One of Windows 10’s least-liked features is its tendency to automatically reboot when updates have finished installing. When it launched, Windows 10 quickly developed a reputation for rebooting entirely on its own timeline, as opposed to yours. The Windows 10 Anniversary Update introduced the concept of “Active Hours,” which could be used to limit updates to off-hours when the machine was not in use, but you can’t always depend on such timers to prevent unwanted behavior — get stuck working late at night, and you could still be impacted by a surprise reboot at an inconvenient moment. Credit for this fix goes to .
Seagate may have made waves last year with its , but the company is still first and foremost a magnetic storage provider. During its conference call yesterday, the hard drive manufacturer laid out its near-term roadmap, with aggressive plans to ramp drive capacities over the next few years. Right now, Seagate’s highest-end drive tops out at 10TB, but the company plans to double that within the next three years, with 16TB drives rolling out as soon as mid-2018. Seagate, according to CEO Steve Luczo, is in the middle of a major market transition and is planning new products that capitalize on the changing storage market.
Fifty years ago today, three American astronauts died in a sudden, uncontrollable cabin fire aboard the Apollo I space capsule. The deaths of Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee could have spelled doom for the entire Apollo space program, particularly after a report surfaced showing NASA had been aware of problems and deficiencies in the work performed by North American Aviation, the contractor in-charge of building the Apollo 1 capsule. The loss of Apollo I’s crew ultimately didn’t lead to the cancellation of the space program, but it did drive significant changes to NASA’s testing methodologies and best practices, some of which endure to this day.
When Nintendo announced the Switch, the company made it clear that the device wouldn’t require specific, proprietary SD cards. That’s in contrast to companies like Sony, which have previously required that their handheld devices use proprietary SD cards with correspondingly inflated prices. It’s a bit of a surprise, therefore, to see Nintendo partnering with manufacturer HORI in Japan to release two official flavors of SD cards — a 16GB and a 32GB. Forbes that at least the 32GB microSD card is notably more expensive than it would be under other circumstances, writing: “The 32 GB card is ¥7,900, or about $70 USD.
Android phones come with a lot of handy apps out of the box, but that’s just the start. With the right apps you can may your phone faster and better. You can also start making changes to customize the device to your liking and really get into the nitty gritty of customizing. For that, you’ll need the right apps. Here are 10 essential apps for the power user to get you started.
A team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has taken images of a laser pulse generating an optical Mach cone: the equivalent of a sonic boom, but for light. To make an optical Mach cone, a pulse of light would need to be traveling faster than the waves it’s emitting can propagate forward. But the researchers were able to peel apart the properties of a laser beam, interacting separately with velocity, wavelength, and frequency. They directed the beam through a layered confection of silicone panels, aluminum oxide powder, and dry ice. The source of the light waves was moving faster than the waves themselves as they passed through the layers, leaving behind the optical Mach cone.
Pioneer announced a brace of new UHD Blu-ray burners today, the first we’ve seen debut for the PC market. Currently, if you want UHD playback, you need to pick up either a dedicated player or an Xbox One S — Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro lacks UHD Blu-ray support, even though the Japanese company was instrumental to the development of Blu-ray itself. The new BDR-S11J-BK and the BDR-S11J-X are both 5.25-inch drives that support nearly every optical read/write standard ever devised, including: CD-R, CD-RW, DVD±R, DVD±R DL, DVD±RW, DVD-RAM, BD-R SL/DL/TL/QL, BD-RE SL/DL/TL, BD-R LTH). They also read CDs, DVDs, BDs, and UHD Blu-ray films.
Beginning in 1947, members of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (an academic journal) have taken time each year to evaluate the state of the world and estimate how close we are to doomsday. They relate this analysis as a handy clock analogy, where midnight is certain global disaster. The Doomsday Clock has been holding steady at three minutes to midnight for the last several years, but the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board has now . This is the closest to midnight the clock has been in 64 years. As the name of the Bulletin implies, the Doomsday Clock was devised over 70 years ago as a way to measure the likelihood of a .
It’s never easy keeping a lid on the various details of a smartphone, but some companies try much harder than others. Apple, even in the post-Jobs era, tries to keep some upcoming features on lockdown. Samsung, in contrast, tends to leak like a sieve — and the full details and photos of the Samsung Galaxy S8 that leaked yesterday are a case in point. VentureBeat’s Evan Blass managed to score , both front-and-back, as shown below: Source: VentureBeat These images confirm that the new phones are bezel-less, and that they’ll be available in two sizes — one will have a 5.8-inch screen, and one will sport a 6.2-inch display.
