Reading for today: on the importance of Creeds - maps to God

I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, ‘I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!’

Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

By: C.S. Lewis

From: Mere Christianity

Amazon to ramp up counterfeit reporting to law enforcement

Amazon is planning to give more data on counterfeit goods to law enforcement in a further crackdown on fakes listed on its e-commerce sites, a person familiar with the program told Reuters.

The move comes as Amazon faces public scrutiny over how it polices counterfeits and allegedly unsafe products on its platform. Fakes have long frustrated top labels like Apple Inc and Nike Inc, discouraging some from selling via Amazon at all.

In the past, the world’s largest online retailer has informed authorities of counterfeit peddlers when it thought it had enough information for police to pursue a culprit. Now, the company plans to disclose merchant information to European and U.S. federal authorities every time it confirms a counterfeit was sold to customers, increasing the frequency and volume of reporting to law enforcement, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

About time too! For years there has been people selling fake goods on the Amazon marketplace. I see it especially in software. Microsoft Office or Windows under a tenner! Truly about time Amazon stepped up to the plate & reported these crooks! 

www.reuters.com

Play every classic Half-Life game for free on Steam - courtesy of Valve!

Valve is giving gamers the opportunity to catch up on (almost) everything Half-Life-related at no expense. For the next two months, each of the Half-Life games will be free to play on Steam. This is basically a two-month-long trial; you won’t get to keep these games. Every game is compatible with Windows, Linux, and macOS (though all of these games are 32-bit apps, which means they don’t work on macOS 10.15 Catalina).

This promotion includes the original Half-Life (the Source version of the game with added physics to make it feel more modern to play, not the beautiful remaster Black Mesa) and its expansions, Half-Life: Blue Shift and Half-Life: Opposing Force. Also available for free is Half-Life 2 and its two episodic expansions.

If you’re a part of the small collective of people who haven’t yet played Half-Life or you haven’t had a chance to finish all of the expansions, now is your opportunity to get to it. Get those downloads started right here.

www.theverge.com

It's a Harley Jim, but not as we know it!

Harley-Davidson is preparing its second electric motorcycle, and a recently surfaced design drawing (above) all but confirms it's on the way!

Following the release of the LiveWire last year, there’s been a lot of chatter about the American factory’s next electric machine. We’ve seen sketches, heard rumours and listened to speculation – but a newly released design sketch gives us a much better idea of what we should expect.

At this stage, there’s no official name for Harley-Davidson’s next electric machine: but internally, it’s being referred to as the “Mid Power” option. Either way, we think it looks great.

In theory, the bike should be well on its way to production at H-D’s R&D centre in Silicon Valley, after we got our first look at a design drawing of the machine around 18 months ago – but it looks like we’ve still got a bit of a wait before we see H-D’s electric flat tracker in dealers, with the current corporate timeline suggesting that the bike won’t be released until 2021-2022.

It’s no secret that the Milwaukee firm has been working hard to appeal to younger riders over the last few years – and if the designs are anything to go by, H-D’s smaller and more affordable electric motorcycle should do exactly that.

www.morebikes.co.uk

LastPass is in the midst of a major outage

Password management service LastPass is currently going through a major outage as users are reporting being unable to log into their accounts and autofill passwords, with some users reporting issues going back for days.

User reports about login issues have been flooding Twitter, but also the company's forum, Reddit, and DownDetector. Users are reporting receiving the following error when trying to log in: "An error has occurred while contacting the LastPass server. Please try again later." Both home and enterprise users are impacted.

According to reports, LastPass' support staff has been either non-responsive, or denying reports of any technical issue happening at all. Despite issues being reported as far back as three days, the company has not updated its status page to reflect the incident, nor do they provided any type of explanation or useful help to their userbase.

www.zdnet.com

Looking for a new movie to watch? Try this on Netflix: The Two Popes

From Fernando Meirelles, the Academy Award-nominated director of “City of God,” and three-time Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Anthony McCarten, comes an intimate story of one of the most dramatic transitions of power in the last 2,000 years. Frustrated with the direction of the church, Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce) requests permission to retire in 2012 from Pope Benedict (Anthony Hopkins). Instead, facing scandal and self-doubt, the introspective Pope Benedict summons his harshest critic and future successor to Rome to reveal a secret that would shake the foundations of the Catholic Church. Behind Vatican walls, a struggle commences between both tradition and progress, guilt and forgiveness, as these two very different men confront elements from their pasts in order to find common ground and forge a future for a billion followers around the world. *Inspired by true events

trailers.apple.com       /       www.netflix.com

Apple may have to abandon Lightning connector cable. So: USB-C or Wireless next for Apple?...

Apple could be forced to abandon its Lightning connector cable if European lawmakers get their way. The cable is used to charge and sync many Apple devices, such as the iPhone.

But members of the European Parliament urged the European Commission on Monday to force tech giants to adopt a single universal charging method.

Two other charging cables - USB-C and micro-USB - are used on Android devices, and Apple has already stopped using Lightning on the 2019 iPad.

European regulators will vote on the matter on a yet to be determined date, but Apple says the proposed regulation would stifle innovation and be disruptive to consumers.

www.bbc.co.uk