing some hilarious footage from the 1989 film The Wizard, the US-based publisher recently proclaimed it would be releasing over a dozen games on the Switch before the end of this year.

Being a publisher, the figure attached to this statement is not all that surprising. Still, it makes us wonder what exactly these titles could be. At this point in time, the best bet is a mix of ports, new releases and perhaps even some unannounced ones. 

Nearly half are already locked in: 

During its E3 spectacle this year, Devolver Digital announced My Friend Pedro would arrive in the first quarter of 2019. Broforce was also recently confirmed for Switch. It doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that even if you took one or both of these games into consideration, there’s still room for more – so what could the other games be? 

Are you hoping for the likes of Hotline Miami and Metal Wolf Chaos XD or are your expectations a lot lower than this? Devolver Digital promises to reveal more soon, so keep an eye out for any updates.  

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