TL;DR: A two-year subscription to PureVPN is on sale for £2.22 per month, saving you 73% on list price.
Your privacy matters, and everyone has the right to complete online privacy. This isn't some brave new idea, but the reality of actually achieving genuine privacy can be tricky.
The only real solution is to invest in a VPN. These services send and receive your data through a completely invulnerable tunnel, providing online privacy and anonymity by creating a private network from a public internet connection. It's a simple solution that has great benefits for anyone looking to hide their data and identity. Read more...
Mark Zuckerberg says he knows his positions are likely to "piss off a lot of people."
Two days after a company earnings call in which he stated that his goal for the next decade "isn't to be liked, but to be understood," the Facebook CEO attempted to explain just what he meant.
Speaking at the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit, an annual conference in Utah, Zuckerberg railed against censorship, saying he "feels like the list of things you are not allowed to say socially keeps on growing."
Zuckerberg's comments are the latest sign that the embattled CEO, who is currently facing an antitrust investigation into his company, plans to change his tone in how he deals with critics. Read more...
WHO declares a global health emergency, flights are suspended, cruise passengers quarantined. From China to South Korea, India to the US, the world reacts to a fast-moving threat.
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J from CNET https://ift.tt/2tclRgp
via IFTTT
WHO declares a global health emergency, flights are suspended, cruise passengers quarantined. From China to South Korea, India to the US, the world reacts to a fast-moving threat.
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J from CNET News https://ift.tt/2uM0djo
via IFTTT
Brazil’s famously-tricky real estate market has long drawn international investors to the region in search of tech solutions. Loft is also a16z’s first and only Brazilian investment. Co-founded by serial entrepreneurs and investors, Mate Pencz and Florian Hagenbuch in 2018, Loft uses a proprietary algorithm to process transaction data and provide more transparent pricing for both buyers and sellers.
https://ift.tt/2GGDxnr from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/31eeZLQ
via IFTTT
While Beats and Bose are amazing, they're not the only good speakers out there.
Gone are the days when we had to either pay a ton of money to get quality speakers or settle for blasting our phones as high as they would go. You can have the best of both worlds with brands, like JBL, that offer great sound for a price you can stand.
Self-care Twitter has been preaching "You're your own damn Valentine" for years, so we'll save you that speech.
But those treat yo-self speeches usually involve buying yourself a box of chocolates or a bouquet of roses, but you don't need to succumb to clichés just because you're gifting to yourself. This year, give yourself the gift of looking bomb on Valentine's Day and every other day — whether that's for yourself or your significant otherT3 Micro is offering 20% off their rose gold collection of award-winning hair straighteners, curling irons, and blow dryers. And when you spend $150, you'll get an extra $85 value gift for free. Read more...
Here's a riddle for you: What's better than one smart speaker?
The answer is two smart speakers.
OK, sorry for that very lame riddle — the point is, you can currently get two Google Home Minis for less than the price of one Echo Dot. Just pick up this two-pack of the Google smart speakers at Walmart for $53 off the usual price.
Google's pint-sized smart speaker is pretty much exactly like the Echo Dot, but swaps out Alexa for the also helpful Google Assistant. Using voice commands, you'll be able to ask questions, control compatible smart home devices, manage your daily schedule and beyond, play games, and more. With two Home Minis, though, you'll be able to sync them up and place them in different areas of your abode — perfect for streaming music, podcasts, and audiobooks throughout the house. While the Echo Dot is generally a little more durable and has a longer list of skills (plus Amazon integration), you can't really beat this two-for-the-price-of-less-than-one deal. Read more...
In 2013, VIA Technologies created a joint venture with the Shanghai Municipal Government and created Zhaoxin, a fabless semiconductor company. Zhaoxin (meaning “million-core,” according to Wikipedia) launched a series of chips based on the old VIA Isaiah core. Over the years, the company has evolved the original Isaiah architecture into a higher-performing CPU core, with more cores, higher clocks, and a lower process node. The current CPU family’s code name is Lujiazui and it’s used in the KX-6000 series of products.
To be clear, Zhaoxin is entirely distinct from Thatic, the joint venture that AMD formed a few years ago. The pedigree for Zhaoxin flows back through VIA through the acquisition of companies like Cyrix and Centaur Technology, as well as through VIA’s own legal settlements with Intel. While I’m cutting through a lot of x86 history here, Centaur’s general design philosophy from the VIA acquisition through the present day has been an emphasis on low-power, efficient computing. There was a brief time, around the turn of the millennium, when VIA was building low-power fanless products for passive, silent SFFs (Small Form Factor systems).
THG has more details on the first Zhaoxin parts to turn up for retail sale in China. The KX-U6780A is an 8C/8T CPU clocked at 2.7GHz, with an 8MB L2 cache and a 70W TDP. There is no L3. The CPU appears to have an integrated GPU with DX11.1 support, along with support for standards like AVX and SSE4.2, PCIe 3.0, M.2 slots, and USB 3.1. While the CPU is only offered in BGA format, there’s going to be a supported mITX motherboard, the C1888.
The Chinese community enthusiasts who benchmarked the board were able to compare it against the previous Zhaoxin product, the KX-C4580. The KX-C4580 is a 4C/4T CPU at 1.83Hz — but it’s clear that there’ve been some substantial additional architectural improvements. If we start from the 228 baseline and assume perfect scaling, we’d expect the U6780A to provide 2x performance based on core count and a 1.47x improvement based on clock. That only takes the R20 score up to ~670, implying the new CPU’s IPC is roughly 1.26x higher in Cinebench on top of the core count and clock gains.
According to CPU-Z’s single-thread rankings, a score of 171 puts this chip in the same ballpark as the Core 2 Duo E7400 (178) or the Core i5-5200U (168). A CB20 score of 845 puts the KX-U6780A in the same range as the Intel Pentium G4600 at 838 (2C/4T, 3.6GHz), or the AMD FX-6300 at 854 (6C/12T, 3.5GHz – 4.1GHz). While it’s obvious that the per-core performance from the Zhaoxin CPU is much lower than the Intel equivalent, the Pentium G4600 does have a 1.33x clock speed advantage.
Anyone looking for a reason to dismiss the KX-U6780A will find reason to do so. Best-case, you’d be buying performance similar to what you could get from Intel or AMD 6-8 years ago. Focusing on that issue, however, misses the rapid rise of China’s manufacturing and semiconductor industry. Zhaoxin has evolved its product line rapidly, moving from Isaiah-derived parts directly based on the old VIA architecture to newer chips that have significantly improved the performance of the underlying CPU. While the new chip may not pack much performance compared with a top-end part from AMD or Intel, the KX-U6780A is still much faster relative to AMD or Intel than previous CPUs the company or country has fielded.
China has set aggressive targets for itself in terms of semiconductor self-sufficiency, and ramping up the performance and production of its home-grown products is part of that. While the company’s current manufacturing capabilities can’t build 7nm hardware, mainland China’s largest foundry, SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) announced volume production of 14nm wafers as of last November. We don’t know anything about yields, so we can’t speculate there, but China is catching up to the United States, Korea, and Taiwan in terms of advanced semiconductor manufacturing capabilities.
Roku owners should put together a Plan B right now for the Super Bowl.
On Thursday night, Roku sent an email to customers with a sudden and largely unexplained warning: All Fox streaming channels will not be available on Roku devices after Friday. This is a problem because the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers battle for NFL supremacy on Sunday night on Fox.
Roku's email didn't provide any specifics beyond that, or even mention the Super Bowl. In a statement to Mashable, Roku confirmed that this is a rights dispute between the two companies. They had a distribution deal that runs through Friday, but nothing beyond that. Read more...
Americans don’t agree on much these days, but thankfully there’s one fact coming out of government reports that’s pretty incontrovertible: However awesome the F-35 might be in theory — whatever heights of achievement it might one day achieve — the plane as it exists today is in pretty sorry shape. Bloomberg’s Anthony Capaccio recently got a chance to preview the annual report prepared by Robert Behler, the DoD’s director of operational test and evaluation. While the latest version of the report doesn’t identify any fundamentally new failings, continued operational problems in the existing categories are more than enough to have stymied the effort to bring the aircraft to full readiness.
Behler’s office has identified 13 Category 1 “must fix” issues directly impacting safety and combat capability before the $22B Block 4 phase of the program commences. The problems detailed by Behler are separate from the announcement on January 22, 2020, that the aircraft’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) would be scrapped and replaced with a brand-new software project. ALIS was supposed to be a revolutionary parts and logistics management system, but it’s never worked properly (we’ve covered ALIS problems in years past at ET). Now that system will be replaced by a new, cloud-based solution designated ODIN (Operational Data Integrated Network). Like ALIS, ODIN will be created in partnership with Lockheed-Martin.
The big problem of Behler’s most recent report, according to Bloomberg, is that the Air Force version of the F-35 has a major problem with its 25mm cannon. The GAU-22/A cannon used by the Air Force is mounted internally. Structural cracking has been a problem for the F-35 for years, and it continues to be an issue today. The report states that “The effect on F-35 service life and the need for additional inspection requirements are still being determined.”
The externally-mounted versions of the gun used by the Marines and Navy doesn’t have the same problem, but the USAF variant has unacceptably low accuracy when used against ground-based targets. Yes, the F-35A has such poor accuracy, it can’t even hit the ground… accurately. Being made of steel and under the influence of gravity, it’s thoroughly capable of hitting the dirt at any other point. It just might do so a few feet to the left or right of where you thought it would.
No significant portion of the F-35 fleet in service with any branch of the US military was capable of achieving what then-Defense Secretary James Mattis promised to achieve in 2018: Namely, that the aircraft be mission-capable, on average, 80 percent of the time. The report doesn’t give percentages but states that all branches lagged the goal “by a large margin,” with the Air Force scoring best, the Marines ranking “roughly midway,” and the Navy’s performance being described as “particularly poor.” The gun issue is unique to the F-35A, but most of the other issues are cross-branch.
Over the years I’ve written about the F-35, there’s been a lot of back-and-forth about whether it’s the “right” design to fight against America’s enemies in the engagements we will face in the future. The more practical question seems to genuinely be whether this aircraft can ever achieve the expectations that have been placed on it. It’s not the most tortured vehicle to ever move through the Pentagon procurement process — I’m pretty sure that dubious honor still belongs to the Bradley Fighting Vehicle — but the cost of the F-35’s development blows the BFV’s price tag out of the water. At least, it blows the BFV out of the water if you have the good sense to aim with a missile. Nineteen years after Lockheed’s X-35 beat Boeing’s X-32 to win the JSF program, that whole “gun” thing is looking a little sketchy.
The F-35 undergoing wind testing.
Every time I look at the F-35, I wonder how the Air Force’s drone programs are coming along. Even if we eventually fix the plane, how long it will be before its replaced in many roles by drone fighters? I’m not claiming that’s going to happen in the next year or two, but the F-16 first entered service in 1980. Forty years later, it’s one of the most popular (and least expensive) fighter jets to operate in the world. There seems little chance of the F-35 achieving the same recognition.
I don’t expect the drone aircraft of 2022 to be punching holes in the F-35’s raison d’etre, but I’d be downright surprised if it’s still flying sorties in 2050. The plane is already scheduled to spend an extra year in testing trying to iron out these bugs, but the number of software flaws has only fallen slightly in 14 months, from 917 in September 2018, to 873 in November 2019.
At this point, has anyone considered a seance to contact Wilbur and Orville Wright?
Researchers have snapped the best-resolution view of the sun ever, courtesy of the Daniel K. Inouye 4-meter solar telescope. The image, which resolves features as small as 18 miles wide (30km), is an unprecedented glimpse of what the surface of the sun really looks like.
Typical images of the sun look like this, as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), in geosynchronous orbit above Earth.
This sort of image shows us a certain amount of detail, but it’s missing a lot — partly as a consequence of being shot from 93 million miles away. Then again, the SDO is also in orbit, which we know typically allows for much better viewing conditions than any ground-based telescope.
What allows the Inouye Solar Telescope to see in such detail compared with the SDO? Adaptive optics, location, and sheer size. At four meters (technically 4.24), the Inouye is the largest solar telescope on Earth and its location at Hawaii is one of the best-known locations for clear-sky viewing during the day. The situation appears to be analogous to the relationship between Hubble and some of our largest ground-based telescopes. Hubble has a 2.4-meter lens, while the European Extremely Large Telescope currently under construction in Chile will have a 39.3-meter lens upon completion. Hubble isn’t important because it presents us with the largest window on the heavens, but because the specific characteristics of space-based observation give us an additional level of bit-depth in areas other than the additional light-gathering capability from scaling up a lens. The Inouye Solar Telescope is expected to cooperate on observations with the already in-orbit NASA Parker Solar Probe and the joint ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter (currently prepping for launch).
In this case, the 4-meter telescope was able to make out what looks a lot like peanut brittle.
The cell-like structures – each about the size of Texas – are the signature of violent motions that transport heat from the inside of the sun to its surface. Hot solar material (plasma) rises in the bright centers of “cells,” cools off and then sinks below the surface in dark lanes in a process known as convection. In these dark lanes we can also see the tiny, bright markers of magnetic fields. Never before seen to this clarity, these bright specks are thought to channel energy up into the outer layers of the solar atmosphere called the corona. These bright spots may be at the core of why the solar corona is more than a million degrees!
These images have been lightly processed to remove noise and enhance the shape of the structures; the full data set is still undergoing scientific analysis. Still, seeing the fine-scale structure of the sun is a reminder that it isn’t actually “just” a ball of burning gas. The science of how heat is theorized to move through a star and the large-scale structures we observe has implications for stellar theory. It could tell us something about how our own sun is evolving over its own lifespan, and might even have implications for our attempts to create sustainable fusion power generation on Earth. A better understanding of solar dynamics might also enable us to predict coronal mass ejections in the future — and that could be critically important, given the risk they pose.
I’m downright curious to see what kind of new data we’ll learn once the Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter, and the Inouye Solar Telescope are online simultaneously.
TL;DR: The LG PK3 XBOOM Go speaker is on sale for £37.66 on Amazon, saving you 62% on list price.
A powerful speaker is a necessity for a successful party, but these devices can often let you down due to a number of common issues.
It doesn't matter how big and bassy the sound is if your speaker is troubled by connection and battery problems. You need a device that ticks every box, and that's exactly what the LG PK3 XBOOM Go speaker does.
The LG PK3 XBOOM Go speaker offers up 12 hours of power from a single charge, so you can keep the vibe going all night long without needing to find a power outlet. It also has high fidelity Bluetooth, which allows for bigger transfers of data from your mobile to the speaker. This means you'll get the superior sound quality you'd expect from a wired connection, but without the restriction that comes with cables. Read more...
There is only one possible conclusion to draw from Hummer's official announcement that its next iteration will be as an electric SUV: There are finally enough badass electric cars out there for our country's national treasure, the Fast & Furious film franchise, to go electric.
The drag racers and drifters of the once earnest, now over the top film series are better known for putting the pedal to the metal in old school American muscle. Of course, no members of the Fast gang are going to turn down a light and bullet-fast Japanese ride, either. And fine, they'll take a Ferrari or a BMW if they must. Read more...
Some people are just forgetful and nothing is going to change that. It doesn't matter how many reminders these people are given, they will continually misplace keys, lose phones, and run around the house in a panic trying to track everything down.
All is not lost though, because Tile's range of product finders can help. These clever little devices track down your belongings so that those moments of total despair could be a thing of the past.
Your smartphone can make your Tile ring when you misplace your things within Bluetooth range, or you can double press the Tile button to make your phone ring, even when it’s on silent. You're covered either way. Read more...
TL;DR: The Philips Sonicare DiamondClean electric toothbrush dual pack is on sale for £179.99 on Amazon, saving you 25% on list price.
There is a lot of clever technology that goes into an electric toothbrush nowadays, with the latest models packing everything from pressure sensors to smart timers.
Top brands like Philips are continuing to release new and exciting innovations, and the latest charging solution is really something. You can now get a sleek glass charger that provides two weeks of regular use from a single full charge.
The charging glass means you can finally ditch all those ugly wires that have been blighting your pristine bathroom for years. It's the stylish charging solution that nobody wanted, but actually seems like a pretty great idea. Read more...
Despite the growth of Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, good 'ol Facebook still reigns supreme as the most-used social network around. Crazy, right? With 2.45 billion monthly active users, it's clearly doing something right. Perhaps, now hear us out, it's all in how it's built.
Facebook, along with Wikipedia, Yahoo, Flickr, Tumblr, and 80 percent of websites all over the web are built with PHP – a server-side coding language used to create custom websites. Basically, while HTML lays the groundwork for your website or app, PHP takes it to the next level. If you're looking to learn a coding language in 2020, go for the dynamic and powerful PHP with this four-course Essential PHP Coding Bundle. Read more...
Listening to music, podcasts or audio books on your iPhone makes perfect sense given its origins are steeped in the old days of the iPod. To get the most out of your audio experience however, you really need a good set of headphones or earphones. The ones that come bundled with your iPhone just don't sound as good as a dedicated pair.
It's important to know what you're looking for when seeking out the best headphones for iPhone. Here's what you need to know and the best headphones and earphones for every scenario in life.
Know your iPhone's capabilities
It's probably time to go wireless.
If you've got an older iPhone, i.e. an iPhone 7 or earlier, you still have a headphone jack which means you can use older types of headphones as well as connect to them via Bluetooth. Read more...
The active noise cancellation option in the Beats Solo Pro make these a great pair of headphones for tuning out coworkers (and then tuning back in when you need to.)
Colors: Black, Gary, Red, Dark Blue, Ivory, Light Blue
Battery life: 22 hours with Active Noise Cancellation on
A cable unites the earbuds so they always stick together, but you'll be completely untethered from your iPhone and are free to run, jump, and climb with ease.
Though we wouldn't recommend wearing these Sony headphones for working out, they are stellar for your daily commute and can even be personalized to fit your audio preferences.
TL;DR: The intelligent Eight Sleep Pod mattress is $250 off with the Mashable-exclusive code MASHABLE250.
Getting enough quality sleep is vital for your mental and physical health and overall wellbeing. If your mattress is preventing you from doing so, it's time to upgrade.
The Pod from Eight Sleep is more than just a mattress; it's a whole-ass sleep system, with smart technology to monitor and regulate temperature and track your sleep. This advanced bed starts at $2,295 for a full, but Mashable readers can save $250 through Feb. 6 by using the code MASHABLE250.
So, what makes the Pod so great? It tracks and learns your sleeping habits and adjusts its temperature to provide you with optimal comfort. It even features a thermo alarm that begins gradually cooling the bed to gently wake you up in the morning. Try making an excuse for falling back asleep when you no longer have a warm bed waiting for you. Read more...
In these divided times, it's easy to blame the internet for so much of the partisanship, misinformation, and general noise in our political discourse. But a new study suggests that cynicism about news on social media is one area where we're mostly on the same page.
The Pew Research Center surveyed over 12,000 adults in the U.S. about how familiar they are with media providing political and election news. One portion of the survey was asked about six social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Reddit), how often they get their news from those sites, and how much trust they put in that news. Read more...
Samsung's next generation of flagship phones, the Galaxy S20 family, isn't officially unveiled yet, but you can already reserve your spot in line to buy them.
This is different from a pre-order, which typically happens after the device has been announced. In fact, the reservation is basically just a way to get in line for the pre-order. There's no need to pay anything, just go to Samsung's website, enter your name, email and ZIP code, and you'll be notified when you can pre-order the phone.
The teaser on the site (below) doesn't show you much, except that there's something beneath a while sheet and that something belongs to Samsung. Read more...
Elon Musk, the CEO of multiple multi-billion-dollar companies, is making music again — and he's exploring an entirely new genre.
Unlike his 2019 rap song "RIP Harambe", the new tune — launched on SoundCloud around 11 p.m. Pacific Time — is an old-school techno hit that keeps it simple and actually wouldn't be that much out of place at an Ibiza party. (The only genre tag, however, is #Anime.)
Musk claims that he wrote the lyrics — which mostly consist of the words "Don't doubt your vibe, because it's you" being sung over and over — and that he also performed the vocal duties. Not bad. Read more...
Facebook is cracking down on coronavirus rumors and conspiracy theories.
The company said that its fact checkers will debunk false claims about the coronavirus, and that it will remove some posts pushing conspiracy theories about it.
"We will also start to remove content with false claims or conspiracy theories that have been flagged by leading global health organizations and local health authorities that could cause harm to people who believe them," the company wrote in a statement.
"We are doing this as an extension of our existing policies to remove content that could cause physical harm." Read more...
IBM CEO Virginia Rometty, one of the most prominent female leaders in tech, is stepping down on April 6th, 2020. She will still serve as Executive Chairman of the Board through the end of the year, but she's retiring completely after that. Rometty will be replaced as CEO by Arvind Krishna, who currently runs the company's cloud business and who was a key figure in IBM's Red Hat acquisition. She called Krishna "the right CEO for the next era at IBM."
https://ift.tt/2u67zhB from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2S4zNBp
via IFTTT
Just as Amazon was basking in the news of a massive earnings win, the tech giant quietly published — as it always does — its latest transparency report, revealing a slight dip in the number of government demands for user data. Amazon said it received 1,841 subpoenas, 440 search warrants and 114 other court orders for user data — such as its Echo and Fire devices — during the six-month period ending 2019. The company's cloud unit, Amazon Web Services, also saw a decline in the number of demands for data stored by customers, down by about 10%.
https://ift.tt/2SgFVa3 from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/37HWz8V
via IFTTT
You're going to want to waste a few minutes hours playing with the new Google Earth mobile app.
The most recent version of the app shows stars in the background when you zoom out. And since you can view from 30,000 miles above the planet, and then rotate Earth to see the stars and the galaxies in the background, it's pretty friggin' cool.
For some reason, Google's official post announcing the feature is gone, but the functionality is there. Check out an image taken on my iPhone 11 Pro Max and the latest version of Google Earth for iOS, below.
Pretty.
Image: Stan Schroeder/Google Earth/Mashable Read more...
Whether you're reading this because you genuinely love working out or because your air fryer isn't making you feel as healthy as you predicted it would, one thing's for sure: A fitness tracker is a necessity for anyone hoping to get fit this year.
The rhetoric around fitness has changed quite a bit recently, and the self-care revolution can be thanked for it. Actively monitoring your fitness progression isn't just for athletes or people training for their local park run. It's a factor of wellness that people are building into their daily groove, just like getting regular massages or keeping up with a skincare routine. Read more...
The worlds of virtual and augmented reality have yet to land on the applications and hardware to truly spark mass-market, consumer interest in the space, but meanwhile a startup building mixed reality services for business users has raised a round of funding, underscoring the opportunity in enterprise. Spatial, which has developed a "holographic" collaboration platform that people use to speak and work together in virtual rooms through the use of strikingly effective avatars -- think: a supercharged, virtual reality version of Zoom or a Google Hangout -- is today announcing that it has raised $14 million, a Series A that it will be using to continue building out the functionality of its application and its interoperability with a wider range of hardware, as well as to start looking at how it can turn its tech into a platform that could be used by others, for example by way of an SDK.
https://ift.tt/37LVlcU from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/2GDmAdq
via IFTTT
NASA’s twin Voyager probes have been on a mission of exploration for decades, and they’ve performed admirably. Both probes have now left the solar system, providing the first direct measurements of the universe outside our little corner of it. Keeping a 42-year-old space probe working is no simple feat, though. Engineers are working to restore normal operations on Voyager 2 after automated fault protection routines shut off the probe’s science instruments.
While Voyager 2 was the first of the two probes to leave Earth back in 1977, it took a more roundabout course out of the solar system. It remains the only spacecraft to visit both Saturn and Neptune, which kept it from reaching the interstellar medium until 2018. Voyager 1, on the other hand, left the solar system back in 2012.
The first sign of trouble came on January 25th when the spacecraft failed to execute a planned maneuver to calibrate its magnetic field instrument. Voyager 2 remained in contact with Earth, but its science instruments shut off after the failed maneuver. After studying the probe’s telemetry, the team determined that the missed spin left two high-power systems operating at the same time. That state would call for more power than the probe had, so the fault protection kicked in to turn off non-essential systems.
The approximate positions of Voyager-1 and 2.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) equipped Voyager 2 with a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) for power as it’s too far from the sun for solar panels to be effective. This type of power source, the same used on the Curiosity Mars rover, provides a constant supply of power, but its potency drops a bit every year as the plutonium fuel decays. Engineers have slowly ratcheted down the probe’s power requirements over the years. For example, they disabled the heater on the cosmic ray subsystem instrument to save power. That instrument has continued to operate, though.
With a full understanding of the issue, JPL staff were able to reactivate the science suite yesterday (January 28th) by flipping off one of the high-power subsystems. The team is currently working to restore normal operations, but that will take some time. This is a machine from the 1970s after all, and it’s 11.5 billion miles away. Each command takes 17 hours to reach Voyager 2, and the confirmation takes 17 hours to come back. So, that’s almost a day and a half just to find out if a command did what it was supposed to do. Despite the difficulties, the Voyager probes remain vital tools in our study of deep space.
Avast announced that it would be winding down Jumpshot, its $180 million marketing technology subsidiary that had been in the business of collecting data from across the web, including within walled gardens, analysing it, and then -- unknown to users -- selling it on to third-party customers that included tech giants like Microsoft and Google and big brands like Pepsi and Home Depot. "We started Jumpshot in 2015 with the idea of extending our data analytics capabilities beyond core security," writes the CEO Ondrej Vlcek in a blog post in response to Jumpshot news. Today's news comes on the heels of a series of developments and investigations highlighting Jumpshot's practices, stretching back to December, when Mozilla and Opera removed Avast extensions after reports that they were collecting user data and browsing histories.
https://ift.tt/2QlbqzK from Yahoo Tech https://ift.tt/36K7Rbz
via IFTTT
TL;DR: Register for the Samsung Galaxy S20 on Mobiles.co.uk and get £50 cashback after you make your purchase.
There is another set of major mobile launches on the horizon, and this time it's Samsung taking centre stage.
Samsung is expected to introduce the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+, and Galaxy S20 Ultra in February. All of these devices are likely to sport Infinity-O Dynamic AMOLED displays with WQHD+ resolution and up to a 120Hz refresh rate. It's all still speculation at this point, but you can see why there is real excitement surrounding the launch.
Snapchat's new "Bitmoji TV" series is ready for its debut and, yes, it's about as odd as you'd expect.
After weeks of dropping bizarre trailers, the company is launching Bitmoji TV, a new cartoon series located in the app's Discover section which stars each user's personal Bitmoji.
I've now had a chance to watch the first few episodes of Bitmoji TV and I still don't know quite how to describe it. If there's an alternate universe where your Bitmoji "lives" in your Snap Map, then Bitmoji TV is like its Saturday-morning-cartoon-themed playground.
While it's a "show" in the sense that there will be a full season of weekly episodes — 10 in total — there's no actual overarching plot. And the only recurring characters are you and your friends' Bitmoji which appear throughout each "episode." (The company has also tapped a few celebs, like Randy Jackson and Andy Richter, whose Bitmoji personas will make guest appearances.) Read more...
We know from multiple reports that Apple is planning to launch an affordable, 4.7-inch smartphone, likely dubbed the iPhone SE 2, this March.
But what about all the other gadgets the company is working on for the near future? Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has a list (via MacRumors), and it's an interesting one.
First, the usual suspects.
Apple reportedly plans to launch new iPads with a triple rear camera and 3D sensing support, paving the way for better augmented reality (AR) applications. The iPads should arrive as early as March.
The company will also launch new MacBooks, although it's unclear whether there will be a new MacBook Pro or a new MacBook Air. A new 13-inch MacBook Pro with a scissor-switch keyboard mechanism (like the one seen in Apple's recently released, 16-inch MacBook Pro) appears more likely, but we may also see both Read more...
TL;DR: Start prepping for summer early this year, starting with a stellar playlist. Play it on this LG speaker while you're at it — it's $50 off in the PCMag Shop for a limited time.
We know it's only January, but it's never too early to start planning your summer music playlists for the forthcoming beach trips, poolside hangs, and backyard BBQs. The days of the boombox are over (unless you're super into retro tech, which is cool, too). If you truly want a summer full of tunes, you should pick up a wireless Bluetooth speaker.
Making it a waterproof speaker helps, too — like this one from LG. It's on sale in the PCMag Shop for $50 off, so get a move on. [Editor's note: PCMag and Mashable are both part of Ziff Media Group.] Read more...
Need a new computer, but can't afford to dish out $1,000 or more? We get it. You're probably still paying off your holiday debt. Plus, you know, all your other bills.
Fortunately, you don't need to spend a fortune to upgrade your setup. Refurbished computers are a budget-friendly way to get all the perks of a new device, minus the astronomical price tag. They're certified to work as good as new and just happen to be pre-loved by someone else. Even better, buying refurbished is a respectable way to reduce your carbon footprint.
Here are some deals on pre-loved Chromebooks and laptops that'll cover every budget. Read more...
