The game is so realistic looking that the lead dev reissued footage showing that it is actually running inside Unreal Engine Editor, as many sceptics thought it was real video footage that had been filtered.

The realism is not only due to the graphics quality, but also that the point of view shown is that of a body cam, with the gun wavering and faces pixelated.

It is still in development though and only expected to have a release sometime in 2024.

See https://youtu.be/zvrRCBlTmDE

#technology #gaming #UnrealEngine5 #Unrecord

Windows is slow, clunky and unreliable. Atlas brings life back to your Windows system, designed to maximize performance and minimize latency. You will experience a smoother and more responsive Windows, and higher framerates over using standard Windows.

It is an open source project which helps to achieve the following:

• Better Performance: By Removing unnecessary components, disabling power-saving features, and optimizing services.
• Reduced Latency: By fine-tuning processes, implementing an efficient power plan, and optimizing networking, you'll feel a difference.
• Better Privacy: By eliminating Microsoft's notorious tracking, pre-installed apps, and bloatware, you can feel confident when using Atlas.

But there are some caveats as this is not the "full bloated" Windows OS, so it is also worth reading their Github project page to see what to expect.

Linus Tech Tips though does a video about it, and also mentions some tips around the hardware side as well.

See https://youtu.be/dc7CIkZcWYE

#technology #AtlasOS #bloatware #privacy #Windows

Friendica actually has its own federating protocol, but it supports others too, such as Activity Pub (Fediverse), Twitter, Tumblr, and more. So it becomes a single client app that you can use as a hub to various other social networks (including Mastodon as part of the Fediverse).

Friendica's functionality is not just about posting a status with an image, as it has calendaring, photo albums, forums, and more. I did a video about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS6oAy7ibqc.

In many ways it is similar to Hubzilla (although Hubzilla does even more including its nomadic profiles) but one big differentiator is that Friendica can be easily installed and run with Docker. This makes it really easy to host as part of a virtual private server, or anywhere Docker can operate.

Friendica is a great social network to host for family and organisations, especially with its photo albums and calendaring. With its ActivityPub protocol, it still easily integrates with the entire Fediverse of social networks as well, so you are never isolated.

See https://github.com/friendica/docker

#technology #Friendica #socialnetworks #Docker #opensource

Samsung has made its image editing app Galaxy Enhance-X officially available for Galaxy S23. It is an AI-powered image editing app for the Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+, and Galaxy S23 Ultra, and it offers an easy way to fix imperfections in images. With a single tap, you can adjust brightness, sharpness, HDR, and colours or adjust facial features in any image.

The Galaxy Enhance-X app, which was unveiled last year, is currently available to download via the Galaxy Store. It has a file size of around 85MB, and its initial version is 1.0.55. The company has mentioned that the app will soon be released for the Galaxy S22 series. More phones will be supported in the future.

See https://www.sammobile.com/news/samsung-galaxy-enhance-x-image-editing-app-ai/

#technology #Samsung #photography #AI

Docker is a popular containerization platform that allows you to easily package, distribute, and run applications in lightweight, portable containers. In light of this, one of the essential tasks in Docker container management is keeping container images up-to-date with the latest software patches, security fixes, and feature updates.

In this article, Linuxiac introduces you to an exciting tool called “Watchtower,” which automates updating Docker container images. They explore what Watchtower is, how it works, and how it can simplify your Docker workflow.

There is a school of thought though that says you should not just allow auto-updates to take place because things can go wrong. For example, over the last 3 or so years I've been using Docker, there was once or twice that I had to manually run a command that did an update on the external database (which meant had to roll back the image update, run the update on the database, and then re-install the latest image). So there is an option for Watchtower to just notify you of any image updates, and to not install them automatically (the option I use).

See https://linuxiac.com/watchtower-automatically-update-docker-container-images/

#technology #docker #watchtower

As Netflix has become more and more expensive, and moved away from its original purpose of "your favorite shows for a low price," free streaming options have come to fill that hole. You might be better off with the free stuff if you want nostalgia.

Freevee, Plex TV, Tubi, Pluto, Filmrise, and Roku TV (if you can get it), are all free. You have absolutely nothing to lose but your time if you choose to download any of these platforms and browse their libraries.

These services may require a US IP address (actual or virtual) as adverts help pay for the services. I actually found lots of really good content on Tubi. It may not have all the latest movies from the last 3 or 4 years, but it does have a variety of different genres including a probably more comprehensive selection of British stuff than Netflix has.

Many classics have disappeared off Netflix, and that is often something the free services have a lot more off. Some free services I've seen in the past have had mostly completely unknown movies, but again with Tubi, I found masses of very well known movies.

So if the economy and inflation are biting you with a Netflix subscription, these may well be worth spending some time on, even if it is just for a few months break from Netflix.

See https://www.reviewgeek.com/151364/free-streaming-services-might-be-better-than-netflix/

#technology #entertainment #streaming #freemovies

Sodium is also abundant, but unlike lithium, is readily available. Sodium — one of the primary components of table salt — is chemically similar to lithium, and thanks to the explosion in lithium carbonate prices, many companies are researching ways to use it to replace lithium in the batteries for electric vehicles. Sodium is an attractive alternative to lithium because it costs only 2 to 3% as much as lithium. Imagine what that price difference could mean to the price of new electric vehicles!

Despite being chemically similar, sodium-ion batteries today have considerably lower energy density than lithium batteries. Things are moving quickly in battery development. The sodium-ion batteries available today will likely improve just as quickly.

On the other hand, sodium batteries are much less affected by low temperatures and appear to be able to handle more charge/discharge cycles than lithium-ion batteries. The latest sodium batteries do not require scarce materials like cobalt and nickel. Both CATL and BYD say they are about to introduce EV battery packs that have a mix of lithium-ion and sodium-ion cells.

So as is usual with battery technology, there is not yet any read drop-in better replacement for Lithium batteries, especially for EVs. But what is also quite usual, is that money is being pumped into research to radically improve these various alternative chemistries. And what is also certain is, that even if these batteries are still not compact enough for EVs, they will have a place so long with grid storage and similar use cases.

See https://cleantechnica.com/2023/04/22/the-sodium-ion-battery-is-coming-to-production-cars-this-year/

#technology #EV #batteries #environment

Since his departure from Twitter in late 2021, co-founder Jack Dorsey has been working on an alternative to the microblogging site, now owned by eccentric billionaire Elon Musk. Bluesky was initially rolled out to iOS devices in February, and it’s now finally come to Android.

If you plan to download the app and post updates about your dislike of Twitter, you’ll still have to wait. Access to Bluesky is by invitation only, so you must sign up for the waitlist or get an invitation from someone already on it. Either way, there isn’t a whole of action going on there now, as the community is only around 25,000 people. But that could change quickly when more people are allowed in, potentially exploding the user base.

Whilst the new social network is decentralised (not hosted on one central server), it is not federated like the Fediverse and Mastodon is, to interconnect across other social networks. So, likening it to e-mail is not a good analogy, as e-mail is an international open standard supported by different brands and mail clients. It is better to compare it say to Microsoft’s cloud service: Hosted across many different servers and countries, all talking to each other, but not talking to Google or Amazon’s cloud services.

But if the network could work like Hubzilla and Friendica do, it is possible it could interconnect more broadly. Hubzilla and Friendica have their own (very good) protocols, but they also allow for the Twitter API and ActivityPub protocols to be activated, thereby interconnecting very broadly from one client. So, we really have to see where Bluesky goes to in the future.

See https://www.xda-developers.com/jack-dorsey-bluesky-twitter-alternative-android/

#technology #Bluesky #interoperability #socialnetworks

"Tough Developer" did this blog recently about looking back at Turbo C and Turbo C++, and also installed an old version to play around with it.

It is a reminder of how far we have come, firstly from the late 1980s and early 1990s, and secondly for those who remember coding with it back then, how advanced it was in its day. Coding before this time was "basically" (yes, I know) standalone text file editing (the days of Emacs and Vim), and you'd debug really from compiler errors.

I'd been programming in Quick Basic for DOS before this, and I only wrote one program in C++ using Borland C++, before I moved on to Visual Basic (with real GUI Windows), and Clipper, Python, etc.

Because there was no Internet yet, nor YouTube, I had to buy paper books to learn from (even though the Borland C++ package came in a massive, cubed foot size box with about 7 or 8 manuals). I still have the three books: Using Borland C++ 3, Tom Swan's Code Secrets, and The Waite Group's Turbo C++ Bible.

Maybe I just did not try a hard enough, but the whole C++ syntax never sat well with me. Yes it wrote really nice tight code, but for some reason I never felt I could just flow with it.

It felt like, back then, that computing was really advancing in leaps and bounds every year or every second year. Graphics cards changed resolution and EGA colour came out, sound went from beeps to real true sound, spreadsheets appeared for the first time, the mouse appeared, graphical interfaces appeared (before Windows even), simulated multitasking appeared, the 640k memory barrier was broken (remember extended RAM and DR DOS?), we progressed from single sided floppy discs to double-sided, stiffy discs, token ring networks (with their T-connectors) appeared and were later replaced by Ethernet, 10MB MFM hard drives, and finally USB ports.

Today, graphics are already so good, storage is so abundant, processors so powerful, so most new innovations are just incremental in nature, and hardly noticed. As I heard on the LTT channel the other day, a user will notice moving from 60Hz refresh rate to a 120Hz monitor, but they will really struggle to notice improvements from 144Hz to 240Hz even though it is double the refresh rate.

Apart from a bit bigger and a bit better, the only big advancement that I remember from the last 15 years or so is SSD drives coming out (super light power, much more robust, and superfast). Even webcams and optical mice had already started to appear 20 to 24 years ago.

See https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/5358258/Revisiting-Borland-Turbo-C-Cplusplus-A-Great-IDE-b

#technology #BorlandC++ #retro #coding