Over the years I’ve made more than a few Amazon purchases. I’ve always known that I could go into the site and look at my recent order history. One thing I didn’t know is you can download your entire order history in spreadsheet form from the site. CNBC detailed how to do it earlier this week.
The site’s Order History tool allows you to download a list of every order you’ve made ever, or just for a certain period of time. The spreadsheet will not only list those items but also tell you when you ordered each item, who you order it from (Amazon or a third-party seller), how much you spent on the item, what payment method you used, and where you sent the product.
To do it, go to Amazon’s website and then select “Account & Lists” from the top right. You have to click on it. From there select “Download order reports” under the “Ordering and shopping preferences” section of the menu.
A form will appear where you can select the type of report you’d like. “Items” is what will show your actual purchases. You can also look exclusively at the refunds or returns you’ve made on the site. To which to one of those select something different from that drop-down menu at the top of the form (it defaults to “Items”).
Finally, select a start and end date on the form and then press “Request report.”
Amazon will tell you it’s processing your report and will email you a link to the finished product when it’s done that you can download.
If your report is anything like mine, then it’s time to personally reflect on what an insane amount of money you’ve spent over the years on things you might not even remember owning.
Microsoft has fulfilled one of the larger promises behind its Your Phone software — if you’re willing to experiment a bit. The developer has released a Windows Insider Preview that displays Android notifications on your PC. If you allow apps to display alerts, you can find out about an important message or status update without reaching for your handset. You can clear notifications one at a time or all at once, and anything you dismiss on your PC will be reflected on your phone.
The feature is gradually rolling out to Windows Insiders using at least the 1803 (RS4) build. You’ll also need a phone running Android 7.0 Nougat or newer and a minimum of 1GB of RAM. You can’t respond to notifications (at least not yet), but this could be particularly vital for Snapchat and other apps that don’t really have a presence on the desktop.
According to sources of MBW, Amazon is readying a HiFi music streaming service, one to combat TIDAL’s offering.
Reported to cost somewhere around $15.99/month, the source claims at least one major record label has signed on to license its music to the service. Not a lot of details were shared, though, the quality should be, “better than CD.”
If we’re comparing to TIDAL, it offers CD-quality lossless streams at 44.1 kHz / 16 bit for $20/month. There is also the Masters tier, which are 96 kHz / 24 bit streams.
The streaming service is said to be available by the end of 2019, so if you need yet another music service, here you go!
About a month after its 5G+ network hit 1Gbps download speeds, AT&T says that the same network has now reached the 2Gbps mark.
During testing in Atlanta, AT&T used their NETGEAR Nighthawk 5G Mobile Hotspot while connected to their commercial 5G network to surpass their previous record. While not a phone, since AT&T still doesn’t sell a 5G phone, that’s an impressive number for a hotspot device that shows the potential of 5G.
As mentioned in their press note on the speed milestone, AT&T says that with those speeds, you could download a 2-hour HD movie in about 10 seconds.
Of course, I can’t help but point out that it won’t be long before AT&T charges you extra to reach those speeds that their fresh, untouched network is producing. Just this week their CEO said that they plan to copy the home internet industry by charging wireless customers for speed tiers. It’ll suck, don’t worry, and those speeds will only touched by those willing to pay a premium.
Sea Hero Quest is a video game developed in partnership with Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, game studio Glitchers and several European universities and it is designed to identify individuals who might have early and mild symptoms of dementia that medical tests aren’t able to detect.
When most folks think of Alzheimer’s disease they think of an illness that ruins a person’s memory. But while memory problems are very common and severe with Alzheimer’s disease, these are late-stage symptoms. Researchers and doctors want to catch the disease as early as possible, before memory loss occurs, to give future treatments the best chance at working.
Sea Hero Quest was built as a way to identify people who might be at risk of Alzheimer’s but who aren’t yet suffering any major symptoms of the disease and according to a study recently published in the journal PNAS, it seems the game is effective.
In Sea Hero Quest, which is a VR game, players have to navigate and control a virtual boat. They are given a map and shown checkpoints, then the map is taken away and players must navigate to these checkpoints in the game world without the map.
According to researchers, every two minutes spent playing the game is equal to five hours of lab-based research. Because Sea Hero Quest has been out for a few years and downloaded and played by over three million players they’ve collected the equivalent of 1,700 years of research data on Alzheimer’s.
Researchers involved with the project studied people who carried the APOE4 gene, which is thought to increase that person’s risk of developing dementia, as they played the game. They then compared these people’s results to the results of folks who played the game who don’t have that gene.
“We found that people with a high genetic risk, the APOE4 carriers, performed worse on spatial navigation tasks. They took less efficient routes to checkpoint goals,” said Professor Michael Hornberger, a member of the team.
Using data gathered from thousands of players who downloaded and played Sea Hero Quest, researchers were able to create a baseline that their test results could be compared to. In the future, the team hopes this data and the game will help identify people who need treatment for dementia before they begin suffering from some of the worse later stage symptoms.
Cox’s website advertises the Cox Elite Gamer service.
Cox cable is beginning to charge Internet users an extra $15 a month for a service that reduces lag in online gaming.
Cox’s new offer sparked concerns that the ISP is violating net neutrality principles. But the service wouldn’t have violated net neutrality rules even if they hadn’t been repealed, because Cox is merely reselling a third-party service and not making any changes to its broadband network.
Dubbed “Cox Elite Gamer,” the service is a Cox-branded version of Wtfast, which can alternatively be purchased directly from Wtfast and used with other ISPs. Cox says the service “routes your game activity through a dedicated gaming network to provide a reduced latency path between your computer and the game servers of select online games.”
But the service’s limitations help demonstrate why it isn’t a net neutrality issue. It only works on Windows computers, and only then when you install an application that connects to the special routing service, so online gamers who prefer consoles instead of PCs have no reason to buy it. “The service will not operate with game consoles or Macintosh operating systems,” Cox says.
If Cox was implementing prioritization at the network level, it wouldn’t be limited to Windows.
“This service does not increase the speed of any traffic, nor prioritize gaming traffic ahead of other traffic on our network,” a Cox spokesperson told Ars. “Cox Elite Gamer solves a problem with deficiencies in the public Internet, not our network. No customer’s experience is degraded as a result of any customers purchasing Cox Elite Gamer service as an add-on to their Internet service… the Cox Elite Gamer service selects an optimized Internet path with each gaming session initiated by the customers.”
Cox’s advertising claims the service results in 34 percent less lag, 55 percent fewer ping spikes, and 45 percent less jitter.
Cox Elite Gamer debuted this week in a trial run in Phoenix that will last for about three months. Cox will then decide whether to expand the service to other parts of its territory. “Following the trial period, we will evaluate the results and determine next steps,” Cox said.
Cox is only making the service available to customers who subscribe to download speeds of 100Mbps or higher. Cox has about 5 million broadband subscribers in 18 states.
Wtfast declined to comment on its partnership with Cox when contacted by Ars.
Wtfast offers mixed results
The biggest difference between buying the service from Cox or Wtfast directly seems to be price. Cox’s $14.99-per-month price includes simultaneous access for two PC users. But it appears to require a two-year agreement, and the price rises to $20 a month after the promotional rate expires. Cox sells additional licenses for $4.99 a month each, up to a total of five simultaneous gaming sessions.
Wtfast’s direct pricing starts at $14.99 for usage on just one computer, but that’s month-to-month pricing with no long-term commitment. A license for two computers is $28.48 a month. Wtfast offers discounted rates if you sign up for three months, six months, or 12 months of service. Twelve months on one computer costs $149.90, for example.
Is it worth it? IGN’s Matt Elliott reviewed Wtfast in April 2017, testing several games and connections to servers in different regions. IGN found that Wtfast improved Overwatch latency when connecting to a game server in the Americas region from 301ms to 43ms, but in most other cases Wtfast had little to no effect. “Without Wtfast, my ping on Overwatch’s Asia server was 249ms, and it dropped to only 202ms when I used WTFast and manually selected the ‘East Asia (Choose Best)’ option,” Elliott wrote. With League of Legends, Elliott found average latency of 43ms without Wtfast and a nearly identical result of 44ms with Wtfast.
“Wtfast was able to impressively improve our ping in some tests, but had no impact in others,” IGN wrote. “If you have a slow ping of 150ms or more on your favorite online game or often want to connect to international game servers, or just want to get any edge you can, it may be worthwhile to give WTFast a try.”
Amazon could be preparing to set itself apart from rivals like Spotify and Apple in the music space, as it’s said to be working on a high-fidelity streaming platform. It might arrive later this year for around $15/month. Amazon Music Unlimitedstarts at $4/month, while Amazon added a free, ad-supported music service to Alexa devices last week.
The rumored upcoming platform will reportedly offer "better than CD quality" music. So far, at least one major record company has signed up to license its recordings, according toMusic Business Worldwide, while Amazon is supposedly in talks with other significant rights holders. If the platform comes to light, it could help Amazon differentiate itself further from Spotify and Apple Music, neither of which have high-fidelity options.
At the $15/month price level, the platform would undercut the likes of Tidal and Deezer, both of which offer high-fidelity tiers for $20/month. Amazon could eat into both of their user numbers significantly if it bundles its subscription with its other services, or, for instance, offers Prime members a discount.
However, a higher bit rate means more data, and many users will need to be conscious of how much their data allowance music streaming is gobbling up. As such, they might be happy to stick with the current offerings on the market.
