It hasn’t been as easy to sell smartwatches as anyone had hoped. Even the Apple Watch hasn’t been a runaway success. was one of the first large electronics firms to launch smartwatches running Google’s (now ), but it pulled back to focus on its own Tizen-based wearables. Now, long-time leaker Evan Blass says Samsung is switching back to Wear OS on an upcoming Gear watch. Samsung has gone through a number of smartwatch phases. It started before the launch of Android Wear when the company released the Galaxy Gear. It ran Android but not Google’s version of Android for a watch.
When you cut your finger, you don’t have a cut on your finger forever. It heals, and that’s something that even our most advanced machines can’t do. They’re dependent on us for repair and maintenance, but a team of researchers from the Integrated Soft Materials Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University has devised a new material that can even when severely damaged. There have been many demonstrations of flexible electronics that could be used in so-called “soft robotics.” However, these materials are more vulnerable to damage than cold, unyielding metal. The newly created elastomer is flexible and capable of self-healing when damaged.
Razer rose to prominence making gaming accessories and peripherals, but it launched the first generation of its Blade laptops in 2013. No surprise, these devices were (and still are) designed with gamers in mind, but the external design is overdue for a refresh. That’s what you’ll get with . It has a bigger screen with smaller bezels, a faster CPU, and improved GPU performance courtesy of Nvidia Max-Q technology. Razer’s matte black laptops have always looked rather slick, but the screen bezels were out of control. There was a great deal of wasted space compared with many other laptops in the $1,000+ price range.
Currently, you have to choose between portability and gaming might when purchasing a new laptop. The thinnest, lightest laptops can’t handle high-end games, but you probably don’t need the extra bulk that comes with a gaming laptop all the time. Razer’s solution is external GPU (eGPU) enclosures, which it’s been selling for a few years. These Razer Core devices let you plug a desktop video card into your laptop, but they cost as much as a whole video card. Razer’s newly announced Core X lowers the price, but . Previous versions of the Razer Core GPU enclosure retailed for around $500.
Finally ready to upgrade to a nice 4K TV? Right now, Walmart is selling a 65-inch Samsung 4K set for under 800 bucks. Our colleagues over at have also gathered up a plethora of gadget deals, so be sure to browse through to find today’s best discounts. Featured Deals with GTX 1070, 512GB SSD, and 16GB RAM for $1399 at Walmart (List price: $1999). Intel Core i7-8750H 6-Core 15.6-inch 1080p Gaming Laptop with GTX 1050Ti, Dual Storage for $799.99 at Dell (Coupon code: 50OFF699 – List price: $949.99). Intel Core i7-7600U 12.5-inch 1080p 2-in-1 Touch Laptop with 16GB RAM, 128GB SSD (Refurb) for $619.99 at PCMag Shop (Coupon code: 100OFF – List price: $1124).
A new variant on the Spectre attacks has been discovered, and it hits CPUs from AMD, ARM, and Intel. The new Variant 4 attack has been disclosed by Microsoft, Google, and Intel itself. The new exploit isn’t thought to be as bad as some of the earlier attacks we’ve discussed, though as always, your exposure to the problem will depend on the type of workloads you run. As we’ve previously discussed, this attack again targets an aspect of — in this case, it’s called a Speculative Store Bypass (SSB). Here’s how Microsoft : SSB arises due to a CPU optimization that can allow a potentially dependent load instruction to be speculatively executed ahead of an older store.
The mysterious last year as the first interstellar object ever detected passing through our little corner of the universe. However, it turns out ‘Oumuamua wasn’t the first interstellar visitor we spotted. It was just the first one we recognized as alien. An asteroid called 2015 BZ509 is currently in orbit close to Jupiter, but . A new study claims this object arrived in our solar system from someplace else and was captured by the sun’s gravity. Scientists were able to peg ‘Oumuamua as an alien soon after it appeared in the sky. This object was rocketing through the solar system so fast that it could not have possibly originated here.
Today, Micron announced that its shipping the industry’s first QLC (quad-level cell) NAND SSD, starting immediately. That’s a surprising move, for two reasons. First, for many years it wasn’t even clear if QLC NAND could ever be built. While TLC NAND first started shipping some years ago, the problems with TLC’s introduction on planar NAND (exemplified by drives like the ), meant that TLC didn’t really come into its own until the introduction of 3D NAND and the use of older process nodes to build the drives (40nm 3D NAND, compared with 20nm planar NAND). Secondly, when TLC arrived, it arrived in consumer products first, only later taking the jump to enterprise products.
With most malware campaigns, the goal is to infect as many people as possible. That’s not the case with the latest attack uncovered by researchers at McAfee. The company’s mobile research team reports that North Korea has been caught tinkering with Android malware again, but this time it’s using both Facebook and Google Play to . According to McAfee, North Korea’s Sun Team hackers perpetrated the attack over the last several months. They likely infected around 100 targets, which isn’t a huge number compared with most campaigns. However, these were all highly targeted infiltrations to gather intelligence on political opponents.
