Month: October 2022

https://www.engadget.com/nvidia-rtx-4090-review-gpu-unholy-amounts-power-130020430.html?src=rss

How do you go about reviewing something like NVIDIA’s RTX 4090? Just looking at its specs alone, it’s obviously the fastest consumer GPU we’ve ever seen. So sure, I can tell you that I can play just about anything in 4K with ray tracing and every graphical nicety turned on. Hell, it can even scale up to 8K if you’re a masochist. For a $1,599 video card, it damn well better. But the real question is, who is this thing actually for?

Benching the RTX 4090 against NVIDIA and AMD’s older hardware is practically pointless. Of course it’s far faster. Of course it’ll make you jealous. If you’ve got the cash and you’re itching to upgrade, go with God (or NVIDIA’s leather-clad CEO Jensen Huang, as the company’s fans see him). But for anyone else who doesn’t need bleeding edge hardware, it exists purely as an object of lust. Sure, you could wait for the upcoming RTX 4080 cards, or whatever AMD has in the works, but it’s not a 4090. Just like the last generation of GPUs, NVIDIA is throwing down the gauntlet with a power-hungry card for the most hardcore gamers and creators.

If your mind isn’t made up, I assume you’re here just to see how much of a beast the 4090 is. And let me tell you, it’s a stunning thing to behold. Weighing in at 4.8 pounds, and approaching the size of the PlayStation 5, the RTX 4090 is a triple-slot GPU that will dominate whatever case it’s in. Seriously, if you’re thinking of getting it, be sure to measure your PC to ensure you can fit a nearly foot-long card that’s close to 5 inches thick.

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Be prepared to upgrade your power supply too: The 4090 has a high 450W TDP (the same thermal design profile as the 3090 Ti) and it requires an 850W PSU. (Some third-party companies are pushing that demand to 1200W PSUs!) While it can be powered by a single PCIe 5.0 cable, there still aren’t many of those PSUs on the market, so most people will likely end up using four 8-pin adapters. I cursed Jensen’s name when I realized I needed to string another PSU line, after tidying up all of my cables.

Beyond its obscene power demands, though, NVIDIA hasn’t changed much about the 4090 Founder Edition’s design from its previous model: It’s still a high-end, all-metal card with a massive vapor chamber, heatsink array and two fans on opposite sides. NVIDIA claims they can push 20 percent more air than the 3090 Ti – in my testing, that meant the 4090 stayed at a relatively cool 70C under load.

What’s truly special about the RTX 4090, though, is everything under the hood. It features the company’s new "Ada Lovelace" architecture (named after the world’s first computer programmer, though I wonder if NVIDIA pays any royalties to turn her name into marketing). It has 16,384 CUDA cores (almost 6,000 more than the 3090 Ti), a base clock speed of 2.23GHz (boost to 2.52GHz), and 24GB of GDDR6X RAM. With figures like these, the upcoming RTX 4080 cards (which start with 7,680 CUDA cores) seem puny in comparison.

And really, that seems like the point of dropping the 4090 before the rest of NVIDIA’s new GPUs. It’s like a heavenly body so massive it warps space time around it. This is the new standard. What other GPU can get you 135fps in Cyberpunk 2049 while playing in 4K with maxed out graphics and ray tracing? 

To be clear, though, the 4090 isn’t just about brute-force power. It was able to reach that killer Cyberpunk framerate by using DLSS 3, NVIDIA’s latest AI upscaling technology that can now generate entire frames of imagery on its own. (That’s in addition to upscaling lower resolution textures using AI, like earlier versions.) DLSS 3 helped A Plague Tale Requiem perform more than twice as fast while running in 4K, delivering around 175fps (up from 74fps).

None	3DMark TimeSpy Extreme	Port Royal (Ray Tracing)	Control	Blender
NVIDIA RTX 3090	16,464	25,405/117.62 fps	4K (Native) High RT: 107 fps	12,335
NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti	8,683	12,948/59.95fps	4K (Native) 43fps Med RT	5,940
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT	7,713	9,104/42.15fps	4K (Native) No RT 28-40	N/A

The RTX 4090 had no trouble delivering 107 fps in Control while playing in 4K with high ray tracing settings. But you know what’s even better? Getting a solid 128 fps when I flipped on an older version of DLSS. It’s just unfortunate it doesn’t support DLSS 3 yet, because I’m sure it would eke out even better performance. Even though the game was actually being rendered in 1,440p, to my eye, DLSS still does a stunning job of making that seem like 4K. (I tested the 4090 alongside Samsung’s 55-inch Arc monitor, giving me a much larger view than my typical 34-inch ultrawide screen. If there were graphical anomalies, I would have seen them.) 

I was particularly interested in stressing ray tracing performance on the 4090, because that was a feature that still managed to bring NVIDIA’s 30-series cards to their knees. It enables more realistic lighting, shadows and reflections. For most, I’d wager the graphical facelift it delivers would be more impressive than a skyrocketing framerate count. So it’s a wonder to see an NVIDIA card that can finally deliver 4K and solid ray tracing beyond 100fps. Is that worth $1,599, though? That remains unclear, especially since we don’t know how the rest of the 40-series cards will compete.

Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

If you’re looking for a video card that can do more than just game, the 4090 may make more sense. In the Blender 3D rendering benchmark, it scored twice as high as the RTX 3090 Ti, a GPU released earlier this year for an eye-watering $1,999. (Let’s have a moment of silence for the poor souls who jumped on that card.) When it came to transcoding a short 4K clip into 1080p, the RTX 4090 was also 10 seconds faster than the 3080 Ti. That could certainly add up if you’re rendering longer clips, episodes or feature films.

It’s hard not to covet the RTX 4090, especially once you see what it’s capable of. It’s a glimpse into a world where we can finally get uncompromised ray tracing. But with the $899 and $1,199 RTX 4080 cards on the horizon, it’s tough to drop the price of an entire computer just to get the best frame rates in town There’s just so much more to consider these days. You could pair up one of those 4080s with a Steam Deck, for example, and bring the joys of PC gaming on the road and all over your home. Sure, you won’t have the prestige of being in the 4090 club, but you’ll probably end up having more fun.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

October 11, 2022 at 08:16AM

https://www.engadget.com/google-cloud-gaming-chromebooks-asus-lenovo-acer-130030080.html?src=rss

One part of Google may have given up on cloud gaming, with Stadia set to be discontinued in a few months. But on the ChromeOS team, there’s a whole new initiative to try and push back on the whole “you can’t game on a Chromebook” thing. Today, Google — along with a handful of hardware and software partners — are announcing what it calls “the world’s first laptops built for cloud gaming.” 

Stripping back the hyperbole, what does this mean in practice? After all, the whole point of cloud gaming is that you don’t need superpowered hardware to enjoy high-quality games — many existing Chromebooks can run cloud gaming services just fine. That said, the new laptops announced today are quite a bit different than your average Chromebook. 

At a high level, Google says that it focused on a handful of hardware features to differentiate these laptops, including large displays with high refresh rates, keyboards with anti-ghosting tech (and RBG keyboards in some cases), WiFi 6/6E cards and generally high specs.

Three new laptops from ASUS, Acer and Lenovo

Acer

ASUS, Acer and Lenovo all announced new computers today as part of this push. First, the Acer Chromebook 516 GE features a 16-inch IPS screen with a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, along with an RBG anti-ghosting keyboard and 12th-gen Intel processors (up to a Core i7). It’s also equipped with a gigabit ethernet port, two USB-C ports, a USB-A port and HDMI. Finally, it has DTS audio via two upward-facing speakers and two more downward-facing speakers on the underside of the laptop. Acer will offer a number of configurations, but the first will be at Best Buy this month for $650 — it’ll include a Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage via its NVMe SSD.

ASUS’ offering is a little different — the Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip has a 15.6-inch display that maxes out at 1080p, but it’s a touchscreen and it has an even higher 144Hz refresh rate. As the name suggests, the CX55 can flip around into “tablet” and “tent” modes, like many other ASUS Chromebooks. It doesn’t have RGB lighting on the keyboard, but it does have a rather distinctive orange trim, including around the crucial WASD keys; it also has 1.4mm of travel.

Specs-wise, the CX55 uses 11th-generation Intel processors; you can get it with an i3, i5 or i7. The i3 model is paired with Intel UHD graphics, while the i5 and i7 models use Intel’s Iris X graphics. It’ll have either 8GB or 16GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. Unsurprisingly, the CX55 also has two USB-C ports as well as USB-A and HDMI ports. The laptop will come out this month as well, and Google said in a briefing that pricing would start at $399 — we don’t know what specs that includes, but it’s probably safe to assume it’s the i3 model. 

Lenovo

Lenovo’s IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook has a fair bit in common with Acer’s device. It has a 16-inch display with a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate as well as an RGB, anti-ghosting keyboard with 1.5mm of travel. Processors include 12th-generation Intel Core i3 or Core i5 options, plus 8GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage (the base configuration starts with 128GB). The port selection is a bit more limited — it only offers two USB-C ports, one USB-A port and a MicroSD slot. Like the other two laptops, the IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook will launch this month; it starts at $599.

Software, gaming services and peripheral partnerships

Google

Naturally, software and game access is perhaps just as important as the hardware here. As such, Google has partnerships with NVIDIA, Amazon and Microsoft to ensure its devices work with GeForce Now, Luna and Xbox Game Pass out of the box. The NVIDIA partnership is probably the most significant, as the company is bringing GeForce Now’s high-performance RTX 3080 tier to Chromebooks for the first time — this means games will play in up to 1600p resolution at 120 fps with ray tracing enabled (assuming the game supports these specs, of course). NVIDIA also made a progressive web app (PWA) so you can laugh directly into GeForce Now from your Chromebook’s dock or launcher. 

Microsoft also made a PWA for Game Pass, but everything works the same as running Game Pass on a PC — assuming you have an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you can stream any Game Pass title to your Chromebook. Similarly, an Amazon Luna subscription gives you access to a rotating selection of over 100 games. 

Google is also optimizing ChromeOS to make directly launching games easier. When you hit the “everything” search button on your Chromebook, you can just type in the name of the game you want to play and launch it directly, as if it were natively installed. For starters, this will only work with the GeForce Now catalog (as well as apps on Google Play), but Google says it wants to add this search feature for other services as well. 

To make sure that anyone checking out these Chromebooks can start playing immediately, Lenovo, Acer and ASUS are all including a three-month subscription to GeForce Now RTX 3080 tier as well as three months of Amazon Luna+. The ASUS option also includes a free SteelSeries Rival 3 gaming mouse, as well.

Speaking of mice, Google also partnered with companies like SteelSeries, Corsair and HyperX (as well as Lenovo and Acer) to make sure their gaming-focused peripherals work with Chromebooks. This includes making sure these peripherals can have their settings fine-tuned in ChromeOS, in some cases via PWAs. 

Do gaming Chromebooks have a shot?

It’s fair to wonder how much traction Google’s latest initiative will get. Chromebooks have found a lot of success in education and (to a lesser extent) enterprise settings, but the idea of a full-fledged push to get people gaming on a Chromebook is a pretty major shift. That said, I’m impressed by the pricing on these models — there aren’t a lot of Chromebooks with large, high-resolution screens with high refresh rates. Generally speaking, it sounds like you get a lot of bang for your buck with these models compared to some other premium ChromeOS devices. Naturally, these laptops are a big bigger and heavier than the standard 13-inch Chromebook, but that’s a tradeoff that might work for some people.

Google is also putting a big advertising and awareness push being this strategy, and it’s not tied to a single product like Stadia. Given that Google is being service-agnostic, these laptops should provide a very good cloud gaming experience for the foreseeable future, even if Google doesn’t stick with its cloud gaming push long term. And with other initiatives like Steam for ChromeOS moving forward (Google said it should enter beta soon), it’s fair to say the company seems focused on removing the longstanding notion that you can’t play games on a Chromebook.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

October 11, 2022 at 08:16AM

https://www.geeksaresexy.net/2022/10/10/leslie-nielsen-in-detroit-become-human-video/

Youtuber eli_handle_b?wav used footage of Leslie Nielsen from the Naked Gun Trilogy, Police Squad!, and Wrongfully Accused and inserted the actor in Detroit: Become Human. As you’ll see, the result is totally hilarious!

[eli_handle_b?wav]

Click This Link for the Full Post > Leslie Nielsen in Detroit: Become Human [Video]

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October 10, 2022 at 09:26AM

https://www.autoblog.com/2022/10/09/ev-charging-electricity-demand/

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October 9, 2022 at 12:13PM

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/04/1060628/covid-pop-up-window-beijing/

Welcome back! Hope you are not stuck in highway traffic if you are enjoying the National Day holiday in China. 

Though maybe it’s still better than staying at home—after all, travel feels like such a luxury in China today. While the rest of the world drops its remaining covid-related travel restrictions, even a short trip in China is plagued by flight cancellations, mandatory quarantines, and requirements to update regular covid test results. 

And for the more than 20 million people who live in or visit Beijing, the capital city, there is one additional worry: a pop-up window that can randomly show up on your phone to disrupt all your plans.

Starting in 2020, China rolled out a contact tracing program that assigns a QR code to everyone in the country. It shows your covid status and allows you to enter public venues or take public transportation. Part of China’s stringent zero-covid policy, the system has persisted, and some of the once-lauded features that kept deaths comparatively low in the country now feel more burdensome than beneficial to its citizens. (Most covid apps in other countries have been suspended. We documented all of them back in 2020.)

The pop-up, ??, is one additional complicated layer that Beijing added to its tracing system. This window in the mobile covid app won’t go away unless the user immediately takes a PCR test. It gives broad instructions on what to do under the title “friendly reminders,” but it’s not so friendly. It masks a user’s QR code so that it can’t be scanned, thus denying people access to just about everywhere in China. In some cases, it takes only a day to get a PCR test to make the window go away; other times, people may be asked to quarantine at home for seven days or more.

I have friends scattered around all parts of China, and this year I’ve seen so many of them complaining about it. “I went to take a PCR test to solve the pop-up window problem, but the testing location turned out to be a high-risk zone, so I was asked to quarantine at home for 14 days,” wrote a friend in April. The specifics may differ, but they all agree on the particular menace: no one knows why they are receiving the pop-up window or when they will get it, and there’s no way to prepare for it.

Officially, the municipal government of Beijing says there are several reasons why people get a pop-up window: you have been to a city with recent covid cases; you have just been abroad; you have been in the same “time and space” with someone exposed to covid; or you didn’t get a PCR test within 72 hours of buying fever or cough medicine. 

But the problem is, despite being touted as a high-tech pandemic solution, the app’s risk-identifying mechanism tends to cast a wider-than-necessary net, with zero explanation as to why the pop-up is appearing—which often leaves people confused and stuck in covid limbo. 

That’s what happened to Flora Yuan, a 28-year-old Beijing resident. She received the pop-up window for the first time earlier this year when she was walking outside her office building; she was immediately blocked from reentering. “After the pop-up window, you could still walk around on the street, but you’d need a QR code to go into any place, a park, a restaurant, or a shop,” she told me recently. 

Since then, she has received the pop-up window just as she was about to enter a restaurant; on the day of Chinese New Year, when all hospitals were closed and she couldn’t take a PCR test anywhere; and hours before she was supposed to take a train out of Beijing. 

In none of these instances had she actually engaged in high-risk activities or had a known exposure. As best she could guess, the system perhaps thought she was elsewhere (her phone number was not registered in Beijing), or she unknowingly happened to be in the same GPS location with a covid patient, perhaps on the subway. 

But whether or not she was actually exposed is sort of beside the point. Since there’s little explanation for why the windows appear, there’s no accountability. And erring on the side of caution (and over-reaching into people’s lives) is a feature of the pop-up window, not a bug.

For all the hype about how tech-savvy the Chinese government is, the pop-up windows reveal major cracks in the system: though often viewed outside China as a smart but utopian use of surveillance technology, the actual covid tracing app is flawed and creates more burdens than it resolves. 

The impact has been vast: When people are waiting for the pop-up to disappear, they miss out on their jobs, vacations, and sometimes urgent medical services. Thousands of people have complained on Weibo about the pop-up suddenly stranding them far from home. The pop-up also haunts the lives of the millions of non-Beijing residents who go to the city for work or to visit family and are subject to the same unpredictable restrictions. 

Instead of precise prevention, the technology is more of a blunt instrument that enables the government to be as strict as possible,just like how China obsessively disinfects every surface. Does it help China reduce the number of covid deaths? Yes. But at what cost? 

Increasingly, this is how the public in China feels. The measures that were considered essential in reducing covid’s spread in the first two years of the pandemic now feel performative and taxing. Ordinary people, even if they want to abide by the covid control policies, still feel they can’t control their own lives. For Yuan, the only thing she can do is to frequently check the app, sometimes once every hour, before she’s due to board a train or plane. 

“Compared to all the tragedies caused by the covid prevention policies, this probably doesn’t seem significant. But when it falls on an individual, it still feels devastating,” she says. 

Have you had a traumatic experience with the pop-up windows, or do you have any thoughts on them as a pandemic tool? Write to me at zeyi@technologyreview.com

Catch up with China

1. I wrote last week about how a new fuel can help transition China’s cars away from gas—good!—but may also increase China’s dependence on coal—not so good. (MIT Technology Review)

2. Lots of news in the Chinese vaccine world: 

• Indonesia became the first country to approve a Chinese-made mRNA vaccine for emergency use—it hasn’t been approved even in China yet. (Reuters $)
• Moderna wants to offer its mRNA vaccine in China but has reportedly refused the government’s request to transfer the technology to a Chinese company in order to sell it there. (Financial Times $)
• Japan is going to start waiving covid test requirements for foreign travelers if they’ve been vaccinated with three shots—including (non-mRNA) Chinese vaccines. (The Strait Times)

3. From “static management” to “unnecessary food,” here are the nonsensical phrases deployed by the Chinese government to serve its zero-covid policy. (The New York Times $)

4. Richard Liu, founder and ex-CEO of China’s ecommerce giant JD, settled a 2018 sexual assault lawsuit in Minnesota. (The Wall Street Journal $)

5. Say bye to Google Translate in China, one of the last remaining services from the tech giant that was still operating in the country. (CNBC)

6. New research shows how Chinese-government-backed hackers have targeted Tibetan organizations in exile. (Bloomberg $)

Lost in Translation

Home to over 90% of e-cigarette production in the world, China has implemented a much stricter regulation on vaper sales since October 1, reports the Chinese publication Sina Tech. All e-cigarettes need to have childproof locks built in, and companies can’t produce or sell fruit-flavored e-cigarettes, which are controversial for attracting children to vaping. Also, wholesalers and retail owners will have to make all transactions on a state-operated central marketplace, and only after they secure licenses from the state. Amid the rush to comply with the new rules, some retailers are hoarding fruit-flavored e-cigarettes and selling them at a 100% premium.

One More Thing

WeChat or baijiu liquor—which one represents China’s economic future? On Friday, Kweichow Moutai, maker of China’s luxury liquor (priced at over $200 per bottle), dethroned Tencent as the most valuable publicly traded Chinese company. The latter has seen its market cap evaporate 64% since January 2021, mostly as a result of China’s moves to regulate Big Tech. It turns out tech companies come and go, but baijiu is forever.

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October 4, 2022 at 04:02PM

https://gizmodo.com/worlds-whitest-paint-can-now-be-used-to-cool-cars-and-p-1849613597

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

October 4, 2022 at 09:39AM

https://www.engadget.com/nes-os-134544459.html?src=rss

You probably never saw the NES as a productivity machine, but some clever developers beg to differ. Hackaday and Ars Technica note Inkbox Software has released a graphical operating system, NESOS, for Nintendo’s console. The mid-’80s technology restricts the OS to two apps (a word processor and settings) and eight 832-byte files, but you have an honest-to-goodness pointer, movable icons and customizable interface colors.

Inkbox primarily had to overcome the NES’ very limited memory and storage. NESOS fits into just 48K, and the files have to sit inside the 2K of NVRAM that retains data when the console turns off. Graphics memory was a particularly large hurdle. Nintendo’s system only has two sprite memory grids (one each for the foreground and background), and it can only display 64 sprites at any time — that’s why many NES games flicker at busy moments. The creator had to combine sprites into larger shapes.

The project is available in a ROM that you’ll likely use through an emulator (unless you make your own cartridge). You won’t be writing a novel in NESOS. The memory prevents any kind of substantial content creation, and typing with the NES controller involves very slowly cycling through characters. This is more about defying expectations, and it’s significant that Inkbox didn’t have to modify the console to achieve its feat.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

October 5, 2022 at 08:53AM