Acer is one of those laptop makers that frequently tries too hard to stand out. Consider the Predator Triton 900, a wild machine with a 360-degree swiveling screen that I found to be mostly useless. Earlier this month, Acer also announced plans to brin…
The latest Apple TV 4K is back to a record low of $150
Now is a good time to shop for a high-end media streamer. Amazon is once again selling the latest Apple TV 4K at a record-low price of $150 for the 32GB model, or $29 off. However, the 64GB model is also on sale for $170 — an easy choice if you need extra storage for apps and games. We’ve seen Amazon sell the base model at this price on occasion, but rarely with a similar discount for its higher-end counterpart.
Buy Apple TV 4K (32GB) at Amazon – $150Buy Apple TV 4K (64GB) at Amazon – $170
The most recent Apple TV 4K fixes some of the few issues with what was already a powerful media player. The new Siri remote is much more intuitive, and the speedier A12 Bionic chip both enables HDR video at 60 frames per second (for the handful of content that supports it) and better game performance. This is the living room device you want if you’re interested in more than basic media playback, particularly given Apple’s tight integration and robust app ecosystem. You can get in a Fitness+ workout, control your smart home or use a niche streaming service.
Apple TV’s main caveat remains the price. At $150, it’s expensive if you just want something to watch Netflix, Amazon Prime Video Apple TV+ and other common services. You can buy a Chromecast, Fire TV Stick or Roku player that will handle 4K HDR video and some other popular apps for considerably less. If you’re heavily invested in Apple’s products or just want the most powerful media box you can get, though, this is still an obvious pick.
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Atlassian co-founder takes big step toward shutting down Australia’s coal power
Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes just scored a major coup in his quest to end Australia’s use of coal energy. The Wall Street Journalreports AGL Energy, Australia’s worst emissions producer, has withdrawn plans to ‘demerge’ its retail power and generation units (thus keeping coal power plants running longer) after Cannon-Brookes bought over 11 percent of the company’s stock. The breakup plan is unlikely to pass a shareholder vote after the tech executive’s move, AGL said.
Both the chairman and CEO of AGL are stepping down as a result of the failed demerger. The board of directors is also conducting a review of the company’s strategy, and plans broader changes to the board as well as overall management. The directors want to deliver the best value in light of “Australia’s energy transition,” the company added.
Cannon-Brookes hopes AGL can shut down the coal plants about 10 years sooner than the company’s 2045 goal. He originally tried to buy AGL outright with help from Canadian investment giant Brookfield Asset Management, but resorted to buying stock after the energy provider rejected the offers.
The Atlassian exec’s renewable energy push began in 2017, when he learned of Tesla’s proposal to end southern Australian blackouts using large-scale battery storage. He has long singled out AGL as a target. According to Cannon-Brookes, AGL represents about 8 percent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than every car in the country, and more than some entire developed countries.
The stock ploy won’t guarantee that AGL shuts down its coal plants ahead of schedule. Still, it’s a relatively unique effort in the tech world to accelerate the shift toward clean energy. Companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and others have generally focused on reducing their own emissions by either buying renewables or installing solar and wind power at their facilities — Atlassian’s co-creator is trying to engineer change across an entire country.
Apple’s second-gen AirPods are on sale for $100
Now might be the right time to snap up a pair of Apple’s second-gen AirPods if you’ve been waiting for a good deal. The earphones are on sale on Amazon, where they have dropped from $159 to $100 for Memorial Day. That’s 37 percent below the regular price and one of the best deals we’ve seen for this model. The current price is about $10 more than the record low, however.
Buy Apple Airpods (2nd-gen) at Amazon – $99
We gave the second-gen AirPods a score of 84 in our review after finding that the fit won’t be suitable for all ears, while sound quality is similar to the first model. There’s no active noise cancellation either. However, the earbuds do have a lot going for them. They’ll be especially useful for folks who are deep into the Apple ecosystem, as the H1 chip allows them to swiftly pair the earphones with an iPhone, iPad or Mac and switch between devices in a snap. You’ll be able to listen for around five hours before needing to recharge, while the charging case provides approximately 24 hours of listening time overall.
Meanwhile, the most recent third-gen AirPods are also on sale. They’re currently $150, which is $29 off the standard price. We felt that Apple had improved nearly every aspect this time around and gave this model a score of 88. While there’s still no ANC, the third-gen AirPods have significantly better sound quality, a more comfortable fit and a longer battery life (around seven hours in our testing).
Buy Apple AirPods (3rd-gen) at Amazon – $150
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DeLorean offers first look at its Alpha5 four seater EV
DeLorean Motor Company has revealed the first images name of its upcoming EV called the Alpha5. The main things that stand are the wedge-like supercar styling, pair of massive gullwing doors and four seats — letting it hit 88 MPH with two extra passeng…
Apple’s MagSafe Battery pack is the cheapest it’s been this year
For iPhone users looking for extra power plus wireless charging who want to stay in the Apple ecosystem, the MagSafe battery pack is the best (and only) way to go. It’s pretty expensive at $99, but Amazon now has it on sale for $80 ($19 off the regular price), the cheapest we’ve seen it this year.
Buy MagSafe battery pack at Amazon – $80
The MagSafe battery pack snaps magnetically onto the back of all iPhone 12 or 13 models and starts charging the handset once attached with about 5 watts of power. It fits onto the back of even the iPhone 13 mini, so you can continue to use your phone with one hand while powering up. If you plug in the battery pack while charging your iPhone, you’ll get up to 15W of power and you can keep track of your phone’s and the battery pack’s recharge on your iPhone’s lock screen.
The main downside to the MagSafe battery pack is the 1,460 mAh battery that can’t fully charge any of the supported iPhones, and charging speed limited to 5 watts — lower than some third-party models. If you need more juice, take a look at Anker’s $60 5,000 mAh MagGo model or the bulky but powerful $60 Belkin 10,000 mAh magnetic charger and portable power bank. Apple’s MagSafe model is certainly more elegant and portable than those options, so if you’ve been looking to buy one, it’d be best to act soon.
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US retakes first place from Japan on Top500 supercomputer ranking
The United States is on top of the supercomputing world in the Top500 ranking of the most powerful systems. The Frontier system from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) running on AMD EPYC CPUs took first place from last year’s champ, Japan’s ARM A64X Fugaku system. It’s still in the integration and testing process at the ORNL in Tennessee, but will eventually be operated by the US Air Force and US Department of Energy.
Frontier, powered by Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) Cray EX platform, was the top machine by a wide margin, too. It’s the first (known) true exascale system, hitting a peak 1.1 exaflops on the Linmark benchmark. Fugaku, meanwhile, managed less than half that at 442 petaflops, which was still enough to keep it in first place for the previous two years.
Frontier was also the most efficient supercomputer, too. Running at just 52.23 gigaflops per watt, it beat out Japan’s MN-3 system to grab first place on the Green500 list. “The fact that the world’s fastest machine is also the most energy efficient is just simply amazing,” ORNL lab director Thomas Zacharia said at a press conference.
Other machines in the TOP10 include another HPE Cray EX system install at EuroHPC in Finland (151.9 petaflops), the IBM-built Summit system using 22-core Power( CPUs and NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs (148.8 petaflops) and Lawrence Livermore’s Sierra, a smaller-scale version of Summit that hit 94.6 Pflop/s.
China held two top-ten spots with its Sunway TaihuLight from the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC) and Tianhe-2A built by China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). However, China is rumored to already have no less than two exascale systems (according to the Linmark benchmark) on new Sunway Oceanlite and Tianhe-3 systems. Due to the current state of semiconductor politics, however, China is reportedly not revealing any new benchmarks or important advances.
‘Star Wars: The Bad Batch’ season two arrives on Disney+ this fall
On Sunday, the final day of Disney’s Star Wars Celebration 2022 event, the company shared the first trailer for season two of The Bad Batch. And while we’ve known since last year that Disney planned to continue the series, the new season now has a release timeframe. It will debut on Disney+ this fall.
The trailer the company shared suggests the story will pick up following a time skip that leaves the members of Clone Force 99 looking older than they were in season one. Each one also is also seen wearing updated armor, with squad leader Hunter sporting a new scarf, for instance. As ever, it looks like the group has a tough journey ahead of them as they try to find a place in a changing galaxy. Oh, and there’s a Wookie with a lightsaber.
A release window for season two of The Bad Batch was one of a handful of announcements Disney shared during Star Wars Celebration 2022. We also got our first look at Rogue One prequel Andor and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the sequel to Respawn’s Fallen Order, in addition to updates on The Mandalorian and Ahsoka.
Researchers sequenced the genome of one of Pompeii’s ancient inhabitants
In 1933, archaeologists excavating the remains of Pompeii found the bodies of two individuals, their skeletons almost perfectly preserved by the volcanic ash that buried their home in the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24th, 79CE…
Recent ‘realityOS’ trademarks hint at Apple moving closer to AR/VR headset announcement
At the start of the year, a handful of developers, including Steve Troughton-Smith, found references to “realityOS,” the operating system for Apple’s long-rumored virtual and augmented reality headset. Now, a little more than a week before the start of WWDC 2022, the name has resurfaced in trademark filings seemingly linked to the company.
It cannot be a coincidence that the “realityOS” trademark owned by a company that seemingly doesn’t exist and is specifically for “wearable computer hardware” is being filed around the world on June 8, 2022 https://t.co/myoRbOvgJa + https://t.co/AH97r95EMnpic.twitter.com/uvsiZCj2rR
— Parker Ortolani (@ParkerOrtolani) May 29, 2022
On Friday, Vox Media product manager Parker Ortolani took to Twitter to share two United States Patent and Trademark Office filings he found registered by a company called Realityo Systems LLC. As Parker and others have pointed out, there’s evidence to suggest Realityo Systems is a shell company created by Apple to obscure its tracks.
First, there’s the June 8th foreign filing deadline for both trademarks, which falls just two days after the start of WWDC 2022. Additionally, as noted by 9to5Mac, Realityo Systems LLC shares the same address as Yosemite Research LLC, the shell company Apple used to secure trademarks for past versions of its macOS operating system, including macOS Monterey. One more interesting tidbit of evidence is that in some countries Realityo Systems submitted trademark filings that include a realityOS logo written in Apple’s signature San Francisco typeface.
The timing of the filings suggests Apple is getting closer to the day it will feel comfortable sharing details about its augmented and virtual reality ambitions. However, we would caution against expecting an announcement as early as next week. In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman predicts the company won’t hold “a full-blown presentation” on its mixed-reality headset at WWDC. In fact, he says he would be “wary of expecting” such an announcement from the company. Gurman previously reported that Apple was considering pushing the device’s debut back to 2023 due to ongoing development problems. Still, the company is clearly moving forward with the project.