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DudeAsInCool

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Posts posted by DudeAsInCool

  1. Adrianne-Lenker-i-wont-let-go-of-your-ha

    Big Thief singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker’s new solo album Bright Future is dropping next week, but she’s got another new release out today. A six-song demos collection called i won’t let go of your hand is available now at Bandcamp, to buy but not to stream. All proceeds will go to Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.

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  2. Google's Bay View campus was designed with the world's strangest roof line.

    Enlarge / Google's Bay View campus was designed with the world's strangest roof line. (credit: Google)

    Google's swanky new "Bay View" campus apparently has a major problem: bad Wi-Fi. Reuters reports that Google's first self-designed office building has "been plagued for months by inoperable or, at best, spotty Wi-Fi, according to six people familiar with the matter." A Google spokesperson confirmed the problems and said the company is working on fixing them.

    Bay View opened in May 2022. At launch, Google's VP of Real Estate & Workplace Services, David Radcliffe, said the site "marks the first time we developed one of our own major campuses, and the process gave us the chance to rethink the very idea of an office." The result is a wild tent-like structure with a striking roofline made up of swooping square sections. Of course, it's all made of metal and glass, but the roof shape looks like squares of cloth held up by poles—each square section has high points on the four corners and sags down in the middle. The roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, and Google calls it the "Gradient Canopy."

    All those peaks and parabolic ceiling sections apparently aren't great for Wi-Fi propagation, with the Reuters report saying that the roof "swallows broadband like the Bermuda Triangle." Googlers assigned to the building are making do with Ethernet cables, using phones as hotspots, or working outside, where the Wi-Fi is stronger. One anonymous employee told Reuters, "You’d think the world’s leading Internet company would have worked this out."

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  3. The 13- and 15-inch M3 MacBook Air.

    Enlarge / The 13- and 15-inch M3 MacBook Air. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    When Apple upgraded its Macs with the M2 chip, some users noticed that storage speeds were actually quite a bit lower than they were in the M1 versions. Both the 256GB M2 MacBook Air and the 512GB M2 MacBook Pro had their storage speeds roughly halved compared to M1 Macs with the same storage capacities.

    Teardowns revealed that this was because Apple was using fewer physical flash memory chips to provide the same amount of storage. Modern SSDs achieve their high speeds partly by reading from and writing to multiple NAND flash chips simultaneously, a process called "interleaving." When there's only one flash chip to access, speeds go down.

    Early teardowns of the M3 MacBook Air suggest that Apple may have reversed course here, at least for some Airs. The Max Tech YouTube channel took a 256GB M3 Air apart, showing a pair of 128GB NAND flash chips rather than the single 256GB chip that the M2 Air used. BlackMagic Disk Speed Test performance increases accordingly; read and write speeds for the 256GB M2 Air come in at around 1,600 MB/s, while the M3 Air has read speeds of roughly 2,900 MB/s and write speeds of about 2,100 MB/s. That's roughly in line with the M1 Air's performance.

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  4. Domestically made smartphones were much in evidence at the National People’s Congress in Beijing

    Enlarge / Domestically made smartphones were much in evidence at the National People’s Congress in Beijing (credit: Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images)

    Apple and Tesla cracked China, but now the two largest US consumer companies in the country are experiencing cracks in their own strategies as domestic rivals gain ground and patriotic buying often trumps their allure.

    Falling market share and sales figures reported this month indicate the two groups face rising competition and the whiplash of US-China geopolitical tensions. Both have turned to discounting to try to maintain their appeal.

    A shift away from Apple, in particular, has been sharp, spurred on by a top-down campaign to reduce iPhone usage among state employees and the triumphant return of Chinese national champion Huawei, which last year overcame US sanctions to roll out a homegrown smartphone capable of near 5G speeds.

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  5. AMD's depiction of a game playing without FreeSync (left) and with FreeSync (right).

    Enlarge / AMD's depiction of a game playing without FreeSync (left) and with FreeSync (right). (credit: AMD)

    AMD announced this week that it has ceased FreeSync certification for monitors or TVs whose maximum refresh rates are under 144 Hz. Previously, FreeSync monitors and TVs could have refresh rates as low as 60 Hz, allowing for screens with lower price tags and ones not targeted at serious gaming to carry the variable refresh-rate technology.

    AMD also boosted the refresh-rate requirements for its higher AdaptiveSync tiers, FreeSync Premium and FreeSync Premium Pro, from 120 Hz to 200 Hz.

    Here are the new minimum refresh-rate requirements for FreeSync, which haven't changed for laptops.

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  6. The bigger Pixel 8 Pro gets the latest AI features. The smaller model does not.

    Enlarge / The bigger Pixel 8 Pro gets the latest AI features. The smaller model does not. (credit: Google)

    If you believe Google's marketing hype, AI in a phone is really, really important, the best AI is Google's, and the best place to get that AI is Google's flagship smartphone, the Pixel 8. We're five months removed from the launch of the Pixel 8, and that doesn't seem like a justifiable position anymore: Google says its latest AI models can't run on the Pixel 8.

    Google dropped that news in a Mobile World Congress wrap-up video that was spotted by Mishaal Rahman. At the end of the show in a Q&A session, Googler Terence Zhang, a member of the Gemini-on-Android team, said "[Gemini] Nano will not be coming to the Pixel 8 because of some hardware limitations. It's currently on the Pixel 8 Pro and very recently available on the Samsung S24 family. It'll be coming to more high-end devices in the near future."

    That is a wild statement. Gemini is Google's latest AI model, and it made a big deal of the launch last month. Gemini comes in a few different sizes, and the smallest "Nano" size is specifically designed to run on smartphones as a much-hyped "on-device AI." The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are Google's flagship smartphones. Google designed the phone and the chip and the AI model and somehow can't make these things play nice together?

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  7. A blurry, ghostly Persona in visionOS 1.0. They should at least look less bad in visionOS 1.1.

    Enlarge / A blurry, ghostly Persona in visionOS 1.0. They should at least look less bad in visionOS 1.1. (credit: Samuel Axon)

    Apple has released a long list of medium-sized software updates for most of its devices today. The macOS Sonoma 14.4, watchOS 10.4, tvOS 17.4, and visionOS 1.1 updates are all available now, and most of them add at least one or two major features as they fix multiple bugs and patch security vulnerabilities.

    The visionOS 1.1 release is the first major update for Apple's newest operating system, and as our coverage of the headset has demonstrated, there's still plenty of low-hanging fruit to fix. Most notably for people who are trying to use the headset for work meetings, Apple says that there have been multiple changes to the look of Personas, the 3D avatars that show up in your place when you're video chatting with the Vision Pro on your face. The update improves "hair and makeup appearance," "neck and mouth representation," and "rendering of the eyes," and while it's clear that it's an improvement over the 1.0 release of Personas, the core uncanniness still seems to be intact. The Persona feature is still labeled as a beta.

    Apple has also made tweaks to the appearance and functionality of the headset's virtual keyboard, improved the Virtual Display feature's Mac connectivity, and added a handful of mobile device management features for IT administrators.

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  8. A promotional image for a Roku TV.

    Enlarge / A promotional image for a Roku TV. (credit: Roku)

    Roku customers are threatening to stop using, or to even dispose of, their low-priced TVs and streaming gadgets after the company appears to be locking devices for people who don't conform to the recently updated terms of service (ToS).

    This month, users on Roku's support forums reported suddenly seeing a message when turning on their Roku TV or streaming device reading: "We've made an important update: We’ve updated our Dispute Resolution Terms. Select ‘Agree’ to agree to these updated Terms and to continue enjoying our products and services. Press * to view these updated Terms." A large button reading "Agree" follows. The pop-up doesn't offer a way to disagree, and users are unable to use their device unless they hit agree.

    Customers have left pages of complaints on Roku's forum. One user going by "rickstanford" said they were "FURIOUS!!!!" and expressed interest in sending their reported six Roku devices back to the company since "apparently I don't own them despite spending hundreds of dollars on them."

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  9. The Red V-Raptor X.

    Enlarge / The Red V-Raptor X. (credit: Red)

    Nikon is buying the ultra-high-end video camera company Red Digital Cinema. Nikon has a press release saying that "RED will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Nikon" for an undisclosed sum. Nikon is typically more of a still-image camera company and wants to use Red to "expand the fast-growing professional digital cinema camera market."

    Red was founded in 2005 by Jim Jannard, founder of the Oakley sunglasses company. The company is a big player in digital film production, and, at the peak of its movie market share in 2016, over 25 percent of the top 100 grossing domestic films were shot on Red cameras. A lot of big YouTubers also use the cameras, so there's a lot more room for growth there. In the early days, the company was a pioneer in 4K digital filmmaking (see Peter Jackson's 48 fps film The Hobbit as a famous example), but since then, the competition has caught up. The company also made a terrible smartphone that one time.

    "This acquisition marks a significant milestone for Nikon, melding its rich heritage in professional and consumer imaging with RED's innovative prowess," Red's president, Jarred Land, wrote on Facebook. "Together, Nikon and RED are poised to redefine the professional digital cinema camera market, promising an exciting future of product development that will continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in film and video production."

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  10. Apple's M3 MacBook Airs put a new chip in 2022's design.

    Enlarge / Apple's M3 MacBook Airs put a new chip in 2022's design. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    Right off the bat, the M3 MacBook Airs aren't as interesting as the M2 models.

    July 2022's M2 MacBook Air updated the design of the 13-inch laptop for the Apple Silicon era after the M1 Air's external design played it safe. And the first-ever 15-inch MacBook Air, released over a year later, was an appealing option for people who wanted a larger screen but didn't need the extra power or cost of a MacBook Pro. Together, they were a comprehensive rethink of Apple's approach to its mainstream laptops, modeled after the similarly dramatic Apple Silicon MacBook Pro redesigns.

    The M3 Airs don't do any of that. They are laptop designs we've already seen, wrapped around a processor we've already seen. But they may end up being more important than the M2 Airs because of when they're being released—as the last of the Intel Macs slowly age and break and Apple winds down software support for them (if not in this year's macOS release, then almost certainly next year's). Between the faster chip and a couple of other feature updates, the new machines may also be the first ones that are truly worth a look for M1 Air early adopters who want an upgrade.

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  11. white-reaper-the-sound-cover-1709239250.

    The Louisville rockers White Reaper released a new album, Asking For A Ride, at the top of 2023. They spent some of last year opening for Weezer on their indie rock roadtrip, and guitarist Tony Esposito got to shred at a Bengals game in the fall. Today, they’re releasing a cover of the Sound’s “I Can’t Escape Myself,” which kicked off the English band’s 1980 debut album Jeopardy.

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  12. EO_FYC_FINAL-1706105929-1000x1000-170923

    In a few weeks, Empress Of is releasing a new album, For Your Consideration, her first full-length since 2020’s I’m Your Empress Of. We’ve heard “Kiss Me” (featuring Rina Sawayama), “What’s Love” (featuring MUNA), and “Femenine” from it so far — that last one made our best songs of the week list. Today, Empress Of is back with one last single, “Preciosa,” and you can check it out below.

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  13. HP Envy 6020e printer

    Enlarge / The HP Envy 6020e is one of the printers available for rent. (credit: HP)

    HP launched a subscription service today that rents people a printer, allots them a specific amount of printed pages, and sends them ink for a monthly fee. HP is framing its service as a way to simplify printing for families and small businesses, but the deal also comes with monitoring and a years-long commitment.

    Prices range from $6.99 per month for a plan that includes an HP Envy printer (the current model is the 6020e) and 20 printed pages. The priciest plan includes an HP OfficeJet Pro rental and 700 printed pages for $35.99 per month.

    HP says it will provide subscribers with ink deliveries when they're running low and 24/7 support via phone or chat (although it's dubious how much you want to rely on HP support). Support doesn't include on or offsite repairs or part replacements. The subscription's terms of service (TOS) note that the service doesn't cover damage or failure caused by, unsurprisingly, "use of non-HP media supplies and other products" or if you use your printer more than what your plan calls for.

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