Let's Clear Up The Issues: Used Games, Kinect Privacy, and Other

By BajiRav
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Grand Master

BajiRav

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This is a nice read on reddit in one place for the controversial aspects of Xbox One. I suggest reading on reddit for better formatting and up vote OP (for efforts if nothing else).

http://www.reddit.co...d_games_kinect/

I'm sick of seeing all the misinformation going around the gaming subreddits. It's really frustrating to see people furiously hating the X1 without having all, if any, of the details. I'll try and break this down for you guys so here we go.

To start off, the Xbox One will allow you buy games at launch through digital download or through discs by going to a retail store.

USED GAMES

One of the X1's main feature is the ability to install the disc directly to the hard drive and play it without a disk. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a feature many asked for when the feature was added to 360, but it was only to allow the game to run better.

Contrary to popular believe, the used game does exist in the X1.

"Trade-in and resell your disc-based games: Today, some gamers choose to sell their old disc-based games back for cash and credit. We designed Xbox One so game publishers can enable you to trade in your games at participating retailers. Microsoft does not charge a platform fee to retailers, publishers, or consumers for enabling transfer of these games."

What can we take away from this? Easy. If you bought a disc based game, you can sell and trade it to any participating retailer. It means that game publishers will work out deals with retailers in order for the developers and publishers to take a cut of used games sales. Microsoft will not receive any money from these transactions. If you bought a digital copy, just like any digital copy, you will not be able to do this.

FIRST PARTY GAMES

"In our role as a game publisher, Microsoft Studios will enable you to give your games to friends or trade in your Xbox One games at participating retailers. Third party publishers may opt in or out of supporting game resale and may set up business terms or transfer fees with retailers. Microsoft does not receive any compensation as part of this. In addition, third party publishers can enable you to give games to friends. Loaning or renting games won?t be available at launch, but we are exploring the possibilities with our partners."

All first party games will be allowed to be resold and be given away (more of this below).

RENTING GAMES

"Loaning or renting games won?t be available at launch, but we are exploring the possibilities with our partners."

Microsoft and companies such as Gamefly are working on a system to make this work.

DRM--WHY?

As we saw above, you will be able install your games to your hard-drive and have your entire library available to play without putting the disc in the disc tray.

This is why the 24-hour check is required. Without this, many copies of the same game could be installed into multiple X1's and it would be absolutely crumble game sales.

The drawback to this is not being able to game offline. Microsoft has said that the final decisions to this issue have not been final. I believe if they allow you to play offline with the disc in the disc tray, this would become a non-issue.

PRIVACY

This is one of the biggest things people have been complaining about. Microsoft has already addressed the issue, but of course it fell on deaf ears. People already had their pitch forks out and had Sony on a pedestal by this point.

"You are in control of when Kinect sensing is On, Off or Paused: If you don?t want the Kinect sensor on while playing games or enjoying your entertainment, you can pause Kinect. To turn off your Xbox One, just say ?Xbox Off.? When the system is off, it?s only listening for the single voice command -- ?Xbox On,? and you can even turn that feature off too. Some apps and games may require Kinect functionality to operate, so you?ll need to turn it back on for these experiences."

As I've stated before, you will have the control to everything that the Kinect has to offer. If you don't want it to hear you? You can do that. If you don't want it to see you, you can do that. Don't want it to listen for the "Xbox On" while it's off, you can also do that.

If you want to learn more about the Kinect's privacy settings, you can click this link: Kinect Privacy

XBOX ONE- A GAME OF CIRCLES

Now onto the other things. As some of us know, you will be able to have a "circle" of friends, 10 people to be exact, that will be able to access your game library from anywhere (in the same region, I'm assuming..still not clear about this) at anytime (as long as you or someone else in your circle isn't playing it). This is of course how things work now, two of your friends can't play the game at the same time from one disc on two separate consoles.

This is a feature that is absolutely wonderful, but the people raging about it had not heard about it before.

"Give your family access to your entire games library anytime, anywhere: Xbox One will enable new forms of access for families. Up to ten members of your family can log in and play from your shared games library on any Xbox One. Just like today, a family member can play your copy of Forza Motorsport at a friend?s house. Only now, they will see not just Forza, but all of your shared games. You can always play your games, and any one of your family members can be playing from your shared library at a given time."

I absolutely love this feature. For example, my cousin is 200 miles away when he's away to college and I've let him borrow LA Noire and Dead Rising. I've yet to receive those games from him. With this feature, we don't have to be close in order for him to borrow any of my games! It's crazy as to how so many people dismissed this feature because it's a big jump forward in digital technology. No longer will my friends or family have to be close to me in order for them borrow one of my games.

GIVING AWAY GAMES

Do you have a game that you will no longer play? Your friend can still play it off of your Xbox (if they're in your circle). What if they're not? As long as they have been in your friend's list for 30 days, you can give a game away to your friend, free of charge! This can only be done once per copy.

Disclaimer: Microsoft has left it up to the publishers to decide whether or not you will be able to give your games to your friend. As stated above, first party games will allow you to this.

AFTER-THOUGHT: ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The big change in the Xbox Live system is the feature to allow all users on one console to have gold by just one user having. For example, if I have Xbox Live Gold and my brothers also use the same console, they will also be able to use all the perks of a Gold account. They will have access to all the games on the console even if it was installed through my account.

In short, one Gold account subscription per Xbox.

With this, we are done with explaining the information that a lot have missed and hopefully will be able to see that the Xbox One really isn't what they think.

If you wish to learn more, all of this and other information can be found here:

Xbox One- Games Licensing

Kinect-Privacy by Design

If I made any mistakes, let me know and I will change them

Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

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I really wish they'd do a break down of the new sharing features etc and talk about them in detail like they have so far for the new achievement and challenge system and also the new smart match system. Maybe they will soon, but it should have been talked about in detail already.

And why no detailed video walkthrough of the UI? When can we see how it looks like when you first put in that disc and how long before we can start playing (I know for sure you don't have to wait for the game to fully install and that you can start playing after a bit, maybe once the first 20% has been installed?). Show us how we set 10 people as "family" and how it'll look like when we share a game etc. Still need to see lots of stuff in action before people can get a clear understanding of the system and it's features.

Grand Master

BajiRav

Posted
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Another similar post showed up on NeoGAF from a 1post wonder. I wonder if individual Microsoft employees are taking things in their own hands to clear the mess their PR/executives did over last few weeks.

Source: http://www.neogaf.co...16#post63435416

Q. Can multiple people play the same game from the shared library at the same ****ing time?

A. Yes they can. Licence owner and ONE other guy. TWO guys at the same time.

Q. Really, at the same time, including downloadable content and multiplayer? Halo5?

A. Really, really.

Q. So two guys playing the same game at the same time is great, but how about 9 other "family members"?

A. If nobody is playing any of these "family members" can play a game

Q. Let's see. Me and my friend Bob playing Halo 5 from my shared library. Can my friend Jim play any other game from my shared library at the same time while me and Bob playing Halo 5?

A. No, he can not.

Q. Who are these "family members" anyway?

A. Complete strangers who happened to be 30+ days in each other friend's list

Q. So can I make my friend Bob a "family member"?

A. Yes you can. Even your friend Jim. Up to 10.

Q. I'm not a friend with Bob anymore. Hate the motherfacker. Can I un-share ****ing game?

A. Yes you can. And you can add new "family member" no charge.

Q. Is Xbox Live Gold required for sharing?

A. Yes it is.

Q. So MS decided to enforce draconian DRM because they hate us, true GAMERS?

A. Yep.

Just kidding. No they did not. The very first decision they made was: "every single game should be downloadable day one and playable from the hard drive without disk in the tray". The future is digital. Everything else - bunch of compromises between publishers, developers, retailers and yes consumers. They implemented flexible framework which will allow scenarios no other digital store has ever dreamed of. Including but not limited to:

- buying,

- sharing,

- gifting,

- giving up license,

- selling digitally (not at lunch),

- renting (not at lunch),

- trading in

- and of course destroying ****ing game.

Q. How about Kinect? Will it watch me? Will it report everything to PRISM? Can I turn it completely off.

A. Kinect 2.0 is really (I mean really) good and it will cost you additional 100 bucks at lunch. No. No. Only when you turn xbox off.

Q. Is "power of cloud" a PR bull****? I know for a fact MS needs 300K servers for DRM and reporting to PRISM.

A. No it's not a PR bull****. You will see benefits in the launch games. For example dedicated servers for every multiplayer game and enhanced AI. Things to come - worlds without boundaries, very complex lighting, etc.

Q. So with a power of cloud XBOX ONE is more powerful than PS4?

A. Nope. About the same for all means and purposes.

Q. Sounds good but why they did not communicate it properly?

A. They tried and failed. Until people actually try and see all benefits.

Q. I don't care. I'm a lonely guy without internet connection, family, friends, girlfriend and even ****ing dog. I also hate M$ in general and xbone particularly.

A. Good. Go buy PS4. Hate is overrated and PS4 is a good console.

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Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

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I wonder if they're not talking about things in exact detail because they're still working out the deals with all the different parties, retailers, publishers, etc. Selling digital copies would be great, I have a few GoD games I'd like to offload if I could but so far you can't, same goes for arcade games but I figure those probably won't let you sell them.

Grand Master

BajiRav

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And re-posting the FPN pastebin for completeness' sake,

>The thing is we suck at telling the story. The whole point of the DRM switch from disc based to cloud based is to kill disc swapping, scratched discs, bringing discs to friends house, trade-ins for **** value with nothign going back to developers, and high game costs. If you want games cheaper then 59.99, you have to limit used games somehow. Steam's model requires a limited used game model.

>The thing is, the DRM is really really similar to steam... You can login anywhere and play your games, anyone in your house can play with the family xbox. The only diff is steam you have to sign in before playing, and Xbox does it automatically at night for you (once per 24 hours)

>It's a long tail strategy, just like steam. Steam had it's growing pains at the beginning with all it's drm **** as well. [...] For digital downloads steam had no real competition at the time, they were competing against boxed sales. At the time people were pretty irate about steam, (on 4chan too...) It was only once they had a digital marketplace with DRM that was locked down to prevent sharing that they could do super discounted ****.

>Think about it, on steam you get a game for the true cost of the game, 5$-30$. On a console you have to pay for that PLUS any additional licenses for when you sell / trade / borrow / etc. If the developer / publisher can't get it on additional licenses (like steam), then they charge the first person more. [...] If we say "Hey publishers, you limit game to 39.99, we ensure every license transfer you get 10$, gamestop gets 20$" that is a decent model... Microsoft gets a license fee on first and subsequent game purchases, compared to just first now? That's a revenue increase.

>Competition is the best man, it helps drive both to new heights. See technology from the Cold War. If we had no USSR, we'd be way worse off today. TLDR: Bring it on Steam :)

2/4

>Yeah we passed that around the office at Xbox. Most of us were like "Well played Sony, Well played". That being said they are just riding the hype train of ZOMG THEY ARE TRYING TO **** US FOR NO REASON. Without actually thinking about how convienent it would be for the majority of the time to not find that disc your brother didn't put back... [...] just simpleminded people not seeing the bigger picture. Some PS4 viral team made them all "U TOOK R DISCS" and they hiveminded.

>Everyone and their mother complains about how gamestop ****s them on their trade ins, getting 5$ for their used games. We come in trying to find a way to take money out of gamestop, and put some in developers and get you possibly cheaper games and everyone bitches at MS. Well, if you want the @#$@ing from Gamestop, go play PS4.

>The goal is to move to digital downloads, but Gamestop, Walmart, Target, Amazon are KIND OF ****ING ENTRENCHED in the industry. They have a lot of power, and the shift has to be gradual. Long term goal is steam for consoles. [...] If you always want to stay with what you have, then keep current consoles, or a PS4. We're TRYING to move the industry forwards towards digital distribution... it'sa bumpy road

>Publishers have enourmous power. Microsoft is trying to balance between consumer delight, and publisher wishes. If we cave to far in either direction you have a non-starting product. WiiU goes too far to consumer, you have no 3rd party support to shake a stick at. PS4 is status-quo. XB1 is trying to push some things, at the expense of others. We have a vision, we'll see if it works in the coming years

>Living room transformation. We want to own the living room. Every living room TV with an XBox on input one. It's the thing that gives the signal to your TV, everything is secondary. The future, where games, TV, internet telephony, all that **** happens magically on some huge ass screen with hand / voice gestures... That's our goal.

3/4

>Google TV + PS4 + Minority report level gestures, that combined with a sick second screen experience (which is really hot for TV, I know I know.. tv tv tv tv tv... but it's ****ing sick when you have it). Games will be the same, there are more exclusives to MS then PS atm, and Kinect 2 makes Kinect 1 look like a childs toy.

>By default it's on, listening for "Xbox On". You can turn it off tho, and turn the console like OFF off. OFF off is required for Germany / other countries that require it (no vampire appliances) [...] It has to be plugged in for the console to post. You can turn off everything it does from the settings. Think of it like airplane mode for the iPhone. You can't just unplug the cellular radio, but you can turn it off.

>Instead of 10mins, is 24hrs for your console, and 1 or 2 at a friends house. Really the majority of people have a speck of internet at least once a day. And if you don't. Don't buy an Xbox 1. Just like if you didn't have a broadband connection don't get Live, and if you don't have an HDTV the 360 isn't that great for you either. New tech, new req. This allows us to do cool **** when we can assume things like you have a kinect, you have internet, etc.

>Current plan is basically you're ****ed after 24 hours. Yeah... I know. Kind of sucks. I believe they will probably revist the time period and / or find a diff way to "call in" to ensure you haven't sold your license to gamestop or something... but there is no plan YET. I'm hoping the change it, but I don't work on that so I don't have much influence there /sigh

>If the power goes out you ain't playing ****. I'm assuming you mean the internet goes out but you have power for TV and Xbox. Yes, You're ****ed for single player games. Again, that's the PoR (Plan of record), but I expect it to change after the e3 cluster****

>What fee? There is no fee to play your games at your friends house. Never has, never will. Even x360 digital downloads could do that.

4/4

>The cloud capabilities is the **** they like the most. We basically made a huge cloud compute **** and made it free. What people are doing with it is kind of cool. THe original intention was to get all the Multiplayer servers not requiring 3rd party costs (Like EA shutting down game servers to cut costs), as well as taking all the games that servers hosted by the clients (Halo, etc), and have all that compute done in the cloud allowing more CPU cycles for gameplay. That will really expand what developers can do. Anything that doesn't need per frame calculation and can handle 100ms delays can be shifted to the cloud. That's huge.

>SmartGlass + IE is going to be pretty freaking sweet. 1 finger cursor, 2 finger direct manip. Basically if you think of a laptop trackpad where your phone/ slate is the trackpad and the monitor is your TV... it's that. The tech is there, just needs to be applied. There is some really cool **** going on with Petra + controllers that pairs people with controllers. So if person with controller two trades controlers with controller 1, their profiles magically switch. It's sick. What does this matter? Now if you lean left/right it knows which person is leaning, even if 4 people are all int he same room. It's awesome.

>New service using Azure for cloud compute. Allows developers to not use clients for hosting multiplayer servers, or other tasks that do not require per frame calcuations. It's pretty sweet.

>Honestly, if you care about anything other then pure games AT ALL. Xbox 1 > PS4. If all you do is play games, and nothing else, PS4.

This was all from the Microsoft engineer that was on /b/ last night.

>It's not worth my time to prove it, or risk my Job. I work in Studio A, 40th ave in Redmond, Wa. The thai place in the studio cafeteria has double punch wednesdays. Go ahead and call them and verify if you want.

Community Regular

efjay

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Posted

If they are promoting digital downloads why offer discs and then apply the same restrictions? Would make more sense that a game installed from disc would require the disc to be played offline without having to dial in, same as it is now. If you choose digital then its reasonable to expect that digital download to be protected by a check in. But not being able to play any game, disc or download without internet is ridiculous.

Community Regular

selphj

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Posted

Yeah this isn't helping. Because someone else "unofficial" has said only ONE person can play a game in your library at once, not two. And that different people in your family can play different games at the same time. Which contradicts what this guy is saying. I get the desire for people to want to like the X1. I want to like it. But helping to spread more confusion and unconfirmed info is not getting us anywhere. What we need is:

1. Someone to fire Don Mattrick, because he apparently is an idiot. A smug idiot at that.

2. Larry Hyrb needs to invite IGN or gametrailers to visit MS HQ, so he can show them exactly how all this will work.

Grand Master

BajiRav

Posted
  • Author
Posted

If they are promoting digital downloads why offer discs and then apply the same restrictions? Would make more sense that a game installed from disc would require the disc to be played offline without having to dial in, same as it is now. If you choose digital then its reasonable to expect that digital download to be protected by a check in. But not being able to play any game, disc or download without internet is ridiculous.

If they went all digital,

1. Retailers won't promote Xbox games as much as say Wii or PS4 or even Xbox 360.

2. Not everyone has unlimited internet to download huge games so discs act as another delivery medium

Yeah this isn't helping. Because someone else "unofficial" has said only ONE person can play a game in your library at once, not two. And that different people in your family can play different games at the same time. Which contradicts what this guy is saying. I get the desire for people to want to like the X1. I want to like it. But helping to spread more confusion and unconfirmed info is not getting us anywhere. What we need is:

1. Someone to fire Don Mattrick, because he apparently is an idiot. A smug idiot at that.

2. Larry Hyrb needs to invite IGN or gametrailers to visit MS HQ, so he can show them exactly how all this will work.

The bold can't be true because it conflicts with their official policy page (which is confusing as hell)

and completely agree with Larry Hyrb part, they should do a clear demo with 10 different Xbox + accounts on how everything works. Let journos do it even.

Grand Master

LaP

Posted
Posted

I wonder if they're not talking about things in exact detail because they're still working out the deals with all the different parties, retailers, publishers, etc. Selling digital copies would be great, I have a few GoD games I'd like to offload if I could but so far you can't, same goes for arcade games but I figure those probably won't let you sell them.

It's probably the case.

Not sure publishers will be happy to learn two friends only have to buy one copy of a game instead of two to play together online.

I'm not sure in the end the family thing is gonna be the sandbox everyone seem to think (or hope) it will be.

Grand Master

compl3x

Posted
Posted
I wonder if individual Microsoft employees are taking things in their own hands to clear the mess their PR/executives did over last few weeks.

That would be a great way to lose your job if you were found out. Besides being unprofessional, it isn't your job unless you are in PR or an exec.

Q. I don't care. I'm a lonely guy without internet connection, family, friends, girlfriend and even ****ing dog. I also hate M$ in general and xbone particularly.

A. Good. Go buy PS4. Hate is overrated and PS4 is a good console.

Good one, make more incendiary comments to **** people off.

Some one at MS really needs to come out and state exactly how this all works.

They have had ample time, if they are thinking this will all just blow over they don't get it.

Grand Master

spenser.d

Posted
Posted

It's probably the case.

Not sure publishers will be happy to learn two friends only have to buy one copy of a game instead of two to play together online.

I'm not sure in the end the family thing is gonna be the sandbox everyone seem to think (or hope) it will be.

Seems unlikely that's an issue - since only two people can play a game at once at some point that second person will get the game themselves so they don't run into issues not being able to play it when they want. I see the library sharing more useful in cases where a friend has some games you weren't interested enough in to buy, but since they're available you play them anyways. And who knows, maybe you buy them then because your friend who owns it won't buy the DLC or some other such thing.

Grand Master

spenser.d

Posted
Posted

They have had ample time, if they are thinking this will all just blow over they don't get it.

I think it will blow over.

There's five months until they release. It is (contrary to internet belief) selling very strongly in preorders, and it does bring a lot to the table while not restricting most of the people who already own current gen consoles. It moves the industry forward into the digital age and people will come to enjoy it. It may not happen right away, but the next gen is likely to last as long as this one, if not longer, so there's a lot of time for people to come around.

Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted

It's still cool if you can both play the same game together. So say you want to co-op a game but your friend doesn't own it, well, now that doesn't matter.

Grand Master

trooper11

Posted
Posted

Good one, make more incendiary comments to **** people off.

I don't think that was very incendiary since he pointed out the ps4 is a good console. In fact, most of the comments seem to avoid making it about how much more 'awesome' the X1 is vs the ps4 lol. He didn't attack the ps4 as being inferior at all, just different.

They have had ample time, if they are thinking this will all just blow over they don't get it.

I'm not sure if they think this will blow over, but I am convinced they are still working out details as we speak. I also believe they can alter the current stated plans due to the fact that they are not finalized. Trying to build a Steam-like system with all these sharing features, etc, can't be easy or quick.

They have time to make us all feel better. We will see if they do that.

Grand Master

BajiRav

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Major Nelson just tweeted that he is working on a blog post about family sharing.

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Click here to view the Tweet
Grand Master

BajiRav

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Posted

It's about bloody time. It should have been done 4 days ago.

well... :p

Javascript is not enabled or refresh the page to view.

Click here to view the Tweet

Good one, make more incendiary comments to **** people off.

what?!

Grand Master

compl3x

Posted
Posted

I don't think that was very incendiary since he pointed out the ps4 is a good console. In fact, most of the comments seem to avoid making it about how much more 'awesome' the X1 is vs the ps4 lol. He didn't attack the ps4 as being inferior at all, just different.

what?!

Q. I don't care. I'm a lonely guy without internet connection, family, friends, girlfriend and even ****ing dog. I also hate M$ in general and xbone particularly.

A. Good. Go buy PS4. Hate is overrated and PS4 is a good console.

Flame-baiting if I have ever seen it.

I'm not sure if they think this will blow over, but I am convinced they are still working out details as we speak.

Why are they finalising a rather important aspect after their big reveal? If Sony was doing something similar they'd be slammed as being incompetent, consumer-hating jerks.

People on this forum need to accept that MS made a gamble on the used game issue and lost. MS is trying to tell consumers what they want and consumers aren't having any of it.

Grand Master

spaceelf

Posted
Posted

consumers aren't having any of it.

angry nerds on forums aren't having any of it. The long term outcome is still very much up in the air.

I would like to point out that everyone hated Steam at launch, everyone hated Xbox at launch, everyone hated Playstation at launch, everyone hates everything at launch.

Mentor

svnO.o

Posted
Posted

There's an update on that reddit post about sharing games with up to 10 family members:

Important Update: New information has risen relating to this feature. You +1 friend from your circle can play the same game at the same time. Others can still play from your other library selection.

SOURCE

If the source is accurate, I think the feature will be great!

Grand Master

compl3x

Posted
Posted

Angry nerds are consumers, chief. In fact, they are generally the most informed consumers which is what makes this more of a problem for MS.

As it stands now those "angry nerds" aren't thrilled by what they see.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
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    • How do you future-proof a home or small office network?

      By sphbecker · Posted

      When I think about a network, there are really two aspects, the hardware and the wiring. So here is what I would do for both. Wiring: Use Cat6A for the patch panel, outlets, and all structured cables (cables installed in walls). Run plenty of Wireless Access Point (WAP) cables, as a general rule, assume a signal can only pass through 2-3 walls and can't pass through a floor (that is conservative, but trust me on this if you want strong WiFi)  Cat6 patch cables are fine for now if you don't plan to run 10gig, those are easy to replace later if needed. Run OS2 single-mode fiber to anywhere you think you may have a server or sub-switch. (yes, single-mode for everything on a small network, don't mess with multimode unless you have entire racks of servers and that minor module cost and power savings will matter). If you really want to future proof, also run fiber to any high density WAP locations, it is likely that WiFi 8 WAPs will push the limits of 10g. Run 6-12 pairs of single-mode fiber between your MDF and the building's MDF, even if you only need 1 or 2 pairs now, those extra pairs will pay off down the road. Hardware: (its easy to say "get all the features incase you need them", so instead of futureproofing, I am going to take approach of suggesting areas worth investing in, and areas you can save money). Don't overspend thinking you need every feature on every port. You don't need 10g on every port, you don't need PoE on every port. Don't overspend on redundancy either, unless you are ready to buy two of everything, don't waste money buying two of some things and not others. Dual power supplies are worthwhile, but probably not HA or multi-path redundancy.  Get 1 "distribution layer" switch that your router/firewall will connect to as well as all your access layer switches below. This should be a fully managed 10g+ switch with a combination of copper and SPF ports, a few 25g uplink ports are nice for this switch. Given that you said it is a small network, I suggest also using that distribution layer switch for servers and WAPs, meaning it will need PoE. Speaking of wireless, get good professional tri-band WAPs, and either turn on the band stirring options, or limit 2.4 to an IoT only SSID. This will provide a solid WiFi capable nearly everything but the highest of bandwidth clients...you could even consider skipping wiring workstations depending on usage. Access layer switch for workstations and printers can be cheaper switches, 2.5g is a good sweet spot between price and future proofing, but even 1g is fine for most individual clients (the kind that could probably be fine on WiFi). You can consider saving a little on access layer switches by only getting 1 PoE switch for whatever needs it (remember your WAPs are connecting to the distribution switch, not here), and non-PoE for your workstations, because desk phones are falling out of favor. You can also save money here by not buying managed switches if you don't need them--but really do some soul searching there, if you go this route, then anything that isn't on your workstation VLAN would either need to be connected to the distribution switch, or its own access layer switch. Also, don't feel like you need a fancy fabric stacking switches for your access layer, that is the point of the higher-end distribution layer, to remove the need for things like that at this level. Home Hardware: I'm realizing the above assumed an office setting, if this if for your house and home lab then the above still applies, but you'll probably want everything managed and PoE, just because, but you probably also don't need multiple access layer switches. If your total port count is below 24, just skip separating distribution layer and access layer and just get one nice switch with the features you want. If you are at the point of considering a 48-port switch, I would instead get a nice high-end distribution switch for things that need it, and cheaper access layer switches with specs based on the needs of connected devices. For home use, don't worry about home running every device to the main switch, there is nothing wrong with running sub-switches for your media areas and office, those essentially become your access layer, just look for sub-switches with a 10g uplink so sharing bandwidth isn't an issue. Just make sure you always connect them to your distribution/main switch, don't daisy chain, the path should never have more steps than Client>Access>Distribution>Firewall>Internet.
    • Google Meet brings Gemini note-taking to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers

      By Karthik Mudaliar · Posted

      Google Meet brings Gemini note-taking to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers by Karthik Mudaliar Google's Gemini-powered "Take notes for me" feature inside Google Meet is now available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. The features work on Google Meet for web as well as on mobile, and Google says that subscribers can use it for meetings they host in many supported languages. As the name suggests, "Take notes for me" allows Gemini to listen to a meeting, generate a summary, identify action items, and save the notes as a Google Doc in the user’s Drive. After the meeting, the organizer receives an email recap with the summary and action items, while the notes can also be attached to the related Calendar event depending on the meeting setup and sharing settings. The feature isn't automatically turned on for everyone, though. Google says that all meeting participants are notified when note-taking is turned on, and users can start it from the pencil icon in Meet or enable it for future calls through Meet’s meeting records settings. For work or school accounts, administrators can also control whether the feature is available and may require explicit participant consent for note-taking, recording, or transcription features. The feature first launched back in 2024, when it was available just for selected Workspace users. Over the years, Google added refinements and more options, including the ability to enable it when scheduling meetings via Google Calendar. Google's support docs say that the feature currently supports English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish, but only one language at a time. Meetings with multiple spoken languages are not currently supported, and Google recommends using the tool for meetings between 15 minutes and eight hours. The new feature makes Google Meet closer to its rivals that have AI tools already built in. Microsoft Teams has recently started offering Copilot and intelligent recap features that summarize meetings, surface highlights, and help with follow-ups, while Zoom’s AI Companion can also generate meeting summaries from desktop and mobile meetings.
    • GnuCash 5.16

      By Copernic · Posted

      GnuCash 5.16 by Razvan Serea GnuCash is a personal and small business finance application, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. It’s designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible. GnuCash allows you to track your income and expenses, reconcile bank accounts, monitor stock portfolios and manage your small business finances. It is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. GnuCash can keep track of your personal finances in as much detail as you prefer. If you are just starting out, use GnuCash to keep track of your checkbook. You may then decide to track cash as well as credit card purchases to better determine where your money is being spent. When you start investing, you can use GnuCash to help monitor your portfolio. Buying a vehicle or a home? GnuCash will help you plan the investment and track loan payments. If your financial records span the globe, GnuCash provides all the multiple-currency support you need. Between 5.15 and 5.16, the following bugfixes were accomplished: Bug 421610 - RFE: Include logical dates for View->Filter by "date range"The Select Range section of the Date tab of the register's Filter By dialog box is changed to provide relative, specific date, or days ago options for the start and end of the filter range. The Show number of days item label is changed to Show from days ago to better reflect what it does. Bug 436105 - esc key not working as expected in register: Enable the escape key to cancel a field edit. Bug 797384 - Gnucash doesn't handle commodity prices with big numerator/denominator properly. Bug 798004 - Next gen UI for stock transactions Bug 799314 - Add "enter now" option in scheduled transaction editor. tab to allow users to select the scheduled transactions to be included in a “Since Last Run…” window. If there are no instances of a selected transaction triggered by today’s date, the next instance is triggered. Bug 799751 - autocomplete crash Bug 799759 - Users can't Enable entries via Checkboxes on Scheduled Transactions PageAllow the Enabled box in the list of scheduled transactions to be operated instead of having to open the transaction editor dialog and change the Enabled checkbox. Also added use of the Name column as the secondary column sort for all the other columns. Bug 799762 - Poor handling of cases where hidden/placeholder accounts are used in the account register Bug 799766 - Double line preference not respected in search register Bug 799767 - POST /accounts in bindings/python/example_scripts/rest-api is broken Bug 799777 - `xaccSplitSetParent`: reparenting a committed split silently drops its KVP slots (online_id, cap-gains links) Other changes & improvements: Numeric values may now be selected to copy in the Accounts page. Add new Finance::Quote source Finnhub.io: Free API key (personal/non-professional use) available at https://finnhub.io. Set FINNHUB_API_KEY environment variable to API key to use this source. As of June 2026, free tier API limit is 60 API calls/minute. The Investment Lots report has new optional columns for Computed Annual Growth Rate. Python Bindings: Improved translation of primary object (Account, Transaction, Split, etc.) so that they can be treated as normal Python objects. This is accomplished with SWIG magic so no existing code is obsoleted. Python Bindings: Better conversion of GLists to Python lists. Python Bindings: Destroy the QofSession in the Python Session dtor to prevent leaving the database locked. [engine] Add first-class online_id accessors for Split and Account and make them available to Python bindings, removing the unused Transaction online_id property. Improve C++ implementation of QofBook. Correct the Doxygen doc for qof_instance_get/set_kvp. [gnc-log-replay.cpp] fix incorrect guid dump Add some Boost library requirements needed by libgnucash-guile to CMakeLists.txt so that missing feature will fail at configure time. Use Compile-time Regular Expressions instead of std::regex in gnc-filepath-utils.cpp and instead of boost::regex in the CSV importer, with the CTRE v3.11.1 header added to borrowed [gnc-filepath-utils.cpp] null check char* arguments Add ChartJS licenses. Removed AEX from list of commodities. euronext.com is now using JS based anti-webscraping. [report-core] always offer options summary in reports. This is useful to debug reports. The Add options summary option is removed because it's no longer optional. Remove remaining obsolete IMContext from sheet Fix blurry text in HiDPI offscreen-rendered widgets Add port field to database connection dialog: The convention of appending the port number after the host isn't obvious. When editing a split in the register treat the account as being changed only if it isn't the one selected before editing instead of if the user performed an edit Return immediately from qof_book_destroy if hash_of_collections is null. If qof_book_destroy is called on a QofBook* freshly created with qof_book_new (usually because it was used to create a session that now must be destroyed) it would try to empty the non-existent hash tables, crashing. Clean up Flathub metadata to solve warnings at flatpak build time. Be consistent in naming GncPluginPage and GncPluginPageRegister HTML: Remove unimplemented function declarations. [gnc-html.cpp] remove unused buggy string conversion functions Convert libgnc-html to C++ Apply -Wall -Werr -Wmissing-prototypes to C++ compilation on Windows and fix the resulting errors. New and Updated Translations: Arabic, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, German, Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Norwegian-Bokmal, Spanish Download: GnuCash 5.16 | 176.0 MB (Open Source) Links: GnuCash Home page | Other Operating Systems | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Microsoft finally launches WSL Containers in public preview

      By David Uzondu · Posted

      Microsoft finally launches WSL Containers in public preview by David Uzondu Microsoft has announced that WSL containers, a feature that allows developers to run Linux containers natively inside Windows without the need for Docker Desktop, is now available in public preview several weeks after Microsoft previewed it at Build 2026. To use the new container feature, you first have to install the latest pre-release version of the Windows Subsystem for Linux by running a quick update command in your terminal: wsl --update --pre-release After installing, you'd get access to the new Linux container CLI (wslc.exe) and the programmable API. Microsoft said that the CLI has a "familiar format" that matches the toolsets developers already use every day. If you know standard Docker commands, your muscle memory will translate directly to wslc.exe, which even features a built-in alias called container.exe. You can quickly run a full Ubuntu KDE desktop container by exposing ports, or pass your graphics card straight into a machine learning environment to run PyTorch workloads. Passing the --gpus all flag inside the run command instantly links your hardware. Image via Microsoft As for the API, developers can now embed Linux container operations directly inside native Windows applications without exposing the command line to users. The team integrated the API directly into MSBuild and CMake, so developers can define container steps directly in project files. Apart from bringing the CLI and API into public preview, Microsoft also said that it's working on a new default file system called virtiofs to speed up file transfer rates between Windows and Linux. Microsoft also introduced an experimental networking mode named consomme, which resolves compatibility issues with corporate VPNs by routing Linux network traffic straight through Windows. One thing to note about WSL containers is that they don't run in your standard WSL distributions; instead, every application and CLI session spawns its own lightweight Hyper-V utility VM in the background. This basically reduces the chances of one app snooping on the container of another app.

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