Month: March 2020

If you’re having trouble concentrating on your work during self-quarantine, a set of quality noise-canceling headphones might be a good solution. You’ll likely get a lot of use out of them in the coming weeks (possibly months) at home. Best Buy is offering a $150 discount on Microsoft’s Surface Headphones, which are over-ear, noise-canceling wireless headphones. These usually cost $350, but now they’re $200.

This model stacks up well compared to Sony’s popular WH-1000XM3, even going beyond them with their ability to simultaneously pair to two Bluetooth devices. More expensive headphones have this feature, like the $400 Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, but it’s nice to have it with this discounted set.

Best Buy is also offering a nice discount on the Beats Studio 3 noise-canceling headphones, which usually cost $349. The sale price is $200, and if you’re picking between these and the Surface Headphones above, these are easier to pair with Apple products, like the Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro, thanks to their W1 wireless chip.

It’s understandable if $200 to spend on headphones isn’t in the budget right now. Anker’s Soundcore Life 2 over-ear, noise-canceling wireless headphones are just $40 at Newegg (via Skimlinks). These offer 30-hour battery life, optional wired mode with the included 3.5mm headphone cable, and they can easily fold up in their included hard case. Use the offer code ANKR25 to save.

Borderlands 3 is down to just $20 for the Xbox One and PS4 at Amazon. This game regularly costs $60, and at this price, you’ll get the physical version. If you’d rather have the digital code for Xbox One, it costs $30. This game could suit you well if you want an open-world FPS that lets you team up with friends to face off against waves of enemies and collect loot.

If you recently got a Nintendo Switch to play Animal Crossing: New Horizons and now find yourself amassing more games than the console’s 32GB of onboard storage can handle, pick up a micro SD card. SanDisk’s 400GB model is down to $52.99, which is less than the cost of a new game. With a storage card this big, you probably won’t have to think about upgrading it ever again — at least, not for a while. This isn’t a huge deal, but it always pays to have storage when you need it. And around this time last year, these cost about $30 more.

The Kindle Paperwhite is back on sale for $95 (usually $130). Amazon had this sale just a few weeks ago, but it’s here again in case you missed out the last time. This isn’t the most affordable e-reader you can buy, but it’s one of the best, thanks to its waterproofing and great backlit display.

T-Mobile is gifting its customers with two months of complimentary YouTube Premium service as a thanks for staying inside during the novel coronavirus pandemic. This service eliminates advertisements, enables background play, and allows you to download videos to your phone. T-Mobile customers using Android can access the offer starting tomorrow in the T-Mobile Tuesdays app, and iOS users can find it on t-mobiletuesdays.com. The fine print states that you have to redeem this offer by May 1st, and if you forget to unsubscribe, you’ll be charged once your two months of service are up.

We all said RIP to the AirPower wireless charging mat when Apple officially killed the product last year. At the time, Apple said whatever prototypes it had been working on simply hadn’t met the company’s high standards. That said, it would appear that Apple has revived the project from the dead.

Leaker Jon Prosser took to Twitter over the weekend to cryptically claim that Apple’s trying to re-engineer the project from the ground up, focusing on wireless coils that would “displace heat more effectively” and that prototypes were being made. In the thread, he noted that none of the current prototypes support the Apple Watch, which presents the biggest hurdle as the company refuses to release a wireless charging mat that can’t work with its popular smartwatch.

According to MacRumors, Prosser has a decent record when it comes to Google leaks but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo did say a smaller wireless charging mat would be on deck as a major new hardware product for the first half of 2020. Prosser’s tweets do seem to address some of the rumoured issues that eventually led to Apple pulling the plug on the AirPower in the first place – namely poor heat management. Trying to cram 20 some odd coils into a sleek, tiny charging mat led to devices getting too hot and bugs with accurate battery level reporting.

But the revived AirPower mat isn’t the only Apple rumour coming from Prosser. Last week, he also tweeted that Apple has begun mass production on the iPhone 9. While the naming is not yet official, there’s been plenty of rumours that Apple is working on a successor to the popular iPhone SE. Basically, it’s understood to be the same form factor as the iPhone 8, but with updated guts and a markedly cheaper price point of roughly $400/£400. A recent report also noted that it’s likely we’ll also get an iPhone 9 Plus as well.

Prosser claims that Apple is currently working with China’s BYD to speed up production, but there’s been no official word from Apple. That’s possibly because Apple was forced to cancel a planned March event due to concerns surrounding the novel coronavirus. That hasn’t stopped Apple from releasing new products, however. Last week, it announced a new iPad Pro, MacBook Air, and the Powerbeats 4. As for a 5G iPhone 12? Prosser claims it’s still happening, but it’s likely to face significant delays, possibly until November.

In a nutshell: Intel’s first-generation Lakefield processors are not due out until Q4 2020, but some have been getting their hands on early silicon providing us with a glimpse of what kind of performance to expect. The latest leak shows an SoC designated “Core i5-L15G7” that Geekbench rated better than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835.

Benchmarks have leaked for another Intel Lakefield SoC. A tweet from InstLatX64 on Saturday revealed Geekbench tests on a Core i5-L15G7. It appears to be a lower-spec version of the Core 15-L16G7 that was spotted in UserBenchmark tests back in January.

It will be a five-core x86 hybrid similar to a Lakefield SoC that leaked last September. It will have one “big” Sunny Cove core on a 10nm process, and four “little” Tremont cores on a 22nm Foveros base die. Foveros is an Intel technology that allows the stacking of different chips on one another. The SoC should have a TDP from between five and seven watts. The Geekbench report also indicated the the Core i5-L15G7 has 1.5MB of L2 cache and 4MB of L3 cache.

The 3DMark scores posted for the Lakefield spotted in September indicated a boosted frequency of around 3.1GHz. The Geekbench tests on the Core i5-L15G7 showed a base clock speed of around 1.38GHz, with the Lakefield part hitting as high as 2.95GHz. So it appears that it might be a different chipset, but that’s just an educated guess.

In any event, the processor seems to be a bit more powerful than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 SoC. In single-core tests, the Core i5-L15G7 scored 725, an increase of more than 104 percent over the Snapdragon 835. However, in multi-core workloads, Intel’s chip only boasted a small advantage against Qualcomm’s — 1,566 points versus 1,533 points, respectively — a gain of just over two percent.

Keep in mind, these tests are on unreleased hardware. First-generation Lakefield chips are not due out until this holiday season. Although, Tom’s Hardware reports seeing the Core i5-L16G7 in a teardown of a Lenovo X1 Fold, which is due out mid-year. Even still, Intel could have already made performance improvements to the i5-L15G7 in question. Keep your eye out for TechSpot’s benchmarks when we get our hands on the new silicon.

HP today announced it is building a new VR headset, called Reverb G2, in collaboration with Valve and Microsoft.

There’s very little to go on, as the only thing available right now is a single teaser video. Here it is, in all its ambiguous glory:

HP also left us with this statement, which may give us at least one clue as to what we’re seeing here:

“Through this collaboration, Valve, Microsoft and HP are bringing a more immersive, comfortable and compatible VR experience,” an HP spokesperson told Road to VR. 

Healthy speculation: by the looks of it, the Reverb G2 may make use of Microsoft’s Windows MR optical inside-out tracking, which is available on a host of Windows MR headsets dating back to the first generation of devices in 2017, including the original HP Reverb.

Launched just last summer and aimed at enterprise users, the HP Reverb was an impressive piece of kit despite the compromises on its generally tepid Windows tracking quality and aging WMR controllers. It includes 2,160 × 2,160 per-display resolution, which is a big step up over the next highest resolution headsets in the same class—the Valve Index, showcasing a resolution of 1,440 × 1,600 per display, and HTC Vive Pro’s dual 1,440 × 1,600 AMOLEDs, making the OG Reverb an impressively pixel-dense headset.

The “more compatible” part of the statement however might just point to the inclusion of SteamVR tracking as a secondary standard, embedded within the headset’s exterior. Windows MR headsets are already compatible with SteamVR by default, and their controllers have a standard input layout, so making it “more compatible” from a software perspective seems like a moot point.

Here’s a better look, brightened for clarity.

If it includes SteamVR tracking, where are the dimples then? Although HTC Vive and more recently Vive Cosmos Elite contain characteristically dimpled faceplates for SteamVR tracking, Valve’s Index has them invisibly embedded, so there’s no telling what lurks underneath that front portion of the headset.

Another bit of speculation: the headset’s integrated audio looks strikingly similar to Valve Index’s, which might suggest an off-ear headphone design. Should that be the case, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they’ve also borrowed some of Valve’s optics as well.

What definitely isn’t clear is whether Reverb G2 will come with the aging Windows MR controllers, or whether that reveal will come later with a prospective Windows MR/SteamVR tracking combo. We’ll have our eyes peeled for more info on Reverb G2, which symbolizes Valve’s first headset collab outside of the original HTC Vive from 2016.

– – — – –

Is HP pushing out another enterprise headset, or heading HTC off at the pass with an impressively speced headset which could potentially trump the Vive Cosmos’ modularity? We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled in the coming weeks for more info on Reverb G2, so make sure to check back soon.

A new Half-Life game, eh? I never thought I’d see the day, but quite a few of us here at PC Gamer have spent the past week battling back The Combine’s invasion of City 17. For impressions of the game itself, check out our full Half-Life: Alyx review.

My job? To get you into this ambitious headset experience with a minimum of hassle. You’ll know by now that Alyx is a VR exclusive. If this game is your entry point into VR, that might leave you with some questions. How powerful a PC do you need? And what headset should you choose? 

The short version: Less powerful than you think, and whichever headset you can find. Read on for more details, though.

VR performance

Half-Life: Alyx is one of the prettiest VR games I’ve ever played. It’s breathtaking from the first moment you look out over City 17, see the Citadel on the horizon, and think “Wow, I’m here. I’m in it.” And given how good it looks, my time in the City has been surprisingly smooth—but then, I’ve played most of the game on an Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti. What about people with normal PC setups? 

I’d say as long as you have an AMD RX 5600 or an Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti, you’ll be more than fine, with some caveats.

How did I come to that conclusion? Benchmarking VR games is a bit different than a standard monitor-bound game. You can’t just uncap the framerate and see what happens. VR games are locked to the same refresh rate as the headset, so they’re either running full-speed (90Hz on the Index) or half-speed (45Hz). Nothing in between. To make matters worse, Valve dynamically adjusts the render resolution depending on what card you’re running. There really is no “fair” way to benchmark Alyx.

I settled on a two-pronged approach. SteamVR can display a graph of frametimes, which is how long it takes the GPU to serve each frame to the headset. Generally, anything under 11.1 milliseconds is good. Above that? You’ll notice jittering, as the headset tries to compensate for the delayed frames. Without getting too technical: It’s bad when this happens. Like, potentially vomiting-on-your-floor bad.

I also used FCAT VR, a tool Nvidia released in 2017. This measures frametimes over a 60-second interval and then uses this data to calculate how many frames per second you would get if you weren’t locked to the headset’s refresh rate—though again, since Alyx adjusts the render resolution on a per-card basis, you don’t get the whole story.

I did what I could though, and used three short sections of Alyx to run my tests—one at the very beginning of the game as a Combine Strider walked in front of City 17’s Citadel, another particle-heavy section later on involving a well-meaning Vortigaunt, and a third in the pitch-dark (and headcrab infested) sewers.

Generally I found Valve’s presets a bit conservative. They really don’t want people to get sick. A 2080 Ti defaults to “High” and not “Ultra,” but having run the game maxed out I couldn’t tell you why. The situation is even weirder on the AMD side, where an RX 5700 XT defaults to “Medium,” despite the equivalent RTX 2070 defaulting to “High.” You can definitely bump the RX 5700 XT higher, in my experience.

That said, there is a bottom. At the risk of vomiting on my own bedroom floor, I tried running Alyx on a GTX 1650. The takeaway? Yes, you can do it—but you probably shouldn’t. Even on the lowest settings, I experienced massive amounts of tearing and dropped frames. 

Our recommendations: 

Low/Medium: A GTX 1660 or 1660 Ti, or an RX 5600 XT, or equivalent.

High: An RTX 2070 or 2080, an RX 5700 XT, or equivalent.

Ultra: An RTX 2080 Ti, or some future equivalent.

These aren’t perfect recommendations, as all headsets are different. The original Vive, for instance, renders at 2160×1200 instead of the Index’s 2880×1600. That means you could maybe get away with the GTX 1650 on low, at the cost of a lower fidelity experience.

Regardless, I found Alyx to look pretty decent across all presets. Maintaining a steady 90 frames per second is actually more important—at least in my opinion—than the graphics settings. I didn’t notice a huge difference between “Low” and “Ultra” besides fewer wrinkles on a Vortigaunt, or a less vibrant flashlight beam, but there’s a definite difference between a smooth and responsive 90Hz and a janky 90Hz with dropped frames. It’s the difference between really “being there,” and being all-too-aware that you’re in a videogame.

How Alyx feels on different VR headsets

Designed around Valve’s premium Index headset and controllers, Alyx is nevertheless compatible with a whole host of hardware, from the original Oculus Rift and HTC Vive to the new Oculus Quest and Rift S, and even Windows Mixed Reality. Which should you choose?

If you’re reading this in March 2020, the answer is probably not the best VR headset but rather, “whatever you can get your hands on.” VR headset stock has been mostly sold out ever since Valve announced Alyx. But assuming you have options, my recommendations are as follows:

Valve Index: Yeah, this one’s easy. If you’ve got a solid gaming PC and $500 to spare (or $999 for the full kit, including controllers and base stations), you should buy Valve’s headset. It’s the best one on the market. Best resolution, best refresh rate, best audio, best comfort, best tracking, best FOV—basically, the best of everything.

The 2880×1600 resolution means you can easily read all the text on Alyx’s various cans of food and posters and floppy disks, while the default 90Hz refresh rate is smooth enough to mitigate motion sickness (to an extent). The Index also offers 120Hz and 144Hz modes for an even smoother experience, though this is more demanding and results in Alyx running at a lower resolution. I’ve generally found 90Hz to be more than suitable.

Performance aside, it’s the less quantifiable features that make the Index stand out. Two speakers hang near your ears, with an audio field so realistic I could usually target most headcrabs before I’d even seen them. And the Index is incredibly comfortable, which is important when you’re spending two to three hours inside. Nobody likes foggy lenses or skull pressure, especially when fending off headcrabs.

Lastly, the Index is one of the few modern systems that still relies on base stations for tracking. It’s cumbersome to set up, either mounting the two laser-powered Lighthouses to the wall or finding suitable shelves. Taking the time guarantees ultra-precise tracking, though. The Index’s second-gen base stations are even harder to fool than the original Vive’s, so you’ll likely never see Alyx’s hand suddenly disappear or fly into space, as occasionally happens with Oculus’s tracking.

Oculus Quest: Oculus’s all-in-one headset isn’t ideal for Half-Life: Alyx, but it’s probably your best choice for investing in VR’s future. Why? Because it’s a mobile headset, entirely untethered from your PC. Wireless VR is a game changer, and if a game runs on Quest then that’s how I’m playing it these days, be it Beat Saber or Vader Immortal.

Alyx doesn’t run natively on Quest unfortunately, but luckily a single USB-C cable turns Quest into a PC-based headset. The official Oculus Link cable ($80) is your best bet, thanks to its five-meter length and flexible casing.

Quest isn’t as comfortable as the Index, nor is its 2560×1440 resolution as sharp, nor is its 72Hz refresh rate as smooth. On raw numbers alone, the Quest can’t compete. But you know what? It’s good enough, especially if this is your first foray into VR, and at around $500 total (with a Link cable purchase) it’s half the price of Valve’s system as well. Not bad for a system this flexible.

HTC Vive Pro: Chris Livingston, our reviewer, used this headset for his full playthrough (he’s played a few hours with a Valve Index as well). The Pro’s 2880×1600 resolution is the same as the Index, which makes it easy to read text on posters, the warning label on a pack of cigarettes, the printing on a tiny tube of glue, and other fine details in Half-Life: Alyx.

Chris also found the Vive Pro far more comfortable and well-balanced than the original Vive, and it fit extremely well over his glasses. He even preferred the comfort of the Vive Pro headset over the Index, which felt a bit tight over his glasses. The main drawback is that the Vive Pro headset (by itself) still costs $600, a full $100 more than the Index—and the refresh rate tops out at 90Hz as opposed to 144 for the Index. That shouldn’t matter much overall, but still, you’re paying more for a less capable headset.

The Vive Pro also uses AMOLED displays, which help shadows pop, but make the so-called screen door effect a bit more pronounced than the Index’s RGB LCD panels. 

The rest: Other headsets are perfectly decent options for an Alyx fix, but be aware of the compromises. The Rift S is barely better specs-wise than the Quest, but is always tethered to your PC. Thus it’s hard to recommend buying that when Quest is twice as capable and retails for the exact same $400 price.

The original Rift and Vive are harder to come by these days, but are still perfectly serviceable headsets. Of the two, the Vive is less comfortable (unless you purchase the Deluxe Audio Strap) but better performing. It uses the first generation of Valve’s tracking solution, and is rock-solid. The original Rift’s base station cameras are more limited, and you’ll need one USB port per camera—or four total, to power a good three-camera setup and the headset itself. Either way, just know you’re getting last-gen hardware limited to a 2160×1200 resolution, which can make it difficult to read text and notice other fine details. The original Rift struggles with high-contrast environments as well, often resulting in “god rays” slightly obscuring your vision.

As for Windows Mixed Reality, I’d generally recommend against it. The HP Reverb is theoretically the “best,” but all Windows MR headsets fall prey to the same problem: They only track the position of the controllers through two cameras on the front of headset. If you put your hand behind your head—which you do a lot in Alyx, to grab ammo from your backpack—it can lose tracking entirely and send your hand flying off into space. The Quest and Rift S are so cheap nowadays that there’s no reason to settle for less.

Controllers

You’ll generally choose controllers based on the headset. The Quest and Rift S both use Oculus’s second-generation Touch controllers, while the Index uses Valve’s finger-tracking “Knuckles” controllers (or the old Vive wands, but they’re not what I’d recommend unless you already own them). You can technically hack your way around the platform limitation and use the Index controllers with the Rift, but… why? Don’t do that.

In any case, both the Touch and Index controllers have advantages. The Touch controllers are incredibly comfortable, and feel natural when holding the pistol or picking up a can. Your hand is subdivided into three zones—thumb, index finger, and grip—which allows you to execute most standard motions, i.e. pointing, pressing, grabbing, giving a thumbs up, and so on.

The Index controllers are more advanced, designed to track all ten fingers independently and provide more granular haptic feedback. The controllers also strap in place, allowing you to fully open your hand without dropping the controller. This gives you an even larger pool of actions, and I’ll say this: The Index controllers are the only ones that let you flip the ol’ middle finger at The Combine. Essential. That said, they also take a lot of getting used to, and can be finicky about finger tracking.

Chris used the Vive Pro wand controllers, which aren’t as well designed as the Index controllers. They’re large and long, the palm triggers are a bit awkward to activate by squeezing, and the thumbpads aren’t as responsive as the Index’s thumbsticks. However, Chris found some of the buttons on the Index controllers a little tricky to reach, while the buttons on the top of the Vive controllers can be found easily by moving your thumb. Still, you really can’t beat the Index for being able to track the location of each of your fingers, compared to the Vive wands where you have to extend your index finger by squeezing the trigger.

I’ve personally played most of Alyx with the Index controllers, but that’s only because I played most of Alyx on the Index headset. The Touch controllers work perfectly fine, and despite Valve theoretically designing Alyx around the Index’s hardware capabilities, I haven’t noticed any scenarios where I thought “Hmm, you definitely couldn’t do that with Touch” except for crushing cans with the Index’s strength-sensitive grips.

Most of the time, it’s a matter of elegance. Healing, for instance, requires laying your hand flat on a panel. That’s easily done on the Index but a bit weird with the Touch controllers, which you still “hold” even when the game shows your hand open. Still, I doubt it’s enough to make Oculus owners envious.

What’s a minimum-viable GPU for Half-Life: Alyx?

Valve’s minimum spec for Alyx lists a GTX 970 or AMD RX480, but I wouldn’t want to play the game on either those cards. From my testing, running Alyx on a GTX 1660 or RX 580 is the lowest I’d tolerate playing the game on, and probably the true bare minimum you could get away with, assuming you’re playing on an old HTC Vive or first-generation Oculus Rift. 

Laptop pick: I wouldn’t recommend running VR games from a laptop. It’s a matter of practicality, as one tangled cable or quick movement could yank your laptop off its perch and onto the floor. That said, if you’re going to try, the MSI GP65 Leopard and its RTX 2070 is probably your best bet. That’s decent horsepower, and at five pounds it also has a decent chance of staying put on your desk. 

Footnotes

Before we go, a few closing comments:

As I said, the presets on AMD cards seem pretty conservative. I reached out to Valve for an explanation but so far haven’t received one. I’ll let you know if that changes.

After spending nearly a year playing primarily wireless VR games on Quest, it sure is annoying dealing with a cable underfoot again.

The laser sights are absolutely essential weapon upgrades in Alyx. Save up for them. Otherwise you’ll be squinting down the iron/reflex sights until your eyes go crossed.

Headcrabs are larger than I expected.

I played most of the game with the continuous motion setting (as opposed to teleporting-based movement). It was tough. I recommend Dramamine.

Our testing regimen

Best Settings is our guide to getting the best experience out of popular, hardware-demanding games. This iteration has proved quite a bit different from our usual work, given the unique constraints of virtual reality. We focused primarily on testing the Valve Index on GPUs spanning the high, mid, and budget ranges, and spent some time with the Oculus Quest, Rift S, and original Rift, as well as the HTC Vive and Vive Pro. All of these variables were plugged into a test bed containing an Intel Core i7-8700K with an NZXT Kraken cooler, 16GB of RAM, and a 500GB Samsung 960 EVO m.2 SSD.

We ran our tests on the latest drivers available (Nvidia 442.74 and AMD 20.3.1) and used FCAT VR and fpsVR to do some basic benchmarking, though the focus of this piece is more on the minimum hardware you’ll need for Alyx and less on optimizing, as Valve’s already (to some extent) handled that aspect for you.

Biostar recently announced the A10N-9630E mini-ITX motherboard, and now it’s adding the FX9830M micro-ATX board to its arsenal for those seeking an alternative with a bit more punch.

As spotted by Hermitage Akihabara, the FX9830M features a black design. AMD’s FX-9830P (codename Bristol Ridge) APU is the heart of the motherboard. The APU’s based on the Excavator microarchitecture and dates back to 2016. It also comes with an included factory CPU cooler, so you don’t have to spend extra money to get an aftermarket one.

The FX-9830P has four CPU cores and four threads that ticks with a 3 GHz base clock and 3.7 GHz boost clock. The 28nm chip comes with a configurable TDP (thermal design power) that ranges between 25W and 45W. However, the FX-9830P typically operates within a 35W envelope. On the graphics side, the FX-9830P is equipped with the Radeon R7 integrated GPU, which consists of 512 shader units at 900 MHz.

The FX9830M has two DDR4 RAM slots and can hold up to 32GB with a maximum speed of 2,400 MHz. For storage, the motherboard provides four SATA III connectors, and a single M.2 PCIe 3.0 x2 port that accepts both PCIe-and SATA-based drives.

The FX9830M’s Realtek RTL8111H controller provides internet connectivity, but there’s only one Gigabit Ethernet port. The ALC887 audio codec is also from Realtek and supports 7.1-channel audio. Additionally, the motherboard supplies three 3.5mm audio jacks for connecting audio devices.

The FX9830M’s rear panel also contains two PS/2 ports, one HDMI port, one VGA port, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and two USB 2.0 ports. In the event that you need more USB ports, the motherboard sports one USB 3.2 Gen 1 header and one USB 2.0 header, which are good for two ports each.

The FX9830M isn’t listed anywhere, so the motherboard’s pricing is a mystery for now. For context, an Athlon 3000G APU and A320 motherboard combo will set you back about $110. For the FX9830M to really appeal to budget seekers, Biostar will need to sell it for below that price point.

Alongside the continued expansion of the Apple TV+ streaming service, Apple is also believed to be working on a new Apple TV 6 set-top box. 9to5Mac has reported select details about the upcoming refresh, and a new report today offers more information.

The YouTube channel iUpdate and The Verifier are jointly reporting a few details about the so-called “Apple TV 6” set-top box today and upcoming tvOS updates.

According to the report, Apple will update the storage configuration options for the Apple TV. Currently, the Apple TV is available in 32GB and 64GB options, but today’s report says that will change to 64GB and 128GB. The idea is to make sure users have enough available space to play Apple Arcade titles.

Apple is also reportedly planning to add a new “Kids Mode” to Apple TV. This wouldn’t be unique to the Apple TV 6 set-top box, but rather a new feature for tvOS itself. It would allow Apple TV owners to set up a separate account for their kids, with control over which applications can be used.

Next up, the report says that Screen Time is also coming to tvOS, for Kids Mode and normal users alike. The report also adds that Apple is working on “redesigned Apple TV+ with a greater focus on content.” What exactly this means is unclear as of now.

In terms of availability, today’s report says to expect the new Apple TV hardware sometime before the end of the year. As with all hardware timelines right now, that could change due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The physical appearance of the Apple TV is said to be virtually unchanged.

The Verifier has accurately reported certain details about Apple software and hardware in the past — but its timing has sometimes proven to be off. That being said, 9to5Mac found evidence in iOS 13.4 that indicating Apple is developing a new Apple TV box with the A12 or A13 processor. We’ve also found evidence of a new Apple TV remote.

IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are teaming with the White House, the US Department of Energy, and other federal agencies to bring a massive amount of supercomputing power and public cloud resources to scientists, engineers and researchers who are working to address the novel coronavirus global pandemic that is expected to bear down hard on the United States in the coming weeks.

Through the Covid-19 High Performance Computing Consortium announced over the weekend, the companies and organizations are making available more than 330 petaflops of performance over 16 systems that hold an aggregate of more than 775,000 CPU cores and 34,000 GPUs to researchers to help them better understand the virus, treatments that can be used and potential vaccines and cures. And because the current economic crisis is tied to the pandemic, anything that can be done to solve the coronavirus outbreak will certainly slow the cratering of the economy and soften the recession that’s coming if it’s not already here.

The move to pool all this supercomputing power comes as the coronavirus continues to spread around the globe. Estimates have put the number of confirmed cases around the world at almost 337,000 resulting in more than 14,700 deaths. In the United States, the numbers are just over 39,000 cases and 455 deaths, with the brunt of the pandemic expected to hit over the next several weeks.

“How can supercomputers help us fight this virus? These high-performance computing systems allow researchers to run very large numbers of calculations in epidemiology, bioinformatics, and molecular modeling,” Dario Gil, director of IBM Research, wrote in a blog post. “These experiments would take years to complete if worked by hand, or months if handled on slower, traditional computing platforms. By pooling the supercomputing capacity under a consortium of partners … we can offer extraordinary supercomputing power to scientists, medical researchers and government agencies as they respond to and mitigate this global emergency.”

Included in the consortium are not only the tech companies but the Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Sandia and Oak Ridge national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the National Science Foundation, and NASA.

LINING UP THE COMPUTE POWER

Supercomputers already have been enlisted in the fight against the virus. Using the massive Summit system at Oak Ridge, scientists this month via simulations ran through how 8,000 molecules would react to the coronavirus and were able to isolate 77 compounds that may be able to be used to stop it from infecting host cells, a crucial step toward finding a vaccine. Summit, first on the Top500 list, is a huge system with more than 2.4 million Power9 cores and Nvidia Volta V100 GPUs that delivers more than 200 petabytes of performance. Researchers also have used the Tianhe-1 supercomputer in China and supercomputers in Germany for everything from diagnoses to research. Summit is included in the systems available to the consortium.

The new Covid-19 consortium will bring to bear compute power from more than a dozen systems. Lawrence Livermore is opening up its 23 petaflops Lassen supercomputer (788 compute nodes, Power9 chips and V100 GPUs), Quartz (3.2 petaflops, 3,004 nodes and Intel Xeon E-5 “Broadwell” chips), Pascal (900 teraflops, 163 nodes, Xeon-E5 Broadwell CPUs and Nvidia Pascal P100 GPUs), Ray (1 petaflops, 54 nodes, Power8 CPUs and Pascal P100 GPUs), Surface (158 nodes, 506 teraflops, Xeon E5 “Sandy Bridge” chips and Nvidia Kepler K40m GPUs) and Syrah (108 teraflops, 316 nodes and Xeon E5 Sandy Bridge chips).

Los Alamos systems are Grizzly (1.8 petaflops, 1,490 node and Xeon E5 Broadwell CPUs), Snow (445 teraflops, 368 nodes and Xeon E5 Broadwell CPUs) and Badger (790 teraflops, 660 nodes and Xeon E5 Broadwell chips), while Sandia will make its Solo supercomputer (460 teraflops, 374 nodes and Xeon E5 Broadwell chips) available.

The consortium also will have access to five supercomputers supported by the NSF: Frontera and Stampede 2, both operated by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). Stampede 2 provides almost 20 petaflops of performance designed for scientific, engineering, research and educational workloads. It uses 4,200 Intel Knights Landing nodes and Xeon “Skylake” chips. Frontera is aimed at simulation workloads, data analytics and emerging applications such as artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning. It offers a peak performance of 4.8 petaflops and is powered by “Cascade Lake” Xeon SP Platinum chips.

Comet is a 2.76 petaflops supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center powered by Xeon E5 chips and Nvidia K80 and P100 GPUs, Bridges is a mix of Xeon E5 and E7 chips and Tesla K80, Tesla P100 and Volta V100 GPUs operated by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and Jetstream, run at Indiana University’s Pervasive Technology Institute powered by Xeon E5 Haswell chips, which uses elements of a commercial cloud computing.

NASA is making its high-performance computing (HPC) resources available to researchers, MIT is offering its Supercloud, a 7 petaflops cluster powered by Intel chips and Volta GPUs, and Satori, a 2 petaflops system using Power9 CPUs and Volta GPUs. The system is oriented toward AI workloads. RPI’s Artificial Intelligence Multiprocessing Optimized System (AiMOS), an 8 petaflops Power9/Volta supercomputer, is being made available to the consortium to explore new AI applications.

Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AW) are making their infrastructure and cloud services available to researchers. Microsoft will provide grants to researchers via its AI for Health program and the program’s data scientists will be available to collaborate on consortium projects. IBM’s Research WSC 56-node cluster, powered by Power9 chips and V100 GPUs, also will be available. In addition, IBM will help evaluate proposals that come in from researchers.

CARVING UP THE WORK

Consortium members expect a range of projects to be run on the supercomputers, from studies of the molecular structure of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), another coronavirus that started in China in 2002 and quickly spread to other parts of the globe, to the makeup of Covid-19, how it’s spreading and how to stop it. Such work around bioinformatics, epidemiology, and molecular modeling requires a huge amount of computational capacity, which is what the consortium is offering.

Scientists and medical researchers who are looking to access the consortium’s compute capabilities can submit a two-page description of the proposal on the NSF’s Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (Xsede) website. The proposal shouldn’t include proprietary information – the consortium expects teams that get access to resources will not only publish their results but produce an ongoing blog during the research process.

The proposal should include scientific and technical goals, an estimate of how much compute resources will be needed, whether collaboration or additional support from consortium members will be needed, and a summary of the team’s qualifications and readiness for running the project.

Once a proposal is submitted, it will be reviewed by the consortium’s steering committee on such metrics as potential impact, computational feasibility, resource requirements and timeline. A panel of scientists and computing researchers, which will work with the proposing teams to evaluate the public health benefits of the project. Speed is of the essence; an emphasis will be placed on projects that can ensure rapid results, the organization said.

Hamilton is bringing back the original digital watch with the PSR, a 50th anniversary tribute to the company’s legendary Pulsar Time Computer — the first commercially sold digital watch, which was released to massive hype in 1972. (The watch was first announced in 1970, hence the anniversary release this year.)

Displaying the time not through a mechanical mechanism but rather an LED display that lit up when a button on the side was pressed, the original Pulsar (and it’s space-age, stainless steel design) was once viewed as the future of the world of technology. James Bond (as played by Roger Moore) even famously wore one in Live and Let Die.

As Hodinkee’s in-depth history of the rise and fall of digital LED watches explains, however, the boom for Pulsar’s watches (and the inevitable copycats) was relatively short-lived. Cheaper, less power-hungry LCD watches would soon follow, with the added advantage of being able to display the time all the time, instead of just when a button was pressed.

In fact, the reason the new watch is being sold under the Hamilton brand, instead of the original Pulsar one, is that the company no longer has the rights — it sold the name off in 1977 (rival watchmaker Seiko now owns the branding).

The new PSR looks to improve on the original Pulsar is a few ways. In an effort to help make the watch a little more useful, the display is now a hybrid LCD and OLED panel that shows the time constantly using the dimmer LCD portion and only lights up the brighter OLED component when the button is pushed. There’s also an antireflective-coated sapphire crystal and a 100-meter water-resistance rating that were both absent on the original model.

The Hamilton PSR isn’t cheap, though, especially compared to a standard digital watch — it’ll run for $750 for a stainless steel model or $995 for limited-edition 1970 pieces in PVD gold. Comparatively, the original Pulsar was sold for $2,100 in a solid gold case, making the $750 price tag a (relative) bargain. Although, you’d have to take into account that Pulsar also sold cheaper $275 steel-case models later on that make the price here feel a little hefty.

All in all, the Hamilton PSR is a neat tribute to an iconic wristwatch and a great example of how far display technology has come in such a short time. It’ll be available later in May.

BenQ has introduced a new 32-inch professional-grade display designed for photographers and post-production specialists. Dubbed the SW321C, the monitor is for professionals who need wide color spaces like the Adobe RGB and the DCI-P3, as well as HDR transport support. And, like many other contemporary displays, BenQ’s new LCD is equipped with a USB Type-C input.

Under the hood, the BenQ AQColor SW321C uses a 10-bit 32-inch IPS panel featuring a 3840×2160 resolution, a 250 nits typical brightness, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, a 5 ms GtG response time, a 60 Hz refresh rate, and 178° viewing angles. The monitor uses a LED backlighting that is tailored to ensure brightness uniformity across the whole surface of the screen.

The LCD can display 1.07 billion colors and can reproduce 99% of the Adobe RGB, 95% of the DCI-P3, as well as 100% of the sRGB color gamuts, all of which are widely used by professional photographers as well as video editors and animation designers who do post-production work. Meanwhile, the monitor has a 16-bit 3D LUT (look-up table) and is calibrated to DeltaE ≤ 2 to ensure fine quality of colors and color gradients. The LCD can even display content in different color spaces at the same time side-by-side in PIP/PBP modes.

As for HDR support, things aren’t quite as stellar there. The monitor supports HDR10 as well as the relatively uncommon HLG transport format. However the monitor doesn’t have the kind of strong backlighting required for HDR, let alone a FALD setup necessary to deliver anything approaching pro-grade HDR. So the inclusion of HDR support seems to be largely for compatibility and checking HDR content, rather than doing actual content editing in HDR.

As far as connectivity is concerned, the display is comes with one DisplayPort 1.4 input, two HDMI 2.0 ports, and a USB Type-C input. The latter can deliver up to 60 W of power to the host, which is enough most laptops. All the connectors support HDCP 2.2 technology that is required for protected content. In addition, the BenQ SW321C monitor has a dual-port USB hub and an SD card reader that is certainly useful for photographers.

Since we are dealing with a professional display, it is naturally equipped with a stand that can adjust height, tilt and swivel as well as work in album mode. In addition, the SW321C comes with BenQ’s hockey puck controller to quickly adjust settings.

The BenQ AQColor SW321C monitor is currently listed by BenQ Japan, so expect it to hit the market shortly. Exact pricing is unknown, but this is a professional-grade display, so expect it to be priced accordingly.