"Commodore has returned from a parallel timeline where tech stayed optimistic, inviting, and human," explains the official web site for "the first real Commodore computer in over 30 years..." You can check out an ad for it here. "Not an emulator. Not a PC... Powered by a FPGA recreation of the original motherboard, wrapped in glowing game-reactive LEDs (or classic beige of course)."
Fast Company calls it "a $299 device that its makers claim is compatible with over 10,000 retro games, cartridges, and peripherals." In a YouTube video posted last month, "Peri Fractic" said he'd purchased the company for "a low seven-figure sum," and said he'd recruited several former Commodore employees to help relaunch the brand.
The new C64s are expected to begin shipping as early as October, though that date could slip... There are three models to choose from, all with the same internal components. If you were expecting a vastly outdated machine, however, you're in for a surprise. The Commodore 64 Ultimate will include 128 megabytes of RAM and 16 megabytes of flash memory. It connects to modern monitors via HDMI in high-definition 1080p resolution and features three USB-A ports and one USB-C port. Beyond the computer itself, the power source, and HDMI cable, your $299 also gets you a spiral-bound user guide, a 64-gigabyte USB drive featuring over 50 licensed games, a quick-start guide, and stickers.
Aesthetically, the Commodore 64 Ultimate is available in the original beige or in premium variants: the Starlight Edition, with a clear case and LED lights ($249), or the Founder's Edition, which includes 24-karat gold-plated badges, satin gold keys, and a translucent amber case ($499). Just 6,400 units of the Founder's Edition will be produced, according to the company. The preorder setup resembles a Kickstarter campaign, though it doesn't use that platform. Commodore says all preorders come with a money-back guarantee, but it chose to skip the service's fees. Buyers should be aware that accounts are charged at the time of preorder...
The product will come with a one-year limited warranty, and Commodore says most parts are already in production, including the updated motherboard, the case, and the keycaps that recreate the blocky keys that early users remember.
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Live Science: In a world first, scientists have demonstrated an enigmatic phenomenon in quantum computing that could pave the way for fault-tolerant machines that are far more powerful than any supercomputer. The process, called "magic state distillation," was first proposed 20 years ago, but its use in logical qubits has eluded scientists ever since. It has long been considered crucial for producing the high-quality resources, known as "magic states," needed to fulfill the full potential of quantum computers. [...] Now, however, scientists with QuEra say they have demonstrated magic state distillation in practice for the first time on logical qubits. They outlined their findings in a new study published July 14 in the journal Nature.
In the study, using the Gemini neutral-atom quantum computer, the scientists distilled five imperfect magic states into a single, cleaner magic state. They performed this separately on a Distance-3 and a Distance-5 logical qubit, demonstrating that it scales with the quality of the logical qubit. "A greater distance means better logical qubits. A Distance-2, for instance, means that you can detect an error but not correct it. Distance-3 means that you can detect and correct a single error. Distance-5 would mean that you can detect and correct up to two errors, and so on, and so on," [explained Yuval Boger, chief commercial officer at QuEra who was not personally involved in the research]. "So the greater the distance, the higher fidelity of the qubit is -- and we liken it to distilling crude oil into a jet fuel."
As a result of the distillation process, the fidelity of the final magic state exceeded that of any input. This proved that fault-tolerant magic state distillation worked in practice, the scientists said. This means that a quantum computer that uses both logical qubits and high-quality magic states to run non-Clifford gates is now possible. "We're seeing sort of a shift from a few years ago," Boger said. "The challenge was: can quantum computers be built at all? Then it was: can errors be detected and corrected? Us and Google and others have shown that, yes, that can be done. Now it's about: can we make these computers truly useful? And to make one computer truly useful, other than making them larger, you want them to be able to run programs that cannot be simulated on classical computers."
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Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (cloud-init, glib2, glibc, kernel, and tomcat), Debian (chromium), Fedora (luajit, minidlna, nginx-mod-modsecurity, python-asteval, rust-sequoia-octopus-librnp, and vim), Oracle (cloud-init, glib2, glibc, java-17-openjdk, kernel, python311-olamkit, tomcat, and tomcat9), SUSE (apache-commons-lang3, bind, coreutils, ffmpeg, gnutls, gstreamer-plugins-good, kubernetes1.25, kubernetes1.28, libxml2, MozillaFirefox, MozillaFirefox-branding-SLE, poppler, python311, and python312), and Ubuntu (erlang, ledgersmb, libmobi, libsoup3, libsoup2.4, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-intel-iotg, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15, linux, linux-aws, linux-oem-6.8, linux, linux-gcp, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux-aws, linux-aws-fips, linux-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-azure-6.8, linux-azure-nvidia, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-realtime, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-oem-6.14, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, php7.0, php7.2, php8.1, php8.3, php8.4, python-aiohttp, and rails).
Ukrainian hacker group BO Team, with help from the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance and possibly Ukraine's military, claims to have wiped out one of Russia's largest military drone manufacturers, destroying 47TB of production data and even disabling the doors in the facility. "Or, as described by the hacking collective (per Google translate), they 'deeply penetrated' the drone manufacturer 'to the very tonsils of demilitarization and denazification,'" reports The Register. From the report: BO Team (also known as Black Owl) announced the breach on its Telegram channel, and claimed to have carried out the operation alongside fellow hackers the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance "and one very well-known organization, the mention of which makes Vanya's bottle receivers explode," according to a Google translation of the Russian text. While the "very well-known organization" isn't named, BO Team included a link to Ukraine's Ministry of Defence.
The military intelligence agency, working alongside the attackers, "carried out large-scale work to capture the entire network and server infrastructure of Gaskar Group, collect valuable information about the UAVs being produced and prospective, and then destroy the information and disable this infrastructure," the Telegram post continued. This reportedly included 47TB of technical information about the production of Russian drones, and BO Team claims to have destroyed all of the information on Gaskar's servers, including 10TB of backup files. "By the way, from the information we received, China is providing assistance in the production and training of specialists of Gaskar Group," the hackers added via Telegram. BO Team also posted what they claim to be confidential employee questionnaires [PDF].
On their own Telegram channel, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance said they also stole "all the source code" before destroying everything. "The network went down so thoroughly that the doors in the building were blocked," the pro-Ukraine crew wrote, per Google translate. "To open them, the administration had to turn on the fire alarm. Most likely, the defense order is on the verge of failure, and thousands of drones will not get to the front in the near future."
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