BenQ has made a name for itself in recent years by delivering pro-quality monitors for photographers at great prices. Its new SW270C is no exception. For $799.99, you get a 27-inch monitor that covers 99 percent of Adobe RGB and 100 percent of sRGB. Unlike its sibling, the SW271, the SW270C isn’t 4K, but other than that it includes essentially every feature you’d find on a monitor costing twice as much. It also adds USB-C connectivity and features BenQ’s AQColor technology for improved color accuracy. In testing, I found it delivers exactly what it promises. Unboxing the BenQ SW270C
College campuses are being flooded with new students right now, but there could be some other new arrivals if Starship Technologies has its way. The robotics company has closed a new round of funding that will allow it to deploy a small army of autonomous sidewalk delivery robots to as many as 100 college campuses around the US. The six-wheeled Starship robots are small, about knee-high, and fully electric. Since launching in 2018, Starship Technologies has tested its robots in more than 100 cities in 20 different countries. They’ve rolled 350,000 miles, crossed 4 million streets, and made over 100,000 deliveries.
Microsoft has been hard at work since announcing the death of the old Edge browser. The new Chromium-based Edge has been in developer testing for several months, but the first public beta is available today. Just head over to to download the new browser. While Microsoft stresses this is still a beta, it believes Chromium Edge is . Since the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft has pushed the Edge browser as a more efficient alternative to the market-leading Chrome or runner-up Firefox. Microsoft wrote blog posts, made videos, and even leveraged popups in Windows to get people using Edge.
Today’s top deal is a TV that uses quantum dot technology to create images with up to 115 percent more color than your standard 4K LCD TV. Vizio’s P659-G1 features quantum dot technology to provide 115 percent more color than competing LCD TVs. This model also comes equipped with a built-in Chromecast and hands-free voice controls, and it supports Dolby Vision HDR. This TV is typically priced at $1,398, but you can currently get it from Walmart marked down to $998. This compact desktop features a Haswell Core i3 processor and it comes with a mouse, keyboard and a Wi-Fi adapter.
Remember solar roads? Five years ago, the idea of building insanely expensive solar panels on the ground and driving pollution-spewing vehicles over them was all the rage. Scientists pointed out the obvious flaws. A flat surface that can’t tilt or move to capture sunlight doesn’t hit very high-efficiency targets. Driving pollution-spewing vehicles over the solar panels in question would inevitably hurt their ability to gather sunlight as pollution built up on the surface. Putting solar panels on the ground and then driving over them is an excellent way to smash said solar panels to flinders. In short, the grand push for solar roadways left a lot of very smart people wondering why we didn’t just put the same amount of money into building conventional solar panels and wiring them up in the normal fashion.
Scientists around the world celebrated the first confirmed detection of gravitational waves several years ago, a discovery that for Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish in 2017. Since then, The American LIGO and Italian Virgo instruments have spotted many more waves from the collision of pairs of black holes and neutron stars. Now, scientists believe they’ve for the first time ever. Gravitational waves were predicted in general relativity, but no one had been able to verify their existence before LIGO came online. While these ripples in spacetime come from cataclysmic events like colliding black holes, the waves are extremely faint.
Over the weekend, Apex Legends developer Drew McCoy took to Reddit to apologize for the various ways in which a recent in-game event (the Iron Crown event) had “missed the mark.” According to McCoy, the structure of the event broke previous promises that Respawn, the game’s developer, had made regarding how loot would be distributed. Specifically, the company has promised that Apex Packs (loot crates) would not be the only way to get loot. Apparently, Iron Crown event skins were initially distributed solely through these loot crates. The original point of McCoy’s post was to inform the community that the Legendary skins available during the Iron Crown event will also be sold in the store for Apex Coins.
If you still use Facebook after the , , and , you should have no ethical concerns over the they began developing two years ago. Now, the first fruit of their labors has arrived. A Facebook-sponsored experiment at the University of California San Francisco successfully created an interface that translates brain signals into dialogue and . The software reads these signals to determine what you’ve heard and what you said in response without access to any audio of the conversation. The process utilizes high-density (ECoG), which requires sensors implanted in the brain, so there is no immediate concern for any non-consensual (literal) mind reading on Facebook’s part.
Tesla has worked to bring down the price of its electric vehicles, but there’s only so much you can do to make large solar panels affordable. The company’s solar installation business has lagged in recent quarters, but a new rental program might pique consumer interest. Consumers in several states can for their homes for as little as $50 per month. Tesla purchased solar panel installer SolarCity about three years ago when it was vying for the top spot in residential solar power. Tesla sold the systems, which can cost upwards of $30,000, in Home Depot stores for several years, but now it relies entirely on direct sales similar to its electric vehicles.
