The Category5.TV Newsroom

Here are the stories we're following for the week of Wednesday August 7, 2019

An Airbus A350 software bug forces the airlines to turn planes off and on again every 149 hours.

An Airbus A350 software bug forces the airlines to turn planes off and on again every 149 hours.

Some models of the airliners still need to be hard rebooted after exactly 149 hours, despite warnings from the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) first issued two years ago.

In a mandatory airworthiness directive reissued just over a week ago, EASA urged operators to turn their A350s off and on again to prevent "partial or total loss of some avionics systems or functions".

The revised directive, effective from July 26, exempts only those new A350-941s which have had modified software pre-loaded on the production line. For all other A350-941s, operators need to completely power the airliner down before it reaches 149 hours of continuous power-on time.

Concerningly, the original directive was brought about in 2017 by "in-service events where a loss of communication occurred between some avionics systems and avionics network". The impact of the failures ranged from "redundancy loss" to "complete loss on a specific function hosted on common remote data concentrator and core processing input/output modules".

In lay terms, this means that prior to 2017, at least some A350s flying passengers were suffering unexplained failures of potentially flight-critical digital systems.

It is common for airliners to be left powered on while parked at airport gates so maintainers can carry out routine systems checks between flights, especially if the aircraft is plugged into ground power.

The remedy for the A350-941 problem is straightforward: install Airbus software updates for a permanent cure, or switch the aeroplane off and on again.

Affected airlines are Air France, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Lufthansa, as well as Air China and Taiwan's China Airlines.

Source: www.theregister.co.uk

Sent to us by: Roy W. Nash

Virgin's Hyperloop One company has signed a deal with the government of Saudi Arabia to build a test track for its futuristic transport concept.

Virgin's Hyperloop One company has signed a deal with the government of Saudi Arabia to build a test track for its futuristic transport concept.

The hyperloop concept involves a pressurised pod with a vehicle carrying passengers or cargo up to 10 times faster than current rail.

A 35km track will be built, alongside a research and development facility and manufacturing plant, north of Jeddah.

Some remain sceptical that hyperloop travel can become a reality.

Virgin Hyperloop One said the technology could reduce a journey from Riyadh to Jeddah to 76 minutes, compared with more than 10 hours currently.

The company showed off a pod travelling at over 100km/h (62mph) in a 500m vacuum tube in Nevada in July 2017.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk has been running an annual competition at his SpaceX headquarters to test the limits of the technology.

This year's contest was won by an engineering team from the Technical University of Munich.

Afterwards, Mr Musk tweeted the 2020 event would be run in a new 10km curved vacuum tunnel.

Source: www.bbc.com

Sent to us by: Roy W. Nash

Yet another crowdfunded game has become an exclusive to the Epic Games Store. MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries' release has been delayed to December, and it won't be on Steam as its backers expected.

Yet another crowdfunded game has become an exclusive to the Epic Games Store. MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries' release has been delayed to December, and it won't be on Steam as its backers expected.

It’s becoming a familiar story, as what was a crowdfunded game, expected to be available everywhere, has become an Epic Games Store exclusive for the next 12 months.

That means it won’t be available on Steam, despite many who have already pre-ordered it doing so with the assumption it would be. It’s hardly the first time that’s happened though, as Epic continue to sign up as many games as possible to keep them off Steam.

As frustrating as it is, the anger with which PC gamers have treated the trend has been extreme even by gamer standards, but Epic shows no sign of backing down and maintains it’s the best way to establish their online store.

On their blog, developer Piranha Games has said they’ll refund anyone that isn’t happy about the news, as long as they get in contact by September 1.

The other big news for the game though is that it’s been delayed, from its original release date of September 10 to December 10 of this year.

That said, a closed beta is now planned for November and anyone’s that pre-ordered will get automatic access to several of the final game’s practice missions.

Source: metro.co.uk

Sent to us by: Robbie Ferguson

You can run Android on Nintendo Switch, and it runs entirely from your SD card. That's right: the built-in OS remains intact and you can jump back and forth between OS's by simply rebooting.

You can run Android on Nintendo Switch, and it runs entirely from your SD card. That's right: the built-in OS remains intact and you can jump back and forth between OS's by simply rebooting.

The Nintendo Switch isn’t a device that we would usually associate with Android development, however, thanks to the hard work by XDA Senior Member langer hans and XDA Junior Member bylaws, any hackable Nintendo Switch (typically devices sold before July 2018) can now boot LineageOS 15.1, directly from the SD card.

LineageOS 15.1 on the Nintendo Switch has basically everything you’ve come to expect from LineageOS. You get all of your basic Android features, support for Google services, and even support for native Nvidia Shield applications. That means you can play Half-Life and Portal on the go, and even make use of GeForce Now if you’re a part of the beta. The Joycons and Nintendo Pro Controller work without a hitch, keyboard and mouse works when docked… pretty much anything that can work will work. It’s a spectacular port of Android, and one that’s well worth setting up if you have a spare SD card.

Installing Android on your Nintendo Switch does not touch the main OS installed on it, so you don’t need to worry about breaking anything. If you want to get started, check out the switchroot LineageOS 15.1 thread we've hotlinked at cat5.tv/switchandroid

Source: www.xda-developers.com

Sent to us by: Robbie Ferguson