During last night’s E3 press conference, Microsoft unveiled the finished version of its long-awaited half-step console. Dubbed “,” this high-powered gaming machine is designed for full-on 4K gaming and media playback. And when it ships on November 7th, it’ll cost $499 — twice that of the current Xbox One S. The console formerly known as is Microsoft’s answer to the , and a compelling offering for gamers with deep pockets. After the somewhat disastrous original Xbox One launch, Redmond has learned its lesson about cutting corners. With a UHD Blu-ray drive, Dolby Atmos support, and blazing internals, Xbox head Phil Spencer isn’t fooling around.
After the rise of the MacBook Air, similar Windows-based laptops have seen widespread success, and it’s easy to understand why. With a slim form factor and a focus on flexibility, these highly portable laptops are excellent fits for most consumers. Unfortunately, they tend to be on the pricey side, but we’ve just found a superb bargain from Dell. With the use of today’s coupon code, you can save a total of $541 on a Dell XPS 13. • (List price: $1800.99 — Coupon code: TENOFF) On the inside, this laptop features a sixth generation dual-core 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-6560U CPU, integrated Intel Iris Graphics 540, 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM (1866MHz), a 512GB solid-state drive, Bluetooth 4.1, and 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi support.
The 2018 Volvo XC60 SUV adds a new layer of safety technology called Steering Assist, which steers the car out of the way of trouble on the highway and in town. The XC60 also includes a quieter, more luxurious cockpit that comfortably carries four adults. The second generation of Volvo’s compact premium SUV is modern and competitive with the best from Germany, Asia and the US. That’s good. As with other premium automakers, however, Volvo puts some desirable driver and safety assists in $1,000-$2,000 options packs. Blind spot detection and adaptive cruise control are package options, not standard the way we’d prefer.
NASA is aiming to have humans on Mars in the next few decades, even if that comes with . Just getting there is only the first challenge. Humans have to be able to survive and explore the red planet, and the agency just unveiled a vehicle that could help with the latter. The new six-wheeled rover looks like it just rolled out of a sci-fi movie. The is a concept vehicle, meaning this design won’t even land on . It was designed by US based Parker Brothers Concepts, based on specifications provided by NASA. The vehicle was unveiled this week at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex.
It used to be that building your own PC was a way to save money. Then it became a way to create top-performing machines. Now, for me at least, it’s mostly a way to make sure I get the components I want, in the configuration I want. Oh, and it’s still fun. So when my four-year-old main Photoshop and AI machine started having some sort of motherboard issue, I decided it was time for a rebuild. Deciding what to keep and what to update My Thermaltake Level 10 case is big, has plenty of bays, and enough fans so it was a clear keeper.
None of us is as wise as all of us, when it comes to diagnostics. So it makes sense to involve deep learning in medicine wherever we can. Think of what IBM’s Watson can do today. Now imagine an AI capable of deep learning — one specifically built for medicine, programmed for diagnostics. Any one person isn’t going to win when pitched against the assembled diagnostic insights and clinical pearls of all the doctors, past and present. Put another way, deep learning could be an incredible force multiplier. And we need all the force multipliers we can get, in this unending war against disease.
The PCI Express 3.0 standard has been with us rather longer than anyone intended it to be. The standard was initially finished in 2010, and motherboards supporting it were in-market by 2011. PCI Express 4.0 should have been available by 2013 if the organization had kept to its previous pace, but delays and difficulties associated with the design have left PCIe 4.0 support languishing. Now PCI-SIG has announced that PCIe 4.0 specification is finished — and it plans to have PCIe 5.0 ready to go by 2019. That’s an accelerated launch window and, given the relatively short window between completing the standard and shipping hardware (typically about 12 months), it’s not clear if PCIe 4.0 will find a huge home in the market.
Intel is prepping the release of its new X299 platform and associated processors, and a new world overclocking record shows the chips its releasing have some real teeth — with a few massive caveats, which we’ll touch on shortly. At a recent Gigabyte event, overclockers were able to hit a whopping 7.5GHz with the Core i7-7740K*. That’s the upcoming Kaby Lake chip on Skylake-X’s platform. That wasn’t all. The overclockers paired the board with Corsair DDR4-4333, a Corsair AX 1500i power supply, and Gigabyte’s X299-SOC Champion motherboard. The CPU managed to in 3DMark03, 3DMark06, and Aquamark, which is a bit like saying that a modern-day PC managed to set CPU benchmark records in the original Doom, Doom II, and Quake.
Apple was the first major smartphone maker to focus on making a smart assistant an integral part of its phones when Siri debuted on the iPhone 4s. However, has since been surpassed by Amazon and Google. A from The Wall Street Journal blames Apple’s lack of progress on equal parts hubris and an excessive concern with privacy. What many people forget about Siri is that it was a completely functional voice assistant app that was acquired by Apple in 2010. The version of Siri that launched on the iPhone 4s in 2011 was not substantially different from the version that ran as an app.
