The is Samsung’s current flagship smartphone with performance that rivals the best phones money can buy. Today you can get the 128GB model of this phone with a $100 discount that drops the price to just $699.99. 128GB Unlocked Smartphone for $699.99 from Amazon (List price $799.99) AMD Ryzen 7 5800H Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB NVMe SSD for $1,249.99 from Dell (List price $1,429.99) Intel Core i5 13.5-Inch Laptop w/ 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for $899.99 from Amazon (List price $1,299.00) Ax1800 Mesh WiFi 6 System for $229.99 from Amazon (List price $299.99) Chip 13.3-Inch Laptop w/ 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for $1,199.00 from Amazon (List price $1,299.00) 2K 75Hz 27-Inch IPS Monitor for $219.99 from Dell (List price $319.99)
NASA’s InSight lander has been on the red planet since 2018, and it relies on solar panels for power, unlike the nuclear-powered Perseverance rover. That means there’s the potential for dust build-up on the solar panels, which is becoming an issue as the planet descends into another frigid winter. Luckily, . All it took was more sand. InSight got its mission extension in early 2021, shortly before the team that stubbornly refused to burrow. However, the SEIS instrument has exceeded expectations as the first seismometer on another planet. The team has been working to wrap up InSight’s science operations for the season.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is expected to expand the bounds of human knowledge, allowing us to investigate the most distant, and therefore oldest, objects in the universe. So far, all it’s done is cost a lot of money and get delayed. Well, prepare for more of the same. NASA has confirmed that the telescope will not hit its planned October 31st launch. However, the delay . The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been in development for more than 20 years, but it took a few years for the plan to take shape. NASA made changes to the design in the early 2000s, which pushed the expected 2007 launch date back to 2009, and then 2010, and then 2011.
At Computex this week, AMD announced that its upcoming Radeon GPU built in collaboration with Samsung will offer capabilities like ray tracing and variable rate shading. These features point in opposite directions, as far as adding new capabilities to graphics hardware. Variable rate shading, also called coarse pixel shading, reduces the workload on the GPU. Microsoft actually defines this as a reverse form of MSAA (Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing), which is rather entertaining. Variable rate shading allows data from the same pixel to be spread over multiple pixels, reducing the overall GPU workload. Nvidia has of how this can be deployed:
Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops equipped with the company’s revolutionary M1 chip offer excellent performance for a wide range of tasks, and you can get one now with an $100 discount. Chip 13.3-Inch Laptop w/ 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for $1,199.00 from Amazon (List price $1,299.00) 2K 75Hz 27-Inch IPS Monitor for $219.99 from Dell (List price $319.99) 43-inch 4K UHD HDR Fire TV Edition Smart TV for $219.99 from Amazon (List price $299.99) Intel Core i5-10400 Desktop w/ Intel UHD Graphics 630, 8GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB NVMe SSD for $549.00 from Dell (List price $998.57) Intel Core i7-10870H 15.6-Inch 1080p 144Hz Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB M.2 PCI-E SSD for $1,499.99 from Dell (List price $1,863.98) w/ 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for $599.99 from Amazon (List price $699.00)
When AMD launched RDNA2, it promised it would unveil a new GPU rendering solution that could match Nvidia’s DLSS. The company has now shared some additional details on the technology, with more coming on June 22. FidelityFX Super Resolution is not the same as DLSS. The technology will be part of AMD’s GPUOpen program, and AMD is promising support for a much wider range of GPUs than currently support DLSS 1.0 or 2.0. Currently, AMD expects to support FSR on RDNA2, RDNA, and Vega GPUs. While it won’t be supported to the same extent on Nvidia hardware, AMD does plan to offer support for Pascal, Ampere, and Turing.
NortonLifeLock, a company whose software you know from such thrilling scenarios as, “Oh God, my parents bought an OEM PC,” and “Can you please make this software stop begging me to buy it,” has announced it will soon allow end users to mine cryptocurrency. “As the crypto economy continues to become a more important part of our customers’ lives, we want to empower them to mine cryptocurrency with Norton, a brand they trust,” said Vincent Pilette, CEO of NortonLifeLock, and an individual with an arguably poor understanding of how computer enthusiasts feel about his company. “Norton Crypto is yet another innovative example of how we are expanding our Cyber Safety platform to protect our customers’ ever-evolving digital lives.
Microsoft has thrown caution to the wind over the last few years as it seeks to take back a piece of the browser market from Google Chrome. The new Chromium-based browser was a step in the right direction, but Chrome continues to dominate. Microsoft hopes to change that with ongoing Edge improvements, like the new startup boost and sleeping tabs features that are rolling out in version 91. The old Edge browser launched with Windows 10, and Microsoft did everything it could to get people to open it. The nagging and ads eventually failed, though, and Microsoft announced in late 2018 that it would begin work on the Chromium-based version.
Mac users are, of course, pretty content with their hardware. Apple makes impeccable software for their devices and, while they might not offer the same customization as PCs, Apple computers certainly allow for creativity, productivity, and goal kicking. But that’s not to say they can’t be improved from standard. There’s plenty of software out there that can further improve your iMac, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or Mac mini. And some of the best software available to upgrade your Mac is available for a limited-time discounted price in a special bundle: Get for just $35 with code ALLSTARMAC, a huge, limited-time discount off the full purchase price of $876.
