It’s no secret many adults suffer from at least some loss of hearing. In the US, the rate is about 15 percent overall and much higher for men. For those for whom hearing loss is a significant problem, hearing aids are an obvious solution. For those of us who only have minor issues — often age-related high-frequency loss — it’s a tradeoff between simply living with it and dealing with the cost, ergonomics, and often perceived stigma of wearing hearing aids. Signia has introduced a new line of Active hearing aids in an earbud form factor, with the goal of reaching a new audience for their hearing aids.
Earlier this month, NASA announced that it had as the human landing system (HLS) for the upcoming Artemis program. In a few years, astronauts could return to the moon for the first time in decades, and they’ll be stepping off a SpaceX vessel when they do it…unless Blue Origin gets its way. The private spaceflight firm founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos has , claiming its lander design was not given proper consideration. This increasingly ugly spat between two billionaires started last year when NASA to develop concepts for lunar landers. Blue Origin proposed a new three-stage design called Blue Moon, which you have to admit is a great name.
Today you can take home one of Dell’s Vostro 15 5502 laptops with an Intel Core i7 processor and a remarkable discount that drops its price by nearly half. There’s also a discount on a retro arcade cabinet that comes loaded with classic X-Men arcade games. Intel Core i7-1165G7 1080p 15.6-Inch Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce MX330 GPU, 16GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB NVMe SSD for $899.00 from Dell (List price $1,641.43) for $349.00 from Walmart (List price $499.00) Intel Core i9-10980HK 15.6-Inch 1080p 300Hz Gaming Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super, 32GB DDR4 RAM and 3x256GB M.2 PCI-E SSDs $2,349.99 from Dell (List price $3,323.98) Dual-Band Mesh Wi-Fi 6 Router System for $223.00 from Amazon (List price $279.00) w/ Automatic Dirt Disposal Base for $399.00 from Amazon (List price $599.99) 7,200RPM NAS HDD for $184.99 from Amazon (List price $209.99)
Anyone who has tried to buy a GPU these past seven months or so has probably had an unkind word or seven for the bots and scalpers that have made GPU, CPU, and console purchases miserable since the fall of 2020. Our sister site PCMag decided to go we’ve all been doing and actually analyze what it was like to purchase one of these products, what the user experience looks like, and whether or not bots were actually able to deliver on their promise of landing you a GPU. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the term: Last year, end users looking to buy hard-to-find PC GPUs and consoles began using bots that had been developed for the sneaker collecting market to search for and purchase other products.
The secure lock screens on Android and iOS devices are supposed to keep your data secure, but there are still some ways to crack the lock. You just need a capable digital crowbar like the ones made by Cellebrite. The Israeli firm recently bragged that it has helped law enforcement retrieve data from the encrypted Signal chat app. Well, Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike had something to say about that. After getting his hands on Cellebrite’s tools, he . These phone hacking tools are basically black boxes — no one outside the company is supposed to know how they work or what exploits they use to break smartphone security.
Next week, Intel’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger, will travel to Europe to meet with EU officials about the possibility of building new fab capacity within the bloc. These discussions with the EU will take place at a time when foundry capacity and overall semiconductor manufacturing capability are increasingly seen in geopolitical terms. The called for the various members to collectively account for 20 percent of leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing by 2020. At present, the EU is home to about 10 percent of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing capability, but there are no leading-edge facilities currently within the zone. Intel’s Irish facilities currently use 14nm and are expected to deploy 7nm when available, but they aren’t in production on that node yet.
On Tuesday, Apple updated the iMac with new SKUs, display panels, and various color options. The new systems are powered by Apple’s M1 CPU, which uses the ARMv8 ISA rather than an Intel or AMD x86 CPU. That sentence is a bit more revolutionary than it might seem. The three new iMacs, which are priced at $1,299, $1,499, and $1,699, respectively, do not differ by memory (8GB) or by CPU core count. Apple calls the M1 an eight-core, and it nominally is. But it’s better understood as a 4+4 CPU architecture, with four high-performance CPU cores and four high-efficiency CPU cores.
There’s a new version of Android available, but it’s probably not one you’re going to want to install. Google has released the . As with the last several versions, this build focuses on behind-the-scenes changes that will make life easier for developers. You can install it on supported devices if you want, but you might want to wait a few more weeks for the beta. Google launched the first Android 12 preview in February, and it has followed up with an update in March and now April. The last two didn’t make any substantial changes to , and it’s the same this time.
Last year, Microsoft announced that DirectStorage would deliver the same benefits of the Xbox Velocity Architecture to the PC side of gaming. The company has shared some details of how DirectStorage can accomplish this goal, and what the required specs for the feature are. If you want to use DirectStorage, you’ll need a PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD and a GPU that supports DirectX 12, though Microsoft apparently says a DirectX 12 Ultimate GPU will provide the best solution. A limited preview of the feature is expected for developers this summer, implying we’re still a little while out from seeing the feature in PC gaming.
