Tech

In search of an affordable desktop that has plenty of room for upgrades? Take a look at the XPS 8910 tower PC from Dell. With a sleek modern design, a quad-core CPU, space for three 3.5-inch drives, and support for up to 64GB of DDR4 memory, this PC is up for almost anything. • (List price: $1,129.99 — Coupon code: XPS669) So, what kind of specs are we looking at here? This tower ships with an sixth generation quad-core 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-6700 processor, a discrete AMD Radeon RX 560 graphics card (with 2GB of memory), 16GB of DDR4 RAM (2133Mhz), a 1TB 7200RPM hard drive, Bluetooth 4.2, and 802.11b/g/n/ac WiFi support.

Update 4/2/18: As predicted, the Chinese space station hit the atmosphere over the weekend. Specifically, Tiangong-1 reentered the atmosphere at 8:16 PM EDT Sunday, April 1. We knew the station would re-enter between 42.8 degrees north and south latitude, but the longitude was unclear until right before the end. The station ended up coming down over Pacific Ocean. China’s space agency lost control of the station in 2016, but it had already been placed in hibernation mode for long-term observation at that point. The Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Technology captured the above radar image of Tiangong -1 at an altitude of 100 miles as it made its final tumbled into the atmosphere.

In 2005, Hell froze over. After repeatedly doubling down on the PowerPC G4 and G5, with its laptops effectively stuck on older 32-bit PowerPC chips, Apple announced it would build future desktops and laptops around the Intel x86 standard. When the first laptops rolled out on Intel hardware, it was immediately clear Apple had made the right decision. Crippled by the older G4, even the fastest pre-Intel Mac laptops were no match for x86. Intel took over Apple’s CPU market and has maintained its lock ever since. But now that’s changing, , and Apple will reportedly transition away from Intel silicon altogether and towards its own custom solutions for iOS and macOS both, beginning in 2020.

If you’ve only got one copy of a file, that’s not much better than having no copies. You’re just one storage failure or account hijack away from losing everything. That’s why it’s vital you keep your important files backed up, and World Backup Day is here to remind you. This is a chance to check on your existing backups and make new ones if you’ve got important files on the edge of oblivion. To offer a little inspiration, here’s how we at ExtremeTech keep our files safe. Jamie Lendino At ExtremeTech, most of our work is stored in the cloud in our content management system, along with the various services we use to run the site.

Data redundancy is critically important. Sure, having a local backup of your hard drive is a good first step, but that’s just not enough. If you use a service like IDrive to keep all of your important information in the cloud, you can rest easy knowing that you won’t lose your data in a fire or robbery. And in honor of world backup day, you can save big! • (List price: $69.50) On Windows, macOS, and mobile, IDrive will store up to 5TB of data securely and privately in the cloud. Stuck with a slow internet connection or terrible bandwidth caps? Fear not, the IDrive Express service has a great workaround.

Security circles were thrown into disarray late last year when serious bugs known as and Spectre threatened to leak private data from computers around the world. The industry spent months developing patches while the public remained unaware of the danger. Updates only began rolling out early this year, and many of them have been buggy or downright broken. In fact, it sounds like Microsoft’s Meltdown patch didn’t even make Windows 7 more secure. It actually . Meltdown and Spectre are so dangerous because they affect one of the most important low-level features of CPUs known as . That’s a process by which a processor can perform calculations you are likely to need before being instructed to do so.

For a limited time, Best Buy is selling the iPad Mini 4 (128GB) for just $299.99 – $100 off the sticker price. This discount ends Saturday though, so don’t wait to place your order. We’ve also found great deals on the Xbox One X, 4K TVs, VR headsets, and so much more in the lead-up to the big holiday weekend. Featured Deals [i7 and GTX 1060 for $1033, i7 and GTX 1070 for $1254] at Dell Outlet. (Ends Saturday) for $299.99 at Best Buy (List price: $399.99). : Intel Core i7 and 512GB SSD (Ends Saturday) for $1299.99 at Best Buy (List price: $1549.99).

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a veritable avalanche of security breaches and data leaks, while Congress has passed laws demolishing what little regulation existed to control how ISPs gather and sell your data. This has led many people to look for third-party privacy solutions. Virtual private networks (VPNs) offer a solution to some of these issues by masking one’s browsing habits, but only if the VPNs are themselves secure. New security research suggests many of them aren’t. Paolo Stagno, who goes , has put together a comprehensive list of the VPN providers and web browsers that are impacted by the bug.

Saudi Arabia and SoftBank have inked a memorandum of understanding to build the world’s largest solar project, worth an estimated $200B. It’s the largest solar project ever announced and it’s a sign that even the Saudis, who collectively hold the largest proven reserves of oil, believe it’s necessary to diversify away from oil and towards other types of energy. Saudi Arabia is to take advantage of solar energy — literally. As GlobalSecurity notes, average solar irradiation in the country exceeds 1.8kWh/m2 and is as high as 2.2kWh/m2 in some areas. That’s more than twice as high as the average solar irradation in countries like Germany, which has been fairly aggressive in deploying renewable power over the last few years.