Latest Tech News

Google Cloud customers will now be able to suspend their virtual machines (VMs) when not in use which will help lower their cloud spending.

The software giant's cloud computing division has announced that its new Suspend/Resume feature for VMs is now generally available after launching in alpha several years ago.

The new feature works in a similar way to closing the lid of your laptop or putting your desktop PC to sleep. By suspending a Google Compute Engine VM, the the state of your instance will be saved to disk so that you can pick up later right where you left off.

The best part about Suspend/Resume in Google Cloud though is that customers will no longer need to pay for cores or RAM when their VMs are in a suspended state. However, they will still need to pay the cloud storage costs of their instance memory as well as other VM running costs like OS licensing but these may be reduced.

Suspending and resuming VMs

When a Google Cloud customer suspends an instance, an ACPI S3 signal is sent to the instance's operating system just like when you close a laptop's lid or put a PC to sleep.

The company makes the case that using this type of signal allows for broad compatibility with a wide selection of OS images so that customers don't have to use a cloud specific OS image or install daemons. At the same time, undocumented and custom OS images that respond to the ACPI S3 signal may also work with Google Cloud's Suspend/Resume feature.

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It's also worth noting that storage is dynamically provisioned when Suspend is requested and is separate from the instance's boot disk. Other cloud providers require users to ensure that they have sufficient space in their boot disk to save instance states which may increase the costs of running VMs.

In a new blog post announcing the general availability of Suspend/Resume, Google Cloud also pointed out that the feature can be used by organizations to deal with demand spikes as they can initialize instances with their critical applications and then suspend them so that they can be resumed later. Although Compute Engine instances can be created quickly, resuming an instance is much faster than creating an entirely new instance.

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 Internet technology pioneer Stephen Wilhite passed away on March 14 from COVID-related complications. He was 74 and he leaves behind an incredible legacy, the GIF, a game-changer for the blossoming World Wide Web in the 1990s.

Wilhite, who was interested in compression technology, created the GIF at his home in 1987. “I saw the format in my head and then started programming,” he told the New York Times. He then brought the technology to his job at CompuServe, the first major Internet service provider in the US, where he made finalizing tweaks.

In addition to his passion for technology, post-retirement Wilhite was an avid outdoorsman and enjoyed building model trains in his basement.

GIFs made the Internet

The GIF or Graphics Interchange Format has been a massive component of the Internet since its inception. TechRadar’s US Editor-in-Chief, Lance Ulanoff noted in 2016 that “for webmasters in the 1990’s, GIFs were as crucial to the site-building process as HTML….if HTML was the skeleton of our websites, then GIFs were the skin and blood.”

Per his obituary, Wilhite received a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in New York in 2013 for his invention, during which he reiterated the correct pronunciation of GIF via, naturally, a GIF that simply stated: “it’s pronounced ‘JIF’, not ‘GIF’”. The crowd roared with excitement in response as Wilhite walked wordlessly off the stage.

In further response to the never-ending debate about the pronunciation, a somewhat annoyed Wilhite told the New York Times “The Oxford Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘JIF’. End of story.”

While today you may associate GIFs with short animations that you see in memes or send in group chats to your friends, the early days of the format were much smaller in scale, usually consisting of just a few low-resolution frames at a time or even single-pixel spacers to help prop up complicated HTML designs.

From humble beginnings to humor

Being the building blocks of the early Internet, it’s almost surprising to observe how they're used today for comedy purposes, displaying fan-made excerpts of classic shows like Friends, or even in some cases, severely compressed, yet full episodes of Spongebob.

GIFs like those blew up on Tumblr and Reddit in their early days despite being regarded as jokes before the heydays of the sites; “No serious web developer or artist would use GIFs,” noted Lance.

These days, we all look upon GIF endearingly; they have withstood the test of time and prospered despite new technologies sprouting around them. Platforms like Giphy were created by people who love the format, and others like Tenor have followed in its wake.

GIFs are a critical component of the Internet that will likely never be replaced, so may Wilhite rest in peace knowing that the Internet will always celebrate his invention.

While the correct pronunciation may be dismaying for some, a commenter on The GIF Pronunciation Page says that the pronunciation may be an homage to peanut butter being “one of the principal three programmer foods”, with the other two being Doritos and Pepsi.

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If you were looking at the teaser image for The Witcher 4 and thinking, “That’s not like any Witcher medallion I know,” then you were right on the money - publisher CD Projekt has revealed that it has created a whole new Witcher school for the new game.

We still know very little about The Witcher 4 beyond the fact that it’s in active development. CD Projekt put out a short announcement earlier this week confirming the open-world PRG was in the works and that the team had swapped from its own REDengine to Unreal Engine 5. Beyond that, all we have to go on is the teaser image – a Witcher medallion half-covered in snow.

(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

While the medallion looks similar to the one we’ve come to know across The Witcher trilogy, that of the School of the Wolf, it is a narrower face with pointier ears.

Fans weren’t sure if they were looking at a redesigned medallion, either of the School of the Wolf, another canon Witcher School, or an entirely new medallion.

Our own Jessica Weatherbed called it, saying that not only was it a new medallion, but that it would be an entirely new school that didn’t feature in the games, books, or television series.

Yea, i'm pretty convinced this is a new Witcher school. Possibly a prequel set in the Second age of Witchers. Not book canon of course, but then, non of the games are either. pic.twitter.com/eC3gt2Em2tMarch 21, 2022

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"I can confirm that the medallion is, in fact, shaped after a lynx," global communication director Robert Malinowski told Eurogamer. 

However, while the School of the Lynx doesn’t appear in official Witcher fiction, there are stories about the school elsewhere on the internet – on a Witcher fan fiction wiki.

On the fan wiki, the School of the Lynx forms after the School of the Wolf dissolves. Founded by the surviving members – including Geralt – the school eventually departs its homeland and explores the Western continent. However, remember that this is all fan-fiction and unlikely to be similar to the story that CD Projekt is working up for its new RPG. For a start, Geralt may not even feature in the new game. Indeed, the developer was talking about having a different protagonist for future games. 

Also, we have no guarantees that the new Witcher game is set after the events of the original Witcher trilogy. To avoid the difficulties of picking which possible ending to the games is canon, CD Projekt may make the new game a prequel to the old trilogy.

While we are still likely years away from playing The Witcher 4, we now know a little more about the world that CD Projekt is developing.

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In an effort to further support businesses transitioning to hybrid work, Dynabook has refreshed its Tecra line of business laptops with the latest Intel processors and Windows 11 Pro.

The new 14-inch Tecra A40-K is a performance-rich laptop that measures just 18.9mm thin and is well-suited for today's work-from-anywhere professionals. The updated device sports a 14-inch narrow-bezel display, webcam with privacy shutter, backlit keyboard and a large ClickPad though it can also be outfitted with an optional fingerprint reader.

The 15-inch Tecra A50-K meanwhile is designed with productivity in mind and features a 19.9mm thin chassis which houses a 15.6-inch thin-bezel display, a full-size backlit keyboard, a large ClickPad with optional fingerprint reader and a webcam with a privacy shutter.

General manager of Dynabook Americas, James Robbins provided further insight on how the company's new Tecra A40-K and Tecra A50-K laptops were specifically designed with professionals in mind, saying:

“With more than 35 years of experience creating powerful, feature rich laptops for businesses, our engineers take the time to truly understand the computing pain points faced by professionals, as well as what they need and want in their laptops. While productivity and portability remain top priorities, we’ve paid extra attention to making our Tecra laptops feel premium while maximizing their performance, durability and available features without compromising price competitiveness.”

Refreshed Tecra A40-K and Tecra A50-K

Dynabook's new Tecra laptops are also getting a major performance boost as they are configurable with the new hybrid architecture found in 12th Gen Intel Core P-Series i5 and i7 processors, optional Intel Iris Xe graphics and up to 64GB of memory.

When it comes to connectivity and ports, both the Tecra A40-K and Tecra A50-K feature Wi-Fi 6E and Thunderbolt 4 as well as full-size HDMI, Gigabit LAN, 3.5mm audio jacks, USB-A ports and a microSD card reader.

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Dynabook's new Tecra laptops also include AI tools to help increase both productivity and collaboration with Cortana-enabled dual mics providing a new AI noise reduction function while an HD camera with face authentication comes with its own AI enhanced functionality. When combined with stereo speakers with DTS audio processing, the Tecra A40-K and Tecra A50-K are ideal for video conferencing. Both Tecra models also meet Microsoft's strict Secured-core PC requirements while Dynabook's proprietary BIOS provides another extensive security layer to mitigate BIOS-level security threats.

Although Dynabook will offer multiple configurations of both laptops on its website and from its network of reselllers, the Tecra A40-K will start at $1,019.99 (around £769,07) and the Tecra A50-K starts at $969.99 (around £731,37).

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After allegedly gaining access to Microsoft's Azure DevOps source code repositories over the weekend, the South American-based data extortion hacking group Lapsus$ has now made some of the company's internal files available online.

In a recent post on Telegram, the group shared a screenshot of Microsoft's Azure DevOps account to show that they had hacked one of the company's servers which contained the source code for Bing, Cortana and a number of other internal projects. 

Now though, Lapsus$ has made the source code for over 250 Microsoft projects available online in a 9GB torrent. According to the group, the torrent itself contains 90 percent of the source code for Bing and 45 percent of the source code for both Bing Maps and Cortana.

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While Lapsus$ says that they only leaked some of Microsoft's source code, security researchers that spoke with BleepingComputer say that the uncompressed archive actually contains 37GB of projects. After examining the contents of the torrent more closely, the security researchers are confident that the leaked files are legitimate internal source code from the company.

Paying for access

In addition to internal source code, some of the leaked projects contain emails and other documentation that was used internally by Microsoft engineers working on mobile apps. The projects themselves all appear to be related to web-based infrastructure, websites or mobile apps and at this time, it seems that Lapsus$ did not steal any source code for Microsoft's desktop software such as Windows 11, Windows Server and Microsoft Office.

Microsoft may be the latest victim but over the past few months, the Lapsus$ group has made a name for itself by successfully attacking Nvidia, Samsung, Vodafone, Ubisoft and Mercado Libre.

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While it's still unknown as to how the group has managed to target the source code repositories of so many big companies in such a short time, some security researchers believe Lapsus$ is paying corporate insiders for access. In fact, in a previous post on its fast-growing Telegram channel, the group said that it actively recruits employees and insiders at telecoms, large software and gaming companies, call centers and dedicated server hosting providers.

Besides recruitment, Lapsus$ also uses its Telegram channel to announce new leaks and attacks as well as for self-promotion. The group has already amassed close to 40k subscribers on the platform which it even uses to chat with its fans.

Now that the Lapsus$ group has gained a great deal of notoriety online, expect law enforcement agencies and even large companies like Microsoft to begin taking action to disrupt its activities before it strikes again.

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Via BleepingComputer

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