Month: January 2022

Enlarge / China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft flies above Mars. (credit: CNSA)

China celebrates the start of a new year on Tuesday—it will be the Year of the Tiger—and on the eve of the holiday, the Chinese space program sent a special message from the red planet.

The country’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft, which has been in orbit around Mars for nearly one year, captured a “selfie” video that shows the craft passing in front of the planet. This video was taken by a camera on the end of a narrow arm that extends 1.6 meters away from the vehicle and is used by operators to monitor the health of the spacecraft.

Highlights of the visuals include Tianwen-1’s waggling solar panels, main engine, and fuel tanks. About halfway through, the ice-capped northern pole of Mars appears in the background as Tianwen-1 makes its orbit around the planet.

Enlarge / Master Chief leads Silver Team through the series’ new “Silver” timeline. (credit: Paramount+)

After years of teases, announcements, and false starts, a Halo TV series starring Master Chief is finally on the verge of existing—and its first substantial, dialogue-filled trailer landed on Sunday.

The flashy, two-minute trailer arrived days after a major announcement last week from Halo‘s narrative handlers at 343 Industries: This new TV series, exclusive to Paramount+, will not be part of the game series’ official canon. That might have been good information to include in the trailer itself, as fans may have missed the memo and wondered why this trailer rewrites a couple of plot cornerstones.

Longtime series scribe Frank O’Connor described the creative decision behind moving the TV series forward with a mix of familiar and brand-new plot elements. “We want to use the existing Halo lore, history, canon, and characters wherever they make sense for a linear narrative but also separate the two distinctly so that we don’t invalidate the core canon or do unnatural things to force a first-person video game into an ensemble TV show,” he wrote. O’Connor said that all things Halo up until this point, including games, comics, novels, and online errata, count as “core canon” for the series, while the TV show will exist as a “parallel, similar, but separate timeline,” officially dubbed the “Silver timeline.”

Enlarge / The MNT Reform, a boxy laptop built around maximally open-source hardware and software. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Specs at a glance: MNT Reform
Screen	1920×1080 12.5-inch (176PPI) IPS screen
OS	Debian Linux
CPU	NXP/Freescale i.MX8MQ (1.5GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A53)
RAM	4GB
GPU	Vivante GC7000Lite
Storage	32GB SD card, NVMe SSD optional
Networking	Optional 802.11n Wi-Fi, gigabit Ethernet
Ports	3x USB-A 3.0, HDMI (optional), SD card slot
Camera	None
Size	11.42×8.07×1.57 inches (290×205×40 mm)
Weight	4.2 pounds (1.9 kg)
Battery	8x 18650 LiFePO4 battery cells
Starting price	$1,358 (not assembled, with trackpad or trackball); $1,550 assembled with trackball

If you’re a Linux fan or open source advocate looking for a decent laptop, you actually have some solid options right now—much better, at least, than buying a Windows laptop, installing Linux on it, and hoping for the best.

Dell has offered Ubuntu editions of some of its XPS laptops and other PCs for years now, and Lenovo sells a respectable collection of desktops and laptops with Linux. System76 sells a selection of Linux-friendly laptops preloaded with Ubuntu or its own Pop!_OS distribution. The repair-friendly Framework Laptop doesn’t ship with Linux, but it can be configured without an OS, and Framework promises robust Linux support from multiple distributions.

But those laptops all have something in common with run-of-the-mill Windows PCs: a reliance on closed-source hardware and, often, the proprietary software and drivers needed to make it function. For some people, this is a tolerable trade-off. You put up with the closed hardware because it performs well, and it supports the standard software, development tools, and APIs that keep the computing world spinning. For others, it’s anathema—if you can’t see the source code for these “binary blobs,” they are inherently untrustworthy and should be used sparingly or not at all.

Enlarge / Mike Lynch, former chief executive officer of Autonomy Corp., departs from his extradition hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court in London, UK., on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021. (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images)

After years of wrangling, HP has won its civil fraud case against Autonomy founder and chief executive Mike Lynch. The ruling, the biggest civil fraud trial in UK history, came just hours before UK home secretary approved Lynch’s extradition to the United States, where he faces further fraud charges.

The UK’s High Court found that HP had “substantially succeeded” in proving that Autonomy executives had fraudulently boosted the firm’s reported revenue, earnings, and value. HP paid $11 billion for the firm back in 2011 and later announced a $8.8 billion write-down of its value. In court, HP claimed damages of $5 billion, but the judge said the total amount due would be “considerably less” and announced at a later date. Kelwin Nicholls, Lynch’s lawyer and a partner at law firm Clifford Chance, said his client intends to appeal the High Court ruling. In a later statement, Nicholls said his client would also appeal the extradition order in the UK’s High Court.

This week’s events are the latest twist in an extradition process that began in November 2019, when the US Embassy in London submitted a request for Lynch to face trial in the United States on 17 counts, including wire fraud, conspiracy, and securities fraud. Lynch denies all charges against him. Nicholas Ryder, professor in financial crime at the University of the West of England describes it as the “Colt-45 for the US Department of Justice”—an all-pervasive and powerful move. “That’s their go-to charge. The ramifications for Mr. Lynch are significant.”