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DudeAsInCool

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Posts posted by DudeAsInCool

  1. 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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  2. HDMI cables, bundled up and covered in some dust

    Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

    Any Linux user trying to send the highest-resolution images to a display at the fastest frame rate is out of luck for the foreseeable future, at least when it comes to an HDMI connection.

    The licensing group that controls the HDMI standard, the HDMI Forum, has reportedly told AMD that it does not allow an open source implementation of the HDMI 2.1 (or HDMI 2.1+) specification, blocking tools such as AMD's FreeSync from working over HDMI connections at resolution/rate combinations like 4K at 120 Hz, or 5K at 240 Hz.

    Linux blog Phoronix noted in January 2021 that the HDMI Forum did not offer public access to the HDMI 2.1 specification. Alex Deucher, an AMD engineer who has long contributed to the company's open source offerings, has kept a related bug thread alive for at least two years, only to deliver the negative outcome yesterday.

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  3. 2024’s first big Windows 11 update extends Copilot’s capabilities, does other stuff

    Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

    For the third year running, Microsoft is releasing a batch of small- to medium-sized Windows 11 updates in February. This year's collection of tweaks includes the now-obligatory smattering of generative AI features but also some window-snapping changes, better Android phone integration, and accessibility upgrades, among other things.

    Starting with the non-AI features: If you've paired an Android phone with your PC in the Your Phone app, Microsoft says that "soon" you will be able to use the phone's camera as a webcam during video calls. This mirrors a similar Mac-to-iPhone feature that Apple added to macOS a couple of years ago; though most PCs these days are sold with webcams, the camera on any reasonably recent Android phone will be a visual upgrade.

    Window snapping is getting some "intelligent suggestions" that Microsoft says will "help you quickly organize open apps based on how you use them." And the Widgets view gets a new "focused" view and subcategories that will let you easily switch between widget boards if you want different widgets for different contexts (one for home and one for work, for example).

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  4. Stereogum-Partisan-Austin-2024-170922897

    Next month Stereogum will team up with Partisan Records for a live music showcase in Austin. The event is Friday March 15 at Cheer Up Charlies on 900 Red River St. In recent years Stereogum brought performances to this venue by acts like Militarie Gun, Ratboys, Rico Nasty, Hotline TNT, Black Midi, Fontaines D.C., and more, and we’re just as psyched about this year’s lineup. In the afternoon on the outdoor stage Stereogum will host the Armed, Horse Jumper Of Love, Snõõper, Kassa Overall, Tomato Flower, and Dirt Buyer. Inside at Cheer Ups, Partisan is bringing Lip Critic, Body Meat, Angélica Garcia, YHWH Nailgun, and a Partisan DJ set. You should be familiar with the artists on the lineup if you read this website!

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  5. Enid Farber

    Álvaro Domene has made a home on the frontier of sound. For over a decade, one of the underground’s most creative forces has constructed compositions that sound unlike anything else, a unique amalgam of guitar-centric jazz, metal, modern classical, and electronic influences that evades easy categorization and often doesn’t sound like traditional guitar-centric music. Those lucky enough to find those solo and collaborative releases discover works that rewrite the books on the possibilities of the guitar and the genres Domene chooses to delve into. And for those few souls brave enough to stick around, it often seems like he’s rewiring multiple styles at once, flipping the off switches on tropes and cliches while patching together something new. That said, since Domene is making the music he wants to listen to, the music isn’t “experimental” in the overused music critic sense. This isn’t an experiment. No, Álvaro Domene is letting you into his home to hear Álvaro Domene.

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  6. Samsung has an event coming up in July, which will see the launch of the Galaxy Ring smart ring and new versions of Samsung's foldable phones, the Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip. We're up to version six now! Both foldables have had renders posted recently from OnLeaks and Smartprix. These are usually based on CAD files passed around to accessory makers, so they should be spatially accurate down to the millimeter, with some guesses as to the colors, materials, and a few small details.

    First up, we have the big foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 6. This year, the device is getting a boxier design with sharper screen and body corners, making it more in line with the S24 Ultra. The dimensions of what a foldable should be is still something no one can seem to agree on, and the report says the Z Fold 6 is "1.4 mm shorter and 2.6 mm wider" than the Fold 5. The body has the same thickness as last year, 6.1 mm when open, but that doesn't say how much thickness the hinge adds. (The Fold 5 is 13.4 mm when folded.)

    The flat sides in the render look great, making the Z Fold look even more book-like than normal. There are three cameras on the back, a hole-punch camera on the front cover screen, and an under-screen camera on the inside. What would help the Z Fold keep pace with the competition is a big battery upgrade: The Z Fold 5 was thicker than the competition yet only packed a 4400 mAh battery. The Pixel Fold and Honor Magic V2 both shipped with a 5000 mAh battery.

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  7. A gas station displays an out-of-order sign on February 29, 2024.

    Enlarge / A gas station displays an out-of-order sign on February 29, 2024 in New Zealand. (credit: Mark Coote/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

    Today is Leap Day, meaning that for the first time in four years, it's February 29. That's normally a quirky, astronomical factoid (or a very special birthday for some). But that unique calendar date broke gas station payment systems across New Zealand for much of the day.

    As reported by numerous international outlets, self-serve pumps in New Zealand were unable to accept card payments due to a problem with the gas pumps' payment processing software. The New Zealand Herald reported that the outage lasted "more than 10 hours." This effectively shuttered some gas stations, while others had to rely on in-store payments. The outage affected suppliers, including Allied Petroleum, BP, Gull, Waitomo, and Z Energy, and has reportedly been fixed.

    In-house payment solutions, such as BP fuel cards and the Waitomo app, reportedly still worked during the outage.

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  8. Image showing a delivery person saying

    Enlarge / Consumer Reports' investigation suggests that, should this delivery person press and hold the bell button and then pair using Eken's app, he could see if other delivery people get such a perfunctory response. (credit: Eken)

    Video doorbell cameras have been commoditized to the point where they're available for $30–$40 on marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, Temu, and Shein. The true cost of owning one might be much greater, however.

    Consumer Reports (CR) has released the findings of a security investigation into two budget-minded doorbell brands, Eken and Tuck, which are largely the same hardware produced by the Eken Group in China, according to CR. The cameras are further resold under at least 10 more brands. The cameras are set up through a common mobile app, Aiwit. And the cameras share something else, CR claims: "troubling security vulnerabilities."

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  9. Samsung's SD Express-compatible microSD cards.

    Enlarge / Samsung's SD Express-compatible microSD cards. (credit: Samsung)

    Big news for people who like (physically) small storage: Samsung says that it is sampling its first microSD cards that support the SD Express standard, which will allow them to hit sustained read speeds of as much as 800MB per second. That's a pretty substantial boost over current SD cards, which tend to top out around 80MB or 90MB per second (for cheap commodity cards) and around 250MB per second for the very fastest UHS-II-compatible professional cards.

    As Samsung points out, that 800MB/s figure puts these tiny SD Express cards well above the speeds possible with older SATA SSDs, which could make these cards more useful as primary storage devices for PCs or single-board computers that can support the SD Express standard (more on that later).

    Samsung is currently sampling a 256GB version of the SD Express card that "will be available for purchase later this year."

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  10. Paramount ends Warner Bros. Discovery merger talks, continues mulling sell-off

    Enlarge (credit: Paramount+)

    Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Paramount Global are no longer considering a merger that would have put the Max and Paramount+ streaming services under one corporate umbrella. Per a CNBC report today citing anonymous “people familiar with the matter," WBD and Paramount had been mulling a merger for “several months."

    In December, reports started swirling about WBD and Paramount discussing a potential merger. Axios even reported that WBD CEO David Zaslav and Paramount CEO Bob Bakish met in person for “several hours” and that Zaslav also met with Shari Redstone, the owner of National Amusements Inc. (NAI), Paramount’s parent company. Now, CNBC reports that discussions between the media giants “cooled off this month.” Paramount and WBD haven’t commented.

    When news of the potential merger dropped, it was unclear what sort of regulatory hurdles the media conglomerates might have faced if they tried becoming one. Combined, the companies would have had the second-biggest streaming business by subscriber count, trailing Netflix.

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  11. Xiaomi's big Mobile World Congress launch is the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. This is a top-tier flagship that of course is not coming to the US but is available in Europe for a whopping 1,499 euros ($1,624).

    Let's get the specs out of the way: This has a 120 Hz, 3200×1440 OLED, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 5000 mAh battery. A proprietary 90 W wired "HyperCharge" will get the phone from 0–100 percent battery in 33 minutes, while a wireless 80 W version will charge the phone in 46 minutes.

    Xiaomi is very proud that all four sides of the screen are curved. The whole screen kind of rises up and bubbles out from the aluminum body. Xiaomi says the glass has "deep bending around all four sides and corners, creating a seamlessly elegant curved form." All images, videos, websites, and apps expect to display on a flat surface, so curved displays serve to distort the picture you're looking at, and thankfully some manufacturers have started to drop the idea. Having the display be a big glass bubble also means you now have four glass corners on the front of the phone, so uh, don't drop it!

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  12. In 2010, Samsung demoed a transparent laptop prototype. The OLED laptop looked uniquely futuristic, and there were even reports that Samsung would release the design for real. But it never did. And 14 years later, even with a different type of display technology improving the experience, it seems like there still isn’t a strong argument for transparent-screen consumer laptops—even with AI shoehorned into the design.

    Just a prototype for now

    Before we get into the Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop Concept, keep in mind that it is just a concept. Lenovo has no official plans to release this computer and describes it as a way to explore how transparent displays and AI can be combined.

    That said, Lenovo's executive director of ThinkPad portfolio and product, Tom Butler, told The Verge he has "very high confidence" that such technologies will be available in a consumer product within the next five years. If that's true, Lenovo will need to figure out what people might want in capabilities.

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