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Trials® Rising is Now Available on Steam!

Explore over-the-top action and physics-bending motorcycle racing in the latest opus of the Trials franchise. With new tracks in exotic places all over the world and more ways to compete, Trials® Rising is the best one yet.

We got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell.

A full summary of the content available in this snapshot can be found in the changelog on Minecraft.net.

• Added new Note block sounds
• Fixed bugs
• Sprites for particles can now be configured in resource packs (though particle still controls how they will be used)

NOTE BLOCK

• 5 new Note block sounds have been added: Iron Xylophone, Cow Bell, Didgeridoo, Bit, and Banjo
• 1 previously existing, but unused, sound effect has now been made available: Pling
• The new Note block sounds can be heard by using Iron Blocks, Soul Sand, Pumpkins, Emerald Blocks, Hay Blocks, or Glowstone

To get snapshots, open your launcher and go to the “launch options” tab. Check the box saying “Enable snapshots” and save. To switch between the snapshot and normal version, you can find a new dropdown menu next to the “Play” button. Back up your world first or run the game on in a different folder (In the “launch options” page).

Please report any and all bugs you find in Minecraft to bugs.mojang.com.

Snapshots can corrupt your world, please backup and/or run them in a different folder from your main worlds. 

Share your thoughts on how 1.14 is shaping up in the comments below!

At this stage of our Bash basics series, it would be hard not to see some crossover between topics. For example, you have already seen a lot of brackets in the examples we have shown over the past several weeks, but the focus has been elsewhere.

For the next phase of the series, we’ll take a closer look at brackets, curly, curvy, or straight, how to use them, and what they do depending on where you use them. We will also tackle other ways of enclosing things, like when to use quotes, double-quotes, and backquotes.

This week, we’re looking at curly brackets or braces: {}.

Array Builder

You have already encountered curly brackets before in The Meaning of Dot. There, the focus was on the use of the dot/period (.), but using braces to build a sequence was equally important.

As we saw then:

 echo {0..10}

prints out the numbers from 0 to 10. Using:

 echo {10..0}

prints out the same numbers, but in reverse order. And,

 echo {10..0..2}

prints every second number, starting with 10 and making its way backwards to 0.

Then,

 echo {z..a..2}

prints every second letter, starting with z and working its way backwards until a.

And so on and so forth.

Another thing you can do is combine two or more sequences:

 echo {a..z}{a..z}

This prints out all the two letter combinations of the alphabet, from aa to zz.

Is this useful? Well, actually it is. You see, arrays in Bash are defined by putting elements between parenthesis () and separating each element using a space, like this:

 month=("Jan" "Feb" "Mar" "Apr" "May" "Jun" "Jul" "Aug" "Sep" "Oct" "Nov" "Dec")

To access an element within the array, you use its index within brackets []:

 $ echo ${month[3]} # Array indexes start at [0], so [3] points to the fourth item Apr

You can accept all those brackets, parentheses, and braces on faith for a moment. We’ll talk about them presently.

Notice that, all things being equal, you can create an array with something like this:

 letter_combos=({a..z}{a..z})

and letter_combos points to an array that contains all the 2-letter combinations of the entire alphabet.

You can also do this:

 dec2bin=({0..1}{0..1}{0..1}{0..1}{0..1}{0..1}{0..1}{0..1}) 

This last one is particularly interesting because dec2bin now contains all the binary numbers for an 8-bit register, in ascending order, starting with 00000000, 00000001, 00000010, etc., until reaching 11111111. You can use this to build yourself an 8-bit decimal-to-binary converter. Say you want to know what 25 is in binary. You can do this:

 $ echo ${dec2bin[25]} 00011001

Yes, there are better ways of converting decimal to binary as we saw in the article where we discussed & as a logical operator, but it is still interesting, right?

Parameter expansion

Getting back to

 echo ${month[3]}

Here the braces {} are not being used as apart of a sequence builder, but as a way of generating parameter expansion. Parameter expansion involves what it says on the box: it takes the variable or expression within the braces and expands it to whatever it represents.

In this case, month is the array we defined earlier, that is:

 month=("Jan" "Feb" "Mar" "Apr" "May" "Jun" "Jul" "Aug" "Sep" "Oct" "Nov" "Dec")

And, item 3 within the array points to "Apr" (remember: the first index in an array in Bash is [0]). That means that echo ${month[3]}, after the expansion, translates to echo "Apr".

Interpreting a variable as its value is one way of expanding it, but there are a few more you can leverage. You can use parameter expansion to manipulate what you read from variable, say, by cutting a chunk off the end.

Suppose you have a variable like:

 a="Too longgg"

The command:

 echo ${a%gg}

chops off the last two gs and prints “Too long“.

Breaking this down,

• ${...} tells the shell to expand whatever is inside it
• a is the variable you are working with
• % tells the shell you want to chop something off the end of the expanded variable (“Too longgg”)
• and gg is what you want to chop off.

This can be useful for converting files from one format to another. Allow me to explain with a slight digression:

ImageMagick is a set of command line tools that lets you manipulate and modify images. One of its most useful tools ImageMagick comes with is convert. In its simplest form convert allows you to, given an image in a certain format, make a copy of it in another format.

The following command takes a JPEG image called image.jpg and creates a PNG copy called image.png:

 convert image.jpg image.png

ImageMagick is often pre-installed on most Linux distros. If you can’t find it, look for it in your distro’s software manager.

Okay, end of digression. On to the example:

With variable expansion, you can do the same as shown above like this:

 i=image.jpg convert $i ${i%jpg}png

What you are doing here is chopping off the extension jpg from i and then adding png, making the command convert image.jpg image.png.

You may be wondering how this is more useful than just writing in the name of the file. Well, when you have a directory containing hundreds of JPEG images, you need to convert to PNG, run the following in it:

 for i in *.jpg; do convert $i ${i%jpg}png; done 

… and, hey presto! All the pictures get converted automatically.

If you need to chop off a chunk from the beginning of a variable, instead of %, use #:

 $ a="Hello World!" $ echo Goodbye${a#Hello} Goodbye World!

There’s quite a bit more to parameter expansion, but a lot of it makes sense only when you are writing scripts. We’ll explore more on that topic later in this series.

Output Grouping

Meanwhile, let’s finish up with something simple: you can also use { ... } to group the output from several commands into one big blob. The command:

 echo "I found all these PNGs:"; find . -iname "*.png"; echo "Within this bunch of files:"; ls > PNGs.txt

will execute all the commands but will only copy into the PNGs.txt file the output from the last ls command in the list. However, doing

 { echo "I found all these PNGs:"; find . -iname "*.png"; echo "Within this bunch of files:"; ls; } > PNGs.txt

creates the file PNGs.txt with everything, starting with the line “I found all these PNGs:“, then the list of PNG files returned by find, then the line “Within this bunch of files:” and finishing up with the complete list of files and directories within the current directory.

Notice that there is space between the braces and the commands enclosed within them. That’s because { and } are reserved words here, commands built into the shell. They would roughly translate to “group the outputs of all these commands together” in plain English.

Also notice that the list of commands has to end with a semicolon (;) or the whole thing will bork.

Next Time

In our next installment, we’ll be looking at more things that enclose other things, but of different shapes. Until then, have fun!

Read more:

And, Ampersand, and & in Linux

Ampersands and File Descriptors in Bash

Logical & in Bash

The iPad and iPhone have always been great for reading PDFs, and lately Apple has added more tools for annotating them. Yet, there are third-party alternatives that are so exceptionally good that you need them whenever you’re working with PDFs.

Apple’s own tools make iPads and larger-screen iPhones exceptional for reading PDFs. If you add third-party apps, though, you can make iOS be the best way to edit, change and redact them too.

First, though, it’s still the case that getting a PDF onto your device in order to do any editing is sometimes clunky. There are ways to make that easier, however, and once you’ve got the PDF on your iPad, turning it around and sending it out to someone else is straightforward.

Getting PDFs into your editor

If you are sent a PDF over email or you download it from a website, the way to get that into your editing app is exactly the same as for simply reading it. You just tap on the Share icon in Safari. In Mail, you tap once to open the PDF and then again on the Share icon that appears.

In both cases you get Apple’s share sheet and can pick which app to send it too.

However, you can also AirDrop a PDF onto your iPad or iPhone and tell iOS to open it directly in your editor of choice.

That’s very useful for sending over a single PDF but it’s less great when you want to load up your iOS device with many of them. There really isn’t a perfect way to put a bundle of PDFs to work on but the major PDF editing apps offer some options.

PDFpen and PDF Expert both let you open documents from iCloud Drive, for instance. They both let you connect to Dropbox to do the same thing, too.

PDF Expert goes further, however, in that it offers Wi-Fi transfer. Open PDF Expert on your iOS device and then on your Mac go to wifipfd.com where you’re shown a QR code. Point the iOS device at that code and you link the two machines. Thereafter, until you quit PDF Expert, close the browser window or move off the same Wi-Fi network, the two are connected.

You can upload PDFs from your Mac to this Safari page and they appear on PDF Expert for iOS’s Documents folder. You can create folders on either the Mac or the iPad/iPhone. On iOS you can also drag PDFs into those folders while on the Mac it’s a little less smooth. You have to go into the folder and then upload the PDFs into it.

It would be good to be able to upload entire folders at once but at least you can shift-click to select as many individual PDFs as you need.

PDF Expert also offers a rather similar-sounding feature called Nearby. However, it’s a way for your iOS device to see your entire Mac, if it’s next to your iPad, and let you pick through the folders to whatever you need. When a folder on your Mac contains PDFs or images, you can view them in PDF Expert for iOS.

Then you can save images to PDF Expert as they are or choose Convert to PDF first.

Once you’ve got PDFs into any editing app, though, they tend to work the same way.

One big exception

There is a special case, however, and that’s LiquidText.

If you want to redact text, look elsewhere. If you need to change any of the actual contents of the PDF, then LiquidText is not for you.

However, for marking up, for taking excerpts of important passages, and for squeezing sections of the PDF down so that you can just read the bits you want, LiquidText is astonishing. It’s a PDF editor but it isn’t. LiquidText is a research and reading and ideas tool that happens to be based on PDFs.

Other than LiquidText, though, PDF editing apps are all good enough that you’d be happy with any of them. There are differences, though.

One small exception

Hats off to Adobe for creating the entire idea of PDF, but hats back on for how poor its own apps can be. The Mac one has the ability to redact slightly more than you actually wanted, for instance, and the free iOS one is little more than an advert for an Adobe subscription.

It’s fair enough to have to pay for great software, but we’d like to know first that it is great. If you’ve already got an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, you might as well use the iOS Adobe Acrobat app because you’re paying for it.

Acrobat is the most expensive of the iOS PDF editing apps, though, and it doesn’t earn that by being better. PDFpen and PDF Expert for iOS both beat it for features – though neither is quite complete.

PDFpen costs $19.99 on the App Store and PDF Expert is effectively the same. You pay $9.99 for PDF Expert’s basic version which gives you all of the features mentioned so far, then you can pay a further $9.99 in-app purchase to get all of its editing features.

Editing text

In PDF Expert, you tap the Edit button at the top of the screen and then the rather similar Text icon in the toolbar that appears. PDF Expert puts bounding boxes around every paragraph of text and if you tap anywhere on the page, you can directly type into the paragraph.

Similarly, tap the image button on that toolbar and you can resize or replace photos.

PDFpen needs fewer taps to get to changing text but it’s less obvious. There are editing tools at the top of the screen and two look like they’re for text. Tap either and you get three or four more options that also look like they could be for this editing.

However, to change text, you ignore all of these and instead press-and-hold on a word. No matter how much of a paragraph you want to change, you have to press on one word first. You get popup options that include Correct Text and if you tap on that, PDFpen lets you edit the entire line that the word is on.

It’s the PDF format itself that limits editing like this as, always, if you need to make substantial changes you should go back to the app where you created the PDF. Still, PDF Expert’s ability to let you edit a whole paragraph is substantially better than PDFpen’s limit of one line at a time.

Redact

So PDF Expert has this superior editing feature and it also has more options for getting PDFs into the app. There is one more thing that it does well —it redacts.

Tap on Edit, tap on an icon that looks like a note and then you can swipe over any text you choose. This is true redaction, too. It does put a black highlight bar over where the text was, but it also removes it from the PDF.

If you open the PDF in another app, select all of the text and then copy/paste it into somewhere else, you won’t get the redacted part. Nicely, you won’t even get blank spaces where the redacted words used to be. All you get is the rest of the text, the non-redacted parts.

PDF Expert does this and, surprisingly, PDFpen does not.

However, PDFpen has an advantage in that you can OCR PDF documents —if you use a companion app.

PDFpen Scan+ ($6.99) lets you photograph a paper document and it will then OCR the text in it. You’ll rarely get fully accurate results but PDFpen Scan+ is very good at getting most of it. You then have a PDF plus what’s called the OCR layer. You can choose to see the original PDF or to be shown just what text has been scanned from it.

Then you can send that PDF over to PDFpen for editing. There’s something odd with this part we consistently found that sending to PDFpen meant we were automatically switched to that app, but the document never appeared.

You can, though, email the PDF and then tell Mail to open it in PDFpen —but then you can equally well email it into PDF Expert.

Look what you can do

PDF is going to go away someday. We used to have paper, now we have PDF documents that look like paper. In the future, we’ll surely just stop needing documents that look like we used to have them.

In the meantime, though, the tools for creating and editing them are now remarkably strong. Given how rarely we happen to need to scan actual paper documents anymore, we think PDF Expert leads the pack by a long way.

Yet if you do a lot of work with PDFs, it won’t break the bank to buy more than one app and that would increase what you can do with these documents on iOS.

Keep up with AppleInsider by downloading the AppleInsider app for iOS, and follow us on YouTube, Twitter @appleinsider and Facebook for live, late-breaking coverage. You can also check out our official Instagram account for exclusive photos.

If you’re one of the many who’ve been eying iOS users with envy as they’ve been enjoying Farming Simulator/RPG Stardew Valley, you need not worry anymore – we now have a concrete release date for the game’s Android release.

Comes March 14^th, 2019 Android users will be able to get stuck in as they try to rebuild their grandfather’s farm in a village in the middle of nowhere. Probably Wales.

The Android version will cost the same as the iOS version ($7.99 / $7.99 / €8,99), and you can head on over to the Google Play store to pre-register right now. It will also come with the following improvements that the mobile version has enjoyed since launching on iOS:

• Save at any time – even when you close the app!
• Pinch-zoom functionality, allowing players to handily zoom in to track down your Junimos or zoom out to get a full view of your farm.
• New control systems including virtual joystick and invisible joystick options, ‘action / attack’ button option, improved auto-attack and Joypad adjuster tool with complete customization of your onscreen controls.
• Additional supported languages – Korean, Italian, French and Turkish (these will be patched into the iOS version of the game at a later date).

While ConcernedApe made the PC & Console version, the mobile version was developed by The Secret Police.

Click Here!

Back in 1999, the first Wi-Fi-enabled laptop was introduced, and it wasn’t long before connectivity became a driving force in how the workplace evolved. Laptop sales began to overtake desktop PCs. As people realized the benefits of portability, open offices became a thing, as did laptops in conference rooms and coffee shops. And a few years later, smart phones made connectivity even more central to modern work and life.

At MWC Barcelona (formerly Mobile World Congress), we’re seeing a similar evolution. Announcements this week from telecoms and eSIM service enablers, demonstrate momentum toward building the infrastructure to provide the connectivity and capacity that LTE-enabled devices have been missing. These services are critical for customers to take advantage of 5G. The result is a wave of product innovation in both the consumer and corporate spaces like we haven’t seen in years.

Next Generation PCs

Over the past few months, we have seen the rise of LTE-enabled PCs that have extended battery life such as the ASUS NovaGo, HP Spectre x360 13, Lenovo Yoga C630 WOS and Samsung Galaxy Book2. These PCs marry the experience of a phone—awakening quickly, instantly connected and ready to go—with improved power availability.

Surface is also adopting this innovation with both the Surface Pro (5^th Gen) and Surface GO available in LTE-enabled versions, offering our customers the perfect balance of performance, portability with additional connectivity options.

LTE-enabled PCs offer an always connected experience. You may not realize how frictionless the hunt for connectivity can be until you experience one of these PCs for yourself. No longer will you need to click on anything to connect, or duck into a coffee shop to get a signal, or ask your server what the Wi-Fi password is, or wait for a file to download on your hotel’s painfully slow connection. It’ll just be there, ready to go whenever you are—and more importantly, wherever you are. The beach, a park, or the back of a taxi.

These capabilities have been available as a PC add-on for some time. But with these new PCs it’s native, and while they work well with today’s 4G LTE connections, upcoming 5G connectivity will make for a transformative experience in personal computing.

Enabling constant connectivity with eSIMs

A big part of making that ubiquitous connectivity happen on a broader scale is the move from physical SIM cards in connected devices to electronic SIMs, or eSIMs.

eSIMs come with several advantages. For consumers, they bring the ability to stay connected by purchasing a data subscription on demand, when and where they need it. Since eSIMs can be updated over the internet, there is no need to visit a provider’s store.

Enterprises, meanwhile, get much more security and control with eSIMs in both phones and PCs. They can create multiple profiles for users traveling to different countries, enabling employees to be constantly connected to resources in the cloud. If a device is ever lost or stolen, it can be wiped first and then the connectivity disabled, without having to worry about whether it’s connected to the internet.

Since Microsoft announced Windows 10 support for eSIM back in 2016, we’ve seen much more interest in cellular-enabled devices, not only from PC makers, but also from the hardware vendors who create modems that now support eSIMs. As manufacturers and service providers roll out support for eSIMs in the coming months, expect to see them become a centerpiece for the connected computing movement.

5G: the newest technology disruptor

With so much potential just around the corner, there’s no doubt that 5G has MWC buzzing this week. As 5G capabilities begin to become available around the world, people are working to understand and prepare for the inevitable innovation and disruption it will bring across industries.

The high throughput of 5G enables extraordinary reductions in latency. Besides things like extremely fast downloads, improved clarity and reliability, the ability to deliver so much data, so quickly, opens up a world of possibilities for new technology solutions.

5G can enable and extend the intelligent edge, reaching drones flying remote inspections, allowing them to return high-definition video feeds and data analytics instantly. Autonomous vehicles in factories, warehouses or airports can be controlled and continually tracked to within one centimeter. New types of collaborative experiences can be enabled, putting everyone in the same virtual room. We’re talking untethered AR and VR and real-time gaming from anywhere.

Many are calling this the “year of infrastructure” as providers build out 5G capabilities across industries. On one hand, you have the telecommunications industry deploying the infrastructure and innovating with new services. And on the other, the entire ecosystem of connected computing device makers of all types, working to tap into the possibilities.

The results will be truly transformative. In our homes, in our cars, at our work, in our stadiums, in our entertainment centers, every industry, from precision agriculture to precision medicine, from personalized retail to personalized banking—every walk of life could see real changes in the coming years.

Microsoft partners and network providers jump in

With all of this going on, we’re very excited about some of the big announcements from our partners and device makers here at MWC. Partners are critical to making this a reality—device makers, silicon manufacturers, mobile operators, eSIM enablers, mobile device management providers (MDMs) and ISVs, all need to establish a new “connected computing” approach to business. And we’re hearing that’s just what they’re up to.

Devices

Qualcomm Technologies announced a new 5G-enabled Snapdragon X55 modem in the lead up to MWC, their second-generation 5G modem after the X50, which was announced in October, 2016.

This 5G modem will enable connectivity for smartphones, mobile hotspots, fixed wireless access points, extended reality devices, automotive applications, and larger-screen devices like LTE enabled PCs, laptops, tablets, which are critical to the ecosystem. For Microsoft this is foundational technology that underpins the sexier intelligent edge solutions to come, a key part of the full picture: PCs connected to a cloud service via 5G, with all of that computing power served up as if you were right there at the server farm.  They also announced Wi-Fi 6, which will play an important role for both consumers and in the enterprise.

Telecommunications services

Another foundational element will be onboarding service providers and offering up mobile data plans that let users get the most from LTE-enabled PCs and 5G. Mobile Plans is a Windows experience that provides consumers with an easy way to top off a data plan with their existing carrier, or sign up for additional data plans with local MNOs if their carrier is not available based on location. On that front, we’ve been working with Telstra in Australia for more than a year, and in the next few weeks they will launch a marketing push, offering customers who wish to sample the new technology, a 30-day trial that includes 30GB free data to use in Australia. Telstra joins our growing ecosystem of mobile operators including GigSky, KDDI Japan, Swisscom, Tele2 and Ubigi.

eSIMs

With eSIMs coming on in a big way, a new ecosystem has evolved, working together to address the productivity, connectivity and manageability gaps that commercial customers are currently experiencing. This week, several of these players are announcing new releases and partnerships within this category at MWC. As an example, IDEMIA and Mobile Iron will be sharing the offering for their common customers and mobile operators in support of the Windows commercial solution for eSIM. Wandera showcased its Windows connected PC solution, which helps enterprise customers define policies that govern how mobile data can be utilized by both users and mobile apps across a variety of network scenarios (physical SIMs, eSIMs, Wi-Fi, etc.). We are also excited to continue to work with mobile operators, such as C Spire and KDDI, as we get closer to deploying eSIM within the organizations of their customers.

Consumers are also benefitting from two new partnerships that will make it much easier for mobile operators to deliver support for easy connectivity with eSIM through Microsoft’s “Mobile Plans” app. Shown for the first time at MWC this week, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Microsoft demonstrated the expansion of “Digital Identity” with HPE’s Device Entitlement Gateway (DEG), a software product that enables mobile network operators to safely and securely connect to the Windows 10 eSIM platform.

Microsoft is also partnering with Amdocs to take advantage of their “Digital eSIM platform” offering to streamline the Mobile Operator onboarding process into Mobile Plans.

Just like the Wi-Fi revolution at the turn of the century, we expect this transformation to connected computing and 5G to take time. But as we’re seeing this week in Barcelona, the entire ecosystem is working to sort out the challenges and make this a new era of continuous, instantaneous, high-speed connectivity.

Updated February 27, 2019 12:22 am

ID. is the first vehicle generation to be connected to the Automotive Cloud

Volkswagen is preparing its digital ecosystem for the core markets of the future ID. model family. The ID. will be the first vehicle to use the Automotive Cloud and is to be launched in Europe in 2020. Production is to start in China the same year and a member of the ID. family will roll off the production line in the USA from 2022 onwards.

First lighthouse projects for connected vehicle services

Volkswagen and Microsoft are also working on first lighthouse projects for connected vehicles. They are concentrating on communication and navigation solutions as well as personalized services: These will leverage self-learning algorithms facilitating the use of services in the vehicle and offering occupants extended functions. Automated linking into telephone conferences and the transfer of prepared navigation destinations will only be the first steps, which will also include the integration of Microsoft Skype and Microsoft Office.

Volkswagen Development Center in Seattle makes progress

Progress is also being made with the establishment of the new Development Center in Seattle. Volkswagen had established this location for the development of the Automotive Cloud at the end of 2018. The idea of the Development Center is to learn from Microsoft’s highly developed culture of agile collaboration and digital leadership and transferring this culture to the center’s own organization. At the center, first developer teams are now starting on project work. Microsoft is providing support for the development of the new center in areas including the recruitment of specialists and project management.

CEOs speak about importance of partnership in Berlin

The two CEOs of Volkswagen, Herbert Diess, and Microsoft, Satya Nadella, visited the Volkswagen Digital Lab in Berlin on Wednesday. They spoke to media representatives about the importance of their strategic partnership and the challenges faced in the digital transformation of the automotive and IT industries.

For Volkswagen, Berlin is an important software development location. Apart from the Digital Lab, other competence centers have their headquarters here. These also include Carmeq, a subsidiary of Volkswagen which is moving ahead with the development of software for the new vehicle operating system “vw.os”. About 650 specialists at three locations are concentrating on “vw.os” as well as the development of software for driver assistance, driving convenience and infotainment functions.

Note for editors:
A film of the joint visit of Herbert Diess and Satya Nadella to the Digital Lab as well as other images will become available in the Volkswagen Newsroom in the course of Wednesday.