free technology

الخميس، 27 فبراير 2020

ET Deals: Extra $200 Off LG OLED 4K TVs, Extra 17 Percent Off Inspiron 3000

If you’re looking for a new high-end TV, check out LG’s 65-inch C9 Series AI ThinQ TVs. In addition to having a large 4K screen, these TVs feature advanced AI technology to improve image quality, and right now they are on sale with an $800 discount.

LG C9 Series OLED65C9PUA OLED 4K HDR 65-Inch Smart TV ($2,199.00)

LG’s C9 series TVs come equipped with the company’s customized Alpha9 Gen 2 processor that works to improve image quality and create a better picture than lesser competing TVs. As it is an OLED TV, it also has superior contrast to create deep blacks and rich colors, and it supports a comprehensive set of smart TV functions for streaming content. Right now it’s marked down from $2,999.99 to $2,199.00 from PCMag’s online store.

Dell Inspiron 3000 Intel Core i5-9400 Desktop w/ 8GB DDR4 RAM and 1TB 7,200RPM HDD ($481.39)

This computer was designed to be a well-rounded home PC with a reasonably fast Intel Core i5 processor and 8GB of RAM. It’s certainly not the fastest system on the market today, but it has plenty of performance for heavy web browsing and other tasks like editing photos. You can get it now from Dell reduced from $628.99 to $481.39 with promo code EXTRA17.

Featured Deals

Apple iPad Air 3rd Gen 256GB 10.5″ Retina WiFi Tablet (Space Gray) for $549 at Amazon (list price $649)
Dell Inspiron 3000 Intel Core i5-9400 6-core Desktop for $481.39 at Dell (use code: EXTRA17 – list price $628.99)
$10 Price Drop: eufy RoboVac 11S Slim 1300Pa Robot Vacuum for $149.99 at Amazon (use code: robovac11s – list price $229.99)
65″ LG C9 Series 4K OLED TV with Alpha 9 Processor, 120Hz at 4K, HDMI 2.1, Variable Refresh Rate for $1999 at PCMag Shop (use code: SAVE200 – list price $2999.99)
65″ LG B9 Series 4K OLED TV with 120Hz at 4K, HDMI 2.1, Variable Refresh Rate for $1799 at PCMag Shop (use code: SAVE200 – list price $2499.99)
eufy Robovac 35C 1500Pa Suction WiFi Robot Vacuum for $199.99 at Walmart (list price $299.99)
NETGEAR Orbi RBK23 AC2200 Tri-band Whole Home Mesh WiFi System (3-Pack) for $199.99 at Amazon (list price $299.99)
Dell Vostro Small 3470 Intel Core i5-9400 6-core Desktop for $549 at Dell (list price $927.14)
Asus Chromebook C425 Intel m3-8100Y 14″ 1080p Laptop for $299 at Walmart (list price $449)
Monoprice Maker Select 3D Printer v2 with Large Heated Build Plate for $168.99 at Amazon (list price $329.99)
Dell New Vostro 15 7000 Intel Core i7-9750H 6-core 15.6″ 1080p Laptop with GTX 1650, 16GB RAM, 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD for $1059 at Dell (list price $1927.14)
Blink XT2 Outdoor/Indoor Smart Security Camera 2-Camera Kit for $139.99 (3-Cameras $200) at Amazon (list price $179.99)
Microsoft Xbox Live Gold 3-Month Membership for $14.99 at Walmart (list price $24.99)
Today Only: Fairywill Rechargeable Electric Toothbrush with 3 Brush Heads for $18.99 at Amazon (list price $29.95)

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

Now read:

sourse ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://ift.tt/32wAEzP

Google Applies for Government Exemption to Work With Huawei

Huawei was one of Google’s biggest mobile partners until last year. The government action that cut Huawei off from US businesses meant Google could no longer license its services to the Chinese megacorporation. Huawei has been trudging onward without Google services, but that might change soon. Google has filed a formal application with the US government for an exemption to continue working with Huawei.

The US government under Trump began targeting Huawei in 2018 when it pressured carriers to drop plans to sell the company’s Mate 10 Pro smartphone. In spring 2019, the Commerce Department dropped the hammer, adding Huawei to the “Entity List.” That barred US firms from doing business with Huawei, unless they could get a special exemption. The government refused to process any of those applications for many months, but Microsoft eventually got one to continue licensing Windows to Huawei.

Huawei was close to overtaking Samsung to become the largest smartphone maker in the world before the ban took effect. Since then, Huawei has been forced to launch several phones without Google services. Its own store and app suite have filled in the gaps, but many Android users won’t consider buying a phone without Google services. Still, Huawei has remained afloat thanks to booming sales in China. Devices like the Mate 30 had such compelling hardware that some people were willing to overlook the software situation.

The Mate 30 was the first Huawei device to launch without Google apps.

Most companies wouldn’t have had any hope of making smartphones without US technology, but Huawei makes most of its own hardware, and Android itself is open source. Google services don’t work in China, so the company already had many of the pieces it needed to roll out non-Google phones in other countries. Huawei has even announced its own Android alternative called Harmony OS, which it could begin using in the future to make itself even less dependent on US technology.

If granted, the exemption would again allow Google to license its mobile services to Huawei. A company executive recently said that Huawei wouldn’t come back to Google even if it could. Huawei’s management team pushed back against that statement, but not very hard. It’s unlikely Google would go to the trouble of applying for an exemption if it didn’t think Huawei would be willing to become a partner again.

Top image credit: Getty Images

Now read:

sourse ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://ift.tt/2w7cjEt

Microsoft: Xbox Series X Can Resume Games Instantly After a Reboot

As we hurtle toward the next generation of game consoles, both Sony and Microsoft have started teasing the features they hope will encourage gamers to upgrade. In a recent podcast, Microsoft’s Larry Hryb talked about how the Xbox Series X could save you from losing game progress. The console can apparently save your game state, even through a reboot. Who needs save points?

On the Major Nelson podcast, Hryb explained his experience testing a game on the Xbox Series X. He had to reboot because of a system update. On current-gen consoles, that would mean either saving your game manually or finding a save point in games that don’t have manual saves. The alternative is losing some progress when the system reboots. However, Hryb says he was able to jump right back into his game where he left off because the Series X can save a game state across reboots.

This is a small detail, but it could change the way people interact with their consoles. Instead of worrying about saving on the Xbox Series X, you might just get in the habit of turning it off when you’re done playing. When you come back, the game will be waiting where you left off. Developers will probably have to build support for this feature, but we don’t know if that will be a mandatory element of releasing games on the Series X.

Microsoft’s new Xbox will support hardware-accelerated ray tracing for both video and audio.

Microsoft’s director of Xbox program management, Jason Ronald also teased a feature called “ray-traced audio.” We have ray tracing in graphics, which Nvidia promotes non-stop on its RTX cards. With GPUs, ray tracing calculates the path of light in virtual environments to make lighting more realistic. We already know the Xbox Series X will support that. Ronald says audio ray tracing can produce more immersive sound in games.

Microsoft will have new details on the Series X at the Game Developer Conference (GDC) next month, provided the event isn’t canceled. Several major exhibitors like EA, Sony, and Unity have already dropped out, citing concerns over the coronavirus epidemic. This echoing the exodus that led to the cancellation of Mobile World Congress earlier this month. Currently, Microsoft still plans to attend GDC, and the organizers are moving forward with plans to host the event.

Now read:

sourse ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://ift.tt/3cgyUij

Panasonic Shuffles Out of Buffalo, Ending Tesla Solar Panel Partnership

Panasonic Corp. will end its upstate New York partnership with Tesla to produce solar panels at a former steel mill in Buffalo. Tesla says it will continue on its own and build the panels; it may also hire some of the Panasonic engineers assigned there. This is one more sign that Panasonic’s longstanding relationship with Tesla is showing strains.

The two are building lithium-ion batteries at the Gigafactory in the Nevada desert outside Reno. But Tesla is now working with two other international battery-makers to meet demand as Tesla scales up its auto assembly plant in China. It’s also worrying to the state of New York and the so-called Buffalo Billion, effectively how much money the state invested to lure a pair of high-tech names to the rust-belt part of New York 400 miles away from booming New York City.

Why does inside-baseball stuff matter? It shows that agreements among industrial giants can fray and generate a seven-year itch in less than seven years. It’s also a cautionary tale to regions willing to invest money to lure high-tech business: You’d better get agreements from the businesses that they’ll invest, too. Tesla has pledged to invest $5 billion in New York State (capital expenditures and operating expenses) and have certain levels of employment. But … right now, Tesla has an April deadline to have 1,460 people working at the plant or face a $41.2 million underperformance penalty. Tesla says it has 1,500 full-time employees working there, including some contractors, with starting wages of $17 an hour ($35,000 a year based on a 40-hour week).

Howard Zemsky, chairman of Empire State Development (a state economic development authority that tracks operations at what is called Gigafactory2; the Nevada battery plant is Gigafactory1), says the state will be making its own headcount to ensure that many people are there. Tesla says it will hire some of the 380 Panasonic engineers at the plant.

Tesla solar panels.

How Bad Are Things in Buffalo?

Beyond the Buffalo Bills having the all-time worst Super Bowl record (four straight trips, four losses 1990-1993), the Buffalo Sabres not being in the Stanley Cup finals in 20 seasons and the NBA’s Buffalo Braves decamping for San Diego in 1978, Buffalo’s population of 255,000 is less than half its peak of 1940-1950. That’s because of the decline of the steel industry by the mid-1990s and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which let goods from the near-Midwest travel by ship to the ocean rather than through Buffalo. Thus the desire for economic growth, especially if it has a high-tech flavor.

Gigafactory2 in Buffalo is a 1.2-million-square-foot facility (about 10 Home Depots big) on an 88-site called Riverbend, the once-contaminated, now-remediated former Republic Steel location. Solyndra, an early, now-defunct solar panel company, first went into the site. It went under in 2011. In 2016, Tesla acquired SolarCity, a company founded in 2006 by Elon Musk relatives, including the Buffalo operation. That’s the facility Panasonic is now stepping back from.

The Riverbend site has other companies, or at least buildings that would have held high-tech companies. Soraa, a maker of LED bulbs highly regarded for their color fidelity (as well they should be given the prices), agreed to build bulbs there after the state spent $90 million to build a factory that Soraa would lease for $1 a year. The state declined a request to buy and install “tens of millions [dollars]” of production equipment for Soraa, which then opted in 2017 to do production elsewhere; it faced no penalty for dropping out. Last year the state found a new tenant, NexGen Power Systems, that manufactures power transistors. This time around, the state negotiated payback penalties if NexGen doesn’t meet hiring requirements.

Tesla wants to supply a battery ecosystem: EVs, solar panels, and batteries. Here, phone apps to manage them.

Who Else Builds Batteries for Tesla?

As we noted, Panasonic will still work with Tesla building batteries at the Gigafactory in the Nevada desert. But there have squabbles – sorry, “discussions” – over costs, how to best run Gigafactory1, and production delays.

Meanwhile, Tesla has cut deals for battery production in Asia, with CATL (China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.), to produce batteries for the Tesla Model 3 plant in Shanghai, as well as with South Korea’s LG Chem Ltd.

Now read:

sourse ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://ift.tt/3cdaV3N

Build A Website Without All Of The Coding Thanks To This $50 Service

If you’ve never used a website building program before, it’s tough to know exactly what to expect. While some offer loads of customization features, others are either restrictive or difficult to use, which could leave you stuck with web design or certain functionality you don’t like.

Weblium is a website builder that prides itself on ease of use without losing the individuality or freedom any website owner wants. You can see how quickly one of their websites can be up and running with a lifetime Weblium Website Builder Pro subscription, now 75 percent off at only $49.

Weblium is no newcomer to the scene either. Ranked as the No. 2 Product of the Week on Product Hunt with more than 200,000 happy creators, Weblium is all about versatility.

New users can choose from over 180 different site templates from over 20 different categories to match your precise tone and feel. Of course, the real value of Weblium is when you start modifying those templates.

The entire format of Weblium is modeled on block design, which offers more than 200 different drag-and-drop content blocks that you can assemble on your site just the way you want. Weblium’s AI Design Supervisor allows you to dynamically edit as you go so you can actually see your changes as they’re made, not after going through a whole saving process.

If you want to drop in a gallery here or add a social media feed or a content section there, just drop it in and check out your results. You don’t have to start over from scratch each time — and changes adjust dynamically to your format, so a change that works when viewing your site on a desktop will also work when you’re on a mobile device.

With advanced SEO settings to boost your site’s visibility, a graphics library of over 100,000 images, and the ability to adjust every color, font, or theme style on your site, Weblium can translate your vision precisely to the page without getting lost in code and other technical hassles.

Right now, you can save over $140 off the price of a Weblium lifetime membership, now just $49.

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

Now read:

sourse ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://ift.tt/2Vwcp35

Toba Supervolcano Probably Didn’t Kill Off Most Humans 74,000 Years Ago

One of the oddities of human evolution is that we’re generally a lot more related to each other than you’d expect in a population as far-flung as ours. While anatomically modern humans are thought to have evolved 200,000 – 300,000 years ago, the most recent ancestors of the population of humans who remained in Africa versus those who migrated away from it dates to much younger, or roughly 70,000 years ago.

In fact, while researchers used to refer to the “Out of Africa” model as a single event, it’s now thought that this migration occurred in at least two large pulses — one beginning roughly two million years ago involving archaic species like Homo erectus and a more recent wave.

The fact that the last common ancestor between African and non-African populations appear to have lived roughly 74,000 years ago suggests that a common event might have shaped our own existence, killing off all previous human lineages outside of Africa extant at that time. There are only a handful of natural disasters capable of killing off an already far-flung species at that kind of scale, but there was one event in particular that stood out — the eruption of the Lake Toba supervolcano, some 74,000 years ago. New data published in Nature suggests the theory isn’t accurate, meaning we’ll have to find a different explanation for what caused the bottleneck.

Proposed migration routes taken by ancient humans across the Middle East, Asia, and into Europe

Lake Toba is what’s left of the crater on top of Mount Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. The Toba eruption had an estimated VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) of 8. To give you some perspective, the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius is considered a VEI 5 event, the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa was a VEI 6, and the Mount Tambora explosion of 1815 that created the “Year Without a Summer in 1816” was a VEI 7.

Each number up the VEI scale refers to the total amount of ejected volume. VEI 0 events eject less than 10,000m³, while a VEI 8 event would eject 1×10¹²m³ of tephra, or 240 cubic miles of material. Total cloud height from a VEI 8 would be roughly 66,000 feet.

VEI 8, in other words, officially qualifies as “a lot.” Toba’s estimated explosion volume was 100x larger than Tambora, and the Year Without a Summer caused massive climate upheavals. Snow fell in the middle of the summer across the United States, with river ice observed as far south as Pennsylvania in July and August and massive temperature changes from sub-freezing to 95F or hotter within a matter of hours. The price of oats rose from $1.68 per bushel in 1815 to $13.86 in 1816 (both values given in modern values, historic was from $0.12 to $0.92).

The fact that we have good historical data on how ugly a VEI 7 can be made the idea of an even more calamitous VEI 8 pretty easy to buy, especially given the primitive state of human technology 74,000 years ago, the relatively small number of people who had left Africa in absolute terms, and the fact that ice cores retrieved from Greenland show the Toba eruption could have depressed worldwide temperatures for up to two hundred years simply due to the amount of particulate injected into the atmosphere. The idea that the Toba Eruption could have nearly wiped out the human race by reducing us to as few as 1,000 breeding pairs has been researched for the past few decades, but new finds at Dhaba, India, suggest Toba didn’t hit us that hard.

Dhaba offers a critical window into how humans were spreading across the Indian subcontinent some 40,000 to 80,000 years ago. By this point, humans were making extensive use of stone tools and had advanced beyond the Oldowan and Acheulian eras. More advanced forms of stone-crafting technology, including the Levallois technique, were in-use by this time. Given that these people left an extensive record of stone tools, a major die-off would appear in the archaeological record. We commonly date human habitation in specific areas by analyzing which dirt layers an item appears in.

In this case, artifact analysis at Dhaba shows that the humans living in the area had been using the same technology since as long as 82,000 years ago, and they kept using it straight through the critical 74,000 year period and beyond. This is an important metric of continuity. Even if a new group of humans had settled quickly enough to leave no break in the geological record, there’s no reason they’d be using exactly the same techniques for flint knapping. In this case, however, the Lavellois flakes are only gradually replaced by microblades, most likely reflecting the general replacement of one technology with another rather than a sudden, catastrophic wipeout. Lavellois flakes are found in African sites up to 280,000 years ago, Arabian sites 100,000 years ago, and in northern Australia by 65,000 years ago. This fits well with the idea that humans traveled across Asia in waves, and that they settled in places like Dhaba as they did. The theory that humanity was wiped out across most of the globe by a single volcanic eruption doesn’t fit with what we’re learning about the timeline of settlement in India and other locations.

Feature image credit: Oliver Spalt/CC BY-SA 3.0

Now Read:

sourse ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://ift.tt/2voaVND

Microsoft Warns Coronavirus Will Hit PC Earnings, Surface Sales

Microsoft has warned investors that the coronavirus known as Covid-19 will have a significant impact on its third quarter. Microsoft’s fiscal year doesn’t follow the calendar, so the period from January – March is technically Q3 for the company, not Q1.

Previously, Microsoft had forecast earnings of $10.75 – $11.15B in the “More Personal Computing” segment, which includes both its Windows licensing business and its Surface hardware. Microsoft is uniquely exposed in this situation, given that it both sells the OS licenses that ship on the overwhelming majority of PCs and also sells its own line of Surface hardware, which is built in China and was likely affected by the Covid-19 breakout.

The company writes:

Although we see strong Windows demand in line with our expectations, the supply chain is returning to normal operations at a slower pace than anticipated at the time of our Q2 earnings call. As a result, for the third quarter of fiscal year 2020, we do not expect to meet our More Personal Computing segment guidance as Windows OEM and Surface are more negatively impacted than previously anticipated. All other components of our Q3 guidance remain unchanged.

Investors and epidemiologists are both concerned about the potential impacts of the coronavirus. Based on China’s official reports, it looks as though the illness is slowing down in that country, with more reports of new coronavirus infections outside of China than inside of it. Right now, we’re all collectively waiting to find out if the virus will be effectively contained or if it’ll go truly global. Organizations like the CDC and FDA have tried to emphasize the seriousness of containing the infection without causing a panic. While coronavirus’ 2 percent fatality rate doesn’t sound high, the estimated fatality rate for the flu is 0.45 percent. The GIF below, courtesy of Wikipedia, shows the outbreak’s spread across the globe through 2/25/2020.

Image by Wikipedia

This article by James Hamblin at The Atlantic explains that the reason epidemiologists are so concerned about coronavirus isn’t because it kills people, but because it doesn’t kill people all that effectively. It’s precisely this kind of pathogen that’s most likely to become a long-term global problem. Influenza drives a fair amount of yearly health care spending and has a measurable impact on the global economy. If coronavirus becomes similarly established, we can all look forward to a new disease that could show up on a yearly basis. Diseases that kill their hosts too quickly don’t tend to spread very well. Coronavirus has a very long incubation period and the vast majority of people who get it recover normally. That actually makes it more dangerous, from a long-term public health perspective, rather than less.

If China’s production starts picking up again, PC shipments should recover by the end of the year. The bigger question would seem to be the impact coronavirus has on everywhere else, and what measures countries are willing to take to prevent it spreading. By this time next year it could be a half-forgotten story — or still a major topic of discussion. Right now, it’s not clear which of those outcomes to expect.

Now Read:

sourse ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://ift.tt/2Vyoe9b