According to a Japanese research study, only 2-5% of players spend money in gacha games like Genshin Impact. This means that the vast majority of players are subsisting on free gacha rolls from various in-game activities. With a little bit of persistence, you can improve your odds and save a pretty significant number…
Source: Kotaku – How To Get Free Wishes In Genshin Impact
If you missed the sale earlier this month, you have another chance to get $60 off Apple’s 2020 iPad Air. At the time of writing this, the green, silver and blue models are down to $539, which is 10 percent off and one of the best prices we’ve seen in months. We considered this to be the best iPad for most people when it first came out and it remains a great option for those that want a powerful, versatile tablet that won’t break the bank.
Yes, there are newer iPads available now — even the base 10.2-inch iPad Air received an update last year — but the Air still sits in the middle of Apple’s lineup. It runs on the A14 Bionic chipset with a six-core CPU and a four-core GPU, and these discounted models have WiFi 6 support, 64GB of storage and a 10.9-inch Liquid Retina Display with True Tone. The updated, flat-edged design has a USB-C port for charging and a power button with a built-in fingerprint reader for extra security. The iPad Air also supports the second-generation Apple Pencil, so artists and those who prefer to take hand-written notes could use it as their main digital notebook.
While we suggest considering the M1 iPad Pros if you want a true laptop replacement, the iPad Air can act as one, too. It has speedy performance, a 12.5-hour battery life and it can connect to Apple’s Smart Keyboard Folio and the Magic Keyboard, so you have a number of ways to turn it into a 2-in-1 machine. There are plenty of perks to the M1 iPad Pros when it comes to productivity, but you’ll pay at least $200 more for one of those. So despite the fact that it is almost two years old, the iPad Air remains a good option if you want a tablet that can keep up with you on your busiest days.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
Source: Engadget – The 2020 iPad Air is on sale for 9 right now
While mapping radio waves across the universe, astronomers happened upon a celestial object releasing giant bursts of energy — and it’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. From a report: The spinning space object, spotted in March 2018, beamed out radiation three times per hour. In those moments, it became the brightest source of radio waves viewable from Earth, acting like a celestial lighthouse. Astronomers think it might be a remnant of a collapsed star, either a dense neutron star or a dead white dwarf star, with a strong magnetic field — or it could be something else entirely. A study on the discovery published Wednesday in the journal Nature. “This object was appearing and disappearing over a few hours during our observations,” said lead study author Natasha Hurley-Walker, an astrophysicist at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, in a statement. “That was completely unexpected. It was kind of spooky for an astronomer because there’s nothing known in the sky that does that. And it’s really quite close to us — about 4,000 light-years away. It’s in our galactic backyard.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Unknown Space Object Beaming Out Radio Signals Every 18 Minutes Remains a Mystery
You probably know the feeling: The night before you have to go back to work or school after being off for a couple of days (or longer), you start to feel anxious. You can’t focus, can’t sleep, and find yourself imagining all the stressful or annoying things that await you at work in the coming week. Welcome to the “…
Source: LifeHacker – What Are the ‘Sunday Scaries,’ and How Can You Beat Them?
Enlarge / The LMDh regulations cap the cars’ downforce:drag ratio, so designers don’t have to spend as much time worrying about aerodynamics and can use more road car styling cues. Not that you can really make that out on this wrapped prototype. (credit: Porsche)
If there were any doubts about Porsche taking its return to prototype racing seriously, they’re now gone.
The company’s new car is not due to race in earnest until this time next year; in fact, it’s so early in the car’s development that it hasn’t been officially named. But that hasn’t stopped the automaker, together with Penske Racing, from starting the new car’s track testing program ahead of competing in two championship series in 2023, beginning with next year’s 24-hour race at Daytona in Florida.
“The rollout of the LMDh racing car was also the first track outing for Porsche Penske Motorsport,” said Urs Kuratle, project manager for Porsche’s LMDh program. “The squad worked well together right from the start. This shows a high level of professionalism in all areas. After all, the operational requirements for the safe running of a hybrid vehicle are very high. In the next outings, we will focus on going deeper into the required processes and procedures. During these first test days at Weissach, the V8-biturbo impressed us in every respect. We’re convinced that we’ve chosen precisely the right unit.”
Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Porsche’s new hybrid Le Mans car breaks cover as testing begins
Astronomers are still finding strange objects that defy expectations. According to BBC News, researchers from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have discovered a strange spinning Milky Way object about 4,000 light-years away. The repeating transient sent a giant burst of polarized radio energy for a full minute every 18 minutes, and was appearing and disappearing over the course of a few hours of observations — for context, a pulsar’s burst lasts a few seconds or less.
The curiosity is smaller than the Sun, but is one of the brightest radio objects in the sky during its bursts. The disappearances were also unique, according to team lead Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker. Curtin student Tyrone O’Doherty first spotted the object using the combination of Australia’s Murchison Widefield Array and a new observation method.
There might be an existing explanation. Hurley-Walker said the data matched a predicted (but as-yet undiscovered) object known as an ultra-long period magnetar. That is, it’s a neutron star spinning at a relatively lethargic pace. Even if that’s the case, though, scientists want to know why the object is converting magnetic energy to radio waves at such an efficient rate. It could also be a white dwarf with an unusually strong magnetic field, or something else altogether.
The frenzy appears to have subsided, but Hurley-Walker is still tracking the object in case it exhibits the odd behavior again. She also plans to sift through the Murchison array’s archives to learn if there were similar objects before. Whatever this entity might be, the findings are significant — they could shape our understanding of stars and the universe at large.
Karen Gillan must fight herself to the death. That’s the premise of Dual, a weird, funny, new sci-fi film from director Riley Stearns (The Art of Self-Defense). Gillan plays Sarah, a disconnected woman who is diagnosed with a terminal illness. She’s going to die, there’s no way around it. And so she does what many…
Source: Gizmodo – Dual Proves That 2 Karen Gillans Are Even Better Than 1
Astronomers are a bit puzzled over a mysterious object 4,000 light years away from Earth that is sending out giant bursts of energy. The object, first spotted in 2018, sent out radio waves three times per hour.
An object located 4,000 light years away, or 24 quadrillion miles, from Earth may seem like a massive distance, but astronomers
Source: Hot Hardware – Astronomers Are Stumped By A Mysterious Space Object’s Spooky Radio Transmissions
Whether you have a stake in who wins the Super Bowl or you just enjoy the theatrics of the half-time show, the best way to experience the Big Game is by watching it live with friends and a full spread of snacks. And if you don’t shell out for cable each month, there are still plenty of ways to watch the Super Bowl…
Source: Gizmodo – Here’s How to Stream the Super Bowl
US President Joe Biden is doubling down on his administration’s support in favor of consumers having a right to repair their electronics. Going a step further, his remarks also seem to suggest he is taking credit for Apple and Microsoft recently adopting policies that are more friendly towards the growing right-to-repair movement.
His latest
Source: Hot Hardware – President Biden Champions Right To Repair Wins As Apple And Microsoft Soften Stance
InvoicePlane is a free, open-source, and self-hosted application for managing your quotes, invoices, clients, and payments. It is used by many organizations and freelancers to manage their payments and invoices.
Source: LXer – How to Install InvoicePlane with Apache and Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate on Debian 11
Is there a more satisfying experience in video gaming than clearing four lines at once in Tetris? (A move technically referred to as a tetris.) It turns out there is: watching an AI developed by Greg Cannon play Tetris flawlessly while prioritizing clearing four lines as frequently as possible.
Source: Gizmodo – Watch an AI Play the Best Game of Tetris You’ve Ever Seen
LG has announced a new offering to advertisers that promises to be able to reach the company’s millions of connected devices in households across the country, pummeling TV viewers with — you guessed it — targeted ads. From a report: While ads playing on your connected TV might not be anything new, some of the metrics the company plans to hand over to advertisers include targeting viewers by specific demographics, for example, or being able to tie a TV ad view to someone’s in-store purchase down the line. If you swap out a TV screen for a computer screen, the kind of microtargeting that LG’s offering doesn’t sound any different than what a company like Facebook or Google would offer. That’s kind of the point.
Online ad spending reached more than $490 billion by the end of last year, and those numbers are only going to keep going up as more advertisers look for more ways to track and target more people online. Traditional TV ad spend, meanwhile, has tanked since its peak around 2016. In order to lure ad dollars back, folks in the television space, like LG, are using every tool at their disposal to claw back the ad dollars the internet’s taken away. And it’s clearly working. While traditional TV ad spend has plummeted, there’s never been more money spent on advertising across the digitally connected TVs offered by companies like LG. Roku, for example, recently announced an upcoming Shopify integration that would let retailers target TV viewers with more ads for more of their products. Amazon rolled out a new beta platform that lets networks promote apps, movies, or TV shows to people right from the device’s home screen. And I don’t need to remind Samsung TV owners how their devices are getting absolutely plastered with ads from every conceivable angle.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – LG Announces New Ad Targeting Features for TVs
In mid-December, Thorsten Behrens, a board member for the Document Foundation (TDF),
posted a
seemingly simple proposal for an “attic” that would become the home of
abandoned projects. No specific projects were named as the first intended
residents of the attic, but the proposal
clearly related to the LibreOffice
Online (LOOL) project. The following
discussion made it clear that the unhappiness around LOOL has yet to fade
away, and that the Foundation still has some work to do when it comes to
defining its relationship with its corporate members.
Source: LWN.net – [$] An attic for LibreOffice Online
Many small businesses rely upon devices like the Square Terminal for payments and receipts. There is a chance that soon vendors may turn to their iPhone devices instead of the tried and true terminals. Apple is reportedly working on technology that would allow business owners to directly accept payments with their iPhone handsets.
iPhone
Source: Hot Hardware – Apple Puts Square In Its Sights With Contactless Payments On iPhone
Just has humanity has learned to fight off pathogens—through strategies like sanitation and medicine—those pathogens are learning to fight back. Some infections are now getting harder to treat, as many microbes have evolved ways to survive the drugs that previously vanquished them with ease. According to a recent study
Source: Gizmodo – 5 Infectious Diseases That Are Evolving Faster Than Medicine
Moderna gave its omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine to the first participant in a clinical trial, the company announced Wednesday. The report comes a few days after Pfizer / BioNTech launched a trial of its shot targeting the fast-spreading variant. From a report: The announcement coincides with the release of data showing that the two-dose series of Moderna’s original vaccine struggled to block the omicron variant of the virus, which has mutations that help it dodge those antibodies. A booster shot restored much of its ability to neutralize the virus — and while that protection weakened over time, it still stuck around for at least six months. Still, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement that the omicron variant is enough of a threat that the company plans to move forward with the variant booster.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Moderna Starts Trial of an Omicron-specific COVID-19 Vaccine
Two Point Campus, Sega and Two Point Studios’ follow up to Two Point Hospital, will arrive on May 17th. The quirky college life simulator is coming to PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch. Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass subscribers can play at no extra cost on launch day.
You’ll be able to build a dream (or nightmare) college campus from the ground up, from residence halls and classrooms to ornamental pathways and forests. Players will be able to give students a college experience packed with relationships and extracurricular activities, such as concerts and a sport called Cheese Ball, and possibly even an education.
Students can take classes such as gastronomy and robotics, and they each have their own character traits to be catered to. Keeping students happy and helping them earn strong grades can boost your college’s prestige, allowing you to enroll more students and boost the institution’s bank balance.
Pre-orders for most platforms are open today, and will be available on the Switch eShop later. Locking in a pre-order will net you in-game goodies for not only Two Point Campus, but Two Point Hospital as well.
A home appraisal is a standard step in the mortgage approval process. If you’re buying a home or refinancing your current one, your lender likely will require a professional appraisal to ensure your loan amount and the home value are aligned and that you’re not paying way too much for what you’re getting. Typically,…
Source: LifeHacker – How to ‘Appraise’ Your House Without Paying Someone Else to Do It
I was sitting on the couch one evening over the holidays, watching a college bowl game as one is wont to do. Football is usually my tune-out time where I can forget the world is on fire and the fossil fuel industry is hellbent on stoking the flames.
Source: Gizmodo – The Nightmare Valero Site Claiming Fossil Fuels Are ‘Essential for Life’
