With the delayed tax filing deadline coming at us fast—it’s July 15, don’t forget!—we’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that TurboTax, the digital tax prep software that pitches itself as a free-and-easy way to do your taxes, is in fact not so free or easy. Actually, it sucks—enough that it inspired…
Source: LifeHacker – Get All Your Free Tax Filing Options Right Here
Who wouldn’t want a dinosaur in their living room? If you search for one of ten species on Google, you can tap “View in 3D” on your mobile device to open up an augmented reality version of the beasts and have them superimposed — at scale — in your…
Source: Engadget – Life found a way with Google’s ‘Jurassic World’ AR models
Although plants make up over 80% of the biomass on Earth, for centuries they have been thought of as inanimate and passive things. Researchers even coined the term “plant blindness” to refer to a cognitive bias that literally makes our brains zone out plants in our view and underestimate their importance.
Source: Gizmodo – Is Plant ‘Intelligence’ Just a Human Fantasy?
Samsung’s second-generation QLC NAND is here, but it’s still held back by a SATA interface. The new Samsung 870 QVO is probably big enough to be your only SSD, but may not be fast enough to satisfy.
Source: AnandTech – The Samsung 870 QVO (1TB & 4TB) SSD Review: QLC Refreshed
After a weekend of rumors, Google confirmed on Tuesday that it’s the new owner of North. Before today, the Canadian startup was best known for its Focals smart glasses. The wearable integrated a holographic display inside a pair of fashion-forward gl…
Source: Engadget – Google has acquired North, the maker of Focals smart glasses
Base camp of the National Geographic crew, illuminated below Everest. [credit:
Renan Ozturk/National Geographic ]
Edmund Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay made climbing history when they became the first men to successfully summit Mount Everest on May 29, 1953. But there’s a chance that someone may have beaten them to the summit back in 1924: a British mountaineer named George Leigh Mallory and a young engineering student named Andrew “Sandy” Irvine. The two men set off for the summit in June of that year and disappeared—two more casualties of a peak that has claimed over 300 lives to date.
Lost on Everest is a new documentary from National Geographic that seeks to put to rest the question of who was first to the summit once and for all. The gripping account follows an expedition’s attempt to locate Irvine’s body (lost for over 95 years) and hopefully retrieve the man’s camera—and photographic proof that the two men reached the summit.
NatGeo is also premiering a second companion documentary, Expedition Everest, narrated by actor Tate Donovan (MacGyver, Man in the High Castle), following an international team that included multiple scientists as they trek up the mountain. Along the way, team geologists collected sediment samples from the bottom of a Himalayan lake; biologists surveyed the biodiversity at various elevations to track how plants, animals, and insects are adapting to a warming climate; and climate scientists collected ice cores from the highest elevation to date to better understand glacier evolution. Finally, the team installed the world’s highest weather station in Everest’s infamous “death zone,” above 26,000 feet, to gather real-time data on weather conditions at that altitude.
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Source: Ars Technica – NatGeo expedition hunts for 1924 climber’s body in Lost on Everest documentary
It was just over six years ago when OnePlus made a splash in the smartphone market with the OnePlus One, an affordable handset that launched at $299 for the 16GB model, and $349 for the 64 version model. Driven by a “Never Settle” motto, OnePlus has focused on cramming premium features into handsets that undercut typical flagship pricing,
Source: Hot Hardware – OnePlus Nord Confirmed As An Exciting Value Phone That Returns The Company To Its Roots
Leading universities and major technology companies agreed on Tuesday to back a new project intended to give academics and other scientists access to the computing resources now available mainly to a few tech giants. From a report: The initiative, the National Research Cloud, has received bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. Lawmakers in both houses have proposed bills that would create a task force of government science leaders, academics and industry representatives to outline a plan to create and fund a national research cloud. This program would give academic scientists access to the cloud data centers of the tech giants, and to public data sets for research. Several universities, including Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Ohio State, and tech companies including Google, Amazon and IBM backed the idea as well on Tuesday. The organizations declared their support for the creation of a research cloud and their willingness to participate in the project.
The research cloud, though a conceptual blueprint at this stage, is another sign of the largely effective campaign by universities and tech companies to persuade the American government to increase government backing for research into artificial intelligence. The Trump administration, while cutting research elsewhere, has proposed doubling federal spending on A.I. research by 2022. Fueling the increased government backing is the recognition that A.I. technology is essential to national security and economic competitiveness. The national cloud legislation will be proposed as an amendment to this year’s defense budget authorization. “We have a real challenge in our country from China in terms of what they are doing with A.I.,” said Representative Anna G. Eshoo, Democrat of California, a sponsor of the bill.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Universities and Tech Giants Back National Cloud Computing Project
If you have a barbell but not quite enough plates, you’ve probably spent this quarantine hanging things off it in extremely sketchy ways. On social media I’ve seen people put weights in tote bags, hang water bottles off their barbell, and more. A lot of these DIY solutions are injuries waiting to happen, but recently…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Safely Hang Dumbbells From a Barbell
Fedora stakeholders are debating the merits of potentially ending legacy BIOS support for the Linux distribution and to only support UEFI-based installations…
Source: Phoronix – Fedora Developers Discussing Possibility Of Dropping Legacy BIOS Support
When the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro launched earlier this year at $700 and $900, it sort of felt like OnePlus had given up on making speedy and relatively inexpensive phones in order to cater to mainstream buyers. But with the new OnePlus Nord, it appears OnePlus is looking to return to its roots by making a truly…
Source: Gizmodo – The OnePlus Nord Could Be OnePlus’ Big Return to Affordability
It doesn’t have a new name, but Discord is effectively rebranding away from being an app dedicated to helping gamers communicate with one another during a tense online match. In a blog post published on Tuesday, the company announced it’s changing it…
Source: Engadget – Discord is rebranding to shift away from gaming
In an era of the climate crisis, it’s easy to imagine things getting worse because that’s all we know.
Source: Gizmodo – The Future Earth Challenges Us to Break Our Cycle of Doom
The Tosche station deleted scene from Star Wars: A New Hope paints a fascinating picture of early plans to flesh out the galaxy far, far away, even if, in hindsight, it was probably for the best that it remained on the cutting room floor. But as Mark Hamill recently reflected, one sad reason it remains mostly hidden…
Source: Gizmodo – Mark Hamill Discusses Luke Skywalker’s Political Naivety in Star Wars’ Deleted Scenes
Video directed by Morgan Crossley, edited by Ron Douglas and Brady Jackson. Motion graphics by Brady Jackson and Dylan Blau. Click here for transcript.
Welcome to the pilot episode of “Human Interface,” a new series we’re kicking off wherein we take you up close and personal with complex systems and have an expert explain what all the buttons and switches do. “Pilot episode” is particularly appropriate here, because we’re kicking off the series with a look at a McDonnell Douglas F-15C Eagle, one of the world’s most famous air superiority fighters. The F-15C and its variants are in service with multiple air forces around the world, including the United States, Japan, and Israel, and the aircraft has an outstanding combat record—across all its deployments and operators, air-superiority F-15s like the F-15C have racked up more than 100 air-to-air kills and zero losses.
Before the coronavirus made everything crazy, we were able to score some time with an F-15C on the flight line at Fresno Air National Guard Base in California. Our tour guide was Air Force pilot Colonel Andrea Themely, who retired in 2018 after serving for 23 years. Col. Themely has about 3,400 hours piloting high-performance jet fighters and about 1,100 hours specifically in F-15Cs, and her last post was commanding the Air Force’s 80th Flying Training Wing.
As I found out firsthand a few years ago in the Navy’s F/A-18 simulator at NAS Oceana, a fourth-generation jet fighter like the F-15C is typically equipped with a mish-mash of ’70s- and ’80s-era screens and buttons, with other more current-looking ’00s-era controls shoehorned into the corners. This reflects the fact that fighters like the F-15C and its contemporaries are mostly products of the 1970s, with more modern improvements bolted on over time.
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Source: Ars Technica – Human Interface: What (almost) every button in an F-15C fighter’s cockpit does
Earlier this year, Motorola launched its Edge+ 5G smartphone, which was its first true flagship device in years. Powered by Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon 865 SoC, the smartphone also came with a hefty price tag to match ($999) and is available as a Verizon Wireless exclusive.
This summer, however, Motorola is launching the regular Edge (sans
Source: Hot Hardware – Motorola Edge 5G Arrives Unlocked This Summer With Boosted Specs And 9 Price Tag
Elementary OS Hera 5.1 has been out for a while now. Here we’ll explore what’s new, what to expect, and how it stacks up against rival desktops.
Source: LXer – Elementary OS 5.1 Hera Review
Second-screen laptops are the cool tech gadgets du jour, but so far, we haven’t seen a good reason to pay extra for one, given all the compromises. However, ASUS made a good case when it unveiled the futuristic ROG Zephyrus Duo 15. As well as a sleek…
Source: Engadget – ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 review: The first good dual-screen laptop
It’s been almost two years since Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor, and in that time there haven’t been many exciting developments in smartwatches, Google bought Fitbit, though that union is yet to be complete. Companies continued…
Source: Engadget – Qualcomm’s latest smartwatch chips support 16-megapixel cameras
Google may have been one of the first companies to the smartwatch scene, but its Wear OS platform has so far been a journey of unfulfilled potential. For a long time, that was partly because most Wear OS watches were running on outdated hardware: the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip. That was supposed to change in…
Source: Gizmodo – Qualcomm’s New Wearables Chip Could Finally Improve Wear OS Watches, I Hope