Day: January 16, 2019

Spotted by at least one user, visual icons and audible warnings for speed traps are being displayed inside of Google Maps, bringing the app just a tiny bit closer to the awesomeness that is Waze.

According to this user, the speed traps icons are viewable when simply looking around an area and also during navigation. As you come closer to a speed trap, you apparently hear an audible alert, which is helpful when you’re driving and not eyeing your phone.

This appears to be a very limited rollout. I’ve looked on my phone inside of Google Maps and haven’t seen anything like this, but check yours and let us know if you spot anything.

Here’s a screenshot of what the icons look like.

// Android Police

Anniversaries offer a moment for reflection, so when Ars Technica reached the start of its 20th anniversary recently, I inevitably paused to consider the state of US human spaceflight in 1998.

In 1998, NASA launched the Lunar Prospector mission, which found water on the Moon. It was also the year when 15 countries came together to agree upon a framework for the International Space Station and later launched the first piece of the laboratory into orbit. And also that year, promisingly, NASA’s new X-38 spacecraft made its first successful test flight. All of these events would, in various ways, help determine the course of US spaceflight development that led us to today.

Looking back, one thing soon became clear: past is prologue, and the rhythm of history repeats itself. The human spaceflight achievements of 20 years ago seemed to foreshadow the current state of play in space, so seeing how the seeds planted then have both bloomed and withered likely offers some helpful perspective on what may happen in the future.

Important, disruptive trends in human spaceflight have emerged in the last few years, many that were largely unforeseen in 1998. Today we have things like new space companies and their billionaire backers, as well as the rise of international players, most notably China, who seek to match or potentially eclipse the feats of NASA.

So considering where the United States has come from and where things stand currently, where will we, and the rest of the world, be 20 years from now? Here, then, is a review of spaceflight 20 years ago, today, and 20 years from now.

Listing image by NASA

We recently reported on the fact that a range of new mainstream Intel desktop processors are coming onto the market without the integrated graphics enabled. This processors, indicated by the ‘F’ designation (not to be confused with Intel’s chips with an integrated fabric, also called ‘F’), have had their specifications released for a short while, except for the price. Intel is now happy to fill that part in.

Intel’s pricing scheme is a little different to AMD. Rather than provide MSRP, or Manufacturer Suggested Retail Pricing, or SEP, Suggested Etailer Pricing, Intel provides ‘tray’ pricing. This value is the company’s list price for OEMs buying literal trays of CPUs, in batches of 1000. We usually write this as ‘1ku’, for one thousand units. OEMs, like Dell or HP or Supermicro, will happily buy thousands of CPUs, often with a single year warranty. This is in stark contrast to the end-user buying a retail unit obviously only wants one processor and often wants a longer (in most cases, the retail box has a three-year warranty).

The on-shelf price of the processor in a retail box, with or without a cooler, is not listed by Intel. The company leaves it up to distributors and then retailers to determine the market value of such a product. This is why the Intel Core i9-9900K, the current flagship of Intel’s 9^th Gen Core desktop processor line, has a ‘tray’ price of $488, but actually came to market on Amazon at $582.50, before settling at its current price of $529. This is also why there has been a debate about whether our comparison between the AMD Athlon 200GE ($55 SEP) and the Intel Pentium G5400 ($64/1ku) is suitable, given that only certain regions with an oversupply seem to hit the Intel price point.

With all that being said, here is Intel’s pricing for the new ‘F’ CPUs:

Intel 9th Gen Core CPUs
AnandTech	Cores	Base Freq	Turbo Freq	IGP	IGP Freq	DDR4	TDP	Price (1ku)
i9-9900K	8 / 16	3.6 GHz	5.0 GHz	UHD 630	1200	2666	95 W	$488
i9-9900KF	8 / 16	3.6 GHz	5.0 GHz	–	–	2666	95 W	$488
i7-9700K	8 / 8	3.6 GHz	4.9 GHz	UHD 630	1200	2666	95 W	$374
i7-9700KF	8 / 8	3.6 GHz	4.9 GHz	–	–	2666	95 W	$374
i5-9600K	6 / 6	3.7 GHz	4.6 GHz	UHD 630	1150	2666	95 W	$262
i5-9600KF	6 / 6	3.7 GHz	4.6 GHz	–	–	2666	95 W	$262
i5-9400	6 / 6	2.9 GHz	4.1 GHz	UHD 630	1050	2666	65 W	$182
i5-9400F	6 / 6	2.9 GHz	4.1 GHz	–	–	2666	65 W	$182
i3-9350KF	4 / 4	4.0 GHz	4.6 GHz	–	–	2400	91 W	$173
Relevant Intel 8th Gen Core CPUs
i3-8350K	4 / 4	4.0 GHz	–	UHD 630	1150	2400	91 W	$168
i3-8100	4 / 4	3.6 GHz	–	UHD 630	1100	2400	65 W	$117
i3-8100F	4 / 4	3.6 GHz	–	–	–	2400	65 W	$117

The only CPU in this list which doesnt have a non-F is the overclockable Core i3-9350KF, showing a 1ku price of $173, which is a few dollars more than the previous generation Core i3-8350K ($168/1ku), and has a turbo frequency. 

Normally when a part of a processor is fused off, usually cores, we expect to see a decrease in the listed price. In this instance, Intel is putting the same tray price on its GPU-free processors to make them also savings-free. Given how tray price is often not connected to the retail price, it will depend on how many processors actually make it to market or to retail (if any end up in retail packaging) to see if they will actually be sold at a lower price than the parts with integrated graphics.