Today you can get an affordable gaming desktop from Dell that comes equipped with an Intel Core i5 processor and an AMD Radeon RX 5300 GPU for just $649. Today also marked the release of Microsoft’s new Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S game consoles, and you can now order one of these systems directly from Microsoft.
Dell XPS 8940 SE Intel Core i5-10400 Gaming Desktop w/ AMD Radeon RX 5300 GPU, 8GB DDR4 RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD and 1TB HDD for $649.99 from Dell with promo code DTXPSAFF116 (List price $1,079.99)
Dell’s new XPS 8940 SE features an updated design and it comes loaded with strong processing hardware that’s able to tackle just about any task you throw at it. The mid-range Intel Core i5-10400 with its six CPU cores is well suited for running numerous applications at the same time. As the system also has an AMD Radeon RX 5300 graphics card, the system’s is able to run games with medium settings fairly well, making it a fitting machine for gaming and work. Currently you can get one of these systems from Dell marked down from $1,079.99 to just $649.99 with promo code DTXPSAFF116.
These new high-powered gaming machines feature cutting-edge graphics that can rival modern gaming PCs. The more higher-end of the two systems is the Xbox Series X, which comes equipped with a custom SoC with an 8-core AMD Ryzen processor and a powerful 52 CU AMD processor. It’s slated to compete directly with Sony’s PlayStation 5 and it retails for $499.99. The Series S console isn’t quite as fast, but you can pick it up for a mere $299.99.
Apple’s AirPods Pro utilizes a new design that’s different from the company’s older AirPod earphones. The key new feature that these earphones have is active noise cancellation. Each earphone also uses a custom driver and a high dynamic range amplifier to improve sound quality. You can snag them with a $50 discount from Amazon that drops the price from $249.00 to $194.00.
This drives lets you carry around 10TB of data in a compact package that transfers data relatively quickly over USB 3.0. Right now it’s marked down from $294.45 to $149.99 on Amazon.
Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information.For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.
Next year, Intel will introduce Alder Lake, a hybrid SoC with a mixture of big and little x86 CPUs on the same slice of silicon. The two chips will be based on Atom and Core, respectively, and they’ll offer up to 16 cores in an 8+8 configuration. There have been questions about whether AMD would do something equivalent, and while the company isn’t talking about long-term plans, it’s got no similar product coming to market in the short term. In a recent roundtable focused on AMD’s Ryzen 5000 CPUs, CVP and CTO Joe Macri shared details of how AMD sees that option.
After noting that big.Little dates back 15 years and that AMD has continually examined the concept, Macri said, “We’re not going to talk about whether we’ll do it or not, but I’m going to talk about some of the challenges of it and around what you really want to do with it. Is the goal power efficiency? Is the goal more performance? Is the goal just marketing, ‘I want more core count’, regardless of what it does for the other two variables?”
Macri then went on to note that AMD would not build any such chip for marketing reasons alone, before digging into the meat of what the company’s concerns are. A hybrid CPU core design with a mix of big and little cores is only useful if there’s scheduler support and, according to Macri, that support just isn’t there in Windows, at least not in a meaningful way that makes the feature appealing to AMD.
Intel didn’t just build a CPU with no plan for Windows support — and Lakefield is already shipping.
The only problem is, we already know Windows does support this kind of capability, on both ARM and x86. Windows on ARM supports big.Little because the existing devices running on Qualcomm silicon are functionally required to do so. Failing to support big.Little on an ARM platform would be like not supporting core aspects of Intel or AMD’s power management stack. This Microsoft blog post confirms that Microsoft has supported heterogeneous compute arrangements on Windows on ARM systems since mid-2018:
To support big.LITTLE architecture and provide great battery life on Windows 10 on ARM, the Windows scheduler added support for heterogeneous scheduling which took into account the app intent for scheduling on big.LITTLE architectures.
We also know, based on Lakefield review details released this year, that Windows supports the hybrid scheduling capabilities built into that Intel platform as well. It is possible that Macri is saying that the Windows scheduler doesn’t usefully support these features, or that the gains from using them aren’t large enough to justify AMD throwing a lot of R&D at the idea just at the moment. But the statements regarding scheduling could be read to imply that Windows hasn’t implemented support for these features at all, and that’s not the case.
We can’t speak to how well it works, because I don’t think anyone’s attempted to perform an exact comparison of power management under Android versus Windows on an identical SoC, but Windows does at least support these features. It’s possible that such support requires additional driver and software development and that Windows hasn’t implemented a standardized framework for these capabilities yet, but feature support has been integrated at some level.
Why It Makes Sense for Intel and AMD to Pursue Different Features
For the past five years, AMD and Intel have pursued very different features. Intel has focused on developing AI capabilities through both Xe and AVX-512, with its Lakefield hybrid CPU debuting an all-new heterogeneous architecture to compete against low-power ARM devices. If Intel hadn’t been stuck at 14nm for so many generations, I think we would have seen the company put more emphasis on improving general compute, but given these issues, we’ve seen more focus on improving computing in new and emerging markets rather than those where Intel was historically strongest.
AMD, meanwhile, had the opposite problem. Up until it launched Ryzen, the company had virtually no share in server and was concentrated in the low-end of the desktop and laptop markets. When you try to talk to AMD about whether it’s going to compete in AI workloads via support for AVX-512, AMD always gently steers the conversation back towards the idea of competing and winning in general compute workloads as opposed to competing in these emerging areas. Even when it bought Xilinx in October, AMD didn’t pump up the company’s AI efforts or work, focusing instead on the traditional core competencies of the FPGA market.
Intel already dominates servers, mobile, and desktop, so it wants to talk about new markets where it is attempting to win mind share, like AI, hyperscale servers, and cloud compute / data center. AMD, in contrast, wants to talk about carving into Intel’s major markets, because that’s where the big short-term opportunity for the company is.
As for the usefulness of big.Little cores, let’s be honest: Alder Lake may debut on desktop first, but the point of hybrid CPUs is not to use them on the desktop. A modern high-end desktop PC typically idles at 75W – 90W. Let’s say Alder Lake’s hybrid compute manages to cut that to, say, 45-55W. 20-30W is a nice slice off idle for a high-end PC, but it’s not going to change the universe. The big question is whether a big.Little approach can help x86 hit the <15W TDP envelopes where ARM laptops are likely to play in the future.
I have no doubt that Intel will position Alder Lake as some kind of response to AMD in one form or another, but that’s just not the entire point of the chip. Almost a decade ago, Intel announced a long-term effort to push higher-efficiency laptop computing. 15W, not 35W, became Intel’s baseline reference point. AMD followed suit, and the long-term result has been a tremendous improvement in CPU performance within a low power envelope. Intel may be hoping it can pull the same trick again by shifting to a hybrid architecture, helping x86 compete in these emerging spaces. AMD, in turn, may be happy to let Intel have that fight while it moves to improve performance in higher power envelopes.
As things stand right now, it looks as though Intel is more interested in AMD than competing against ARM in the spaces where ARM is encroaching, like laptops and HPC. AMD is more focused on the mass market and in winning socket space and mind share in general workloads. Macri stated, “I think there will be a point when we are going to need Little,” (meaning, little cores alongside big cores), but said that the company was currently making such rapid progress with big core designs, it was hard to come up with a cogent argument for little ones. Overall, the company seems more interesting in continuing to improve its general-purpose workload performance, and we may see it transition to using a hybrid architecture only when it makes sense to do so in this context.
Most efforts to combat the coronavirus have focused on public health measures and the race to develop a vaccine. However, a team from Columbia University, Cornell University, and others has developed something new: a nasal spray that attacks the virus directly. In a newly released study, the concoction was effective at deactivating the novel coronavirus before it could infect cells.
Like all viruses, SARS-CoV-2 (the causative agent of COVID-19) needs to enter a cell to reproduce. The virus injects its RNA genome and hijacks cellular machinery to make copies of itself, eventually killing the cell and spreading new virus particles to infect other cells. Gaining access to a cell requires a “key” that fits into a protein lock on the cell surface. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, we call that the spike protein, and that’s where the new nasal spray blocker attacks.
The spike protein “unzips” when it meets up with a cell, exposing two chains of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins). The spray contains a lipoprotein, which has a complementary strand of amino acids linked with a cholesterol particle. The lipoprotein inserts itself into the spike protein, sticking to one of the chains that would otherwise bind to a receptor and allow the virus to infect the cell. With that lipoprotein in the way, the virus is inactivated.
This work is still in the very early days, and there have been no human trials. The study is based on testing with a handful of ferrets, several of which received the real lipoprotein spray and several who were given a placebo. The animals, which were used because they are susceptible to many human respiratory infections, were then deliberately exposed to the coronavirus. The medicated animals didn’t contract COVID-19, but the controls did.
The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Credit: NIH
The study, which is so far only available on the preprint bioRxiv server, shows that the lipoprotein spray completely stopped viral infection in the experimental animals. The team believes the spray will linger around the cells of the nose and lungs for approximately 24 hours.
It will take additional work to confirm the mixture is safe before any human trials can begin, but this could be worth the time. Unlike similar attempts to block SARS-CoV-2 that rely on antibodies and other complex proteins, a lipoprotein doesn’t have any special storage requirements. It can be shipped in dry powdered form and stored at room temperature. This could make it ideal for slowing the spread of COVID-19 in poor countries with limited access to medical care.
Reviews for Sony’s PlayStation 5 dropped today, a few days after Microsoft’s Xbox Series X, and while I’ve only personally tested the latter, I wanted to round up what people are saying about Sony’s console as well.
Typically, when new consoles launch, you get a lot of comparison and contrast between the two new solutions. The Xbox One launched with a major feature (Kinect support) that the PS4 lacked, while the PS4 had the edge in gaming. During the previous generation’s launch, the Xbox 360 eschewed features like Blu-ray and hardware backwards compatibility, while the PS3 had both.
The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X launches feel much more similar to each other, and that’s not just because consoles are becoming ever-more PC-like and therefore similar to each other. It reflects the fact that neither platform is launching with a slate of next-generation titles. One of the most common things to hear about the PlayStation 5 is that it feels like an enhanced, refined, and polished PlayStation 4 with some added features on top. Reviewers have been saying similar things about Microsoft’s new console as well.
The Verge really likes the Sony PS5 DualSense controller.
I think it’s useful to keep this in mind when you read coverage of either platform. These are soft launches compared with what we’re used to, and the biggest advantage of either the PlayStation 5 or the Xbox Series X today is how adroitly they handle games that their predecessors choked on, and how quietly they do it. But because we’re mostly seeing comparisons of how the PS5 and XSX compare on last-generation titles, there’s not a lot of hard data about how they’re going to compare in the games people actually intend to play from 2020 ~ 2027.
Activity Cards and Haptics are the Current PS5 Breakout Features
Every review of the PlayStation 5 highlights two things: how big it is, and the new Activities option built into game menus. The size of the PlayStation 5 has been discussed quite a bit, so I won’t belabor the point again — the platform is large in comparison with other pieces of home electronics, and it’s quite distinctive-looking compared with them as well. It can be positioned vertically or horizontally, so you’ll have some options as far as that goes.
Activity Cards are Sony’s answer to Microsoft’s quick resume. Microsoft’s big hook is the idea of bounding from game to game seamlessly, in a single-digit number of seconds. Sony has no such feature. Instead, Sony offers you “Activity Cards,” which give you the option to jump into a game at a specific point in time. According to Polygon: “They allow players to load directly into the game at different objectives or levels, or hop right into add-on content like art galleries. I found the most useful ones to be anything that would quickly help you get on a different path and avoid a slew of menus.”
The haptic feedback in the Sony DualSense controller is extensively praised in every publication that experimented with it. While rumble has been used to simulate impacts and/or taking damage since the feature was unveiled, Sony’s implementation takes things much farther, allowing for remarkably subtle changes in what you’re feeling — and hence, a much tighter integration between on-screen play and your own sensory experience. Kotaku refers to this feature as conferring “subtle benefits and additional texture to gameplay mechanics” in titles like Spider Man: Miles Morales. Polygon similarly praises it.
The takeaway on Activity cards as compared to Quick Resume seems to be a wash, if only because Quick Resume is currently supported on all XSX games and doesn’t always work perfectly, while Activity cards require developers to explicitly support them and will not be available (or necessarily all that useful) in every game. This is also true of the excellent haptics support in the PlayStation 5, and several reviews raise questions about whether or not developers will support them. Polygon notes that the Switch includes advanced haptic capabilities as well, but that these are rarely used.
The PS5’s backward compatibility level is lower than Microsoft’s, but reviewers’ found that the supported list of games works quite well.
The overall tenor of the review coverage can be summarized as “Optimistic.” People like what they’ve seen and experienced, and caveats like the system’s lower total storage space and weaker backward compatibility are weighed against its lower price tag. One fundamental characteristic of both the current XSX and PS5 reviews is that they feel somewhat unfinished. There are more next-gen game titles becoming available for testing before the XSX and PS5 actually go on-sale, but since we can’t currently talk about them, it’s hard to show off these consoles to the same fanfare.
Right now, the PlayStation 5 is landing somewhere between “A great, refined PS4 Pro experience” and “A nice upgrade, but don’t worry if you can’t find one on store shelves.” That’s more-or-less the same place the Xbox Series X lands, but there’s variation on that point from review to review — Ars likes the XSX a bit more than the PS5, while I’d say the Verge comes down really strongly on the PS5, based on their reviewers’ experience with the controller. That’s one thing I’d highlight right now — without much in the way of objective comparisons between next-gen launches on both platforms, which platform a publication favors comes down to features like the DualSense’ haptics implementation. It’s always harder to judge how widely a new technology will or will not be supported on any platform, and that’s definitely the case with the PS5 / XSX comparison.
Our sister site PCMag is the most bullish on the PS5 of any publication we’ve seen, writing: “The PlayStation 5 is a must-have for PlayStation devotees, and is worthy of sharing our Editors’ Choice award alongside the Xbox Series X.”
It’s going to be interesting to see how the market responds to these launches. The XSX and PS5 aren’t exactly debuting to a ticker-tape parade of media attention and a massive PR tour. The launch volume is downright muted compared with what we’d expect normally. Given the magnitude of some of the challenges the United States is facing, this is scarcely unexpected, but it does raise some questions about how well these new platforms will perform. Personally, I think they’ll both likely sell every console they can manufacture through the holiday season.
If you’re looking for a PC to run the latest games on then you should consider Dell’s new G5 gaming desktop. This system has an Intel Core i5 processor along with an Nvidia GTX 1650 Super GPU that gives it sufficient power to run most games at 1080p resolutions with ease. The system’s also on sale and can be picked up for just $599.00.
Dell G5 Intel i5-10400F 6-core Gaming Desktop w/ GTX 1650 Super GPU, 8GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB NVMe SSD for $599.00 from Dell with promo code DTG5AFF114 (Regularly $899.99)
iRobot Roomba 675 WiFi Robot Vacuum for $179.00 from Amazon (list price $248.99)
All-New Fire HD 8 32GB 8″ WiFi Tablet with Special Offers for $59.99 from Amazon (list price $89.99)
Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ Unlocked 256GB Smartphone for $799.99 from Amazon (List price $1,099.99)
Dell built this gaming desktop with an Intel Core i5-10400F and a GeForce GTX 1650 Super graphics processor. Together, this hardware can run games with high settings at 1080p resolution. The system also has a unique front panel that looks cool and edgy, and with promo code DTG5AFF114 you can get it now marked down from $899.99 to just $599.00 from Dell.
The Roomba 675 offers solid performance at a price that won’t break the bank. It utilizes a three-stage cleaning system to thoroughly clean your floors as it navigates your home. It also has a battery that can last up to 90 minutes, after which the robot returns to its charging station automatically. You can get one now from Amazon marked down from $248.99 to $179.00.
Amazon’s new Fire HD 8 tablet features an 8-inch display with a resolution of 1,280×800 that is suitable for watching HD videos. This new model also has more RAM and storage than the old Fire HD 8 tablet with a total of 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The integrated quad-core processor is also faster at 2GHz. The tablet’s battery is rated to last for up to 12 hours on a single charge as well. Right now it’s marked down from Amazon from $89.99 to $54.99.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10+ smartphone measures an enormous 6.8 inches with a high-end 3,040×1,440 OLED display and some of the fastest smartphone hardware commercially available today. This phone may have been succeeded by Samsung’s new Galaxy Note 20, but it’s still an incredibly powerful phone with a rich set of features. Now, you can get one of these phones from Amazon that drops the price from $1,099.99 to $799.99.
Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information.For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.
When the first foldable drones were introduced, such as the Parrot’s Anafi and DJI’s original Mavic Pro, they marked a major breakthrough in portability. Those who didn’t need all the pro features could work with a drone that fit in a daypack, instead of carrying around a massive hard case such as with the Phantom. While DJI has shipped several drones that are even small, one of the most intriguing has been the DJI Mini ($449). At just over half a pound (249 grams), it’s so light that it falls below the FAA registration requirement. Now, registering a drone isn’t exactly hard or expensive, but that’s still pretty cool. However, the original Mini didn’t capture 4K video and had limited range and flight time. With the Mini 2, DJI has addressed all those shortcomings at a fairly affordable price point.
DJI Mini 2 By the Numbers
The most significant upgrade is the camera. The updated 12MP 1/2.3-inch format sensor is now capable of recording 4K/30 fps video with 100Mbps output. That’s incredibly beefy for a drone that fits in the palm of your hand. Drone communications have been upgraded to OcuSync 2.0, with a stated range of up to 10km. Of course, in the US, regulations require that you keep your drone in your sight, so 10km may just be aspirational. However, I think the upgraded connectivity is important for the Mini 2 to stay in good contact, as the relatively large remote seems to contain some of the processing power that larger drones might have on board. Raw image capture is supported, and DJI claims that it can provide a 2x lossless zoom using computational imaging.
The Mini 2 also touts an impressive 31-minute flight time. I’m hoping that my favorite flight planning app, Litchi, will add support for it, as half-an-hour is time to fly some fairly interesting routes. Support for the original mini is still in “beta” so unfortunately, it could be a while. (As an aside, since Litchi development seems to have slowed, if anyone knows of a good alternative for pre-planned waypoint routes that can be built using Google Earth, please let me know in the comments!) Of course, you do get DJI’s usual selection of pre-programmed maneuvers to play with. They include Dronie, Helix, Rocket, Circle, Boomerang under QuickShots, plus various panorama modes. For improved still image capture, Auto-Exposure Bracketing and Timed Shots are supported.
For those who don’t want to use a third-party app to process their images and video, DJI’s Fly app has some photo enhancement tools built-in, as well as a video clipping function. If you connect your drone over USB-C to your computer, video can be transferred at up to 20MB/second. For flying indoors, DJI recommends its optional 360-degree propeller guard.
Flying the DJI Mini 2
If you’ve flown any other DJI drone (or for that matter a similar drone such as Parrot’s Anafi) then flying the Mini 2 will be very familiar. It has all the essential controls, and they are clearly labeled. Some, like Return To Home, also appear on the app’s screen. The one thing missing compared with the Mavic and DJI’s larger drones is a screen on the remote. Over the years as DJI’s apps have improved and the video link to the drones has become more reliable, the screen has become less important. But as recently as last year, I had the app lock up on me and had to navigate my Mavic Pro back using only the remote. So, depending on the type of flying you do, that might become an issue.
The Mini 2 is a competent flier, reaching 22+ MPH even in standard mode, which fits with DJI’s claim that it can deal with winds up to 24 MPH. The Mini 2 is also small enough to fly indoors. DJI says the Mini 2 can hover in place indoors using visual positioning. I found that it did a good job of that in large areas, but in narrow areas like hallways it had a tendency to drift (maybe due to the way it was pushing air around), so I would have felt more comfortable if I’d had the propeller guards as a backup to my flying.
DJI Mini 2 Sample Videos
First up is a simple Orbit Quick Shot. I was pleased with how smooth the result was for such a small drone, but I also noticed later that even though I had the drone in 4K video mode, the Orbit was recorded in 1080p. So I’ve also added a 4K video clip (30fps) so that you can see the raw quality the drone is capable of. Unlike its bigger siblings, your post-processing options are somewhat constrained as it doesn’t support Log colorspaces.
Orbit Quickshot recorded in 1080p.
4K Sample Video.
DJI Pocket 2 If You Don’t Need to Fly
I’ve often referred to photo drones as tripods with wings. Of course, that ignores the most expensive part of the drones — their gimbal. Since DJI is known for a line of consumer and professional gimbals, it makes sense that it would split the difference between a gimbal and a drone with a stabilized action camera. We reviewed the company’s original Pocket when it came out, but if you’ve been holding off, the new Pocket 2 may be worth a look.
Like the original Pocket, it can operate with or without an attached smartphone. If you’re planning to always use it with a phone attached, you might be just as well off saving some money and purchasing DJI’s OM 4 foldable gimbal for your phone. But it’s fun to use by itself, as it becomes just about the smallest decent video camera available, as it basically disappears completely into your hand as you hold it. The Pocket 2 adds audio zoom and directional audio, as well as a replaceable cover on the bottom that allows it to be adapted to a tripod or selfie stick.
It Doesn’t Fly, So Why Do I Need to Activate It?
I have the same gripe about the Pocket that I do about DJI’s Osmo gimbals. They require you to link with an app and a DJI account to use them. I get why that is important for drones, but I’ve bought around 40 cameras and reviewed at least another hundred, along with a large number of accessories, and until recently they never required me to surrender personal information and link to an account simply to take photos. DJI doesn’t seem to have any plans to change, so if this bugs you, probably best to look for alternative products.
Price and Availability
The DJI Mini 2 can be ordered now for $449 including remote control and one battery, or in a Fly More Combo that includes three batteries, a charging hub, and a carrying case for $599. The Pocket 2 is available now for $349 or in a Creator Combo kit for $499.
Today you can get a pair of Apple’s AirPods for just $99.00, which is the lowest price that we’ve seen on these earbuds to date. You can also get a Roborock S6 robot vacuum with $240 slashed off the retail price.
What better way to celebrate your independence than with a pair of high-quality earbuds to help block out bothersome external noises and enjoy your music? You can get Apple’s AirPods today from Walmart marked down from $159.00 to $129.00.
This high-powered robot vacuum has 2,000Pa of suction power and it has a built-in mop function, which makes it a versatile cleaning tool for your home. The Roborock S6 was also built to be fairly quiet with an average cleaning volume of just 56dB. Currently, these robot vacs are selling on Amazon marked down from $599.99 to just $359.99 with a clickable coupon.
This 27-inch IPS work display has a resolution of 2560×1440 and excellent color accuracy that covers 99 percent of the sRGB color spectrum. If you buy it now you can also get it with a free $150 Dell gift card. Dell is also offering it discounted from $499.99 to $359.99.
These high-end headphones were designed to be exceedingly comfortable with an over-ear design. Bose also built these headphones with noise-canceling technology that helps to improve your audio experience by blocking out bothersome ambient noise. Right now they are marked down from $349.00 to $199.00 at Amazon.
Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information.For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.
Whether we like it or not, our electronic gadgets are our lifelines nowadays. Not only do phones and computers keep us connected, but they also harbor our important documents, sweetest video memories, and irreplaceable photos. And for those of us taking daily pictures of our kiddos or continuously safeguarding important documents, we’re continuously adding to the data we need to keep safe.
If potentially losing your files keeps you up at night, there’s a simple solution available to give you peace of mind — the Degoo Premium Mega Backup Plan. Degoo provides 15TB of AI-based cloud storage, all supremely secured and easily accessible to manage and share your files. And a lifetime subscription to this hefty storage solution is available now for $149.99, 96 percent off its usual $4,320 price tag.
Degoo provides high-speed transfers from a database that gives you more backup space than competitors like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive combined. Sleep easy knowing your data has been backed up under ultra-secure 256-bit AES encryption, while still keeping it within arm’s reach. Once your files are stored away, they’re super easy to access and send to friends and family via emails or links.
The cloud storage works for your smartphone, tablet and web browser, and it replicates your backup as you perform it to give you extra peace of mind. Automatic file change detection also ensures things backup automatically, so you’ll never lose a precious photo.
Tom’s Guide has called Degoo “a straightforward cloud storage solution with an emphasis on photos, but it does little to differentiate itself from cloud storage leaders”, and TechRadar says it’s a “snappy, simple backup.” Now a lifetime subscription to the Degoo Premium Mega Backup Plan can be yours for just $149.99, 96 percent off the usual price of $4,320.
Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information.For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.
Does it get any better than winning a giveaway? What if we told you that it’s possible to win a giveaway while also giving back to those in need? That’s exactly what’s happening with our latest Tesla giveaway! You can enter to win a 2021 Tesla Model 3, and in the process donate to charity and help others. Proceeds will be going to the Playing For Change Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization geared toward using music education to create positive change for children and communities in need all over the world.
While you’re giving back by purchasing 100 Entries to Win a 2021 Tesla Model 3 for just $10, you put yourself in the running for this fabulous luxury vehicle. This 2021 Tesla Model 3 can reach speeds of up to 140 mph, going from 0 to 60 in just 5.3 seconds. But besides going fast, it also boasts an impressive safety record.
The 2021 Tesla Model 3 has a range of up to 263 miles, making it the perfect car for road trips or simple running errands. And if you’re visualizing yourself in the driver’s seat, all you have to do is the good deed of donating. The more you donate, the better your chances are of winning this car — a pearly white model with rear-wheel drive, 18″ aero wheels, and all black interior that retails for $39,990.
This is our most highly anticipated giveaway ever, so make sure you get your donations in and throw your hat in the ring. And share with your friends to help their chances winning, while also making sure more money is raised for the Playing For Change Foundation. Snag 100 entries to win for just $10 here.
Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information.For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.
OSIRIS-REx has been in orbit of Bennu since late 2018, which gave NASA ample time to find just the right landing zone on the unexpectedly rocky surface. It apparently chose well. Following the recent successful touch and go operation, NASA has reported a sizeable sample of the asteroid has now been locked away in the probe’s sample return container.
Earlier this month, OSIRIS-REx descended and tapped the surface, or rather, it was supposed to be a tap. NASA now says the sampling arm may have punched through 19 inches (48 centimeters) of loose soil before the nitrogen blast fired. That puff of air was supposed to blow about 60g of material into the sampling container. Instead, it harvested a whole lot more.
There was a brief but scary period earlier this week when NASA confirmed that large pebbles had jammed open the sample container’s lid. As a result, asteroid particles were falling out whenever the spacecraft moved. NASA opted to forego the planned sample measurement over the weekend as that would have caused more sample material to drift away. It also scrapped any plans to conduct a second sampling run at the backup Bennu site. Instead, NASA worked to secure its impressive haul.
The latest images from OSIRIS-REx show the sample safely locked inside the sample capsule. This module will eventually drop into Earth’s atmosphere, and the heat shield will protect it from atmospheric reentry. We don’t know exactly how much sample OSIRIS-REx grabbed from Bennu, but we know it’s a lot more than the 60g minimum. NASA estimates OSIRIS-REx could have as much as a kilogram (1,000g or 2.2 pounds) of pristine asteroid soil in the return canister. That’s huge — the payloads of past sample return missions could best be measured in milligrams. The recent Hayabusa2 mission hopes to have 100mg (a tenth of a gram) of asteroid regolith when it lands in the coming months.
Getting that much of Bennu back to Earth could be a watershed moment for science. Most asteroid samples on Earth have been scorched by the atmosphere and smashed to bits on impact. Bennu has remained mostly unchanged since the formation of the universe, and we’ll have enough for lots of teams to run lots of tests that will no doubt teach us a great deal about the early solar system.
Bennu and OSIRIS-REx are currently millions of miles away, so it’ll take time for the probe to return home. NASA plans to break orbit in March 2021 when Bennu and Earth are in close proximity. The sample return capsule should be back on Earth in September 2023.
Astronomers have identified more than 4,000 exoplanets orbiting other stars but just a few “rogue planets” wandering the galaxy without a star to call home. A new study claims to have spotted one of these worlds, and it may be a small, rocky world like Earth. If confirmed, the planet known as OGLE-2016-BLG-1928 would be a major milestone in our efforts to spot these unattached worlds.
While scientists believe rogue planets are common throughout the universe, they’re very difficult to find. We currently lack the technology to directly image exoplanets in most instances, so we can only locate them by observing the stars they orbit. The dearly departed Kepler Space Telescope single-handedly detected more than 2,500 exoplanets, and that number continues to rise as scientists analyze its data. Kepler used the transit method, which involves watching stars for dips in brightness as a planet passes in front of them. Scientists have also used radial velocity measurements of stars to look for small wobbles caused by the mass of planets.
Without a host star, spotting planets gets a lot harder. The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) project found the potential rogue planet using gravitational microlensing, which superficially similar to the transit method. This approach monitors the light from a distant star in hopes a massive object like a planet will pass in front of it. While the star and planet may be many light-years away, the planet bends or “lenses” the star’s light from our perspective on Earth. This can reveal the foreground object’s mass and size, but only if you happen to be looking in the right place at the right time.
This light curve indicates a massive object passed in front of the star.
Andrzej Udalski of the OGLE project notes that you could watch a single star for a million years and only see a single lensing event. Luckily, Udalski and his team didn’t have to go one star at a time. They used the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, which scans millions of stars in the direction of the galactic center on a daily basis. In analyzing this data, the OGLE team spotted a lensing event dubbed OGLE-2016-BLG-1928. At just 42 minutes long, it’s the shortest such detection ever recorded. That suggests the planet, if indeed that’s what it is, would be somewhere between the size of Earth and Mars.
The team believes this object is a rogue planet because there are no known stars to which it could be connected. The data also showed no light sources within eight astronomical units of the lensing event. Other researchers will need to confirm this object is a planet before it goes in the history books, but if current theories are right, there are uncountable millions of similar objects out there just waiting to be discovered.
Rocket Lake has been a bit of a mystery ever since we first heard about the chip. There have been questions about whether it was a true 14nm backport of a 10nm design, whether it would keep the full measure of clock speed Intel squeezed out of 14nm, and whether it will compete effectively against AMD’s Zen 3 architecture. We can’t answer that last question until the chips launch, but luckily we can take a crack at the first two.
First of all, Rocket Lake isn’t based on Willow Cove, the higher-frequency CPU that Intel debuted earlier this year. Rocket Lake’s CPU core, codenamed Cypress Cove, is based on Sunny Cove, the CPU that powers its Ice Lake line of processors. This isn’t necessarily a problem; Intel was attempting to fix problems with scaling to high frequencies when it built Willow Cove. Because it’s based on an older 14nm process, Sunny Cove shouldn’t suffer the same declines.
Meet Cypress Cove
Cypress Cove is a backport of Sunny Cove, aka Ice Lake. Intel claims it is looking for double-digit IPC scaling, which we assume refers to IPC scaling without counting clock speed improvements over previous chips. Advantages of Cypress Cove include:
New support for AVX-512 baked into Intel desktop CPUs.
Integration of Intel’s new Xe graphics core
Support for up to 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes
DDR4-3200 support
Xe-LP graphics
The Xe-LP graphics are only listed as being 1.5x faster than Gen9 integrated performance. This says nothing good about the actual onboard GPU built into the desktop versions of these chips.
To put this in perspective, Tiger Lake’s Xe solution is ~2x faster than Ice Lake’s GPU. As this graph from Anandtech shows, Ice Lake’s Gen11 GPU was substantially faster than any Gen9 solution Intel ever shipped. There are limited numbers, but they range from a 2x advantage to a 1.27x advantage.
If Intel was putting a full Xe configuration on its die, we should be able to expect something like a 2.54 increase in raw GPU horsepower. TGL laptops can carry up to 96 EUs (execution units). We know that Xe is going to be much faster than Gen 9 thanks to efficiency improvements, but it sounds like Intel is going to use between 24 EUs and 32 EUs in its desktop chips. If it used 32 EUs instead of the 24 it had fielded previously, this would represent a 1.33x performance improvement on width alone. We know, however, that Xe makes some significant changes to Intel’s overall GPU design, which is probably where the rest of the improved performance is coming from. If Intel was using a 96 EU configuration in Rocket Lake, we’d expect performance to be 2-2.5x faster than Gen 9, not just 50 percent.
I had floated the idea earlier this year that Intel might compete against AMD by positioning its own CPUs at price points where the built-in Xe graphics could carve into markets where people want better graphics on a budget. As an added bonus, setting up a comparison against an AMD APU with a 64-96 EU Rocket Lake would probably have gone well for Intel, given how Tiger Lake compares against the Ryzen 4000 series.
But if Intel is sticking to 32 EUs on desktop, that’s not going to happen. Gen9 simply wasn’t fast enough for a 1.5x performance increase to get you much in the way of useful gaming performance. If you start at 30fps, a 1.5x increase gets you to 45fps — a visible gain while playing. If you start at 15fps and pick up the same +50 percent, you’ve hit 22.5 frames per second — well below the playable threshold for the majority of titles.
Intel, apparently, still views its integrated graphics as worthless to its desktop line, which is deeply unfortunate. Companies like Topaz Video Enhance AI are actively working to improve Intel GPU support, and a more robust iGPU in desktop would have helped this a great deal.
Also, unlike Comet Lake, Rocket Lake will drop back to just eight cores. How much of an impact this will have on the product remains to be seen. Imagine, for example, that Intel hits the ~1.16 IPC uplift for Ice Lake and keeps every bit of its frequency at 14nm — or maybe even hits slightly higher clocks, since it doesn’t have to power 10 chips in the same die. That would be a 1.16xc IPC jump combined with, say, a 5 percent gain in real clock speeds, or about 1.22x uplift overall. An eight-core chip with a 1.22x performance uplift would be just slightly slower (theoretically) than a 10-core chip that lacked these advantages.
A few other notes: Intel doesn’t rule out releasing chips without integrated graphics, similar to its current “KF” CPUs, and it says that the x4 PCIe lane off the CPU is “only validated for discrete graphics, storage, or Intel Optane.” Not sure if anyone is likely to build a PCIe 4.0 sound card any time soon, so this is unlikely to be an issue. There’s also backward compatibility with the existing 400-series chipsets, with a new 500 series chipset coming as well, with unspecified features.
Intel’s single-thread performance jump would put it closer to par with AMD, but its multi-threaded performance might not get much better. Matching the performance of a 10-core with an eight-core is intrinsically impressive, but cleanly exceeding the performance of your 10-core with an eight-core in well-threaded code will require more than just a 1.16x IPC boost combined with a 5 percent frequency gain. A 10 percent improvement in sustained clocks combined with 1.16x IPC would do it, but it’s not clear if Intel’s 14nm process has any headroom left.
Getting AVX-512 into desktops is critical to encouraging developers to use it, but I think the most important narrative around Rocket Lake for Intel is that it’s no longer recycling an endless succession “14nm++++.” While these new chips are still built on 14nm, they will introduce real, distinct improvements to the Intel ecosystem, with everything from PCIe 4.0 to Xe support in an iGPU.
I’m not sure that’ll be enough — but it’s absolutely wonderful to see real competition in the CPU market again.
Spooky sounds are a mainstay of Halloween, but there’s no sound in space. That doesn’t mean it’s not scary, though. Black holes can vacuum up light and spaghettify matter, but it turns out they have a Halloween vibe if you give them a listen. NASA’s latest data release turns signals from beyond Earth into spooky sounds that are sure to send a chill up your spine.
NASA’s new spooky playlist is available on Soundcloud featuring “moans and whistles from our universe.” It consists of audio from several different sources, shifted as necessary to be inside the range of human hearing. The Sinister Sounds playlist kicks off with the eerie tones from X-ray studies of the galactic center. That’s where you’ll find a true monster: a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 4 billion suns. It’s too far away to be dangerous, but it sure does sound spooky. You cannot, of course, put your ear up to a black hole and “hear” its X-rays — see the aforementioned spaghettification problem. It does make for some creepy audio when sufficiently processed, though.
Next up, there’s audio from NASA’s Juno mission to study Jupiter. These tracks sound like a Doctor Who-style warbling effect with occasional bouts of static. The InSight lander has sent back some sound from the red planet in the past, but the low, rumbling Marsquake noises make another appearance here. NASA even digs into its back catalog to play one of Voyager 1’s greatest hits, “Plasma Waves of the Bow Shock of Jupiter.”
LISTEN IF YOU DARE 🔊
Using data from our spacecraft, @NASA scientists gathered new eerie sounds from the depths of space, just in time for Halloween. This playlist is filled with real “moans” and “whistles” from our universe. https://t.co/v7uaGIq66h#NASAHalloween
The end of the spooky playlist is mostly plasma waves from the moons of Jupiter, which sound like rumbling static with assorted bleeps and boops. Is it spooky? Sure, but not as much as the Juno and galactic center tracks.
Feel free to use these sounds to set the mood this season, courtesy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
I don’t know that anyone needed another reason to dislike Facebook’s decision to fuse Oculus accounts into its own Borg-like mass, but in case you didn’t have enough of them, here’s another: Delete your Facebook account and your games are gone, forever.
Important VR PSA: 👉 Deactivating your Facebook profile disables your Oculus Profile.
👉 Deleting your Facebook account takes away all your games, purchases, and progress.
Source: Eli Schwartz pic.twitter.com/dSJIcIf0ki
Facebook would undoubtedly argue that it’s just carrying out the end-user’s wish to be forgotten and that it isn’t the only company to have a policy like this. Blizzard’s Battle.net client notes that deleting your Blizzard account will also delete all of your purchase history with the company. You’ll lose your games, characters, records, and all associated data.
The difference in how the two situations feel is instructive as to why Facebook should have left Oculus and Facebook on separate systems. I might wish to step away from using Facebook without quitting VR, or wish to quit the Oculus ecosystem without deleting my Facebook account. Now that the two are joined at the hip, there’s no way to do so. Your VR gaming and your social media life are welded together, whether you like it or not. Will you be able to avoid sharing your own gaming information with other individuals? Undoubtedly. Corporations? Not a chance. Will Facebook relentlessly push you to share that information, at every turn? Undoubtedly.
In other, unrelated news, Palmer Luckey (founder, Oculus) and Robert Long (senior software engineer, Mozilla) are teaming up to offer a $10,000 reward to anyone who can jailbreak the Quest 2.
I’m still offering $5000 for a Quest 2 jailbreak! Jailbreakers, dm me. Let’s break free of FB’s anti-competitive, anti-privacy ecosystem! https://t.co/TYI0Uy1YsF
Long is one of the developers who opposed the fusion of Facebook and Oculus, saying in August: “I will no longer be working on VR projects for the Oculus platform. Including Oculus Browser specific WebXR features. If a Facebook account will be required for me to develop on Oculus’ platform then I’m not interested in supporting them further.”
Facebook has faced no meaningful penalty for its decision to combine accounts in this fashion and sales of the Quest 2 have reportedly outstripped the original Quest. There have been issues around this launch, with readers reporting being issued permabans after trying to register a new Facebook account for the first time, and other users not being able to use their devices post-account fusion. Facebook has been responsive to these issues according to multiple reports.
In this case, if you like VR, be advised that walking away from Facebook now carries an additional penalty: You’ll be permanently quitting the Oculus ecosystem and losing whatever investment you’ve made into it.
We are in the very early stages of exploring the universe, and our efforts have uncovered thousands of exoplanets. We don’t yet know if any of them support life, but maybe one day we’ll know. In the meantime, Earth is the only planet we know for certain does host life. Researchers from Cornell University and Lehigh University turned this question around. We know Earth has life, but does anyone else? The new study says that, yes, there are 1,004 nearby stars where an alien looking at Earth could potentially know we’re here.
There are more than 4,000 known exoplanets currently, and most of them were identified with the Kepler Space Telescope. We can’t just point any old telescope at a star and say, “Yep, there’s a planet there.” Stars are so much brighter by comparison that we can’t make out individual worlds. The most common way to spot exoplanets, and the method Kepler used, is to watch for the planet to transit in front of the star. When you hear about a new exoplanet discovery, that’s usually how astronomers found it.
Here’s the catch: we can only see transits if the plane of an alien solar system is aligned with ours. Otherwise, the planet doesn’t pass in front of the star from our perspective. Professors Lisa Kaltenegger and Joshua Pepper looked at this from the other side — which solar systems would be able to make a transit observation of Earth and detect life-associated molecules in our atmosphere?
Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) star catalog, the pair looked 300 light-years in all directions to find candidate solar systems, ruling out stellar remnants like white dwarfs that cannot (as far as we know) host alien life. There are a huge number of main-sequence stars in this region of space, but only a fraction of them would be able to see Earth passing in front of the sun from where they are.
The final count, according to Pepper and Kaltenegger, is 1,004. Of those, 508 have angles that would give them at least 10 hours of observational data every time Earth transited the sun. However, 5 percent of the total are stars too young to have developed planets or life. The rest, though, could hypothetically have habitable planets, and two of them have known exoplanets.
In every one of those solar systems, beings like us with an understanding of planetary transits could be seeing Earth darken the sun every year. They might be able to estimate Earth’s size and distance from the sun, and that would indicate the possibility of liquid water on the surface. If they’re a little more advanced than us, they might already have the equivalent of the James Webb Space Telescope, which NASA hopes to launch in the next few years after numerous delays. An instrument such as that could detect the presence of water vapor, methane, phosphine, and other compounds that suggest life. Maybe an alien astronomer is, right at this moment, having a eureka moment as they realize someone is looking back at them from Earth. You should wave hello to be polite just in case.
Yesterday marked the 35th birthday of the Nintendo Entertainment System’s launch in North America. On October 18, 1985, the NES went on sale in limited markets across America (a broad launch would follow in September 1986). To say that initial expectations were low might be an understatement. The North American market was still reeling after the video game collapse of 1983, and plenty of pundits had limited expectations for Japan’s first game console.
Nintendo was sensitive to the risk of introducing a new video game console just two years after the market’s implosion, and it took specific steps to make the NES look more like a VHS player than a then-traditional top-loading console like the Atari 2600. Large, bulky cartridges and a front-loading device were intended to distance Nintendo from Atari and earlier competitors, while devices like ROB (Robotic Operated Buddy) positioned the NES as a unique toy rather than just a video game player.
A 1985 CES brochure, uploaded as fair use to Wikipedia. ROB is remembered for being a brilliant marketing fakeout much more than for its actual contributions to gaming.
In terms of technical specs, the NES is powered by a 1.79MHz (NTSC) or 1.66MHz (PAL) Ricoh 2A03 CPU with a second-source MOS 6502 inside and a whopping 2KB of onboard RAM. Most NES games are between 8KB and 1MB, with 128KB to 384KB being most common. The system also contains an onboard Picture Processing Unit (PPU), again developed by Ricoh. The PPU offered 2KB of dedicated video RAM and a color palette of 48 colors and six shades of gray. The machine can display up to 64 sprites on-screen at a time and displayed images at a standard 256×240 pixels. The actual guts of the NES were quite similar across the world, though the console’s loading mechanism, shape, and game controllers varied by region.
All of this, I learned later. When I actually encountered the NES in real life, my reaction was immediate: I wanted one. Unfortunately, or so I thought at the time, my parents did not.
PC Gaming in the Mid-to-Late 1980s Kinda Sucked
Now, before anyone takes my head off, let me be clear: I love the computer games of the mid-to-late 1980s: Space Quest, Hero’s Quest Quest for Glory, King’s Quest, Zork, and Ultima IV would be just a few examples. There were some all-time great games produced in this era — but none of them realistically compared with what Nintendo could achieve.
Today, PC gamers pride themselves on having access to hardware consoles can’t match. Thirty-five years ago, it was the other way around. Nintendo shipped seven million NES systems in 1988, nearly matching the number of Commodore 64s that had been sold in its first five years. By 1990, 30 percent of American households owned an NES, compared with 23 percent with a PC.
Playing on the NES was fluid in a way that no IBM PC or clone equivalent of the time could deliver. Characters could move quickly across screens, and games transitioned nearly instantly from one area to another. Compared with the slow, disk- or hard-drive-based games that ran on PCs, the NES felt positively zippy. In a game like The Legend of Zelda, you could theoretically move continuously through each area, dodging enemies in real-time. Games like Commander Keen would finally begin to close the gap with Super Mario Bros. (Captain Comic doesn’t count), but SMB was a much faster platformer than CK, and it had shipped five years earlier. Super Mario World on the SNES actually came out the same year as the Commander Keen series and was clearly the better, more complex game.
There were a few years where I was pretty unhappy about not being allowed to own a console. My parents were not fond of gaming of any kind, but PCs at least held the potential for educational uses. Consoles, at least in my parents’ eyes, did not.
I doubt they realized the long-term impact of their own decision. I learned to tinker with MS-DOS because being a gamer required it. I learned to upgrade my own hardware and eventually build my own systems for the same reason. My love of gaming drove my interest in hardware, and my interest in hardware drove my career. Even my desire to game on better hardware was once driven by wanting a way to match or exceed console performance as opposed to forever playing second fiddle.
Happy birthday to the console that changed my life, even though I never got to own one.
