Just a few years ago, big Chinese telecom firms ZTE and Huawei were making major inroads in the US. They were selling more smartphones every year and were positioned to supply 5G network infrastructure. Today, neither company is doing much business in the US, and that trend is probably going to continue. After several Commerce Department penalties, the FCC has now stepped in to declare ZTE and Huawei are “national security threats.”
The government first focused on ZTE in 2018 when the Commerce Department slapped it with trade restrictions connected to a previously settled case. The government claimed ZTE had not sufficiently complied with the previous agreement, but the company said it was doing everything required. That situation was eventually resolved, but its network equipment business in the US has never recovered. Huawei is currently on the Commerce Department’s entity list, which prevents US businesses from doing business without specific government authorization. This affects not just network equipment but the company’s phones as well.
According to the FCC, the evidence points toward the companies being a danger to US interests. “We cannot and will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to exploit network vulnerabilities and compromise our critical communications infrastructure,” the FCC said in a statement. This distinction means Huawei and ZTE hardware will not be eligible for the Universal Service Fund, an $8.5 billion pot of money that helps subsidize equipment that improves connectivity in the US.
A 5G millimeter wave cell site on a light pole in Minneapolis.
The FCC says the order takes place immediately, but it’s not clear what the order actually changes. It was unlikely ZTE or Huawei would be permitted to supply network hardware regardless of this declaration. The government has already strongly discouraged companies from using the Chinese firms for 5G infrastructure, alleging that the Chinese government could pressure the companies to spy on Americans. This is something ZTE and Huawei have always denied. The FCC also calls on Congress to fund the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, which will allow network operators to replace potentially untrustworthy components.
The order shouldn’t affect smartphones, not that either company is directing many resources toward launching devices in the US right now. Both are still major players in China and some other markets, but tightening restrictions could eventually cut them off from technology that they need to develop new hardware.
The Boeing 737 Max flew for the first time yesterday since the FAA grounded the aircraft in the wake of crashes by Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. Bloomberg reports that a Max 7 landed at 2:16 PM in Seattle with an FAA pilot sharing a cockpit with a crew member from the company.
Originally, the 737 Max was supposed to be back in the air in a matter of months (or at least, that was Boeing’s line). Once investigators started pulling the plane apart, additional problems began to surface. After the twin crashes, the source of the problem was isolated to the MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System). When Boeing designed the 737 Max, it was facing steep competition from Airbus in the medium-range, mid-sized jet segment. Rather than building an all-new aircraft, the company opted to once again refresh the aging 737, which originally debuted in the 1960s.
But in order to bring the 737’s efficiency up to par with Airbus, Boeing had to fit the aircraft with much larger engines than it was designed to carry, and change the aircraft design to compensate. These changes left the aircraft with a tendency to pitch upwards in certain circumstances, potentially causing a stall. Boeing decided to design a system intended to keep this from happening. MCAS was the result.
What we know now is that the system as designed was riddled with failures, some of which Boeing absolutely knew about and deliberately brushed under the rug. The MCAS system depended on a single point of failure. Boeing changed the design in significant ways after receiving FAA approval to modify it, leaving the FAA under the impression that the system operated differently than it actually did in the field.
Most damningly, Boeing refused to train pilots on MCAS and actively discouraged airlines from training their pilots in simulators, insisting that any pilot who had qualified on the 737-NG would also qualify to fly the Max. Chillingly, one of the airlines that had requested simulator time was Lion Air. When the Singapore and Ethiopian jets crashed, it was common to see people implying the reason the crashes had occurred was due to poor training policies from one or both of these companies. We now know that Boeing employees privately mocked Singapore Air for requesting simulator time.
It’s not a great look. Especially not when multiple engineers declare they need “forgiveness from God:”
Or, alternately, that they’ll never lie to the FAA again:
And company employees bragged about how they “Jedi mind tricked” regulators into believing additional simulator time wasn’t necessary.
Turns out, however, there didn’t need to be much lying to the FAA. Between the Ethiopian and Lion Air crashes, the FAA performed an analysis of expected 737 Max crashes over the lifetime of the plane. That analysis found that the risk of dying in a 737 Max crash was equal to the risk of dying in a 757, 767, 777, 787, and the latest 747 models combined, bearing in mind that some of these planes flew when the rate of airline crashes was much higher than it is now.
Having discovered this jaw-dropping fact, the FAA did nothing. The 737 Max was allowed to remain in the air until it killed another 157 people. Eighteen experts at the FAA were overruled by a manager.
Having pushed back the 737 Max’s reintroduction date repeatedly due to problem after problem, the plane is apparently finally ready to fly (or at least, Boeing things it is). Ironically, Norwegian Air Shuttle just notified Boeing today that it was terminating its previous order for 97 737 Max jets.
This has far more to do with the devastating impact of the coronavirus than any reaction to the Max itself, but Boeing faces a steep climb to win back trust. On June 15, the US Air Force refused to accept delivery of a KC-46 aircraft due to debris being found in the plane after rework. The Air Force had previously halted all deliveries of KC-46 aircraft due to fuel tank debris in March 2019.
Boeing has good reason to restart Max production as quickly as possible; the company has literal parking lots full of aircraft it already built and it needs to move them out. It can’t do that so long as the plane isn’t allowed to fly. At the same time, given how 2020 has played out thus far, putting the 737 Max back in the air seems a wee bit like tempting God when he’s already proven to be in a smiting mood.
Now that it’s received all this rework and special attention, the 737 Max ought to be one of the least crash-prone, least-buggy planes in the air. Boeing is presumably aware that having a third aircraft attempt to become the world’s worst drill would kill the product. Also, killing a bunch more people looks bad, too.
With everyone stuck at home, the video game industry is booming with consoles selling out and game sales on the rise. But storing all those games requires an enormous amount of storage space. That’s exactly what WD’s Black P10 gives you, and it’s available now for just $99.99.
WD designed its Game Drive external HDD as an easy-to-use accessory to give your Xbox One or PS4 more storage space for games. With an enormous 5TB of storage, this drive has more space than you are likely to ever need for your game console, and it can also be used with your PC or Mac. For a limited time, you can get this drive from Amazon marked down from $149.99 to $99.99.
Dell engineered this model to be a large display with tons of desktop real estate. This makes it easier to multitask on multiple windows at the same time. The display also has a high 4K resolution and a USB-C port that doubles as both a video connection and a charging port for compatible notebooks. Right now you can get this display from Dell marked down from $1,049.99 to just $710.99 with promo code STAND4SMALL, and it even comes with a $100 Dell gift card, which makes this deal truly incredible.
With an enormous 400GB of storage space, this microSDXC card can hold a tremendous amount of data. SanDisk also made this drive relatively fast with read speeds that can hit as high as 100MB/s. Currently, this microSDXC card is on sale from Amazon marked down from $62.99 to $47.99.
This robot vacuum comes with 2000Pa of suction power giving it the strength it needs to lift all the dirt from your floor. This model also sports a large 5,200mAh battery that can last over 150 minutes of nonstop cleaning. Currently, you can get it from Amazon marked down from $399.99 to $299.99 with promo code ROBOROCKS45.
Apple’s Series 3 smartwatch is powered by a dual-core S3 processor and it features a built-in GPS as well as a cellular connection. It’s also able to keep count of your steps and display information from your smartphone. This watch originally entered the market at $379.00, but you can get it today from Amazon marked down as low as $169.00.
Built with one of AMD’s new hexa-core Ryzen 5 4500U processors, this laptop should have excellent performance for everyday tasks. It should also have decent power to run games with low settings, and it will likely boot quickly as well thanks to a 256GB NVMe SSD. Right now you can get this laptop from Best Buy marked down from $779.99 to $579.99.
Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information.For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.
Once a company gains dominance in a market, its next step is often to scope out new worlds to conquer. That’s always been the philosophy driving Jeff Bezos and Amazon, so it’s no surprise that with the company’s cloud systems arm Amazon Web Services (AWS) now controlling more than a third of the world’s cloud services business, they’re looking for new challenges.
That’s part of the movement behind the unveiling of Honeycode, AWS’s effort to help non-coders build apps. But with even more AWS features driving organizations to the platform, that only increases the responsibility on each company’s in-house AWS expert tasked with knowing all these IT systems and keeping them running smoothly.
Anyone looking to master how a company can take advantage of the full roster of AWS capabilities will find a complete primer in this six-course, nearly 90-hour training download.
With AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, even inexperienced AWS users will start to get a full overview of everything the provider has to offer. After an introduction to the platform, you’ll understand all the basic cloud concepts, security measures, and architectural needs to build and maintain a company’s operations in the cloud.
Next up, the exploration examines some of AWS’s most popular and impactful features for using basic Python and PHP code to create scalable, fault-tolerant apps (AWS Certified Developer), the tools available to help collect, store, process, and analyze data (AWS Certified Big Data), and even how to design and manage an AWS environment to handle multiple DevOps projects at once (AWS Certified DevOps Engineer).
And with all that knowledge and certification status to bolster you, the final courses AWS Certified SysOps Administrator and AWS Certified Solutions Architect dig deep into advanced administrator duties like implementing and controlling the flow of data, applying the best uses of AWS best practices and using key AWS admin tools like Route53, EC2, S3, CloudFront, Autoscaling, Load Balancing, RDS and more.
Of course, all this training is also geared toward helping you pass a handful of major AWS certification exams to prove your system mastery and secure a six-figure salary as an AWS administrator.
Despite launching a year earlier, Google’s Wear OS platform has been unable to make even a tiny dent in the Apple Watch’s market share. Certainly, some of the blame rests squarely on Google’s proverbial shoulders as it struggles to design compelling experiences on such a small screen. However, the sluggish, power-hungry wearable chipsets in watches have been an even bigger problem. Qualcomm has announced a pair of new wearable chips that might finally fix that. The Snapdragon Wear 4100 and 4100 Plus improve on the old Wear 3100 in every way, but it’ll take more than new hardware to turn around Google’s smartwatch project.
First, a little history. The first Android-powered smartwatches ran on low-power phone processors like the Snapdragon 400. Later, Qualcomm produced the Wear 2100 with a few modifications for wearables, but the Cortex A7 CPU cores were slow even by 2016’s standards. The Wear 3100 came in 2018 with a high-efficiency co-processor to improve always-on features, but the A7 CPU cores were even more out-of-date by then. The 4100 finally revamps the entire chip, which should make future wearable devices much more capable. We hope.
The Wear 4100 and 4100 Plus share all the same core features. In place of the archaic 28nm A7 cores, the 4100s have four 12nm Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.7GHz — Qualcomm says it’s about 85 percent faster than the 3100. Memory speed is also nearly doubled from 400MHz to 750Mhz. The GPU is about two and a half times faster, too.
The Wear 3100 debuted the QCC1110 co-processor, and it’s still around in the new generation. However, it’s only part of the 4100 Plus chip — this is what makes it the “Plus.” The “Enhanced” QCC1110 has a Cortex M0 processor core along with its own dedicated memory and display controller. It supports more colors in always-on mode, number kerning, haptics, and more. Manufacturers that choose to go with the regular 4100 won’t have the enhanced always-on functionality.
Qualcomm has started shipping chips to its partners, but there aren’t many companies still trying to make Wear OS devices. Fossil will probably get to the 4100 eventually, but Mobvoi says it’s already working on a 4100-based watch. Google itself might finally give wearables a shot with its pending acquisition of Fitbit. But after years of mediocre hardware and software, is anyone still waiting for a Google smartwatch?
Ever since Apple announced the A12Z and its shift away from x86, there’ve been questions about exactly how these ARM chips will perform and what we can expect from them. The first benchmark results are starting to appear from Apple dev kits, and as long as you take them with a mountain of salt, they’re pretty interesting.
What we have to work with here is Geekbench. Geekbench tends to be a very strong test for Apple CPUs, but in this case, we’re talking about Apple CPUs running the x86 version via emulation. Even if Geekbench does favor Apple CPUs more than x86, running the application through an emulator is going to hit performance.
Also, note that the application only reports four cores. The A12Z is nominally an eight-core chip, with four big, four little. It isn’t clear if these dev systems only use the “big” cores, or if the application simply doesn’t detect them properly, or if this is an emulator limitation. Regardless, it’s very early days and these are early results.
Here’s the data as it has come in to Geekbench 5.
We see single-threaded scores of 844 and a multi-threaded score of 2958, which yields a scaling factor of 3.5x. On the x86 side of the equation, there’s the 13-inch MacBook Pro, with scores of 1218 and 4233. This also works out to a scaling factor of approximately 3.5x. Similarly, the Macbook Pro 13-inch is roughly 1.44x faster than the A12Z in both single-threaded and multi-threaded mode.
One thing to keep in mind is that emulation performance can vary drastically depending on the application. Some programs might run with relatively small penalties, while others crater and die. Rosetta 2 is specifically designed to avoid those outcomes, but historically, there’s a nasty corner case or two lurking somewhere in any emulator. Some applications are harder to emulate than others. But the upshot of this effect is that we don’t really know if that 1.44x lead the 13-inch MacBook has is the product of emulator handicapping or if it’s a pretty good look at the CPU’s performance. Data from the iPad Pro suggests it might be the former.
If we assume that the A12X in the iPad Pro is a pretty good stand-in for the A12Z, we can check ARM-native Geekbench performance, albeit in iOS, not macOS. Here, we’re looking at 1120 single-core, 4650 multi-core, with a scaling factor of 4.16x. The MacBook Pro 13-inch is only about 8 percent faster than the iPad Pro in single-thread, and 10 percent slower in multi-thread.
Frankly, that should send a frisson of fear through Intel and AMD. The implication of these results is that the gap between the 13-inch Mac and the A12Z is largely the result of emulation. That’s not a guarantee, because OS differences matter in situations like this, but it certainly looks as though most of the penalty the A12Z is carrying is related to emulating x86 code.
That fact should send a frisson of fear down AMD and Intel’s collective spines. Apple’s year-on-year record of delivering new performance improvements is considerably better than Intel’s right now. AMD can make a much stronger argument for its own recent improvement, thanks to Ryzen, but the enormous 1.52x IPC improvement from Excavator to Ryzen tilts the comparison a bit. To put it bluntly, AMD’s improvements the last three years would be a little less impressive if Bulldozer hadn’t been such an awful chip to start with.
We’re in a weird situation at the moment. Intel has always been Apple’s chief supplier, but AMD is selling more performant mobile CPUs today, making them the more obvious point of comparison. The 4900HS appears to score a 1116 single-core and a 7013 multi-threaded score. x86 MT is, at least, in no immediate danger, in absolute terms. Keep in mind that the 4900HS also draws far more power than either the Intel or Apple chips.
What we see here isn’t proof that Apple will launch a MacBook ARM chip that rivals the best Intel and AMD can offer — but it certainly puts a floor under expected performance, barring unusual emulator quirks that Apple will spend the next few months quashing. The x86 companies may want to ask their mobile CPU designers to put an extra pot of coffee on.
Final note: These kits are not the CPUs Apple will ship to customers and do not represent final performance.
We’re still several months away from Apple’s next iPhone release, but the rumors have already started to appear. Analysts like Ming-Chi Kuo have made an unexpected prediction about this year’s iPhones: they won’t come with charging bricks or earbuds. Apple will have a faster charger for the iPhone 12, but you’ll have to pay extra for it.
For years, Apple has bundled anemic 5-watt power adapters with the iPhone, only recently switching to an 18W adapter for select products that supports USB Power Delivery. The iPhone 11 still has the old 5W charger, but the 11 Pro has an 18W brick. Apple has also made it a point to bundle Lightning earbuds ever since it dropped the headphone jack. Kuo says the new iPhones will cost more to manufacture because of the addition of 5G. However, dropping these accessories will help keep prices steady for consumers. Analysts at Barclays contend there will still be a USB cable, which will allow you to connect the phone to a computer or use another adapter.
It might seem shortsighted to remove accessories from a high-end phone, but they’re only worth including if most people are using them. Otherwise, it’s just more e-waste. There absolutely are people who rely on the included accessories, but they’re usually the ones buying less expensive devices like the iPhone SE 2. Most people who are buying a $1,000 iPhone already have higher quality wired or wireless earbuds, so those will probably just sit in the box. Likewise, these people have multiple chargers around the house from past phone purchases. The included Lightning to USB-C cable can also plug into third-party adapters and fast-charge the phone.
Apple’s supposed 20W power adapter.
This could be a win-win. The number of people negatively impacted by this move will be small, and it helps Apple keep prices down. Kuo says that Apple will make a new 20W power adapter as an add-on purchase — photos claiming to show this accessory have already leaked. We don’t know how much this adapter will cost, but you’ll probably be able to get a cheaper third-party plug if you don’t already have a box of them at home.
You’ll also be able to buy EarPods from Apple if you don’t have headphones, but the company would probably prefer you dropped the cash on AirPods. That’s probably what some people will do when faced with the barren iPhone 12 packaging. While there’s a definite financial incentive for Apple to stop including all the extras with its phones, it will probably lean heavily on the environmental advantages to justify the move.
Ever since AMD launched Ryzen, we’ve kept an occasional eye on how the company’s CPUs sell at retail. While the DIY retail market is only a fraction of the total PC space (the typical measure given is ~20 percent), it’s always been AMD’s strongest battleground. New numbers from MindFactory back that up, though Intel’s Core i7-10700K shows some encouraging signs of life.
According to TechEpiphany, MindFactory data continues to show a runaway success for AMD. Keep in mind that MindFactory is one storefront in Europe, and that adoption rates of Intel versus AMD sometimes vary from country to country. Germany is a favorable market for the company, thanks to AMD’s historic presence in Dresden.
With that caveat out of the way, here’s the numbers:
This is a huge reversal from just a few years ago. Here’s what the picture looked like back in 2017:
Compiled by reddit user ingebor, data from Mindfactory, 2017-2018.
Three years ago, AMD had roughly 45 percent of Mindfactory’s retail shipments. This was considered a major achievement for the company, given how badly Piledriver-derived sales had slumped. Intel still had an overall lead on revenue, however, due to higher ASPs.
Intel still leads on ASPs, but the only bright spot in the company’s sales matrix is the Core i7-10700K, though the Core i7-9700K also manages to move some units. Most people would focus on the top of the chart and crow about AMD’s Ryzen 5 3600 sales, but I find the bottom rather more interesting. According to this data, sales of the Ryzen 9 3950X managed to outstrip sales of the Core i3-8100.
If this data were representative of the overall DIY market (and I’m explicitly not making that assumption), it would indicate that users aren’t really building low-end or even mid-range systems with Intel chips. There’s only one budget chip from Intel in the 16-entry list. In contrast, the Ryzen 3 3200G, 3400G, and 3100 are all budget chips.
Intel isn’t going to be unhappy about having higher ASPs (average selling price) than AMD, but higher ASP’s aren’t worth much if you aren’t selling enough volume to make up the difference. Intel has repeatedly adjusted its pricing over the last three years — less with straight price cuts, and more often by introducing new chips at better pricing — but it clearly isn’t enough to counter AMD’s performance in the DIY retail space. Given that Intel still earns the lion’s share of revenue in the PC industry, this may or may not trouble anyone at company headquarters.
The last thing I’ll say about these results is that they suggest Intel’s messaging on being best-in-gaming is having an effect. I don’t think it’s an accident that the two CPUs selling the best are two of Intel’s best-positioned gaming CPUs. The 9700K wasn’t nearly as fast as some of its competitors when new, but it turned in top-notch gaming results. The gap between AMD and Intel has narrowed to virtually nothing, but for those who want every last millisecond of frame time, Intel still has an advantage in some titles.
If you’re looking for a feature-rich display for your office, Dell’s UltraSharp U2720Q may be your perfect option. This monitor has a 4K resolution and excellent color accuracy that makes it well-suited for professional work projects. Best of all, it’s available now with a $100 gift card and hundreds knocked off the retail price.
Working on a 4K monitor has some major advantages, including fitting more on-screen at any given time. This display from Dell utilizes a 27-inch 4K panel that also supports 1.07 billion colors, making it well-suited for image editing. Right now you can get one from Dell marked down from $719.99 to $485.99. Add to that a bundled $100 gift card and this deal is almost too good to pass up.
This external drive can store up to 5TB of data with password protection and 256-bit AES hardware encryption. The drive also has a durable metal enclosure, and you can get it from Best Buy marked down from $149.99 to $99.99.
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 $59.99.
Razer designed this keyboard to use its tactile optical switches that have a short 1.5mm actuation distance. The switches are also rated to last for up to 100 million keystrokes before failing, and the keyboard has programmable RGB LED lights to give the keyboard a touch of style. Today you can get one of these keyboards marked down from $149.99 to $89.99 from Amazon.
Ring equipped its Spotlight camera with a motion sensor and a pair of exceedingly bright LED lights. When the motion sensor is triggered, the lights will illuminate and a 1080p camera built into the center of the device will activate to record who or what is creeping around your house during the day or at night. This bundle also includes an Echo Show 5, which has numerous uses, but it can also display live video from the camera. Right now you can get the bundle from Amazon marked down from $288.99 to just $159.00.
This set of Apple’s AirPods comes with a wireless charging case. Simply set the earbuds into the case whenever you are finished using them and they will automatically start charging. They also have support for Siri to quickly access your iPhone, and they can last for over 24 hours while listening to music. Amazon is offering these AirPods currently marked down from $199.00 to $169.00.
Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information.For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.
Microsoft has decided to begin rolling out its own Edge replacement to PC users across the world. Inevitably, this has caused problems — updates always cause issues for someone — but there’s an array of issues lighting up Reddit and Microsoft’s own tech support forums. Depending on which version of Windows you have, you’ll receive one of three different updates:
KB4541301: Intended for Windows 10 1803 and 1809. KB4541302: Intended for Windows 10 1903 and 1909. KB4559309: Intended for all Windows versions, 1803 – 2004
Those who have installed KB4559309 are reporting a laundry list of issues, including very slow boot times, markedly worse performance when gaming, external hard drives not working properly, display failures, printing problems, and Office files failing to open. Part of the problem is that KB4559309 cannot be uninstalled without using System Restore. The update cannot be removed through the standard Add/Remove Programs process.
There are a few ways you can handle this problem. First, you can install Chromium Edge manually. The purpose of this update is to switch over your Edge installation, but manual updating appears to avoid the problems some users are having.
Second, you can download the tool Microsoft has made available for blocking Edge in the first place. The blocker toolkit will not prevent you from installing the new Edge version manually, but it prevents Microsoft’s servers from updating you whenever they feel like it. That application can be downloaded here.
Third, you can edit the registry manually. Standard statements about the dangers of registry editing apply. Screwing around in the registry can hose a Windows installation pretty quickly, and the problems you create may not be easy to fix without reinstalling software. Follow instructions carefully. Hat-tip to WindowsLatest for surfacing the instructions below:
Open the Windows Registry editor via the “Regedit” command.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft. Open the Microsoft folder.
Right-click on the folder and choose “New Key.” Name the key “EdgeUpdate.”
Left-click on the new “EdgeUpdate” folder you just created, if it isn’t automatically selected. You may have to scroll to the bottom of the registry — on my machine, the “EdgeUpdate” folder was created at the very bottom of the list. Once you click on it, you’ll see a single “default” key and nothing else.
Right-click under the “Default” option and choose “New,” followed by “DWORD (32-bit) Value”
Name the DWORD “DoNotUpdateToEdgeWithChromium.”
Double-click the DWORD you just created. Change the value in the “Value Data” field from 0 to 1. You do not need to touch the “Hexadecimal” versus “Binary” field.
This is what your registry should look like when you are finished:
Last step is to reboot your machine. This will prevent Microsoft from updating Edge automatically. I can’t find specific data on this point, but you should still be able to manually install the browser if you wish to.
Why Is Microsoft Importing Firefox and Chrome Data?
You might want to avoid Microsoft’s new Chromium Edge for one reason: It imports your user data from Firefox and Chrome without permission.
Here’s how the process typically works:
1). Run the browser installer.
2). The browser installer asks if you want to import your data from another browser.
3). You choose “Yes” or “No” and proceed with the installation.
Here’s how Microsoft’s new Edge does it:
1). Run the browser installer.
2). The browser imports some of your data from other browsers.
3). The browser asks if you would like to import your data.
If you say “Yes,” you’ll never notice the problem, because you chose to merge your data pools. If you say “No,” the installer is supposed to delete your data. However, Microsoft has noted that if you stop the installer early, some “residual data” may remain. But here’s the rub: When you launch Windows 10 after updating Edge, the Edge installer runs automatically, which means Microsoft is gulping up your data, failing to delete it upon exit, and claiming the entire process is somehow beneficial.
When asked about this activity, Microsoft responded:
We believe browser data belongs to the customer and they have the right to decide what they should do with it. Like other browsers, Microsoft Edge offers people the opportunity to import data during setup.
This is claptrap, start to finish. Microsoft is not respecting personal data privacy in the slightest by starting the import process before even asking if you want to, then failing to delete data if you don’t. Even if you aren’t concerned about the privacy aspects of the issue, you might not want Firefox or Chrome data in your new Edge installation.
I can’t speak for other people, but I subdivide my browser use by activity. I run Edge without any add-ons whatsoever, so I always have a browser I can use to check a recalcitrant website. I use it for streaming because Chrome still won’t stream above 720p on Windows 10. I use it for different tasks than I use Firefox and Chrome, and I don’t mix data between them.
We’ve inveighed against the Windows 10 update model so often, I’m honestly tired of doing it. Five years after Windows 10 launched, I see no evidence that the company has improved perceptions of Windows as a stable OS, and a great deal of evidence suggesting that it has not. I have written far more stories about failures in Windows 10 following each of Microsoft’s upgrade pushes than I ever wrote about, say, Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 SP1.
Yes, Windows gets updated more often, and yes, Microsoft has added some nice features over five years, particularly when it comes to monitoring system performance. But those improvements have come at the cost of near-endlesstroubleshootingandsomeserious, high-profilescrewups. It may not look like it, because of how our site displays multiple URLs in sequence, but each of the words linked above points to a different story. It wasn’t hard to find the examples, either.
Microsoft has published data claiming that Windows 10 generates far fewer problems or user issues than previous versions of the OS. I have no proof that isn’t true. From a press perspective, however, the constant drumbeat of Windows 10 failures is downright wearying. Every time Microsoft releases a new version, I plan to write another few stories about everything new that’s broken. Since Microsoft won’t follow Apple and Google’s lead and release one update per year, we get to visit this topic at least twice. Often it’s considerably more, since individual Patch Tuesday updates often break things, too.
Microsoft may be making real progress as far as the absolute number of people who are impacted by problems, version after version. Perception isn’t always reality, and forum discussions are dominated by people who have problems, not people who don’t. But this constant, unending drumbeat of issues cannot be doing Windows 10 any favors in how people perceive its reliability, even if the underlying situation is different.
The United States is currently experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases as states begin dropping restrictions and allowing businesses to open once again. With people venturing outside and returning to offices, it’s more important than ever to neutralize coronavirus particles on surfaces before they can add to the infection rate. MIT has developed a robot that navigates around spaces to blast the virus with UV light. The team has even tested the system at a Boston-area food bank with encouraging results.
The most significant source of coronavirus particles is an infected person, but such people can leave behind viruses on surfaces and drifting through the air that can be infectious for several days. The UV robot comes from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) as a way to clear these unwanted visitors from public spaces using the power of ultraviolet radiation.
You’ve probably heard about the dangers of UV-A and UV-B light from doctors and the occasional sunscreen bottle. UV-C is a higher energy form of ultraviolet radiation with a wavelength between 280 and 100 nanometers. UV-A is as high as 400nm, and X-rays start around 10nm. So, UV-C is much more damaging to living organisms than UV-A and UV-B. Luckily, UV-C from the sun is absorbed by the atmosphere before reaching us. You can, however, use artificial UV-C radiation to effectively sterilize objects.
The robotic base of the CSAIL project comes from Ava Robotics, which makes telepresence machines. The team replaced the screen that usually sits on top of the robot with a custom ultraviolet lighting rig. MIT decided to test the system in the Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB). Since UV-C is dangerous for all living organisms, it can only run when there’s no one around. Being a telepresence robot, it’s simple for a remote operator to guide it around the GBFB facility by placing waypoints. Later, the robot can simply follow those waypoints autonomously.
As the robot makes its way down the aisles at 0.22 miles per hour, the UV-C sweeps over every surface. It takes just half an hour to cover a 4,000 square foot area, delivering enough UV-C energy to neutralize about 90 percent of coronaviruses (and other organisms) on surfaces. Currently, the team’s focus is on improving the algorithms running the GBFB system, but that may lead to more robotic UV scrubbers. CSAIL hopes to use the data gathered at GBFB to design automated UV cleaning systems for dorms, schools, airplanes, and grocery stores.
WordPress is the undisputed king of the internet, the content management engine powering about 35 percent of all sites on the web. The company rose to that lofty perch by being about as simple to use as a site-builder could be, allowing users to get a website of almost any type up and running quickly and easily.
Of course, you don’t stay top dog by being complacent. Since WordPress is an open-source environment, innovations to the platform have come fast and furious over the years in the form of plugins that make creating and curating a website even easier with more customization features to get the most out of your site.
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Last year, before Microsoft unveiled the Xbox Series X, there were rumors of two consoles: Anaconda and Lockhart. When the console finally debuted, however, only one system was discussed. There’ve been rumors about Lockhart since, but not much more.
Now, leaked documents have confirmed Microsoft is reportedly planning to release a Lockhart console, targeting either 1080p or 1440p gaming. Rumored specs on the device are 7.5GB of useable RAM, a “slightly underclocked” CPU speed, and around 4TFLOPS of GPU performance, according to The Verge,. That’s substantially less than the Xbox Series X, which has 13.5GB of useable RAM and promises ~12 TFLOPS of performance.
On paper, this would put the Xbox Lockhart below the Xbox One X, which offers 6 TFLOPS of performance and 9GB of RAM useable by games. This is a good example of how TFLOPS can be a tricky way to measure performance. Compared with the Xbox One X, the Xbox Lockhart should have two advantages we can count on, even if we don’t know anything else about the system: It uses a Ryzen CPU core (with a bit less clock), and it uses an RDNA2 GPU. We know RDNA2 should offer 1.5x more performance per watt than RDNA, according to AMD, and we know that RDNA was a significant uplift over GCN, with ~1.3x more performance per clock.
AMD claims RDNA2 delivers an additional 1.5x perf/watt, which is relevant when considering Lockhart versus Xbox One X.
But TFLOPS, as a metric, doesn’t capture improvements to a GPU’s performance per clock, because TFLOPS is a theoretical measurement intended to illustrate the GPU’s maximum performance potential. The fact that Microsoft is apparently keeping close to the same CPU in both systems suggests that it’ll be GPU performance that splits the two machines more so than CPU, which makes sense — the vast majority of games are GPU-limited far more than CPU-limited. 4TFLOPS is roughly in the ballpark of AMD’s RX 5500. Consoles tend to overperform their listed specs relative to PCs because developers are able to spend more time optimizing the underlying hardware.
But while we don’t know the exact speeds on the Xbox Lockhart, we can assume it’ll be slower than the Xbox One X, for one reason: Microsoft is targeting 1080p and 1440p playback for the platform, not the 4K targets it set for the Xbox One X. It’s not clear exactly where this leaves the Xbox One X, and those who purchased the console could wind up a bit unhappy if there’s an entry-level Xbox Lockhart slower than their own platform, yet they’re still unable to buy new Series X games.
The Xbox Series X and the Xbox Lockhart seem as though they’re intended to bracket the PlayStation 5 with a platform above and below its price and performance targets. Microsoft and Sony have never released precise breakdowns on which customers bought a lower-end as opposed to a refreshed console. It’s entirely possible that Microsoft has decided it has two tiers of customers: Those willing to pay $300 – $400 for an Xbox, and those willing to shuck out $500+.
This would explain how Microsoft plans to bring the Xbox Series X to market at something approaching a reasonable price. On its own, the console is clearly a high-end platform, potentially positioned against a significantly less expensive PlayStation 5. With two platforms, Microsoft could be trying to use the Xbox Lockhart to win customers who are put off by the rumored higher price of the PlayStation 5, while the Xbox Series X is intended to woo console gamers who want more horsepower than that system can offer.
The leaked documents indicate there’s a special Lockhart mode built into the Xbox Series X development kits that developers can use to target 1080p / 1440p development. This could explain why Microsoft was a bit cagey about the 60fps claim. It doesn’t want to promise the Xbox Lockhart will also hit the performance targets set for the Xbox Series X, though this is purely conjecture.
Now that Apple and x86 have made their impending breakup official, attention has turned to when the company made that decision and why. According to an ex-Intel engineer, Apple pulled the trigger as far back as 2015, after it saw how buggy the Skylake CPU and platform were.
Francois Piednoël relayed the story while playing Xplane and streaming on YouTube. According to him, Skylake’s wretched quality assurance (QA) process caused Apple to turn away from Intel and explore its own options.
The quality assurance of Skylake was more than a problem. It was abnormally bad. We were getting way too much citing for little things inside Skylake.
Basically our buddies at Apple became the number one filer of problems in the architecture. And that went really, really bad. When your customer starts finding almost as much bugs as you found yourself, you’re not leading into the right place.
There’s some circumstantial evidence that backs up Piednoël’s point. Paul Thurrott has written that Microsoft ran into massive problems with the Surface Book partly because they were inexperienced and had no idea how difficult the platform would be to debug. That’s all believable, especially given how Consumer Reports later pulled its Surface hardware recommendations on systems produced during this time period.
If you look at Intel’s processor errata sheets for the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th processor generations, there are far more entries for Skylake than its successors. This isn’t a perfect method of comparison, for multiple reasons, including the fact that Intel doesn’t always order the bugs the same way and provides so little data, it’s often impossible to judge severity in any meaningful way. Bug 133, for example, is described as: “Executing Some Instructions May Cause Unpredictable Behavior.”
The mind boggles at such a commitment to transparency.
Even with these limitations, the numbers imply Skylake was worse than what followed. The 6th Gen document lists 190 errata, compared with 145 for the Kaby Lake docs and 137 for Coffee Lake. At least a few of these bugs were combined, but spot checks suggest others have been resolved.
In Piednoël’s mind, it was this quality control issue above all else that drove Apple to build its own chips. He says:
So, for me, this is the inflection point. This is where the Apple guys that were always contemplating to switch, they went and look at it and said ‘Well we’ve probably got to do it.’… The bad quality assurance of Skylake is responsible for them forcing themselves to actually go and go away from the [Intel] platform. If they didn’t have this reason that they were actually doubtful that this could be delivered, they would probably not have gone.
I don’t feel like the situation boils down quite that simply. Even if Apple started looking at building its own solution due to the problems it had with Skylake, reports have indicated it didn’t commit completely to the idea until 2018. Clearly, the company was waiting and watching to see what would happen.
Whatever seed of doubt Skylake planted was watered by 10nm delay after 10nm delay. Intel originally expected to ship 10nm in 2015. Then, it slipped to 2018. Then, it slipped to “holidays, 2020.” From a consumer perspective, the impact of these shifts was relatively small, especially prior to 2018. 8th Gen CPUs were well-regarded, on both mobile and desktop. But in other ways, the impact was seismic.
In 2015, Intel had already dominated the CPU industry for two full decades. Its fabs were regarded as the best in the business and they were running a full node ahead of the competition. I have no problem believing that Skylake got the ball rolling, but it was scarcely the only factor.
Intel has never missed on a node as it missed on 10nm, ever. There have to be at least a few people at Apple who remember what happened to the firm when it allowed itself to be chained to a CPU manufacturer that couldn’t deliver the goods. It damn near killed the company.
The third piece of the puzzle is the rapid improvements to the Apple A-series CPU family. Remember, CPUs are finished and taped out a year or more before they actually ship. Even as Apple was evaluating its own ability to match or beat Intel’s performance and power efficiency, it was also watching its own ability to deliver successful CPU designs, one generation after the other.
The most exciting thing about Apple’s plan to transition to its own ARM CPUs is that we’re going to see whether x86 or ARM is faster, after a decade or more of speculation. For decades, certain CPU enthusiasts have groused bitterly that Intel never launched anything better than the x86 architecture. (Intel, for the record, tried).
Now we’ll get to find out what the tradeoffs are when a high-performance ARM microprocessor debuts against the x86 CPUs we’re all familiar with. There are only a handful of companies that could even attempt to take on Intel and AMD in the x86 market. After decades, somebody finally stepped up to try.
I suspect this would have happened, no matter what. In order to assume it wouldn’t have, we have to assume a world in which Intel didn’t just deliver 10nm on time — it delivered 10nm and went on to outpace Apple’s A-series to such a degree that the Cupertino company would never feel it had a chance of catching up.
It’s not clear that would have happened. Post Sandy Bridge, we watched Intel shift to 22nm and 14nm before it hit 10nm roadblocks. SNB was the last major uplift for Intel until Coffee Lake started adding cores in 2017. The company hadn’t shown any interest in increasing CPU core counts until AMD forced it to. It’s completely possible we’d still be looking at the same 2C/4T, 4C/4T, 4C/8T configurations that typified 2011 – 2017 in 2020 if Ryzen hadn’t been as good as it was.
There’s no sign Intel was on some kind of tear before it was derailed by 10nm troubles. Ultimately, I think even stronger year-on-year improvements from Intel might only have postponed the inevitable. It’s not just a question of Skylake’s quality control. It’s everything else that’s happened to Intel over the past five years.
OnePlus is about to offer relief to fans who have been increasingly dismayed each time the company launches a phone at a higher price. CEO Pete Lau confirmed recently that the company would release a less expensive phone, and now we know a bit more about it. A new report claims the budget OnePlus will sport two selfie cameras, both occupying a cutout in the display.
The latest leaks seem to agree on the name of this phone: OnePlus Nord. It’s not official, so the company could end up giving it a different moniker before release — other supposed names include and OnePlus 8 Lite. Whatever they call it, it may bring a new feature to OnePlus phones with its dual selfie cameras.
The Nord will sport a 32MP paired with an 8MP module, according to Android Central. The higher-resolution camera should have a standard wide-angle lens, and the 8MP shooter will allegedly be ultra-wide. This is similar to the camera setup on the Google Pixel 3 and 3 XL. Google included both standard and wide-angle selfie cameras on those phones, but they had just one camera on the back. With a pair of cameras, the Nord will be able to take selfie images of larger groups than most phones can.
The OnePlus Nord will have a camera setup similar to this but on the opposite side.
The source for this information says the phone’s camera setup is now final, and that both selfie cameras will be inside the same cutout. So, it should look a bit like the Galaxy S10+, but with the cameras in the top left corner instead of the top right. It’s unclear if this will be a trend for OnePlus or other phones, but most manufacturers so far have decided the advantage of having multiple front-facing cameras isn’t worth taking a bigger bite out of the screen. Samsung moved from dual (and even triple, in the case of the S10 5G) selfie sensors to a single camera on all its 2020 devices.
OnePlus has an event scheduled for about two weeks from now in India, and that is almost certainly when we’ll see the OnePlus Nord in all its glory. The device will likely cost a bit over $300 (in local currency), a sharp decrease from the $800-900 starting price for OP’s latest flagship phones. OnePlus has stated that the phone will come to India and Europe first, and any launches after that are still under consideration.
By taking advantage of PCI-E 4.0, the newest generation of NVMe SSDs can theoretically hit speeds that are twice that of PCI-E 3.0 drives. If you’re looking to get an incredibly fast SSD for your system, have a look at Corsair’s new MP600 that’s able to use PCI-E 4.0 lanes to hit a max speed of up to 4,950MB/s. It’s also currently on sale for the lowest price we’ve seen to date.
Corsair’s Force MP600 supports the new PCI-E 4.0 interface, which enables it to transfer data at a blazing fast rate of up to 4,950MB/s — significantly faster than last-gen SSDs. This particular model also has a 512GB capacity, giving it enough space to store several games and numerous applications. For a limited time, you can get one of these drives from Amazon marked down from $139.99 to just $114.99.
This Alienware desktop features an edgy, rounded design and powerful gaming hardware capable of running most current AAA titles with high graphics settings. In addition to looking cool, this system was also designed to provide improved airflow over the older Aurora desktops, which means the hardware inside will also run cooler as well. For a limited time with promo code SAVE10, you can get this system from Dell marked down from $1,429.99 to $1,206.00.
This robot vacuum comes with 2000Pa of suction power giving it the strength it needs to lift all the dirt from your floor. This model also sports a large 5,200mAh battery that can last over 150 minutes of nonstop cleaning. Currently, you can get it from Amazon marked down from $399.99 to $299.99 with promo code ROBOROCKS45.
Asrock designed this as an affordable gaming motherboard that still has a fair share of high-end features. In addition to having steel-reinforced PCI-E x16 slots for exceedingly large graphics cards, this board also has modest overclocking features to help you get the most out of your Comet Lake CPU. Right now you can get this board from Amazon marked down from $239.99 to just $194.99.
In addition to its large 256GB capacity, this microSDXC card is also fairly fast and able to transfer data at up to 100MB/s. Currently, you can get it from Amazon marked down from $49.99 to $33.99.
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