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• Dual 13.3-inch OLED screens create an 18-inch equivalent display
• Available for $2,000 through Links International, releasing mid-December
• Powered by Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU with 64GB RAM

We've covered the GPD Duo laptop several times this year - first when GPD, best known for its compact gaming laptops and handheld consoles, initially teased it, and later when the company officially unveiled its full specifications - and now we finally have all the information, and as expected it's not cheap.

The GPD Duo was made available to back on Indiegogo earlier this month, where it pulled in $337,057 in pledges from 190 backers, well above the $2,571 flexible goal the creators were seeking. There, the laptop was offered for $1,860. If you missed your chance to back it then, you can now buy it through Links International, priced at approximately $2,000.

Set to be released in mid-December 2024, it features two 13.3-inch OLED displays with a 2.8K resolution and a high refresh rate of 60Hz. The displays are versatile, with options to mirror, extend, or use as a standalone screen. When used together, the screens offer an expansive viewing area equivalent to an 18-inch monitor, making it ideal for multitasking, content creation, and even gaming.

OCuLink support

Under the hood, the GPD Duo is powered by AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor. With 12 cores, 24 threads, and a boost clock of up to 5.1 GHz, this CPU is optimized for performance across various demanding applications. Paired with 64GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 2TB M.2 SSD, the GPD Duo should be more than capable of handling pretty intensive tasks.

The laptop's connectivity options include USB4, HDMI 2.1, SD/microSD slots, and an OCuLink port which allows users to connect an external GPU.

OCuLink compatibility is a rare feature in laptops, so this is a very welcome inclusion allowing the GPD Duo to handle a range of graphics-heavy workloads. The GPD Duo features an 80Wh battery that provides up to 14 hours of usage and supports 100W USB PD fast charging, reaching 50% capacity in about 30 minutes.

Weighing around 2.3 kg, the laptop has an integrated fingerprint sensor compatible with Windows Hello, a 5-megapixel camera, dual microphones, and wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

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• Japan is urging people to include usernames and passwords in their wills
• It could lessen the burden (and financial implications) on loved ones
• Removing old accounts is also a good thing for the environment

Japan’s National Consumer Affairs Center is urging citizens to leave their usernames and passwords in their wills in its fight against unnecessary online content.

Leaving family members access to their online accounts is hoped to ease the burden on those who may struggle to manage the digital legacy of their deceased family member.

However, there is another positive side effect in that closing down unused accounts will lessen the impact on data centers, therefore reducing environmental damage associated with cloud storage.

Japanese citizens urged to share passwords in wills

Families often face difficulties cancelling subscriptions or closing down accounts due to a lack of access to usernames and passwords, which can result in complications in the best scenario, and ongoing expenses where frequent payments are concerned.

As part of its ‘digital end-of-life planning’ proposition, Japan is asking its citizens to ensure that family members can unlock devices in the event of emergencies.

On the more morbid side of things, the country’s residents are being asked to keep a list of subscriptions, user IDs and passwords, and to store them in an accessible place for family members to reach.

The news is a welcome move given the widespread adoption of smartphones and associated online accounts; the Center is anticipating an increasing number of unresolved digital affairs after people die.

Some services already include such features. Meta and Apple are two companies that allow users to assign legacy contacts to manage their accounts after passing, however the reality is that most online accounts lack this functionality.

Moreover, to simplify matters, storing login credentials in a password manager and sharing only the login to that makes it much simpler to ensure that all passwords are being passed on to family members.

Via The Register

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• New research claims most QR code emails are spam
• QR codes can easily bypass anti-spam filters, Cisco Talos warns
• 'Quishing' attacks are becoming more common

The dangers of clicking an unknown or suspicious link should have been drilled into most of us by now, but many don’t realize scanning a malicious QR code from an unknown source could be just as damaging.

Despite QR codes steadily gaining popularity over the last few years, research from Cisco Talos has claimed many people still don’t consider the threats they could pose.

A driving factor to this is the fact that anti-spam filters aren’t designed to recognize that a QR code is present in an image, so they overwhelmingly evade detection - with the team saying that although only 1 in every 500 emails contains a QR code, a staggering 60% of those are spam.

'Quishing' threats

QR code phishing, or ‘Quishing’ is becoming an increasingly common threat, and often imitate real sites to trick victims into entering personal and payment information. Fraudsters were observed placing QR stickers on parking meters, for example, to trick victims into entering their payment details into fake parking apps.

Talos particularly warned on malicious QR code emails, which sent fake multi-factor authentication requests, used to steal user credentials.

QR codes in emails only make up a fraction of emails worldwide (between 0.1 %and 0.2%), but Talos found these messages disproportionately bypass anti-spam filters, so users see them in their inboxes much more often than you'd expect.

Malicious URLs can be ‘defanged’ by changing the protocol from ‘http’ to ‘hxxp’, or adding brackets around one of the dots in the URL - this means browsers don't render the link as an active URL, and ensures users don’t inadvertently follow the link. This is less common with QR codes.

It can be done though, either by obscuring the data modules or by removing one or more of the position detection patterns (one of the large squares in the corner of the QR code). This makes the QR codes safe for consumption.

Users should exercise just as much caution with QR codes as they do suspicious links, Talos suggests. For those who may need to use QR's regularly, there are QC decoders available online which will take screenshots of the code and allow you to closely inspect the link.

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• Creature Commandos star Sean Gunn has revealed how it differs from The Guardians of the Galaxy films
• Gunn, who played Kraglin in those Marvel movies, plays two characters in the forthcoming DCU TV show
• He says Creature Commandos will "feel very different" to the James Gunn-directed MCU flicks

One of Creature Commandos' voice actors doesn't think the forthcoming DC Cinematic Universe (DCU) TV series can be compared to The Guardians of the Galaxy (GoTG) films.

Well, not completely, anyway. Speaking exclusively to TechRadar before Creature Commandos is released on December 5, Sean Gunn suggested there are a couple of key differences between the groups of ragtag misfits who are thrown together by happenstance.

Ever since Creature Commandos was announced as part of DCU Chapter One in January 2023, people have routinely likened one property to the other for myriad reasons. Has James Gunn, Sean's brother and DC Studios' new co-chief, had a role in bringing the duo to life? Yes. Do they feature a cast of superpowered oddballs who are lost and alone? Double yes. And are they tasked with saving the world and/or universe from a potentially cataclysmic event? Triple yes.

Creature Commandos will be the first project to launch as James Gunn's rebooted cinematic franchise (Image credit: Max/DC Studios)

However, for Sean Gunn, who played Kraglin and was Rocket Raccoon's mocap performer in all three GotG movies, that's where the similarities end. Indeed, the former Marvel actor, who voices G.I. Robot and Weasel in this DCU Chapter One show, suggested the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) flicks actually have less in common with Creature Commandos than people think, and that the latter is more akin to 2021's The Suicide Squad film – the first movie James Gunn directed for DC.

"It's interesting because, for all the similarities, it [Creature Commandos] feels very different to me," Gunn told me. "All of the characters in Guardians – they're really good people or individuals, whether they're raccoons or sentient trees. They're good-hearted and they find the strength to be heroic.

"The Creature Commandos are not that. They have their individual stories and some of them are good natured, but some definitely aren't. They're all trying to survive in a world that doesn't accept them and that part of it [the story] is what feels very different. There's not the camaraderie that there is in Guardians – they're just forced together by [Viola Davis'] Amanda Waller and coerced into going on this mission that they might not come back from."

'I don't know what went into his choosing of these characters'

"Yeah, I don't know why I'm here, either, Doc" (Image credit: Max/DC Studios)

Just like The Guardians of the Galaxy, the Creature Commandos' line-up has been chopped and changed throughout DC Comics history. Indeed, the eponymous supergroup has featured around 20 different anti-heroes and supervillains since the team's debut in November 1980. In fact, some of the characters who appear in Max's animated adaptation, such as Doctor Phosphorus and Weasel, have never been a part of the group in the literature. That circa-20 figure, then, will only grow once Creature Commandos debuts on one of the world's best streaming services.

How, then, did the series' creators settle on the R-rated show's line-up of humans and superpowered individuals? According to showrunner and executive producer Dean Lorey, the series' predominantly metahuman roster was decided upon by one key member of DC Studios' chief creative team.

"That's probably a question for James Gunn, because he wrote the show" Lorey told me with a chuckle during another exclusive chat. "So, I don't know what went into his particular choosing of those characters.

"But, I know that, for all of us, we really loved being able to pay homage to classic horror movie characters, like Frankenstein's Monster and the Bride of Frankenstein. So, a lot of it was trying to infuse the show with those mythological figures, as well as an Eastern European look and feel, in terms of the art style and palette."

I'll be bringing you more exclusive coverage of the first project to emerge from DCU Chapter One, aka Gods and Monsters, ahead of and after its release. Be sure to check back in with TechRadar, then, for more shortly. In the meantime, you can read other DCU-centric news and hubs in the section below.

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