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Zoey Fan, product manager for Flutter, recently announced that Codepen, a popular online code playground, is now supporting Flutter. Flutter developers interested in sharing code snippets, or developers interested in quickly trying Flutter out without installation nor setup, can interactively write Flutter code in a Codepen window and observe the web output in another one.

Developers may now create Flutter code snippets from existing templates or from scratch:

As usual with Codepen, developers will be able to enter their code in a dedicated window, and have a separate output window display application resulting from the code running. As developers make changes in the code, the output window will, after a few seconds, update to reflect the result of the changes. Syntax errors in the code are additionally reflected in the code windows with warning messages.

The new Codepen functionality leverages the existing, recently open-source backend service that powers DartPad, an online code playground that can run Dart and Flutter code. While DartPad and Codepen overlap in some functionalities, Codepen is home to an active and socially-minded design community that uses Codepen to try out ideas, share, promote and get feedback from other designers. Codepen thus proposes social sharing and discovery features that are not replicated in DartPad.

Those social features may be useful to promote and extend the Flutter community at a time when Flutter is striving to cover the implementation of mobile, web, and desktop applications from a single source base. The Flutter team encourages developers and designers to build up their Codepen portfolios, showcase their ideas and share their designs on Twitter using the #FlutterPen tag.

Some Twitter users expressed their enthusiasm, one of them wishing to have Flutter also support the codesandbox playground, in addition to Codepen. While noting that performance in codepens can be improved, a reddit user remained optimistic about Flutter cross-platform vision:

I think the performance, especially in codepen, seems week.

But I see the hard work that they put into the beta version of the web. And for me the hope that it will really work later out of the box for every environment is impressive.

Today’s the official launch day for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PS4. And now some people (and gaming websites) are getting worked up into a frenzy over something that showed up in a recent trailer for the game.

During the trailer, which you can see below, there’s text along the bottom that says “Gameplay captured on PC.” This has led many to say this is a “hint” for a coming PC release, but I think people are probably getting overly worked up about its significance.

We already know that the Final Fantasy 7 Remake is a timed exclusive on PS5 until April 2021. So, it was already highly possible that a PC (and Xbox) release was going to be coming all along, so this should not really surprise anyone. Remember, this is a Square Enix game, not some internal Sony game. Sony has only recently started to trickle out some of its exclusives to PC over time like Horizon Zero Dawn, which is a contrast to Microsoft which releases all Xbox exclusives on PC on day one. Today In: Games

But again, this is a different publisher, and Square Enix is already very familiar with PC releases for a ton of its titles, so this would not really be all that wild of a step to take once the Sony exclusivity deal ends.

Past that, the text on the screen here may have nothing to do with this at all.

You can say “footage captured on PC” even if you’re say, running a PS4 Pro build of it, and this just so happened to be the best way to capture it for the trailer. “Footage captured on PC” is a different phrase than “PC version of the game shown.” So I really don’t think this means anything at all one way or the other.

Fundamentally, yes, it does seem obvious that the Final Fantasy 7 Remake will probably come to PC in a year once this exclusivity deal ends. Square Enix has had PC releases for Final Fantasy and other games for years, and this should be no different, especially since they have a full year to learn from the PlayStation version and perfect that build. So we don’t have to be treating this like any kind of groundbreaking revelation as opposed to say, God of War coming to PC or something that would be a little more unexpected. This will happen, it will just take time.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Pick up my new sci-fi novel Herokiller, and read my first series, The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook.

You can expect 20 more markets to get 5G this year, Rogers said. At the same time, it’l start using low-band 600MHz access that should both widen coverage and help you stay connected to 5G indoors. It’ll eventually start using 3.5GHz service as well as spectrum sharing that lets it use LTE airwaves for 5G.

There is a gotcha, however: 5G will eventually carry a premium. Rogers is only offering 5G at no extra charge until March 6th, 2021. You’ll have to pay a $15 surcharge after that. While this practice isn’t completely unheard of (Verizon has talked about charging a premium, but waived it for early adopters), it’s not likely to please Canadians who are already complaining about paying high prices for cell service compared to other countries.

The decision to charge a premium might even lead to a political confrontation. Canada’s Innovation, Science and Industry Minister Navdeep Bains recently warned that the country’s big three carriers (Rogers, Bell and Telus) will have to cut the prices of mid-range plans by 25 percent as part of a larger bid to reduce phone costs. While that won’t affect Rogers’ 5G (at least not at first), it’s not likely to please politicians and regulators trying to make wireless data more affordable.

NASA is enlisting whatever help it can get to make sure its crewed Moon and Mars missions go smoothly, and that might include help from schools. The agency is running a new round of its Moon to Mars Exploration Systems and Habitation Academic Innovation Challenge (M2M X-Hab if you want a much shorter name) that encourages university students to study and develop spacefaring tech. The challenge will reward work on habitation, vehicles, robotic advance missions, “foundational systems” (think autonomous mission tech and remote manufacturing) and human spaceflight architecture focused on the lunar Gateway

The awards will be relatively modest at $15,000 to $50,000, but NASA stressed that this doesn’t necessarily involve tangible products. It can also involve research that fills “knowledge gaps” or reduces risks, for instance. Proposals are due by April 24th.

The competition may not lead to a major breakthrough in NASA’s Moon and Mars expeditions. However, competitions like this have developed inflatable airlock modules and other concepts that could play important roles. M2M X-Hab could let NASA focus on the broader problems involved with traveling to and surviving in places beyond Earth.

In the evolving story of a so-called “stablecoin” the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James accused iFinex Inc. — operator of the Bitfinex exchange and the Tether cryptocurrency — of trying to cover up “the apparent loss of $850 million dollars of co-mingled client and corporate funds.” While researchers have tied Tether transactions to the spike in Bitcoin value that occurred between March 2017 and March 2018, this issue of the missing money is allegedly tied to a transfer of $850 million in funds to Crypto Capital Corp., a payment processor based in Panama.

The AG says Bitfinex lost access to funds it had transferred there after regular banks stopped handling its business and subsequently dipped into $900 million of Tether’s cash reserves. According to the filing, Crypto Capital Corp. told Bitfinex the funds were “seized by governmental authorities in Portugal, Poland, and the United States” but the AG says Bitfinex doesn’t believe that is true.

The concept of Tether is supposed to be that it’s a cryptocurrency backed one-to-one by US dollars or possibly other assets, however as the Wall Street Journal points out, the lack of an updated public audit has fueled speculation about whether the $2 billion or so that it should have in reserves are actually there. According to the AG, Bitfinex has taken “at least” $700 million from Tether.

After the AG’s statement came out, Bitfinex issued one of its own, saying that “The New York Attorney General’s court filings were written in bad faith and are riddled with false assertions, including as to a purported $850 million “loss” at Crypto Capital. On the contrary, we have been informed that these Crypto Capital amounts are not lost but have been, in fact, seized and safeguarded.” It claims Bitfinex and Tether are financially strong, “full stop” and said it will fight these actions. Source: Bitfinex, Tether, NY AG Coverage: Wall Street Journal, Coindesk, Fortune In this article: bitcoin, bitfinex, business, Cryptocurrency, new york, new york attorney general, security, tether

cnet.com
ZTE will reportedly pay total of $1.7B to lift US Commerce Department ban
by Jessica Dolcourt
Chinese telecom giant ZTE said its major operations had ceased following last month’s US ban on American sales of critical technology to the company.

Johannes Eisele / AFP/Getty Images
Embattled Chinese telecommunications manufacturer ZTE may be alive after all.

The company has agreed in principle to a settlement that would lift the Commerce Department ban preventing US companies from doing business with ZTE, according to a Reuters tweet. In exchange, ZTE would have to pay a total of $1.7 billion in penalties, according to the the report. The preliminary deal includes a $1 billion fine and $400 million in escrow in case of future violations. This comes on top of the $361 million ZTE had already paid under the original settlement.

The ban had been put in place for ZTE’s failure to see through the proper punishment for doing business in Iran and North Korea, and it had proved crippling, forcing the Chinese company to shut down major operations. ZTE seemingly had little hope of survival until President Donald Trump tweeted that he was pushing the Commerce Department to work with ZTE to remove the ban —– an unprecedented move by a US president to countermand one of his own departments.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle criticized Trump’s tweet as irresponsible, prompting him to defend his position with yet another tweet. ZTE, the fourth-largest smartphone maker in the US by market share, “buys a big percentage of individual parts from U.S. companies.” He also said ZTE was “reflective of the larger trade deal we are negotiating with China and my personal relationship with President Xi.”

On Tuesday, Charles Schumer, a Democratic senator from New York, tweeted that the deal shows Trump put China, and not the US, first. “The president who roared like a lion is governing like a lamb when it comes to China,” he tweeted, calling for Congress to take action.

Dropbox opens trading at $29   12:03 PM ET Fri, 23 March 2018 | 01:54

Dropbox shares jumped on Friday in the cloud storage provider’s first day of trading on the Nasdaq.

The stock opened more than 40 percent higher at $29 a share and closed more than 35 percent higher at $28.48 per share.

The company listed its $756 million IPO under the trading symbol DBX and priced its 36 million shares at $21 Thursday, above the expected range of $18 to $20. A source told CNBC that the offering was 25 times oversubscribed.

The offering, the largest tech IPO since Snap last year, gave the company an initial market capitalization of more than $8 billion. That swelled to more than $12 billion by midday Friday.

“We’re ready, and this is a step that we’ve been working on for a while,” CEO Drew Houston told CNBC’s “Squawk Alley” earlier Friday. “We look at the iconic tech companies out there and most of them had even more impact after they went public.”

It’s the first of a pair of anticipated tech IPOs this year, soon to be followed by music-streaming service Spotify.

Dropbox reported more than $1 billion in 2017 revenue and 500 million registered users when its plans to go public were unsealed in February.

The company posted a net loss of $111.7 million in 2017, a narrower loss than 2016’s of $210.2 million.

Dropbox has been facing steep expenses driven by a growing R&D budget but became free-cash-flow positive in 2016.

The company says more than 90 percent of Dropbox’s revenue comes from individual users purchasing subscriptions. That’s somewhat unique in the cloud storage industry, where enterprise sales often drive income.

Dropbox, which faces some stiff competition in giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, raised its long-term profit outlook for expanded margins in confidential documents revealed to investors and seen by CNBC.

“We’ve always lived in a competitive environment … and importantly all our growth has happened in that environment,” Houston said. “We don’t see Amazon in our space. You know, things can change. We don’t count anyone out.”

The company has been named to CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list five times as a company whose innovations have revolutionized its industry and the way we live.

Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Allen & Co. were among the top underwriters for the company’s IPO.

Facebook has come under fire recently for privacy after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Cambridge Analytica was a firm which accessed data of tens of millions of Facebook users, without their explicit consent, and used it to sell their ad targeting capabilities to political entities.  The firm was recently caught boasting about their tactics, including extortion, bribery and entrapment by a Channel 4 documentary in the UK.

In response to this, Brian Acton, WhatsApp co-founder, has tweeted that users should delete Facebook, and take advantage of more private solutions, like Signal. Acton previously sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $19 billion dollars in 2014.

While Acton’s interest in Signal seems quite self-interested on the face of it, Facebook really has stepped in it this time. The company is facing summons and inquiries from both US and European legislators, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been absent from the conversation.

Similarly, many tech publications have taken advantage of the zeitgeist, with how-to guides urging users to delete Facebook.
Facebook might end up inadvertently shape the future of privacy on social media, and push it into a more private sphere than it had previously existed in.