Apple Discontinues Financing Options in the United Kingdom

Apple has stopped offering financing options to customers in the United Kingdom, as indicated by the elimination of its UK financing page, which was removed from the UK Apple site this afternoon.

Apple previously allowed customers in the UK to sign up for financing on Apple products through PayPal Credit or Barclays when checking out from the online Apple Store. PayPal Credit could be used on purchases with a £99 minimum, while Barclays was available for purchases over £399.

When making a purchase through the Apple site in the UK, there are now no financing options to select at checkout, and the finance pages that were previously available now redirect to the main UK site.

Apple previously eliminated financing options in Canada back in June of 2017, but in the United States, Apple still offers financing through the Barclaycard Visa that includes Apple Rewards points.

Apple also continues to offer financing options for educational institutions in the UK, and financing on iPhones continues to be available through the UK iPhone Upgrade Program in partnership with Barclays.

Tags: United Kingdom, Apple retail, financing
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Maker of ‘GrayKey’ iPhone Unlocking Box Suffers ‘Brief’ Data Breach, Receives Money Demands

Grayshift, the company that makes the GrayKey iPhone unlocking boxes that have been sold to multiple law enforcement agencies across the United States, recently suffered a data breach that allowed hackers to access a small portion of the GrayKey code, reports VICE’s Motherboard.

GrayKey box, via MalwareBytes
Last week, unknown hackers leaked portions of the GrayKey code and demanded two bitcoin from Grayshift with the threat of additional data being leaked. According to Motherboard, the code in question “does not appear to be particularly sensitive,” but Grayshift did confirm that a “brief” data leak had occurred.

Indeed, Grayshift told Motherboard in a statement “Due [to] a network misconfiguration at a customer site, a GrayKey unit’s UI was exposed to the internet for a brief period of time earlier this month.”

“During this time, someone accessed the HTML/Javascript that makes up our UI. No sensitive IP or data was exposed, as the GrayKey was being validation tested at the time. We have since implemented changes to help our customers prevent unauthorized access,” the statement added.

Grayshift says that no sensitive IP or data was exposed, and Motherboard confirms that the leaked code appears to be related to the user interface that displays messages on the GrayKey, but it’s clear that Grayshift security is not airtight, raising questions about what kind of data might be accessible to hackers.

The GrayKey is a small, portable gray box equipped with dual Lightning cables. An iPhone is plugged into one of the cables to install proprietary software that’s able to guess the passcode to an iPhone in as little as a few hours to a few days, based on the strength of the passcode.

GrayKey, which is priced starting at $15,000, can crack the latest iPhones running modern versions of iOS, including iOS 11. While the box is designed to provide law enforcement officials with easy access to locked iPhones for criminal investigations, there have been fears that the GrayKey technology could fall into the wrong hands.

The box has been sold to multiple law enforcement agencies across the country, and the data breach that Grayshift suffered, however inconsequential, is not at all reassuring for those who are worried about the security of the GrayKey boxes. The underlying functionality that allows the GrayKey to crack iPhones could be discovered and replicated, and the GrayKey boxes themselves are said to download data from cracked iPhones, which could also be at risk in a data breach.

According to Motherboard, Grayshift has not paid the extortionists their two bitcoin fee, as the Bitcoin addresses provided have received no funds. An additional Bitcoin address promising to provide interested parties with GrayKey information has also not received funds.

Grayshift says that “changes” have been made to help customers prevent unauthorized access to GrayKey boxes in the future, but Motherboard discovered another exposed GrayKey device broadcasting similar code.

Using the computer search engine Shodan, Motherboard found a seemingly exposed GrayKey device, broadcasting similar chunks of code to the open internet.

“To brute force a complex alphanumeric passcode, upload a custom password dictionary. If a dictionary is not uploaded, GrayKey will not attempt to brute force custom alphanumeric passcodes,” one section of the apparent device’s code reads.

The technology used for the GrayKey will likely be outdated at some point through updates to the iOS operating system, but as far as we know now, it’s still functional for even the latest versions of iOS and the newest iOS devices, including the iPhone X.

Those worried about GrayKey and similar technologies can implement stronger and more secure passcodes and passwords that are more difficult to guess through brute forcing to prevent these kinds of tools from working. A 6-digit numeric passcode, Apple’s default, can be guessed in as little as 11 hours, but an 8-digit numeric code can take over a month, while a 10-digit numeric code can take years.

Security experts recommend alphanumeric passcodes that are at least seven characters long with numbers, upper and lowercase letters, and symbols included. The longer the password, the more secure it is from GrayKey-style guessing methods. For more information on Grayshift’s data breach, check out Motherboard’s full report.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook Attends State Dinner at White House

Apple CEO Tim Cook is attending the first state dinner of the Trump administration, which is honoring French president Emmanuel Macron, according to CNN. Cook is accompanied by Apple vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives Lisa Jackson.

Guests at the dinner, which is taking place in the White House State Dining Room, will dine on a goat cheese gateau with tomato jam and buttermilk biscuit crumbles, a rack of spring lamb with Carolina Gold rice jambalaya and a burnt cipollini onion soubise, and a nectarine tart with crème fraîche ice cream.

Image via Paul Bedard
Other state dinner attendees, aside from President Donald Trump and Melania Trump along with President Macron and his wife, include Vice President Mike Pence, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoch, Olympic curler John Shuster, hockey player Meghan Duggan, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Approximately 150 guests are attending.

Cook has met with Trump several times in the past, attending a December 2016 tech summit and a meeting of the American Technology Council put together by Trump. Most recently, Cook was in Washington D.C. to meet with Senators Mark Warner (D-Virginia) and Richard Burr (R-North Carolina).

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Tim Cook
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Amazon’s Alexa App Finally Gains Support for iPhone X

Amazon today updated its Alexa app for iOS devices to introduce iPhone X compatibility, allowing the app to be displayed full screen on the longer display of the iPhone X.

Prior to today, the Amazon Alexa app displayed unattractive black bars at the bottom and top of the app, so this should be a welcome change for Amazon users who have an iPhone X. The addition of Alexa support comes just over a month after Amazon promised the update was in the works.

The Alexa app for iOS is designed to be a companion to Alexa devices, allowing iPhone users to set up and manage Alexa-enabled equipment.

While many popular apps have been updated with support for the display of the iPhone X, there are still some notable holdouts even months after the release of the new smartphone. Inbox by Gmail, for example, continues to lack iPhone X support, as do several Apple apps, including iMovie, iTunes Connect, iTunes Remote, and AirPort Utility.

Tags: Amazon, Alexa
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PUBG Mobile Review – the original Battle Royale lands on mobile

The roar of the propeller engines in your ears is deafening. You sit with 99 other people, each of you as scared as the next. Maybe you know some of them – maybe you’re even friends. Maybe you can rely on them – maybe not. The massive cargo door of the C-130 opens, and the wind billows hair and clothes alike. One by one, the other people in the jet leap into the abyss, descending on the small island below.

Then it’s your turn.

You jump.

The Drop

The parachute on your back is heavy, and you see the dots of the dozens of other contestants in free-fall. There are plenty of places to see on this deathtrap landmass – cities, towns, ports, a school, a hospital, even a military base – but you know that those places are likely to heavily populated, and therefore dangerous. You gaze out over the island and pick your spot, a small ranch with a couple of outbuildings that looks promising. Diving, you pull your ripcord to pop your parachute. You drift down to the ground, landing roughly. Turning your gaze to the sky you look for other chutes nearby, but you don’t see any.

You sprint into the closest house, shouldering it open and peering into the dim light. The main room is empty, cleared of all furniture and person effects of whoever once lived here. You push into the kitchen, and the glint of metal on the ground catches your eye. It’s a pistol, lying on the cold, dingy linoleum. Beside it are two boxes of ammunition; almost as if they were placed there for you to find (which, of course, they were).

It Starts

A series of shots from an automatic weapon shatter the relative silence of the island. A scream of pain follows – then silence. The contest has officially begun. You hesitantly load the weapon, no longer helpless but still very much vulnerable. The bathroom holds another box of ammunition – this one a box of rifle rounds – and a small bottle of painkillers. You know you’ll need them before the day is done. The bedroom – the mattress soiled and bedframe smashed – is useless. Totally empty.

You slowly climb the stairs, the reports of automatic weapons sounding from all directions. You know no one else is here – you would have seen them – but you move cautiously nonetheless. Laying at the top of the stairs is a tactical vest, complete with ballistic plates. You put it on hastily and load it up with the spare magazines you found. By the time you finish exploring the house, you’ve amassed a small arsenal; an assault rifle, a shotgun, even a grenade! – and a backpack to carry all the spare ammunition.

You figure this is about as ready as you’ll be. You step out onto the island, ready to face the other contestants. Looking to your right, you see the shimmering blue barrier approaching, foot by foot. It’s herding you and the other contestants, you know. Herding you toward a single location on the island, where the fighting will continue until only one contestant still draws breath.

It’s been a while since you heard any gunshots, but you know there are many more to come. You steel your nerves and begin the long walk down the road.

The Premise of PUBG

The above is about how a game of PlayerUnknown’s BattleGrounds goes. Admittedly, there’s quite a bit more gunfire, wanton death, and explosions in a typical game, but the vast majority of your time will be spent looting houses and gearing up for a showdown as an ever contracting blue barrier herds you toward a random location.

With almost 30 weapons across eight categories, PUBG offers a variety of gunplay options in addition to grenades, armor, medical supplies and vehicles. The game makes you parachute into each match from a plane, onto an 8km x 8km island that features a wide variety of locations. As such, no two games play out exactly alike; with 99 other players in the game, each one picking where to land independently of the others, you have to improvise constantly. Do you land with a group of other players, hoping to survive the initial onslaught and come out well-geared, or do you land in isolation, hoping to gear up before you have to fight someone?

Regardless of your approach, you’ll eventually end up fighting for that coveted Chicken Dinner (that is, being the last man standing). It’s intense. Gunfights are quick and brutal, and while collecting gears offers a respite from that intensity, it’s still plagued with suspense that creates an atmosphere unlike anything else out there (yes, even Fortnite).

The Difference Between Mobile, Console, and PC

Unlike Fortnite, which is unified across all platforms – no matter which you play on, it’s the same experience – PUBG varies greatly from one to the next. PC is the front-runner, where all the latest and greatest features come first. XBox has more or less the same experience, though with features that come later. It uses the same assets, the same map, and is generally just a lite version of the game.

The mobile version, however, takes a completely different tack, thanks to Tencent. In the PC and XBox versions, there’s zero persistent progression. No leveling system, no rankings (save for stats leaderboards), no quests, no economy beyond the limited Battle Points one earns for participating in matches. In PUBG Mobile, you get a little of all of these things.

Daily Missions provide goals to work toward, and reward you with Experience Points (to increase your overall level) and Activity Points (which give increasingly better rewards the more you earn them on any given day). Events are timed activities that often give you unique gear for performing a specific task – like missions, but limited time offerings. As you earn Experience Points, you’ll level up and earn additional rewards. Like many mobile games these days, you get rewards for logging in daily. This is usually in the form of XP or a crate to get new gear. Finally, as you play through matches you’ll be placed into higher Divisions, which feature more skilled players and fewer bots.

Yes, that’s right – another difference of the Mobile version is that it features bots to hold your hand through the opening Divisions. And I wish that was communicated in the first few games, so we know we’re being coddled rather than thrown to the wolves. I felt like an utter badass the first few games I played (I’m decent, not great, when I play on XBox), but once human players started getting thrown into the mix – especially those try-hards playing with a mouse and keyboard – that sense of Deification goes away real quick. Bots really give a sense of immortality in the early going – they are so dumb.

Graphics/Sound

PUBG is not a traditionally gorgeous game. It’s got choppy textures, occasionally janky animations, and – especially on XBox – framerate issues. And yet, it’s got this kind of grimy beauty that reeks of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Buildings are little more than abandoned shacks, and the burning husks of vehicles dot the landscape.

And while the Mobile version of PUBG doesn’t have quite the graphical fidelity of its console or PC counterparts, it still captures that magic. In a sad commentary on the state of PUBG on XBox, PUBG runs better on my LG V30 than on the XBox One X. It’s obviously noticeably lower resolution and lower fidelity but the frame-rate, stability and even loot density is all much better on Mobile.

Sound-wise, the game is as crisp as ever. One of the great things about PUBG is the ability to identify the type of guns being fired and the direction and distance they’re being fired from, just based on how they sound. Whether it’s the whump, whump of an SKS fired at range or a TAT-TAT-TAT of an M16 on burst-fire right in your face, the depth of sound and lack of music makes for a unique audio atmosphere.

Voice chat is also baked into the game, which is an invaluable feature when playing the team-oriented game modes of PUBG. And it’s surprisingly good quality! Game chat rarely plays through the mic, and the latency, even on mobile data, is totally manageable.

Gameplay

As you’d expect with a complex shooter on mobile, the controls are a little janky. There are a ton of mechanics on the screen all at once, and it gets a little crowded. Tencent optimized the controls as much as possible – picking up ammo and attachments for the weapons you carry, automatically for instance – but there’s still a lot going on visually.

The cramped controls and the close proximity of the Fire button to the Aim panel means I’ll occasionally fire when I really just wanted to look around. You can see how that would be problematic in a game 99 other people are trying to kill you.

Speaking of shooting, the aim-assist in PUBG Mobile is a little out of control. You can blow people away just by glancing at them at times. Even Aiming Down Sights (ADS) at a distance is optional. If you fire enough times, you’ll take someone out while they take their time aiming.

A note on gamepads: at the moment, PUBG Mobile is utterly incompatible with an XBox controller. The joysticks work, but none of the buttons work in the least. I can’t attest for any other gamepads at the moment, but XBox controllers are a non-starter.

Value

At the moment, the game is completely free, with no ads and no meaningful in-app purchases. I’d expect that to change over time, but for now, enjoy the freeness.

UPDATE: With this last update, Tencent added In-App Purchases – all purely cosmetic – to the game. It’s a shrewd move by the Chinese software giant, to launch a game tit knew would be successful without IAPs, and add them in later.

Download PUBG Mobile on Google Play

WhatsApp will require users in Europe to be at least 16 years old

As we get closer to the launch of Europe’s new GDPR privacy standards, a number of companies are announcing some changes that will affect European users. Today, Sky News reports that WhatsApp has changed its age requirements in order to comply with the new regulations and users living in Europe will have to be at least 16 years old in order to use the service.

During the coming weeks, WhatsApp will ask users to accept new terms of service and European users will have to confirm that they’re at least 16 years of age. Those not living in Europe will still be held to the current standard, which requires users to be no younger than 13 years old. WhatsApp hasn’t said how it will be verifying users are reporting their real age.

Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, has been announcing GDPR-related changes across its platforms including Instagram, Oculus and Facebook itself. In a blog post, WhatsApp also said that users around the world will soon be able to download all of the data the messaging service collects.

Via: Sky News

Source: WhatsApp (1), (2)

Windows 10 ‘Lean’ shows up in a preview build for Windows Insiders

A recent Skip Ahead build of Windows 10 served up to Windows Insider participants, version 17650, ships with a new variant called Windows 10 Lean (or CloudE). The x64-based installer for this specific variant is reportedly 2GB smaller in size than Windows 10 Pro and packs a slightly different restricted environment than Microsoft’s recent stab at the education sector with Windows 10 S. It also appears to have a small, limited number of pre-installed first-party apps after installation including Edge, OneDrive, and OneNote. 

With Windows 10 Lean, specific tools are reportedly missing such as the registry editor and the Microsoft Management Console, but the platform doesn’t appear to restrict app and program installs to the Microsoft Store like Windows 10 S. Instead, Microsoft provides a “lite” operating system for the general user stuffed with the basic essentials to get you started. Microsoft doesn’t even plaster the desktop background with wallpaper. 

With Windows 10 S, Microsoft provides a full installation of Windows 10 Pro, but introduces an “S Mode” as a new layer that disables software installation outside the Microsoft Store. It’s also tweaked to run on low-end hardware so the platform and its associated PCs can better compete with Chromebooks in the education sector. Rather than labeling the platform as Windows 10 Pro in S Mode, the company simply shortened the name to Windows 10 S. 

But there’s speculation that Windows 10 Lean could merely be an “S Mode” for the Enterprise or Home version of Windows 10. Given the additional “CloudE” listing associated with this “lean” build, we can’t help but speculate that it’s Windows 10 Enterprise in S Mode. After all, employees have no business tweaking the PC’s registry hence the tool’s removal. 

Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore said in March that S Mode will be offered for Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Enterprise in the next update “coming soon.” He is referring to the Spring Creators Update launching in May, aka Redstone 4, which will see the demise of Microsoft’s Windows 10 S brand. Instead, customers can purchase a Windows 10 Pro, Home, or Enterprise device with S Mode already enabled. 

“If a customer does want to switch out of S Mode, they will be able to do so at no charge, regardless of edition,” he said. “We expect to see new Windows 10 devices ship with S Mode, available from our partners in the coming months.” 

Hands-on experiences with Windows 10 Lean reveal that the platform doesn’t include drivers for optical drives. It also doesn’t provide download prompts in Microsoft Edge, thus you can’t download files “out of the box.” Even more, Microsoft’s traditional Office installer won’t install the software for unknown reasons. 

“With Microsoft’s great tradition of meaningful error reporting, the installer just plays the error sound without displaying any additional dialog whatsoever,” says the user who originally revealed Windows 10 Lean on Twitter. 

We will likely find out more about Windows 10 Lean during Microsoft’s BUILD developers conference in May. Belfiore will be one of the speakers talking about the Windows platform and will possibly spill the Windows 10 Lean beans if CEO Satya Nadella didn’t already in his initial keynote.

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Using this A.I.-based healing brush, repairing an image is no biggie

Photoshop’s healing brush can use surrounding pixels to repair an image or remove an object — but what if the surrounding pixels don’t have enough data to fill in those holes? Researchers from Nvidia recently used artificial intelligence to help fill in those gaps to create a tool similar to the healing brush tool that is able to intelligently fill in missing pieces, a technique called image inpainting for irregular holes using partial convolutions — here’s hoping Nvidia comes up with a nickname before making the tool widely accessible.

Nvidia isn’t the first to try to reinvent the healing brush using A.I., but the researchers say that earlier attempts left artifacts and blur. Rather than using full convolutional filter responses to those holes, Nvidia instead created a partial convolution method — in other words, the software creates a layer that renormalizes the pixels to create a more normal looking image without those artifacts. The new program also uses an automatically generated layer masks.

Unlike the traditional healing brush tool that only uses surrounding pixels to determine what to fill in the gap with, Nvidia trained its tool using three different sets of images, resulting in thousands of images to train the tool with. The researchers randomly applied masks to intentionally remove sections of images to those groups of photos. By showing the computer both the before and after, the program could learn how to fill in some of those gaps. “Our model can robustly handle holes of any shape, size location or distance from the image borders,” the researchers wrote. “Further, our performance does not deteriorate catastrophically as holes increase in size.”

While more robust than previous attempts, the researchers said that the tool struggles with the largest holes and images without a lot of structure.

The research could bring some significant changes to photo editing if the tool makes its way into an image editor. Nvidia’s program, for example, could replace an eye in an old, damaged portrait, even without the other eye to replicate. The resulting eye, of course, isn’t the same eye — in one example, the replaced eye is an entirely different color. In the demonstration video, the program also appears to give a young woman and an older gentleman the same pair of eyes. 

While giving a person different features using the database of images should raise ethical considerations for portraits, the concept could speed up the process of removing distractions from other types of images. The tool could potentially help remove objects in photographs, such as removing power lines or signs from the background, with more accuracy than current tools.

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Use this Rubik’s Cube-style device to create ultra-secure computer passwords

You would think that, here in 2018, the threat of bad actors and hackers online would make us work a bit harder at coming up with secure passwords. Yet somehow “123456” and “password” persist as popular choices. (And, no, we’re sadly not kidding about that!) Wouldn’t it be great if there was a desk toy that could somehow generate and store random, ultra-secure passwords?

Bringing such a dream to life is the goal of a new Kickstarter campaign for the so-called “Ultra Password Cube,” a password-creating Rubik’s Cube-like device that uses a combination of cutting-edge random number generator tech and user manipulation to create secure passwords. Best of all, because the device is non-electronic, it can’t be hacked online.

“We generate and apply a unique set of true random symbols to each ‘magic cube’ to create a device that, when purchased by the consumer, is highly likely to be almost completely different from any other device produced by our method,” Dr. Petrus Potgieter, one of the brains behind the project, told Digital Trends. “Because the user can then shuffle the device further through normal manipulation, introducing a vast amount of further randomness, it becomes easy to have a source of true random passwords at home or in the office. This contrasts with electronic random password generators that are subject to spyware and other forms of online snooping.”

The creators also provide instructions for how to read your passwords off the device while it sits on your desk, so you don’t have to write them down to remember them. Of course, this only works until you further twist the cube. Fortunately, because of the number of characters on each side, you should be able to generate multiple passwords without having to continually manipulate the device.

Potgieter describes the product as fun to use (well, fun compared to other ways of coming up with new passwords, that is). But he said that it is certainly not a novelty item as much as something intended for serious use by security-conscious people and institutions. “Our device is more sophisticated than any hardware device that we have seen,” he continued. “The Ultra Password Cube is the ideal way to generate passwords that are virtually immune to online ‘dictionary’ attacks.”

As ever, we offer our usual warnings about the risks associated with crowdfunding campaigns. However, if you’d still like to get your hands on an Ultra Password Cube, you can pledge your support — and cold, hard cash — over on the project’s Kickstarter page. A handmade cube will set you back $60. (Somewhat randomly, there are a host of animal photography-themed rewards available, too.) Shipping is set to take place in December.

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Pimax takes notes from Valve for its prototype ‘knuckles’ VR controller

Pimax revealed a new knuckles-style controller that will ship with the company’s virtual reality headset. The prototype introduced on Tuesday, April 24, specifically focuses on right-handed gamers as their fingers wrap around the “stem” of the controller. It borrows from Valve Software’s still-unreleased “knuckles” design in that it supports all five fingers, not just two. 

The new prototype includes a grip button on the left side of the controller’s “stem” accessed by your middle finger, a trigger pressed by your pointing finger, and a rounded control pad area where your thumb manages the thumbstick (or trackpad), menu, and system buttons. The controller’s stem includes sensors for using your ring and pinky fingers, too. 

“We are looking to make a super comfortable controller with all fingers tracked. You do not need to hold it, you can relax in the games with your hands open, grab objects when close your hands, and release hands to throw objects naturally,” the company says. “There are sensors over the grip button. The controller tracks all your fingers while you hold it, and you can squeeze further with the grip button as well.” 

If the prototype seems familiar, it looks like a distant cousin of the Romulan warbird in Star Trek: The Next Generation. But in reality, a hand strap simply connects to the right side of the controller while a second, larger ring resides over the entire hand. This larger component is the tracking contour, and as many customers point out, could be an issue when placing your hands near your face.

Pimax’s prototype is based on feedback from the community waiting patiently for the company’s virtual reality headset. The peripheral includes the grip, menu, system, and trigger buttons so it’s compatible with SteamVR and Oculus-based content. Pimax expects to complete the prototype in the third quarter of 2018 for testing, feedback, and additional improvements. 

“For controller backers, we understand some of you are swaying between thumbstick and trackpad,” the company adds. “You will still have a chance to switch your option when the controller prototype comes out. 

The prototype surfaces after Pimax explained why it continues to delay it’s “8K” virtual reality headset. Pimax originally targeted a January release, but pushed back the Kickstarter launch given the company was on its fifth prototype in December and exploring new hardware to better maintain high refresh rates. To appease backers, Pimax decided to release a pre-production model called M1, but even that model experienced a setback because the lenses due to arrive in February showed up late. 

“Given the vendor will deliver the newly designed lens in early May, we are looking to ship M1 to testers in May, when the units have been assembled and tested,” the company said.

Pimax’s Kickstarter campaign promises the world’s first 8K VR headset sporting two displays with a 3,840 x 2,160 resolution each and a combined 200-degree field of view. The larger resolution will help reduce the “screen door” effect caused by viewing the dark spaces between each pixel on lower resolutions. 

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