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The Amazing Success of IBMs Mainframe – TechSpective

IBM just released its financials which show it has significantly outperformed its peers. Given IBMs age, this is amazing in and of itself. But what is even more amazing is that the star of the IBM show is a mainframe, the Z16, and it grew revenue a whopping 16% for one of the most expensive and arguably most secure, capable, and reliable platforms in the market. For those new to technology, back in the 1980s, everyone, including most at IBM, thought the mainframe was virtually dead. Yet here we are some 40 years later with a mainframe as IBMs top-performing offering.

There are a couple of lessons and common mistakes here Id like to chat about this week.

When a new technology wave shows up, you generally have three choices: embrace it and abandon your competing technology and go all in an attempt to take the early leaders from behind; defend your technology and disparage the new stuff; or hedge and continue your existing path but invest in the new stuff.

All three approaches can be successful. We saw Microsoft pivot hard to the web when Netscape navigator showed up, and it ended up taking full control of the browser market while Netscape failed (though I could argue that was largely due to Netscape mismanagement). Steve Jobs was famous for disparaging technology he didnt have, and Apple PCs still, decades after Windows laptops got touch screens, largely avoided that technology. In most cases, Jobs disparaged something until he could supply an alternative. As you may recall, he was against video on the iPod until the Video iPod came out, and was against tablets, calling them stupid, until Apple rolled out the iPad. Jobs took Choice Two from above but executed Choice Three, which, given the outcome, you could describe as best practice.

But Jobs never has done what IBM did in the 80s and accepts that new technology was better than what he had publicly, though I have no doubt he did so privately. He fully learned how to manipulate people, and he did so brilliantly.

IBMs early mistake was to seemingly agree that mainframes were dead while working to hedge with PCs and Servers when it should have defended and advanced the mainframe back then while hedging, like Jobs did, with the newer technologies.

The concept of a mainframe, which is basically a proprietary server focused aggressively on I/O, security, and reliability, seemed ill-suited to the once-coming age of client/server computing, which requires performance at both ends of the system. However, centralizing technology has a few unique advantages: its easier to secure something you have full control over, most users dont need the kind of performance dedicated servers provide, and when you are talking about a shared resource, I/O is critical, and that is where mainframes clearly are superior.

In another age, we might have called Amazon Web Service (AWS) a large mainframe given it is remote, you run your applications on it, not on your PC, and given how attractive a target it is, security is a critical part of the mix as opposed to what you might have in a typical on-premises data center.

The concept of a hosted Web service has effectively replaced much of our on-premises server solutions with services that are very similar in concept to what mainframe services used to be: a shared resource that could securely scale reliably as needed.

So, the market may come back around to where you are, and IBMs Z16 success is just the most recent example of that. It is my belief that had IBM fought harder and advanced its mainframe more aggressively, it not only wouldnt have declined in the 90s, it would have been far better positioned for the Internet world that was born that decade.

Mainframes have always been awesome machines. There is a story of one of IBMs smaller mainframe-like AS400s that had been left running in a room that had been sealed up during an office remodel that continued to function for at least a decade with no one even knowing about it, let alone able to service it. When it comes to I/O, reliability, security, and stability, there is no platform that can compete with a mainframe. Apparently, there are enough IT buyers that get this, making the IBM mainframe a growth platform.

So, while credit for IBMs recent success belongs to IBMs CEO, Board of Directors and rank and file employees and executives that do the heavy lifting, it is IBMs foundational mainframe that really sets the bar in terms of sales performance now, and I think that is amazing.

As President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, Rob provides regional and global companies with guidance in how to create credible dialogue with the market, target customer needs, create new business opportunities, anticipate technology changes, select vendors and products, and practice zero dollar marketing. For over 20 years Rob has worked for and with companies like Microsoft, HP, IBM, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, USAA, Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Credit Suisse First Boston, ROLM, and Siemens.

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The Amazing Success of IBMs Mainframe - TechSpective

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The best VPNs of 2023, according to reviews – NJ.com

Using a VPN, or virtual private network, is like putting a shield around your online presence. It creates an encrypted tunnel to safely navigate the internet. Your data, IP address and any other sensitive information is protected when one is running.

A good VPN should contain a few key elements, including two-factor authentication, encryption of your IP address, and a kill switch.

However, with so many VPNs available, and so much digital jargon to wade through, it can be tough to choose one.

Heres a look at some of the best VPNs of 2023, according to various tech publications.

Related stories about streaming TV services

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Forget Netflix. Apple TV+ is the streaming service you need right now.

How to watch HBO Max: What is it? How much does it cost?

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Joseph Rejent covers TV, writing about live television, streaming services and cord-cutting. He can be reached at jrejent@njadvancemedia.com.

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The best VPNs of 2023, according to reviews - NJ.com

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rFactor 2’s network code to be rewritten over the coming months – Traxion

The network code for rFactor 2 is slated to be rewritten over the next few months following an investigation stemming from issues that arose in the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual.

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An update to the initial statement following the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual was shared on social media Friday (27th January) regarding the red flag periods that stemmed from server and network issues, as well as the handful of random disconnects that ultimately took the #1 Team Redline LMP out of contention.

In a news posting on the Studio 397 website following the aftermath of the event, Studio 397s Paul Jeffrey originally posted that the team behind rFactor 2 would be launching an investigation into why certain events occurred.

The investigation would look at the red flag stoppages that stemmed from the alleged sharing of IP addresses, as well as the random disconnects that affected many teams, including both eventual class champions, but most notably and publicly, the two-time Formula 1 World Champion Max Verstappen.

Full disclosure Traxion.GG is part of Motorsport Games and the Motorsport Games family of brands. All Traxion.GG content is editorially removed from Motorsport Games video game development andcreated by a dedicated team.Traxion.GG is one of the official media partners of the Le Mans Virtual Series.

On the first part of the investigation with the red flag periods during the first half of the event, the investigation update had this to say:

We are aware that the IP addresses of the servers were inadvertently made public, and we observed unusual levels of traffic during the event, combined with logging of some concerning events taking place during this period. We are not aware of a malicious attack, but will be implementing new procedures to ensure that in future our servers are robustly defended. The use of direct IP addresses for access to multiplayer sessions is clearly not an ideal solution, and we take full responsibility for any inadvertent distribution to non-participants we are actively working on new processes to allow only permitted users and prevent similar issues in the future.

As for the part that ultimately affected the outcome of the race, as the #1 Team Redline LMP was unable to get any laps back due to the sporting regulations that state that four (4) or more drivers would need to disconnect for there to be any, this is what the update stated regarding that:

Additionally, the four instances of spontaneous multiple disconnects that occurred during the race were highly unusual and have only been seen once before in competition. Whilst we have made significant improvements and bug fixes to the multiplayer code of the game in recent years, we are clearly still experiencing problems with legacy low-level networking code. Naturally, this is an unacceptable situation for any multiplayer environment, and we are committed to rewriting this code over the coming months to ensure a better experience for all players.

The commitment to making multiplayer a better experience is admirable, but it doesnt change the fact that it happened at such a high level and left such a sour taste in many mouths following the event. Many in the sim racing sphere on social media were highly critical of the event in general, and rightfully so.

If a reworked code means that a better experience is attainable, this should hopefully lead to a more acceptable sim racing atmosphere on the rFactor 2 platform that will hopefully allow for future top level competitions to succeed with less controversy like weve seen from the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual.

Granted, the big race ran without a hitch at the beginning of 2022 with the same amount of entrants and surrounding hype, so it really is still unclear as to what specifically caused things to self destruct in the 2023 running. Regardless, well keep a lookout for these changes over the next few months.

Full disclosure Traxion.GG is part of Motorsport Games and the Motorsport Games family of brands. All Traxion.GG content is editorially removed from Motorsport Games video game development andcreated by a dedicated team.Traxion.GG is one of the official media partners of the Le Mans Virtual Series.

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rFactor 2's network code to be rewritten over the coming months - Traxion

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Daseke, Inc. to Release Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2022 Results … – InvestorsObserver

Daseke, Inc. to Release Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2022 Results February 6, 2023

ADDISON, Texas, Jan. 27, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Daseke, Inc. (NASDAQ: DSKE) (or the Company), the premier North American transportation solutions specialist dedicated to servicing challenging industrial end-markets, today announced that it plans to report results for its fourth quarter and full year, ended December 31, 2022, on Monday, February 6 th . A conference call to discuss the financial and operational results is scheduled for February 6 at 11:00 AM ET.

Participants are encouraged to join via a listen-only mode with this link: https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/oksbpe3j .

For participants that prefer to dial in by phone, please register with this link: https://register.vevent.com/register/BIb6206807a56c44188bb63e40ddb91e15 . Once registered, participants will receive a dial-in number as well as a PIN to enter the event. A participant may re-register for the conference call in the event of a lost dial-in number or PIN.

Accompanying presentation slides will be available on the Companys investor relations page at investor.daseke.com . A replay of the conference call will be available a few hours after the event on the investor relations page, under the Events and Presentations tab.

About Daseke, Inc.

Daseke, Inc. is the premier North American transportation solutions specialist dedicated to servicing challenging industrial end-markets. Daseke offers comprehensive, best-in-class services to a diversified portfolio of many of North Americas most respected industrial shippers. For more information, please visit http://www.daseke.com .

Investor Relations

Adrianne D. Griffin Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer (469) 626-6980 investors@daseke.com

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Daseke, Inc. to Release Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2022 Results ... - InvestorsObserver

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Is Your Future Distributed? Welcome to the Fediverse! – TidBITS

A new concept with old roots has started to come to the fore on the Internet: federation. Instead of a centralized system, typically run as the equivalent of a single giant database by a company with a profit motive or investors to repay, federation relies on distributed servers. Each server, called an instance, runs a common protocol. Servers using that protocol agree to exchange nuggets of information, like brief posts or pieces of media. The best-known and most popular example of a modern federated system is Mastodon, a micro-blogging network that has garnered great attention as the primary alternative to Twitter. (See this articles sibling, Mastodon: A New Hope for Social Networking, 27 January 2023, for more about the ins and outs of what Mastodon is, why you might join, and how to use it.)

The concept of federation has garnered recent attention because of the rise of the Fediverse, a set of open-source protocols that manage user activity on a server and the interchange of information among users on other, independently operated servers. (The most widely used such protocol is ActivityPub, supported by the World Wide Web Consortium, but there are others.) Server softwaretypically open-source as wellsupports federation by allowing users to register accounts locally, then letting local users follow and be followed by users on both the local server and other servers within the Fediverse that run the same protocol. In essence, this open-source system builds a skein of connections across servers that dont have to make prior arrangements to interact.

Theres no center of the Fediverse. Each participant and each server has their own agenda, operating principles, and local data store. The connections among servers are all consensual, voluntary, and subject to change. No authority dictates whether a given server can or cant connect to another; nor can an overarching authority demand that users or content be removed. (Governments and courts are another matter, but they are always extrinsic actors with regard to individual or commercial speech.)

You can find Fediverse software for exchanging music, social networking, and photo and music sharing, among many other purposes. This nifty sitenon-authoritative by its nature!explains the Fediverse in depth and lists a huge array of Fediverse apps. I also love this graphic created last November by Per Axom that visualizes many Fediverse apps as branches and leaves of a tree.

The Fediverse exists in stark contrast to most organizations centralized, commercial efforts to connect people via the Internet. Its an example of the ethos of IndieWeb, which simultaneously looks back to the best of the Internets earlier days and forward to the best of what can be built today. The Fediverse is designed to share resources in a cooperative way that lifts all boats while also providing individual points of authority that decide how to connect to other independently operated networks and servers.

While your immediate interest may primarily be Mastodonand for that, see the article linked abovethe Fediverse is broader, a galaxy in which Mastodon is the language of peace among many star systems and trade routes, while co-existing with many other federated systems. Lets dig into what the Fediverse is and what it means.

In the universe of possibilities of how people communicate electronically with one another, the choices largely separate out into centralized, decentralized, and distributed. This is not a new distinction, as you can see in this network types diagram from an influential 1964 research paperby Paul Baran.

Here are the definitions with services as examples:

The oldest among us might find this reminiscent of what used to be called store-and-forward systems, like the original FidoNet, UUCPNET, and BITNET. These were early examples of a kind of federation. Every server knew how to pass information destined for non-local accounts, even if that merely meant passing it along to the next server. With UUCP, for instance, mail could be addressed using bang routing, which listed out each server between the source and the destination. These networks were critical in the early days of internetworking when modems were expensive, bandwidth scarce, and no backbone existed.

Centralization is, by definition, in opposition to that spirit. It spread partly because of the cost of resources required to manage the necessary computational and bandwidth requirements as the Internet grew richer in media and more complicated. The technical bar to entry also deterred mass adoption. Newer services provided an easier on-ramp to some components of the Internet, and early and then mature social networks captured audiences who primarily used email and a browser, and didnt want to blog, build a Web site, or post on Usenet.

Thus something that charts a new course on old paths has to demonstrate a thriving community, provide easy access, and work reliably. Its hard to argue that all three of those exist today in the Fediverse, but each of those elements is heading in the right direction.

Mastodon and the Fediverse represent something far better than Web 2.0and vastly better than whats already seen as the ill-fated, ridiculously branded metaverse/crypto-focused Web3. The Fediverse is more like Web 1++: what you liked back in the early days, only modern and much more of it.

Federation has some drawbacks related in part to the lack of a central organization that handles infrastructure and policy. That said, these drawbacks are really all two-edged swords, with both negative and positive aspects:

You might recognize some of these problems from email, which is effectively a federated service despite the mass numbers of consumer and business email accounts hosted by Apple, Google, and Microsoft, as well as for employees by large corporations. For instance, the admins who run email servers can and do block mail from going to or being received from other email servers; constantly updated lists of bad actors aid that process. Individual email recipients can use tools to block messages from individuals or entire domains. (In contrast, admins of federated servers may have to examine individual messages constantly, something thats rarely done with email). Email used to suffer from limitations on email attachments volume of messages sent, sometimes resulting in huge backlogs in receiving emails. These issues have shrunk over time as the cost of running servers has dropped.

Despite these problems, email has thrived. Turn-of-the-century predictions that email would become increasingly balkanized, with servers interacting only with subsets of other servers, didnt come to pass. One specific worry was that any given email message might not be able to get from here to there, wherever there was, because of a block in between. That hasnt happened. The success of email as a decades-long accidental experiment in federation should give us hope.

In the Fediverse, most instances do block other instances. But its typically a subset of other instances for various bright-line reasons. The most common are instances used by people with extremist ideologies. This so-called defederationblocking traffic from another instancehappens at the discretion of the admins of an instance. Within Mastodon, in particular, you can also mute or block accounts or entire instances distinct from the instance on which your Mastodon account is hosted. You then will never see that individual or posts from that domain.

Admins can also take various moderation actions against individuals and posts or other items. In the Mastodon world, some instances have a robust moderation team and a detailed acceptable use policy. Some even have a review board or advisory group to ensure fairness and offer recourse. Moderation doesnt scale, making it a challenge as the Fediverse grows. An increase in users and activities could result in the heavy-handed removal of posts and people or insufficient throttling of bad actors. That, in turn, could lead to other instances being defederated from an instance that is either too severe or not severe enough!

Fortunately, while every account must live on a particular instance, you own your social graph, your connections with other people. You can migrate your identity from one server to another, bringing followers and those you follow along, and leaving behind an automated forwarding address. (With Mastodon, your posts dont migrate but remain in amber on the previous server unless an admin there removes the account.) If youre blocked or banned on the instance where the account you want to migrate lives, that naturally introduces complexity.

If a given Fediverse project, including the underlying ActivityPub protocol, became too radical in its behavior, it could be forked, or become a duplicate of the project taken in a new direction, because most of these efforts are open source. People running instances that use a protocol could opt to install the forked version if they didnt like the primary direction. This could split up the Fediverse or a service within it, but in practice, most forks usually have a primary branch.

Not all apps compatible with the Fediverse are dedicated to it. For instance, Manton Reeses Micro.blog service supports ActivityPub as a format and enables it by default on accounts created starting in October 2022. In Mastodon, you can add a Micro.blog users feed as easily as adding another Mastodon user. WordPress users can install an ActivityPub plug-in (in beta) to allow similar feed subscriptions. The Fediverse is also highly flexible around RSS, using it as a sort of lingua franca to obtain non-interactive feeds.

The future of the Fediverse isnt dependent on mass adoption by hundreds of millions of people. No company has to pay thousands of employees or maintain massive server resources. Instead, its predicated more on momentum and commitment. Open-source projects and volunteer-run servers require people who believe what theyre doing is worthwhile, whether from enlightened self-interest or generosity.

The excitement over the Fediverse is that we could see the blossoming of a dream held in the equivalent of an Internet seed vault for nearly two decades, thanks to the current focus on Mastodon. As blogs died, RSS receded, and people owned less of what they posted and their relationships with others, the question was if the seeds of that dream of a distributed Internet would be forgotten. The Fediverse is fresh soil. Lets see what blooms.

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Is Your Future Distributed? Welcome to the Fediverse! - TidBITS

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Vodafone UK trials 5G Standalone with plans to activate next year – FierceWireless

Vodafone UK trials 5G Standalone with plans to activate next year  FierceWireless

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Waze Gets Major Update on Android Auto With Coolwalk Support – autoevolution

Waze Gets Major Update on Android Auto With Coolwalk Support  autoevolution

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Playing Games on the Acer Chromebook 516 GE is Fun, But It’s Still … – Gizmodo

The Acer Chromebook 516 GE is Acers first gaming Chromebook.Photo: Florence Ion / Gizmodo

Its been a while since Ive been on a Chromebook. I was a dedicated user of the Google Pixelbook when it launched. Its 2-in-1 form factor fit my life surprisingly well, and I even turned it into a podcasting machine on the go. But then the laptop started aging out, and I needed something that could handle video and photo editing in a way that Chrome OS couldnt. I also wanted to play games on it. The Pixelbook became redundant once I upgraded my computer to a Windows-based Dell XPS 15, and its been collecting dust ever since.

Now, we have gaming Chromebooks, a phrase I never thought Id be typing out. These are different from the gaming laptops youre used to from brands like Razer or Alienwarethey dont even have the power of my Dell XPS 15. Instead, they have specs tuned to launch games from the cloud. The benefit of all this is it makes the overall ChromeOS experience feel more premium for a fraction of what I paid for the Windows-based XPS.

The Acer Chromebook 516 GE is one of the three models that Google has trotted out in this latest campaign. The GE stands for Gaming Edition, and it refers to Chromebooks that have screens with high refresh rates, recent generation Intel processors, and unique gamer-y touches like RGB-lighted keyboards. The Chromebook 516 GE has all those things, making it a great all-purpose laptop. Im particularly struck by how light and easy it is to cart aroundI miss that part of having a Chromebook. This is my first experience with cloud gaming on ChromeOS outside of Stadia (RIP). Some features felt like the Windows gaming experience Im used to, but there were instances when I remembered ChromeOS also has limitations.

Acer's gaming Chromebook is an excellent package for anyone wanting a beefy ChromeOS machine. But its gaming capabilities are limited to the cloud.

Acer's gaming Chromebook is an excellent package for anyone wanting a beefy ChromeOS machine. But its gaming capabilities are limited to the cloud.

What is it?A gaming-focused Chromebook

Price? $650

LikeSolid Chromebook performance, 120Hz display, enough ports for work or play

DislikeBattery life could be so much better, still prefer a mouse over the built-in trackpad

The Acer Chromebook 516 GE is a 16-inch laptop weighing slightly less than four pounds. Its not dense like my Dell, so it feels easier to tote around one-handed. It has a 2560 x 1600 resolution display, though its not a touchscreen like most Chromebooks. Instead, you get a display with a 120Hz refresh rate, convenient if youre subscribed to a cloud service like Nvidia GeForce Now or Xbox Game Pass, which lets you stream games at high refresh rates. If youre thinking of getting one of these Gaming Edition machines, nabbing a subscription to one of these services is something youll want to consider, especially because youre not going to hit those frame rates locally.

G/O Media may get a commission

Inside, the Chromebook 516 GE runs on the Intel Core-i5-1240P, which is a mid-range Alder Lake-P series processor. The chip is paired with Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics and 8GB of RAM, enough to broadcast the game from the cloud. The Chromebook 516 GE is only available with 256GB of space, and youll feel its limitations if you frequently deal with large image and video files and prefer to do it all offline. Theres a 16GB variant of the Chromebook 516 GE with more storage space coming to market soon.

The right side of the Chromebook 516 GE has an HDMI port, a USB-A port, and a USB-C port.Photo: Florence Ion / Gizmodo

The left side of the Chromebook 516 GE has an ethernet port, a charging port, and a headphone jack. Photo: Florence Ion / Gizmodo

Acers Chromebook 516 GE has plenty of ports, which is always an excellent addition to a Chromebookthe Pixelbook only had two USB-C ports, so I had to Frankenstein it with dongles whenever I needed it to podcast. On the 516 GE, theres a USB-A 3.2 port, HDMI port, and USB-C port for charging on one side, and on the other side is an additional USB-A port, another USB-C port, and an Ethernet plug-in, which is seriously necessary for cloud gaming. Theres also a 3.5mm audio jack and support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.

The Acer Chromebook 516 GE is the relatively no frills choice of the Gaming Edition devices that Google introduced last year. The other models include the Lenovo Ideapad Gaming Chromebook with similar specifications and the Asus Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip, a convertible model with a display with a high refresh rate of 144Hz. All three laptops are around the $600 mark.

The Chromebook 516 GE can be paired with any compatible Bluetooth controller to play cloud games. Photo: Florence Ion / Gizmodo

Just because this is a gaming laptop doesnt mean it performs like a gaming laptop. The integrated graphics are merely there to help the apps keep up with the graphics the cloud is rendering for you. In the case of Nvidia GeForce Now, there was an RTX 4080 graphics card in a distant server farm running the copy of Control that I booted up to test the Chromebooks ability to handle ray-tracing.

Reader: it did fine, and its because the Chromebook had to do very little except send my inputs to the cloud and show me video of the game. You will have to pay $20/month for GeForce Nows highest tier. You might also endure fan noise, but paired with a SteelSeries Stratus+, it felt as native as playing a console on a small screen (the screen is much smaller than any TV Id play on). Also, GeForce Now works with my Steam library, so I could play through the first hour of Half-Life 2 like I was back in my college bedroom, avoiding schoolwork on my laptop.

I used the Chromebook 516 GE to play games on several platforms. In addition to Nvidia GeForce Now, I played through Xbox Game Pass, Amazon Luna, and Steam, which went into beta on Chromebook only a few weeks after this laptop launched. On Xbox Game Pass, I hopped into Disneys Dreamlight Valley to play the character I started on the Nintendo Switch version of the same game. Its almost surreal that Im so easily able to jump into the game between two platforms.

Games can be launched natively from ChromeOSs app drawer. Photo: Florence Ion / Gizmodo

Steam was the client I had the most trouble setting up, but only because it took me a while to figure out there was a specific option I had to enable so that games wouldnt launch in a fixed resolution. Also, its technically still in beta, so its not a finalized experience. I followed all the instructions I found online, and it was a relatively simple process to get it installed. It requires switching ChromeOS into developer mode and toggling on Chrome flags, developer-centric features you can enable to test this out on your own. I then figured out I had to enable another flag called borealis force double scale so Steam games could display adequately on ChromeOS.

I tried downloading Sid Meiers Civilization VI and Shadow of the Tomb Raider to run their respective benchmarks out of curiosity. I managed to get a campaign in Civilization VI started, enough that I was almost curious to look up a guide to figure out how to play the game. But when I tried the built-in benchmark, the Chromebook crashed, and I had to force restart. On the heavier side, Shadow of the Tomb Raider didnt go beyond the splash screen. I tried running that benchmark, and each time, the Chromebook 516 GE would shut down and force a restart.

For my final trick, I downloaded Far Cry 5 and Total War: Warhammer II to see if they would take. Thats when I remembered the Chromebook 516 GE only has 256GB of storage space. Far Cry 5 is nearly 67 GB when locally downloaded, while the latter is 57 GB. When I tried downloading anything else, the Chromebook was out of space. Rather than clear up some space and wait for the downloads, I figured youd get the idea by now: dont expect this thing to run even casual modern games locally.

I did play older games using Steam on the Chromebook 516 GE. Stardew Valley runs fine, as do older titles like Torchlight II. The Chromebook may have integrated graphics, but theyre better than anything from around 15 years ago. I also played through the beginning of 2013's Tomb Raider reboot while the frame rate hovered between 30-35 fps.

The Chromebook 516 GE is emblazoned with Chromebook markings. Photo: Florence Ion / Gizmodo

Now that weve established you can get some gaming done on the Chromebook 516 GE, lets talk about getting work done. I wrote a few end-of-the-year articles on this machine before all the CES hype, and found the keyboard especially comfortable, but only after I had lobbed off my claws. Acers keycaps, in particular, are thin enough that I couldnt tell if my nail was on the chassis or the key, which made typing a little frustrating. I managed about 110 words per minute after cutting my nails.

The Chromebook 516 GE has a neat RGB backlit keyboard. Photo: Florence Ion / Gizmodo

I mentioned earlier that some of these Chromebook gaming laptops have RGB backlightsthis is one of those models. I love being able to change the lights on the Chromebook directly from the settings panel without having to download some third-party keyboard suite. Even when I wasnt playing a game, it was nice to have rainbow keys while I was typing away at an article. Acer even outlines the WASD keys, so youre ready and prepared for gaming with a mouse and keyboard.

My only other annoyance was the small arrow keys. When on a laptop, I rely on them for scrolling through web pages. The trackpad also feels like something Id find on a cheaper Chromebook. Its not the most fluid, especially when attempting something precise, and I often felt like the pointer could overshoot at any time. I found any excuse to use a Bluetooth mouse to control the device.

The Chromebook 516 GE is light and portable, but dont leave the charger behind. Photo: Florence Ion / Gizmodo

The Chromebook 516 GE is fine for getting work done. Its light enough to cart around in a backpack all day and the ample amount of portsfor a Chromebook, anywayhelps get various use out of the machine. Theres even HDMI out so that you can tether an external monitor. I could see this Chromebook serving as a cloud gaming hub for a dorm room, the way a streaming dongle does for the TV in the living room.

But Id caution leaving without a charger in tow. Acer promises nine hours on battery, but the Chromebook 516 GE lasted a mere six hours in our internal battery rundown test. We test by looping a YouTube video with the screen brightness set to about 200 nits. There are proper gaming laptops with worse battery life, but in the world of ChromeOS, its not enough to leave without a backup power situation. At the very least, the Chromebook 516 GE is a fast charger. I got it up to 100% in about 90 minutes.

Its nice to know you can run a game on ChromeOS. But dont try running a recent one. Photo: Florence Ion / Gizmodo

The Acer Chromebook 516 GE isnt going to take you to the esports arena, but it makes a massive archive of cloud based PC-based gaming available at an accessible price point. This laptop will also do well with indie games, which are just as engaging as the titles coming out from major game publishers, and often less resource intensive.

At $650, its $300 more expensive than other Cloud gaming solutions like the Logitech G Cloud, but it also provides you with a full laptop. For a dedicated gaming machine, you might want to look to either the G Cloud or something like the Steam Deck, depending on your needs, but this is a good entry level option in a similar price point for someone who moonlights as a gamer.

On the productivity side, the Chromebook 516 GE is a fine Chromebook for day-to-day use. The keyboard is comfortable for long bouts of typing, and ChromeOS has improved since Google introduced more ways to sync up the software with an Android smartphone. But this is far from a gaming laptop like in the Windows world. If anything, at least Chromebook manufacturers have found a way to beef up the systems without increasing the price point, as Chromebooks are still considered secondary machines rather than primary ones.

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2023 Cyberthreats Threads: The Advanced Security Response – Newswire

TSplus has just released an updated version of Advanced Security, the all-in-one cybersecurity program for remote desktop installations. It is the opportunity to remind users how the software can protect them against growing cyberthreats.

Press Release - Jan 27, 2023 15:00 CET

IRVINE, Calif., January 27, 2023 (Newswire.com) - In 2023, cybersecurity experts predict that ransomware attacks will keep increasing, raising the ransoms to recover encrypted data to unprecedented amounts. Both public and private spheres are under threat. That is why it is crucial that organizations of all sizes, from large corporations to single-person enterprise and freelancers working from home, use the right protection.

TSplus Advanced Security includes a powerful Ransomware Protection feature, which works as a defensive shield against ransomware attacks: using advanced analysis techniques. Possessing both static and behavioral analysis to catch ransomware unknown to antivirus and antimalware software, it immediately detects and blocks attacks even before they happen. It then quarantines the suspicious documents or programs and sends a warning with details of the attack. The admin can then decide to whitelist what is considered safe. When the feature is active, it automatically checks all opened apps and files. To ensure a greater level of protection, Ransomware Protection also creates bait files in key folders where ransomware attacks often originate.

Moreover, Administrators can quickly identify and recover affected files after an attack thanks to the snapshot feature.

Protecting Careless Remote Desktop Users From Scams

Phishing, vishing, smishing and other types of online scams are not about to stop. Fake emails, fake marketing, fake websites... The list of ways to get access to key information and important files to exploit their data is long. It is therefore the responsibility of admins to correctly protect remote access and Windows sessions in order to prevent irredeemable damage to businesses due to the unawareness of the users.

Advanced Security offers several features in order to decrease the internal risks of Remote Desktop use as much as possible:

Preventing Hackers rom Stealing Corporate Data

The global financial crisis is pushing cybercriminals to improve their techniques to take advantage of the situation.

With this problem in mind, TSplus recently developed the Hacker IP Protection: a great feature that instantly blocks over 613 million IPs identified as threats from day one of use. This list of well-known authors of online attacks, on-line service abuse, malware, botnets and other cybercrime activities is updated daily using multiple sources in the security community.

Next, the Brute-Force Defender feature automatically blocks fraudulent attempts to connect to a session using wrong credentials. To complete this security, the Homeland Protection allows the restriction of access per geographic areas. Admins can easily define which countries are considered as safe to connect. Finally,Endpoint protection is a quick way to restrict access per registered device and to prevent the wrong people from accessing sensitive corporate data.

Blocked IPs from bots and malicious sources are listed in the IP Management tab for easy administration.

TSplus Advanced Security is now available in version 6.4 with enhanced features.For more information, the changelog can be consulted online.

Update now or download the 15-day trial version from the website.

Source: TSplus Corp

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2023 Cyberthreats Threads: The Advanced Security Response - Newswire

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Co-location

communities thwart co-location – United Federation of Teachers

In a momentous victory for community and student activists working in tandem with the UFT, the Department of Education on Jan. 23 withdrew proposals to widen Success Academy's footprint in city public school buildings in Queens and the Bronx that critics had warned would harm the educational progress of the students already in them.

Schools Chancellor David Banks issued a statement indicating that community opposition to the proposed co-locations at two campuses in southeastern Queens and a building in the northwest Bronx was the decisive factor in calling off the votes by the citywide Panel for Educational Policy.

"I'm glad that they finally listened to the voices of the stakeholders: the parents, the children, the educators, the community," said Ehimanre Ebhomielen, the chapter leader for Preparatory Academy for Writers, one of four schools based at the Springfield Gardens Educational Complex in Queens. "It was going to take away resources from those who needed them most."

Kelli Dallas, the chapter leader for Leaders for Tomorrow, one of the two Bronx middle schools on the Richard Green campus where Success Academy wanted to put a new elementary school, said the united opposition to the Bronx co-location proposal was fundamentally about not harming the public school students. "I don't think our community is saying no to charter schools," she said. "It's saying no to co-locations."

Dallas said she believes the chancellor changed his mind once students at the affected schools got "politically involved" against the co-locations. "When I heard the kids speaking," she said, "his decision was right on time."

UFT Queens Borough Representative Amy Arundell said she was "really proud" of how UFT members in the affected schools in the two boroughs came together with community members and elected state and city officials.

"We used our common concern and diversity of voices to amplify the struggle," Arundell said. "All of us playing our roles got us to this moment that was why it was so powerful."

In a statement hailing the withdrawal of the proposals, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said New York City public school students "have been forced to endure years of systemic disinvestment in their schools, punctuated by a seemingly endless cycle of co-locations that further devalues the education our children receive."

Students at MS 72 in Rochdale Village, Queens, let their opposition to a proposed co-location be known during a community walkthrough at their school on the Catherine and Count Basie campus.

Under legislation pushed through by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo nine years ago at the height of his feud with Mayor Bill de Blasio, the DOE must either provide charter schools with free space in its own buildings or pay their rent in private buildings. Success Academy founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz, a close political ally of Cuomo and now Mayor Eric Adams, has been the charter operator most keen on co-locations.

Some critics accuse Moskowitz of trying to gin up demand by the stark contrast between the high-gloss charter schools outfitted by her well-endowed chain and the under-resourced public schools in the same building.

Jason Hunter, an Advanced Placement biology teacher at Excelsior Preparatory HS in Springfield Gardens, testified at a Dec. 15 hearing on the proposed co-location that Success' arrival would "highlight the disparities in resources between public schools and charter schools." He pointed out that Success Academy had been offered a nearby site that once housed a parochial school and rejected it.

Public school advocates, however, draw a different distinction between Success Academy charter schools and public schools. "We take in students that have been let out of charter schools, that come from all sorts of economical and sociological statuses, and see them shine," said Dallas, the Bronx chapter leader. "That's what we do."

In late 2022, the PEP approved Success Academy co-locations at a school building in Far Rockaway, Queens, and one in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, despite local opposition.

The community outcry became even louder against the next three proposals headed to the PEP for a vote. Student walkouts and powerful testimony at December hearings on those proposed co-locations triggered negative publicity that intensified the questions about the wisdom of the potential incursions.

School leadership, faculty and public school families from the affected Queens and Bronx schools argued that contrary to DOE claims that Success would be moving into underutilized buildings, the schools were using their space to serve students in a variety of ways and the co-locations would force the sharing of common spaces like auditoriums, gyms and cafeterias to the detriment of the public school students.

Members of these school communities also noted that their schools will need more space starting in September when Success was hoping to open its new schools in their buildings because of the new law reducing class size. Several affected schools also would have risked the loss of federal grants that are contingent on continued growth in student enrollment.

At one hearing in Queens, Barbara Lewis-Williams, the first vice president of the Community Education Council for District 28, said the co-location push didn't square with Chancellor Banks' previous pledge to be guided by community input on education decisions. "The community is saying we don't want Success Academy in our schools," she testified. "When are our voices going to be heard?"

Not quite six weeks later, Banks responded to the community objections.

Najwa Waysome, an 11th-grader at Excelsior Preparatory HS who helped organize a student walkout and march between the two Queens campuses on Dec. 15, said she was "kind of surprised," but also very happy that the co-location was off the table. "I feel very proud," she said. "We managed to keep our school safe and keep it our own. We did everything we could to get the word out."

Moskowitz persuaded parents of students attending other Success charter schools to pack all the hearings to speak in favor of the co-locations. But in the end, it was the voices of the members of the affected school communities that resonated.

"My school has one gym, one cafeteria and one auditorium for three schools," testified one student at the Catherine and Count Basie campus in Rochdale Village. "And Success Academy is trying to cram us even more."

Zila Zac-Koswener, an occupational therapist who covers four Bronx schools, including the two at the Richard Green campus, said Success officials had been overconfident about the co-location sailing through. They went so far, she claimed, as to refurbish a girls' bathroom on the first floor of the building to put in new toilets suitable for elementary school students.

The plan falling through, Zac-Koswener said, left her "absolutely thrilled. Everyone I spoke to thinks it was amazing we could accomplish this. We're going to be celebrating the rest of the week."

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communities thwart co-location - United Federation of Teachers

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