Apple has announced that it will sell more repair tools and supplies to independent third-party repair shops, allowing them to make a wider variety of repairs. According to the company: Apple will provide more independent repair businesses — large or small — with the same genuine parts, tools, training, repair manuals and diagnostics as its Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASPs). The program is launching in the US with plans to expand to other countries. The program is free to join and only requires that a repair-person complete an Apple course for certification. This would be a significant change to Apple’s existing repair programs.
When World of Warcraft Classic launched this week, no one was quite sure what the player response would be. The amount of interest in the launch has been massive, but how many people would show up to play? The answer: Tons. So many, that the question is now “How many will stick around for the long haul?” The game is mobbed, to put it politely. I managed to log on Monday for a few hours, probably because people weren’t aware that the official North American opening was on Monday, not Tuesday. Tuesday night, the queues were basically impossible — an attempted log in at 8 PM found me stuck in a 3-hour queue.
SpaceX has big plans for the Starship that include launching deep space missions and colonizing Mars. Before it can do any of that, it has to finish designing the vehicle. The final Starship will be a sci-fi masterpiece of stainless steel, but the Starhopper is its stubby precursor. This prototype rocket is still plenty sci-fi, though. In its latest and final test, the Starhopper successfully hovered hundreds of feet in the air and landed at the company’s Boca Chica test facility. The Starhopper is the first vehicle to use Raptor engine. The final Starship will have six Raptor engines, but Starhopper only has one.
The new Volvo XC60 Polestar Engineered is how other future performance cars should be propelled, as long as we have combustion engines: with help from electric booster motors in addition to turbochargers and superchargers. That is the case with the 2020 Volvo T8 XC60 eAWD Polestar-Engineered, a compact SUV with a big name, meant to compete with the Audi SQ5, BMW X3 M, Mercedes-AMG GLC 43, and even the Porsche Macan S. For $70,000, you get a car that’s fast, safe, roomy for four, and tastefully appointed inside. This plug-in hybrid EV is good for about 17 miles on battery alone, with the battery caching enough electricity to take you from zero to 60 mph in as little five seconds.
Today you can save on one of Dell’s Vostro 14 laptops that comes equipped with one of Intel’s new 10th Gen processors. There’s also an excellent deal on a 4K TV and a Roomba robot vacuum. Dell upgraded this laptop with one of Intel’s new 10th generation Core i5-10210U processors that has four CPU cores clocked at 1.6GHz. The system also comes with a fast NVMe SSD storage device and a 1080p display, which makes it well suited for just about any type of work or any non-gaming activity. You can get it now from Dell marked down from $1,141.43.
Fitbit of fan-favorite smartwatch maker Pebble several years ago, using that expertise to launch its own line of smartwatches. The Ionic came first, and then the smaller, cheaper Versa. Now, Fitbit is back with a , a followup to the Versa predictably called Versa 2. The design is cleaner and more refined, and there’s support for voice commands via Amazon Alexa. It’ll also support Fitbit’s new paid subscription fitness service. The Ionic and Versa both focused on fitness and health tracking functionality, as you’d expect from a company like Fitbit. However, they brought some enhanced features that set them apart from the company’s watch-like fitness trackers including apps, custom clock faces, and smartphone notification management.
One of the new features baked into DirectX 12 is support for variable-rate shading, also known as coarse-grained shading. The idea behind variable-rate shading is simple: In the vast majority of 3D games, the player doesn’t pay equal attention to everything on-screen. As far as the GPU is concerned, however, every pixel on-screen is typically shaded at the same rate. VRS / CGS allows the shader work being done for a single pixel to be scaled across larger groups of pixels; Intel demoed this feature during its Architecture Day last year, showing off a 2×2 as well as a 4×4 grid block.
When it comes to keeping your mind active and healthy, nothing beats learning a new language. But far too many people give up on tackling their dream language because most of the go-to language-learning services on the market rely on boring memorization tactics. The platforms listed below, however, make it easy and fun to learn a new language, and each is available at a significant discount for a limited time. This subscription grants you unlimited access to a trove of materials that covers 14 languages and over 10,000 hours of high-quality instruction. This platform even comes with a wide range of state-of-the-art speech recognition tools.
OnePlus announced the OnePlus 7 Pro earlier this year, and it was a big step for the company. Not only did this phone sport a pop-up selfie camera an high-refresh display, but it also had an optional 5G radio. However, the 5G variant wasn’t available in the US until now. OnePlus just to launch its first phone in the US. In case you need a refresher, the OnePlus 7 Pro is the latest phone from the Shenzhen-based company and the second with US carrier support. It previously partnered with T-Mobile for the OnePlus 6T and 4G OnePlus 7 Pro.
