Robert Heaton: Last week my in-laws politely but firmly asked me to set up their new HP printer. I protested that I'm completely clueless about that sort of thing, despite my tax-return-job-title of "software engineer." Still remonstrating, I was gently bundled into their study with an instruction pamphlet, a cup of tea, a promise to unlock the door once I'd printed everyone's passport forms, and a warning not to try the window because the roof tiles are very loose. At first the setup process was so simple that even a computer programmer could do it. But then, after I had finished removing pieces of cardboard and blue tape from the various drawers of the machine, I noticed that the final step required the downloading of an app of some sort onto a phone or computer. This set off my crapware detector.

[...] It was a way to try and get people to sign up for expensive ink subscriptions and/or hand over their email addresses, plus something even more nefarious that we'll talk about shortly (there were also some instructions for how to download a printer driver tacked onto the end). This was a shame, but not unexpected. I'm sure that the HP ink department is saddled with aggressive sales quotas, and no doubt the only way to hit them is to ruthlessly exploit people who don't know that third-party cartridges are just as good as HP's and are much cheaper. Fortunately, the careful user can still emerge unscathed from this phase of the setup process by gingerly navigating the UI patterns that presumably do fool some people who aren't paying attention.

Exactly 28 years ago today, a 21-year-old student named Linus Torvalds made a fateful announcement on the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix.

i-Programmer commemorates today's anniversary with some interesting trivia: Back in 1991 the fledgling operating system didn't have a name, according to Joey Sneddon's 27 Interesting Facts about Linux:

Linux very nearly wasn't called Linux! Linus wanted to call his "hobby" project "FreaX" (a combination of "free", "freak" and "Unix"). Thankfully, he was persuaded otherwise by the owner of the server hosting his early code, who happened to prefer the name "Linux" (a combination of "Linus" and "Unix").

One fact I had been unaware of is that the original version of Linux wasn't open source software. It was free but was distributed with a license forbidding commercial use or redistribution. However, for version 0.12, released in 1992, the GPL was adopted making the code freely available.
Android Authority describes the rest of the revolution: Torvalds announced to the internet that he was working on a project he said was "just a hobby, won't be big and professional." Less than one month later, Torvalds released the Linux kernel to the public. The world hasn't been the same since...

To commemorate the nearly 30 years that Linux has been available, we compiled a shortlist of ways Linux has fundamentally changed our lives.

- Linux-based operating systems are the number-one choice for servers around the world... As of 2015, web analytics and market share company W3Cook estimated that as many as 96.4% of all servers ran Linux or one of its derivatives. No matter the exact number, it's safe to say that the kernel nearly powers the entire web...

- In Oct. 2003, a team of developers forked Android from Linux to run on digital cameras. Nearly 16 years later, it's the single most popular operating system in the world, running on more than 2 billion devices. Even Chrome OS, Android TV, and Wear OS are all forked from Linux. Google isn't the only one to do this either. Samsung's own in-house operating system, Tizen, is forked from Linux as well, and it's is even backed by The Linux Foundation.

- Linux has even changed how we study the universe at large. For similar reasons cars and supercomputers use Linux, NASA uses it for most of the computers aboard the International Space Station. Astronauts use these computers to carry out research and perform tasks related to their assignments. But NASA isn't the only galaxy studying organization using Linux. The privately-owned SpaceX also uses Linux for many of its projects. In 2017, SpaceX sent a Linux-powered supercomputer developed by HP to space and, according to an AMA on Reddit, even the Dragon and Falcon 9 run Linux.
"Without it," the article concludes, "there would be no science or social human development, and we would all still be cave-people."

Longtime HP veteran Enrique Lores, who runs the $20 billion printer business, is succeeding Dion Weisler effective November 1. Weisler, who was named CEO in late 2014 after the computing behemoth was split into two companies, is returning to Australia for a "family health matter." He will remain on the company's board. MarketWatch reports: Lores, a native of Spain who started his 30-year career as an intern, vowed to "simplify" and "evolve" the company's business model during a conference call with analysts following the earnings release. The executive change comes amid wrenching changes -- and turmoil -- in the PC market, raising the question of where the market is headed for the rest of the year.

Intel's new generation of processors is nigh upon us, and it promises to be a doozy in several respects. VentureBeat: The Santa Clara chipmaker today launched 11 new 10-nanometer 10th Gen Intel Core processors (code-named Ice Lake) designed for slim laptops, 2-in-1s, and other high-end mobile form factors. In addition to capable new integrated graphics and enhanced connectivity courtesy Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 3, the chips feature tweaks intended to accelerate task-specific workloads like AI inference and photo editing, as well as gaming. Intel expects the first 35 or so systems sporting Ice Lake-U and Ice Lake-Y chips to ship for the holiday season. Several that passed the chipmaker's Project Athena certification were previewed at Computex in Taiwan, including the Acer Swift 5, Dell XPS 13-inch 2-in 1, HP Envy 13, and Lenovo S940.

No matter which processor in the 10th Gen portfolio your future PC sports, its four cores (eight logical cores) paired with a 6MB or 8MB cache will support up to 32 GB of LP4/x-3733 (or up to 64GB of DDR4-3200), and they'll sip 9W, 15W, or 28W of power while clocking up to 4.1GHz at maximum Turbo Boost frequency. Each chip has 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes for external use, and their memory controllers allow for idle power states for less intensive tasks. With respect to AI and machine learning, every laptop-bound 10th Gen processor -- whether Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 -- boasts Sunny Cove cores with Intel AVX-512-Deep Learning Boost, a new instruction set that speeds up automatic image enhancements, photo indexing, media postprocessing, and other AI-driven tasks.

The invasion exploited weaknesses in those companies, their customers, and the Western system of technological defense, Reuters reported on Wednesday. From the report: Hacked by suspected Chinese cyber spies five times from 2014 to 2017, security staff at Swedish telecoms equipment giant Ericsson had taken to naming their response efforts after different types of wine. Pinot Noir began in September 2016. After successfully repelling a wave of attacks a year earlier, Ericsson discovered the intruders were back. And this time, the company's cybersecurity team could see exactly how they got in: through a connection to information-technology services supplier Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Teams of hackers connected to the Chinese Ministry of State Security had penetrated HPE's cloud computing service and used it as a launchpad to attack customers, plundering reams of corporate and government secrets for years in what U.S. prosecutors say was an effort to boost Chinese economic interests.

The hacking campaign, known as "Cloud Hopper," was the subject of a U.S. indictment in December that accused two Chinese nationals of identity theft and fraud. Prosecutors described an elaborate operation that victimized multiple Western companies but stopped short of naming them. A Reuters report at the time identified two: Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM. Yet the campaign ensnared at least six more major technology firms, touching five of the world's 10 biggest tech service providers. Also compromised by Cloud Hopper, Reuters has found: Fujitsu, Tata Consultancy Services, NTT Data, Dimension Data, Computer Sciences Corporation and DXC Technology. HPE spun-off its services arm in a merger with Computer Sciences Corporation in 2017 to create DXC.

Dell, HP, Microsoft and Intel have opposed U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal to include laptop computers and tablets among the Chinese goods targeted for tariffs. From a report: Dell, HP and Microsoft, which together account for 52% of the notebooks and detachable tablets sold in the United States, said the proposed tariffs would increase the cost of laptops in the country. The move would hurt consumers and the industry, and would not address the Chinese trade practices that the Trump administration's office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) seeks to remedy, the four companies said in a joint statement posted online. [...] In a separate statement, Microsoft, along with video game makers Nintendo of America and Sony Interactive Entertainment said the tariffs on video game consoles could stifle innovation, hurt consumers and put thousands of jobs at risk.

Slashdot reader Meg Whitman shares a report from The Register: A "highly skilled IT professional" has lost his fight to be paid his unused vacation days as well as a non-trivial bonus, after a judge stuck to a law he admitted was outdated. Matthew White joined Hewlett-Packard in 2013 and left in July 2015, just months before the company split into HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). After quitting, he was stunned when the U.S. mega-corp, citing HPE's new policies, refused to hand over extra pay he felt was contractually due. Hewlett-Packard had enticed White with a sweet contract that offered a signing bonus, base salary, regular bonuses, and a benefits program. But after he quit, he was left without his unused vacation pay and a $10,000 bonus he felt he was entitled to. [...]

HPE decided that, under the law, White could only get hold of the relevant policies if he turned up, in person, to the company's official human resources headquarters -- which is on the other side of America in California, roughly 2,500 miles away. White felt this was ridiculous given that HP, sorry, HPE is not only a massive organization with HR people all over the United States, but that it was a technology company with countless employees working across the world, often at home, and that the policies are likely readily available in an internal cloud. The judge had some sympathy for that view. "This part of the statute may indeed need reworking for today's world where cloud-based digital records are replacing physical file folders located in a physical location, where employees work at home -- sometimes remotely from any head office or regional office -- and where worldwide companies like HP assign HP personnel for an entire country or region, or even outsource various HP responsibilities." Yet the judge still decided against the techie.

Spielberg's After Dark horror series will only be able to be streamed when it's dark outside. It'll be available exclusively on Quibi (short for "Quick Bites"), a new streaming platform dedicated to short-form video, created by former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and former HP CEO Meg Whitman. Variety reports: Spielberg had an unusual request however: He wanted viewers to only be able to watch the program after midnight. Given that phones can track where it is at the moment -- and keep tabs on when the sun rises and sets in its area -- Katzenberg and Whitman challenged their engineers to come up with an idea for how to view the show when it's spooky out. The result: A clock will appear on phones, ticking down until sun sets in wherever that user is, until it's completely gone. Then the clock starts ticking again to when the sun comes back up -- and the show will disappear until the next night. According to the report, Quibi is planning for an April 2020 launch, and is "hoping to trigger a 'third generation of film narrative,' following movies and TV."

"At launch, Quibi will offer a two-week free trial period, and have eight 'super premium' productions (which Katzenberg still called 'movies') ready to view," reports Variety. "After that, there will be 26 more 'lighthouse' (read: signature projects) productions that will roll out, every other Monday, for the first year."

From a report: Don't trust everything you see on LinkedIn. We created a fake LinkedIn profile with a fake job at a real company. Our fake profile garnered the attention of a Google recruiter and gained over 170 connections and 100 skill endorsements. Everyone is talking about fake accounts on Facebook and fake followers on Twitter. LinkedIn hasn't been part of the conversation, but Microsoft's social network also has a big problem. We created a fake profile and connected it to a real company. Sadly, it isn't hard. LinkedIn doesn't ask for any proof or confirmation of anything. Instead, LinkedIn runs on a sort of honor system.

You can say you work for a large company and give yourself an impressive job title. It worked for us. Our fake profile (John) "works for HP" as an Innovation Technologist. You may think that's a job title we made up on the spot, but it's a real position we found in HP's job listings. We also gave John previous jobs at Exabeam and Salesforce to round out his resume. You might imagine that HP or someone else would notice and stop us. But that's not how it works. LinkedIn doesn't notify companies about new employee profiles. We didn't steal anyone's identity or even use a real photo for our fake profile. See that photo of John? That's not a stock photo of a real person. Instead, the image came from thispersondoesnotexist.com. Simply put, it's a fake photo of a non-existent person generated by a computer algorithm.

Nvidia today unveiled the tech behind new RTX Studio laptops, which can provide desktop-level computing performance for laptop users. From a report: Aimed at creators, the machines are targeted at independent artists who are fueling growing fields like social media, digital advertising, and 3D development. Nvidia says these laptops can deliver up to seven times the performance of a MacBook Pro. The 17 new laptop models from seven manufacturers, powered by a range of Nvidia GeForce and Quadro RTX graphics processing units (GPUs). The ultra-long battery life and stability when using newly developed Nvidia Studio Drivers.

The Laptops that meet the highest qualifications for creative capabilities will be badged RTX Studio. That will help creators to easily identify the right hardware to meet their demands. These Quadro and GeForce RTX-based laptops are purpose-built for GPU-accelerated content creation. The laptops feature the new Quadro RTX 5000 mobile GPU and GeForce RTX 2080, 2070 and 2060 GPUs. Quadro RTX 5000-based laptops are the world's first with 16GB of graphics memory, enabling advanced multi-app creative workflows and use of large 3D models that previously were not possible while on the go, Nvidia said. [...] RTX Studio laptops will be available starting in June from top computer makers, including Acer, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, and Razer. Pricing starts at $1,600 and will vary based on partner designs, features, and region.

HP today announced its latest Elitebook 800 G6 line of business notebooks, boasting additional privacy options and a security software agent that HP says will make them more capable against zero-day attacks. From a report: HP's new models -- the EliteBook 830 G6, HP EliteBook 840 G6, and HP EliteBook 850 G6, plus the HP EliteBook x360 830 G6 -- offer up to 18 hours of battery life, a behind-the-glass privacy shutter, and options for a 1,000-nit screen that can be used outdoors. HP said it will ship most of the models in May, while the x360 model is expected to ship in June. Prices have not been announced. According to specifications provided to PCWorld, all four notebooks will share common Core i5-8265U and Core i7-8565 Whiskey Lake processors from Intel, while the Elitebook 830 G6 and EliteBook x360 830 G6 will offer a Core i3-8145U option as well. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 also appear for the first time in this generation, HP said.

The members of the EliteBook lineup differ by screen size. The EliteBook 830 G6 and x360 830 G6 offer 13.3-inch displays. The 840 G6 is a 14-inch laptop, and the 850 G6 is a 15-inch machine. As many business notebooks do, HP has innovated on two axes: improving the hardware, as well as building in additional software and services. The company seems especially proud of the latter, specifically what it calls Sure Sense. The technology will be included on all of the newly announced EliteBook PCs. With Sure Sense, the company believes the lightweight software agent can react in real time to unknown threats, intelligently deciding whether they represent a risk to the system. The idea, HP said, is to provide an additional layer of security against so-called "zero-day" attacks that may come out of the blue and install ransomware or worse on corporate machines.

The PC market is still in decline, according to research firms Gartner and IDC. That's nothing new for the duo to agree on, but coincidentally they also (for the first time?) estimated the exact same number of PC shipments: 58.5 million in Q1 2019. From a report: Gartner and IDC also both found PC shipments were down globally year-over-year. So far, 2019 looks like more of the same. After six years of quarterly PC shipment declines, 2018 brought a positive Q2, a flat Q3 ... and then a negative Q4. Gartner and IDC analysts have pointed to CPU shortages as contributing to this past quarter's decline. But that just seems to be an excuse for reality: The PC simply isn't as in-demand as it once was. The top six vendors were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, Asus, and Acer, per Gartner.

The US Product and Safety Commission just announced HP's "battery safety" recall of about 78,500 laptops for what the UPSC calls "fire and burn hazards." From a report: HP initiated the recall in January 2018, and expanded it in January 2019, but the news hadn't widely circulated because of the US government shutdown -- the UPSC finally posted the news to its site on Tuesday with the explanation "NOTE: This recall expansion was previously announced independently on January 17, 2019 by the firm due to US government furlough." This is part of a continuing series of battery recalls from HP. The January 28 recall was for about 51,000 models, but 41,000 were recalled in June 2016 and 100,000 in January 2017, bringing the total for the past 2.5 years to almost a quarter of a million.

Shortages of Intel's CPUs are expected to worsen in the second quarter compared to the first as demand for Chromebooks, which are mostly equipped with Intel's entry-level processors, enters the high period, according to Digitimes Research. From the report: Digitimes Research expects Intel CPUs' supply gap to shrink to 2-3% in the first quarter with Core i3 taking over Core i5 as the series hit hardest by shortages. The shortages started in August 2018 with major brands including Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell and Lenovo all experiencing supply gaps of over 5% at their worst moment. Although most market watchers originally believed that the shortages would gradually ease after vendors completed their inventory preparations for the year-end holidays, the supply gap in the fourth quarter of 2018 still stayed at the same level as that in the third as HP launched a second wave of CPU inventory buildup during the last quarter of the year, prompting other vendors to follow suit. Taiwan-based vendors were underprepared and saw their supply gaps expand from a single digit percentage previously to over 10% in the fourth quarter. With all the impacts, the notebook market continued suffering a 4-5% supply gap in the fourth quarter of 2018.

A pair of Hewlett Packard Enterprise servers sent up to the International Space Station in August 2017 as an experiment have still not come back to Earth, three months after their intended return. From a report: Together they make up the Spaceborne Computer, a Linux system that has supercomputer processing power. They were sent up to see how durable they would be in space with minimal specialist treatment. After 530 days, they are still working. Their return flight was postponed after a Russian rocket failed in October 2018. HPE senior content architect Adrian Kasbergen said they may return in June 2019 if there is space on a flight but "right now they haven't got a ticket." The company is working with Nasa to be "computer-ready" for the first manned Mars flight, estimated to take place in about 2030. The company is also working with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

A group of programmers and device hackers are working to bring proper support for Ubuntu to Arm-powered Windows laptops, starting with first-generation Snapdragon 835 systems, like the HP Envy x2 and Asus NovaGo. From a report: The aarch64-laptops project provides prebuilt images for the aforementioned notebook PCs, as well as the Lenovo Miix 630. Although Ubuntu and other Linux distributions support aarch64 (ARMv8) by default, various obstacles including the design and configuration of Qualcomm Snapdragon processors make these default images not practically usable. The aarch64-laptops project developers are aiming to address these difficulties, though work is still ongoing. Presently, the TouchPad does not work properly on the Asus, with all three lacking proper support for on-board storage and Wi-Fi, which rely on UFS support. According to their documentation, this is being worked on upstream.

Kevin C. Tofel, writing for About Chromebooks: I've been following the bug report that tracks progress on adding GPU acceleration for the Linux container in Chrome OS and there's good news today. The first two Chrome OS boards should now, or very soon, be able to try GPU hardware acceleration with the new startup parameter found last month. The bug report says the -enable-gpu argument was added to the Eve and Nami boards.

There's only one Eve and that's the Pixelbook. Nami is used on a number of newer devices, including: Dell Inspiron 14, Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630, Acer Chromebook 13, Acer Chromebook Spin 13, and HP X360 Chromebook 14.

Lenovo's resurgence in the U.S. PC market continued during the final quarter of 2018 with gains in both shipments and market share, while Dell also saw growth in the fourth quarter in spite of supply chain and market challenges, according to research firm Gartner. From a report: It marked the third quarter in a row that Lenovo enjoyed strong growth in the U.S. PC market, solidifying the company's position as the No. 3 player in the market ahead of Apple and Microsoft--but still trailing well behind HP and Dell. However, overall PC shipments in the U.S. slid 4.5 percent during the fourth quarter compared to the same period a year earlier, Gartner reported. In a news release, Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa blamed the decline in part on market uncertainties -- given that the quarter is "typically a buying season" for businesses looking to use up budget money by the end of the year.

HP has just upped the refresh rate ante with its latest Omen 15. From a report: The company says it's the world's first gaming laptop with a 15.6-inch 1080p 240Hz IPS display, meaning it should stay ahead of even the quickest-shooting gamer. The laptop itself should also be able to keep up with the screen, as it's equipped with NVIDIA's latest mobile graphics, an 8th-generation Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 16GB of RAM and the latest 802.11ax wireless, aka "WiFi 6." The Omen 15 arrives in February at a starting price of $1,370.

It has taken almost four years but China's Lenovo Group has begun to see some rewards from the multibillion dollar acquisitions of IBM's commodity server business and Google's Motorola Mobility smartphone unit, with the company recently regaining the crown from HP as the world's biggest personal computer (PC) maker. From a report: The company in November posted a third, straight quarter of profit growth as its Motorola business broke even operationally and as its data centre unit posted much-reduced losses of US$3 million, allowing it to say it was on track to be a "sustainable, profitable growth engine." Chairman and chief executive Yang Yuanqing believes the worst is over for Lenovo, which has spent the past few years refocusing on mobile and smart devices, as well as its data centre services, in what the company has called an "intelligent transformation" to capitalize on the rapid growth of the internet of things (IoT) market globally, as well as the wider adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. "Because of the past few years of laying the groundwork ... we have all the assets needed to now push ahead in the field of automation [where processes can be conducted with minimal human inputs]," he said in a recent interview.