TL;DR: The Ultimate DevOps Mastery bundle is on sale for £25.41 as of August 1, saving you 95% on list price.
In its 2017 State of DevOps Report, Puppet.com found that DevOps engineers are considered "a significant attribute to businesses". Those that hire people with DevOps skills deploy code with 30 times the frequency of their competitors, with 50% fewer failures.
Despite this, only 18% of those surveyed claimed that their organisations had a DevOps engineer at their company. What's that sound? That my friends is the sound of opportunity.
TL;DR: The Fundamentals of Physics course is on sale for £7.69 as of August 1, saving you 94% on list price.
When you were a kid, being forced to learn things was the worst. You coasted through school doing the least amount of work possible and filled your free time with mindless nonsense.
When you became an adult, you suddenly realised that you don’t know half of what you thought you did. Fortunately, it’s never too late to learn something, and a great place to start is by taking a course in physics. Yes, physics. Stick with us here.
It finally happened. Former KKK leader David Duke, one of the United States’ most well-known white supremacists, was banned from Twitter late Thursday night.
According to a Twitter spokesperson, Duke’s account “has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of the Twitter Rules on hateful conduct.”
“This enforcement action is in line with our recently-updated guidance on harmful links,” Twitter explained.
Critics have long questioned how David Duke was able to remain on Twitter for so long. Duke joined Twitter in 2009, and spread white supremacist messages even as other openly white supremacist users were banned. Read more...
General Motors is teaming up with the EVgo charging network to add 2,700 fast-charging connectors in cities across the U.S.
The Chevy Bolt EV maker announced the new charging infrastructure Friday, promising to add fast-charging stations in more than 35 cities and suburbs within the next five years. The first batch of stations will open in early 2021. Already EVgo has 800 fast-charging stations, and this partnership should add at least 650 stations by 2025.
Each station usually has at least four charging ports that can juice up EV batteries anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. The new stations will charge at 100 to 350 kilowatts to keep up with faster EV batteries becoming more available in cars. Read more...
Even if you didn't care about watching Game of Thrones or Endgame in 4K, dedicated Beyoncé stans are certainly in the market now that the musical film and visual album Black Is King has finally made its Disney+ debut. The variety of scenes directed by the Grammy winner herself is nothing short of incredible, with vibrant, highly-costumed shoots in New York, Los Angeles, South Africa, West Africa, London, and Belgium. A slew of familiar faces from the family and beyond also make an appearance.
But the still shots or viewing quality on your laptop simply won't do it justice. The closest thing you can get to experiencing it IRL (or going to a Beyoncé concert) is by watching it in 4K and HDR. Read more...
CRISPR tech startup Mammoth Biosciences is among the companies that revealed backing from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Rapid Accleration of Diagnostics (RADx) program on Friday. Mammoth received a contract to scale up its CRISPR-based SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic test in order to help address the testing shortages across the U.S. Mammoth's CRISPR-based approach could potentially offer a significant solution to current testing bottlenecks, because it's a very different kind of test when compared to existing methods based on PCR technology.
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Calling all students! If you don't know about Best Buy's Student Deals, we're here to make sure you don't miss out any longer.
Getting prepared to head back to class (whether in real life or virtually) is not a cheap task. Besides books and writing tools, you'll most likely have your eye on a lot of tech like laptops and headphones.
Luckily, Best Buy is coming through with a ton of sales, including this one on a pair of second-generation JBL FREE True Wireless in-ear headphones. You can take nearly 50% off and grab them for just $79.99, a $70 savings. Yup, for under $80 you can enjoy hands-free calling with their built-in microphone and crystal clear sound that actually stays put in your ear (they're designed to fit securely and not budge). Charge them up and you'll be set with up to 4 hours of use. Read more...
It might take a little effort to get one in the United States, but Oppo's new smartwatch is one to keep your eyes on.
On Friday, the company announced that its new Oppo Watch, powered by Google's WearOS platform (and looking a whole heckuva lot like Apple Watch), would be immediately available in "select markets." Though, apart from India, the company hasn't specified which other territories will be seeing the Watch yet. Like many smartwatches, it's filled to the brim with fitness and lifestyle features, along with some new display enhancements.
Unfortunately, Oppo didn't confirm a U.S. launch or exact pricing. That said, wearable enthusiasts will surely find something to like about the Oppo Watch, which is available in two 46mm models and one 41mm model. Read more...
Samsung isn't even the first brand to attempt at-home steam cleaning with a smart closet of sorts (the LG Styler was a CES 2019 favorite and Whirlpool debuted one in 2015) but the Samsung AirDresser is the first one to have a special focus on the longevity of your wardrobe by protecting sensitive fabrics and using gentle air cleaning to prolong time between real washes. Read more...
TL;DR: July 31 through Aug. 2, Best Buy is running a Samsung savings event with tons of great tech deals.
Best Buy has been having some pretty stellar sales lately, and this weekend will be no different. Starting July 31, the retailer is holding a Samsung savings event where you can score amazing deals on 4K TVs, tablets, smartphones, home appliances, and so much more. This event runs through Aug. 2.
We're not going to waste your time and tell you about every single thing included in this sale — you can look for yourself. But, we do want to highlight a few standout deals so you can get a taste of how good this sale is. Read more...
You Got This is a series that spotlights the gear you need to improve one area of your life. If you buy something from this post, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Even though movie nights look a little different than you're used to, that doesn’t mean we can’t create awesome movie watching experiences at home. With a few product upgrades from onn., an exclusive tech brand at Walmart, movie night is sure to be a crowd favorite.Whether you’re streaming a new flick on your Roku or watching an old favorite for the 50th time, here are some suggestions for creating the ultimate movie night, from your living room to your lawn. Don’t forget to make some popcorn! Read more...
You know what we always say: The best kind of laptop is the laptop you didn't pay all that much for (and the one that works well, too, we guess).
If paying thousands of dollars for a piece of tech isn't something you're into, you're not out of luck — there are still a ton of budget devices out there, ones that can still perform all the tasks you need them to.
Reliability and sharp performance are two things that Dell's Inspiron laptops do quite well, and you can get this one for $110 if you buy directly from their website. Read more...
Google is making it easier for buyers and customers to find Black-owned businesses to support. The tech giant has introduced a Black-owned attribute merchants based in the US can add to their profile, so long as they’re verified. Google will then put the new icon alongside any other attribute business owners choose to display on the Highlights section of their profile.
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If you have a small business, you know it needs to have an online presence. The days of being able to succeed without some kind of website or online store are far behind us.
Fortunately, making your mark online has never been easier thanks to many companies offering easy-to-use website builders. That means you no longer need to hire a dedicated designer to construct your website. Many of these sites appreciate that you might not have expert knowledge, offering simple drag-and-drop interfaces and intuitive methods that help your website rank highly on search engines.
With so many services out there, how do you know what's best for your business? Read on, and we explain what to look for when buying a website builder and everything you need to know about the best ones for you. Read more...
TL;DR: Make your Amazon Echo 2 wireless with the SkyTote Battery Sleeve for $23.99, a 59% savings.
As smart as your digital home assistant is, it's not exactly mobile. Alexa generally lives inside your smart speaker, which needs to remain tethered to an outlet. That also means you have to bring yourself to it whenever you want to issue a command, ask a question, or choose some music. Seems a bit counterproductive, yeah?
What if you want to bring your digital assistant with you on a camping trip? Or out by the pool? Or anywhere else where you don't have access to an outlet? That's where the SkyTote Battery Sleeve comes in to save the day and keep your Amazon Echo 2 working no matter where you are. Read more...
A good blow dry is the foundation to a good hair day. The fanciest hair straightener or curling wand in the world won't do you much good if your hair was singed with a crappy blow dryer beforehand. That's that on that.
It's common knowledge that pressing hair onto a sizzling hot flat iron or curling iron isn't great for it. We're quick to blame those tools for split ends and frizz, but less often, we consider that part of the problem may be the way the hair was dried in the first place. If your lifelong dream has been to give yourself the same glossy blowout that you get at the salon, your skills might not be totally to blame — your stylist's professional blow dryer is a lot better than your drugstore one. Read more...
You look at your watch and see your step count, how many calories you burned on that bike ride you went on earlier, when your next period is due to arrive, what the temperature is outside, and more, but cannot figure out how to get back to the main screen that tells you the time. Sigh. Remember the good ol' days when watches told the time — and only the time?
The FCC has unanimously approved Amazon’s Project Kuiper, giving the tech giant the go-ahead to deploy and operate a constellation of 3,236 satellites. Amazon asked the FCC for permission to launch thousands of Low Earth Orbit satellites in July 2019, just a few months months after announcing the project. Similar to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, Kuiper’s purpose is to provide satellite-based broadband services.
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TL;DR: The Writing With Impact course is on sale for £7.69 as of July 31, saving you 95% on list price.
Prolific writers make writing look easy, but it's really not the case.
Between finding a unique, zippy opener to decoding a jumble of thoughts and emotions into clean, concise prose, the whole process can be grueling. Yes, even for professional writers. And when it comes to writing persuasively? Forget about it.
As a writing tutor at Cambridge University, Clare Lynch knows a thing or two about good writing and has developed an online course dedicated to making you a better writer. The Writing With Impact course features 5.5 hours of on-demand videos and 30 articles, and will teach you the nuts and bolts of persuasive writing. Read more...
It’s never been easier to start your own business. On the flip side, it’s also never been harder to start your own business. Everyone and their mother is doing it and there are so many different digital ways to reach customers that it can seriously make your head spin.
This massive educational bundle contains 22 individual courses that will teach you how to become a digital marketing rock star. You’ll get lifetime access to 298 lectures and some 28 hours of content covering everything from social media and content marketing to email marketing and paid marketing. Whether you’re looking to grow your own business, land a marketing job, or help a client increase their business, this masterclass will get you where you need to go and take your skills to the next level. Read more...
Twitter just released an update on the massive hack that prompted the Great Blue Tick Silence of 2020, letting us know exactly how many accounts were actually impacted.
On July 15, hackers posted tweets from several prominent, verified Twitter users' accounts, falsely claiming that any bitcoin sent to a certain address would be paid back in double. The scam netted the hackers 400 payments with a total value of $121,000 — a tidy sum for a handful of tweets.
Now, Twitter has revealed what it's learned about how this hack took place, stating that it "relied on a significant and concerted attempt to mislead certain employees and exploit human vulnerabilities to gain access to [Twitter's] internal systems." Read more...
Last quarter, Facebook made $18.3 billion in advertising revenue, which blew past investor expectations. While the company didn't give numbers for July (when the boycott began), it said its ad revenue growth rate for the first three weeks of July tracked with the rest of its 2020 year-over-year ad revenue growth rate of 10%. Meaning, despite companies from Ben & Jerry's to Unilever pulling their advertising dollars, things are basically the same for Facebook's bottom line, and Facebook expects it to stay that way. Read more...
Apple has pandemic work-from-home orders and stimulus checks to thank for setting new all-time sales records across a number of its product categories.
Starting with the iPhone, which saw a decrease in sales last quarter, Apple revealed revenue for that product category grew by two percent during the third quarter.
"In April, we expected year-over-year performance to worsen, but we saw better than expected demand in May and June," said CEO Tim Cook during the company's earnings call. "We attribute this increase in demand to several interactive causes, including a strong iPhone SE launch, continued economic stimulus, and potentially some benefit from shelter-in-place restrictions lifting around the world," he explained. Read more...
Konami has been making games for decades, but now it’s making gaming PCs. Konami Amusement, a subsidiary of Konami Holdings, is now accepting orders for its new line of Arespear gaming PCs. The company expects to begin shipments for the Japanese market in September, and they are decidedly not cheap.
The Arespear computers come in three different versions, all of which have the same custom “wiffleball” cases, measuring a compact 575.3 x 501.5 x 230mm. They also have a dedicated Asus Xonar XE sound card. The C300 is the base model, while the C700 and C700+ offer better specs. The C700+ is also the only one of the three with a transparent side panel.
The C300 will have respectable internals with an Intel Core i5-9400F CPU (air-cooled), 8GB of DDR4 memory, a 512GB M.2 SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650. With that GPU, you’re limited to a single DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.0b, and a DVI-D port. You’re probably thinking that sounds alright for a modest gaming PC, but the price is anything but modest. The C300 will cost 184,800 yen, which works out to $1,760.
The C300 without a window or RGB but still priced at nearly $2,000.
If you step up to the C700 Arespear, you get a water-cooled i7-9700 CPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 512 M.2 SSD, a 1TB hard drive, and an Nvidia RTX 2070 Super. You’ve got many more display options with these computers in the form of three DisplayPort 1.4 ports and an HDMI 2.0b on the video card. There is also an additional DisplayPort and HDMI on the motherboard. The C700 costs 316,800 yen ($3,016), and the C700+ is 338,800 yen ($3,226).
The only difference between the two 700-series is the window and RGB lighting on the C700+. That distinction really drives home the wild pricing. Are people going to pay $200 more just for some RGB? Probably, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. We don’t know when or if Konami Amusement, which also makes arcade games, will launch the computers in other markets.
Intel’s decision to tap pure-play foundries like TSMC for potentially any future project has sent shockwaves through the industry. One of the biggest questions raised in the wake of the announcement is just how temporary it truly is. Intel is definitely positioning the delay as a pragmatic matter of getting its house in order, and for now, TSMC seems to agree.
According to DigiTimes, TSMC has no plans to expand its fab capacity for Intel, viewing it as a temporary customer rather than a long-term win. If you’re a fan of Intel manufacturing (or would like to be again), this is a very good sign. While Intel isn’t one of the five largest semiconductor manufacturers any longer, all of which are capable of over 1,000,000 wafer starts per month, it’s still one of the largest at an estimated 817,000 wafer starts per month. And unlike TSMC, Samsung, or GlobalFoundries, Intel uses its own capacity almost entirely for its own products.
Image by IC Insights
Further complicating the issue is the fact that Intel manufacturers the majority of its products on its leading-edge nodes, while pure-play foundry wafer starts will be spread across all of the nodes the foundry manufacturers, not concentrated in 1-2 processes. In short, the capacity gap between Intel and any foundry Intel wanted to tap to handle its manufacturing is likely to be large. TSMC is said to currently view itself as Intel’s “rescuer,” not its long-term manufacturing partner.
Intel Could Be Snared by the Same Trap That Once Caught AMD
Before AMD and Intel settled their antitrust lawsuit, AMD was under a much more restrictive x86 license than it currently holds today. One of those restrictions was the requirement to own its own fabs. AMD was not allowed to pay TSMC, UMC, or any other pure-play foundry to manufacture x86 CPUs. It had to use its own facilities. Intel, of course, is under no such restriction, but there’s a variation of this problem haunting the semiconductor stage nonetheless.
Intel’s foundries are explicitly optimized to build Intel x86 CPUs, and its CPU designs are intended for fabrication at its own foundries. This hand-in-glove engineering is the advantage of being an integrated device manufacturer (IDM), and it’s one of the reasons Intel used to give to explain its industry-leading performance. So long as Intel is building and filling its own fabs, this model works well. Shifting business to a different foundry, however, creates problems.
The fact that Intel’s fabs are so specialized means they principally have value to Intel. Every dollar that Intel invests in paying TSMC to implement a specialized product line is a dollar it isn’t investing in fixing its own fabrication technology. Every facility that TSMC brings online for Intel to use is a facility it’ll probably need to use for something else as soon as Intel can return to its own fabs.
What happens if Intel can’t return to its own fabs? This doesn’t actually fix anything in the near term. TSMC doesn’t have the capacity to absorb Intel’s entire business because 1). Intel’s business is huge, 2). Fabs take 3-5 years to build. Even if Intel wanted to dump all of its own manufacturing today and TSMC actively wanted to take over as Intel’s manufacturer, it would take years to bring up new factories or modify existing Intel fabs to meet TSMC’s new guidelines.
I wrote the other day that Intel had given itself a 24-36 month deadline to fix its manufacturing, but upon further reflection, I’m not sure that was the most accurate way to summarize the problem. Intel can’t afford to wait 24-36 months to begin making plans to move its manufacturing to TSMC or Samsung. Given the difficulty and complexity of such transitions, Intel would need to be making an announcement more like this:
“We intend to deploy our own Xnm node and will transition to TSMC for Ynm beginning in 2022 / 2023.”
It seems unlikely anything less would suffice. Intel’s foundry partner would want the assurance of a publicly announced roadmap and would need the lead time to either build or allocate capacity. Intel, in turn, would have an obligation to inform its investors and to develop plans for how it would dispose of its foundry business. Building on n-nanometer at Intel and n+1 at TSMC would also smooth the roadmap rather than forcing Intel into further delays.
Given these facts, I’d modify my own earlier statement. The fact that Intel is still committing to a late 2022 – early 2023 timeline for its 7nm CPUs shortens the window the company has to pull the trigger on a production change. Should it decide to shift to TSMC or Samsung, it would need to make that announcement within the next 12-18 months to avoid the likelihood of even larger delays. The bring-up time on new fabs is long enough that Intel would almost certainly need to either license a process node, pay TSMC directly to build a fab, or operate its fabs in tandem with TSMC to avoid severe production shortages.
I still think it’s more likely that Intel deploys its own 7nm node and moves ahead with its efforts to overtake the pure-play foundries and re-establish process leadership than that the company pulls the plug on its own IDM status. The timeline for making that decision just may be a little shorter than I initially implied.
Need some bliss? The new 'Microsoft Flight Simulator' is almost ready to ship and Jessica Conditt can let you know what it's like. Also, big tech CEOs appeared (via video) on Capitol Hill, the Hummer EV has a new teaser and we're breaking down next week's Samsung event
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The last ice age on Earth ended about 11,000 years ago, but that was just a few flurries compared to so-called Snowball Earth scenarios. Scientists believe Earth experienced several of these periods when the entire surface was covered by ice and snow. New research from MIT points to a potential mechanism for Snowball Earth events, and that could help explain the development of complex life. It may also impact the search for exoplanets around other stars.
An ice age is simply a period during which global temperature drops sufficiently for polar ice caps and alpine glaciers to expand. A Snowball Earth is on a completely different level, and that’s made it difficult to identify causes. Researchers have long assumed that it has something to do with a reduction in incoming sunlight or drop in retained global heat, but the MIT team points specifically to “rate-induced glaciations” as the primary cause.
The findings suggest that all you need for a Snowball Earth is a sufficiently large drop in solar radiation reaching the planet’s surface. Interestingly, the modeling done by graduate student Constantin Arnscheidt and geophysics professor Daniel Rothman show that solar radiation doesn’t have to drop to any particular threshold to trigger a Snowball Earth. Rather, it just needs to drop quickly over a geologically short period of time.
When ice cover increases, the planet reflects more light and the glaciation becomes a “runaway” effect. That’s how you get to a Snowball scenario, but luckily for us, these periods are temporary. The planet’s carbon cycle is interrupted when ice and snow cover the entire surface, and that causes a build-up of carbon dioxide. Eventually, this leads to a warming trend that breaks Earth out of a snowball period.
The research suggests a few ways solar radiation could decrease fast enough to trigger global glaciation. For example, volcanic activity could deposit particles in the atmosphere that reflect sunlight before it reaches the surface. It’s also possible that biological processes could alter the atmosphere, producing more cloud cover to block the sun.
The two suspected snowball Earth periods most likely happened around 700 million years ago, which is a notable time in the planet’s history. That’s also when multicellular life exploded in the oceans. So perhaps, Snowball Earth cleared the way for the development of complex life. It might be the same on other planets, too. We may eventually spot exoplanets around distant stars in the “habitable zone” covered in ice. That doesn’t mean they’ll be icy forever, and big things could be coming as they thaw.
Small- to medium-sized companies that do a lot of international business have to deal with two big headaches: high foreign exchange fees and corporate expense tracking. Volopay, a Singapore-based financial tech startup with offices in Bangalore, wants to help by integrating prepaid multi-currency corporate cards, expense tracking and accounting tools into one free-to-use platform. It now has about 40 clients in Singapore, mostly tech startups like Dathena, Tookitaki and Appknox, and plans to launch in Indonesia and Australia within the next six months.
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Since the Apple Store’s purpose is to sell you the tech giant’s products, Apple has also launched an in—depth iPhone comparison tool. The Apple Store app launched in 2010 and expanded to 20 more countries back in March.
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