Computing
The latest news and reviews of PCs, laptops, chips and accessories.
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Elizabeth Warren campaign open sources its organizing tools
The impact of Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign might be felt well after it ended. The Warren for President team is open-sourcing some of its key get-out-the-vote projects to help other politicians and cause supporters with their own efforts. These include the peer-to-peer texting platform Spoke, the polling location search tool Pollaris, a Caucus App used in Iowa (above) and the data handling app Redhook, among other tools.
Classic action RPG 'NieR Replicant' is coming to PC and modern consoles
NieR fans may have a lot to be happy about in the near future. Square Enix has teased a pair of games in the series, including an "upgraded" version of the cult classic NieR Replicant for PC (via Steam), PS4 and Xbox One. The publisher hasn't said just how it'll improve over the 10-year-old or even provided a general release window, but you can safely presume it'll represent a visual upgrade for the action RPG.
Fox Sports will air a 'Madden NFL 20' tournament on March 29th
Fox Sports' NASCAR esports race was a success, and it's betting that it can repeat that achievement with football. FS1 is planning to air its first ever Fox Esports Madden NFL Invitational on March 29th at 7PM Eastern. The two-hour event will pit players (remotely, of course) against each other in a single-elimination, three-round Madden NFL 20 tournament. There are only eight players, but they include a mix of analysts and pros such as Derwin James (above), Matt Leinart and Michael Vick.
Games Done Quick will host a charity stream for COVID-19 relief
If you want to help people directly affected by the coronavirus pandemic while watching some of the best speedrunners in the world show off their craft, you're in luck. The good folks over at Games Done Quick (GDQ) announced today they plan to host a COVID-19 charity stream next month. Dubbed Corona Relief Done Quick (CRDQ), the event will take place online over the April 17th weekend, with 100 percent of donations going directly to Direct Relief. The humanitarian agency works with doctors and nurses in the US and across the world to equip them with medical supplies to care for people affected by poverty and other emergencies. You'll be able to watch the stream on GDQ's Twitch channel.
The Morning After: Reviewing the iPad Pro (2020)
Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. I spent the last few days talking with Huawei, listening to Huawei and (briefly) playing with its new flagship P40 Pro phone. If you've been following the company's progress over recent years, you'll know it really hit its groove making aggressively high-specced smartphones with incredible cameras and imaging tricks. But hopes of becoming the de facto Android phone maker (and kicking Samsung aside) were crushed when the US government took aim at Huawei, and Google had to stop providing Android services (as you know 'em) for Huawei devices. The P40 is its first P series phone since that bombshell, and it doesn't have the Google Play app store, Chrome or Google Maps. Making things worse, Huawei's app store is still severely lacking, despite huge teams of software engineers and an outreach program to the biggest app developers both globally and in specific countries. So, what do I think of the P40? It feels like a Galaxy phone, to be honest, all curves and sloping sides. It comes with a 5X optical zoom, backed by a huge imaging sensor that would be more at home in a compact camera than a phone. The specs are to die for, but the reality of using it is a dull one. I'll be carrying around the P40 for a little longer -- even if there's really not many places to go at this moment in time. Hey, at least Nintendo is ensuring there's no shortage of games for me to play. -- Mat
'Flight Simulator' developers explain its 'shared world' multiplayer
Last year we got some hands-on time with a pre-alpha build of the next Flight Simulator game in Microsoft's long-running series. While that gave a peek at the game's photorealistic environment and inclusion of information like piped-in live flight traffic and weather data, Windows Central points out a seven-minute video the developers just posted that goes into the game's multiplayer features. The main mode is a shared world where everyone playing Flight Simulator can potentially see everyone else, relying on Azure servers to provide enough capacity. That includes people flying in the real world, with "most" air traffic accounted for, along with AI that will take over if information from the real plane is lost for a moment.
The latest 'Borderlands 3' DLC is an engagement party with guns
Borderlands 3 is a lighthearted take on a Mad Max-style future, and its latest add-on is proof positive of that. Gearbox has released Guns, Love and Tentacles: The Marriage of Wainwright & Hammerlock, and it's just as silly as you'd hope for. You're attending the engagement party of the DLC's namesake characters on a brand-new world, Xylourgos, and it just so happens that the festivities are taking place near a giant creature carcass revered by a cult. You'll have to juggle celebrations with fighting off mutant cultists, bandits and the planet's not-so-timid wildlife.
Google resumes Chrome updates on a modified schedule
Google is ready to restore some semblance of normalcy to its browser release strategy after pausing Chrome updates to adjust to the work-from-home realities of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company is resuming releases for Chrome and Chrome OS on an altered schedule. Security fixes and other crucial patches will come back to Stable releases next week, with Chrome 81 arriving the week of April 7th. Google is still skipping Chrome 82, but Chrome 83 is now due to arrive three weeks earlier than planned, in mid-May -- it'll include all the work from version 82.
Apple Arcade standout ‘Assemble With Care’ is now on Steam
If you're looking for new games to play while you stay at home amid the pandemic, you may be in luck. Today, two Apple Arcade exclusives hit other platforms. As promised, Assemble With Care, one of our favorite Apple Arcade games, is now available for PC. And Capcom's Shinsekai Into the Depths arrived on Switch.
Apple iPad Pro 12.9 review: The rest is yet to come
The message is clear: The 2020 iPad Pro doesn't act the way your computer does, but it's just as capable. The company has spent years pushing that message in one form or another, and every time I heard someone invoke it, the notion sort of fell flat for me. Yes, iPads are powerful and clever and user-friendly, but — and tell me if this sounds familiar — I've always been able to get more done, and faster, on a proper laptop or PC. Apple sees that, and it's starting to change it.
The Morning After: Weightlifting with a robotic exosuit
Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. When the International Olympic Committee decided to make the right call and postpone the Tokyo Olympics, I was disappointed. I was writing a story about Panasonic's robotic exosuits that were going to be assisting Tokyo visitors and Paralympic athletes this summer. I had hoped to report on all the major tech showcases that Japan had planned, too. (Like a broken record, yes, I used to live there and, sure, wanted to visit again.) Whether it was self-driving transport, robotics or 8K broadcast, it was going to be a quintessentially tech Olympics. It still will be, I'm sure, just in 2021. -- Mat
iFixit's MacBook Air teardown confirms 0.5mm thicker keyboard
If you've been lucky enough to get your hands on the new MacBook Air, you know that the keyboard really is excellent. Thanks to the scissor mechanism, which replaced the hated butterfly keyboard, the keys are noticeably cushier, with more travel. iFixit took a closer look at those keys in its latest teardown and reports that the height difference is about 0.5 millimeters.
A hacker stole and leaked the Xbox Series X graphics source code
AMD has been having a particularly rough few months, apparently. The chip designer has revealed that a hacker stole test files for a "subset" of current and upcoming graphics hardware, some of which had been posted online before they were taken down. While AMD was shy on details, the claimed intruder told TorrentFreak that the material included source code for Navi 10 (think Radeon RX 5700 series), the future Navi 21 and the Arden GPU inside the Xbox Series X.
'Below' arrives on PS4 on April 7th with an easier exploration mode
While we knew it was coming to PlayStation 4 this spring, we now have an exact release date for Below. The one-time Xbox One exclusive will launch on Sony's console on April 7th. And when it arrives on PS4, Below will include a new optional "explore" mode that addresses some of the difficulty issues that stopped the game from finding a bigger audience when it first came out.
The terrible, fantastic life of AbleGamers COO Steven Spohn
When Twitch streamer DrDisrespect won the Trending Gamer prize at the 2017 Game Awards, there was a tiny riot on Twitter. There's always a buzz of hashtag activity after a winner is announced as people congratulate or disagree with the pick, but this time around, there was a small yet clear consensus: Steven Spohn should have won. As the Chief Operating Officer of AbleGamers, a charity working to make video games more accessible to people with disabilities, Spohn was the face of positive change in the industry. He regularly shared insightful affirmations on Twitter, as well as deeply personal stories about the realities of living with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a disease that was progressively destroying his motor neurons and muscles. Meanwhile, DrDisrespect was best known for wearing a mullet wig and mocking his teammates with racist accents in Fortnite streams.
'Second Life' creator sells its ambitious social VR platform
Second Life creator Linden Lab's big VR push didn't pan out, it seems. The company has sold its Sansar social VR platform to a startup, Wookey Project Corp., in a bid to "streamline its focus" in favor of Second Life as well as money service provider Tilia. Sansar will revolve more around "premier virtual events" under its new ownership, the team said in a blog post.
Samsung is first to ship RAM produced with extreme ultraviolet tech
Samsung just reached an important milestone in memory for PCs and mobile devices. The tech firm has shipped the first million 10nm-grade DDR4 DRAM modules based on an extreme ultraviolet process. The next-gen lithography technique should help Samsung get past barriers in DRAM scaling, allowing for better performance, shorter development time and better yields (that is, fewer bad chips). Don't be surprised if your next computer or phone has fewer memory bottlenecks.
Unity is offering premium game development tutorials for free
Unity, arguably the biggest game engine in the world, is giving away hundreds of hours of premium game developing tutorials for free because of the coronavirus. For three months until June 20th, aspiring game makers will be able to get their hands on courses on everything from coding to design, and get access to Unity's daily interactive live lessons, Create with Code.
An enterprise SSD flaw will brick hardware after exactly 40,000 hours
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has warned that certain SSD drives could fail catastrophically if buyers don't take action soon. Due to a firmware bug, the products in question will be bricked exactly 40,000 hours (four years, 206 days and 16 hours) after the SSD has entered service. "After the SSD failure occurs, neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered," the company warned in a customer service bulletin.
The Morning After: iPadOS 13.4 brings mouse and trackpad support
Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. Years after Apple's tablet first debuted, the iPad is finally like other computers in one important way: You can easily use it with a mouse or a trackpad. The 13.4 update that rolled out yesterday for iOS and iPadOS added that and a number of other new features, like support for third-party navigation apps in the CarPlay dashboard and revamped iCloud file sharing that will be a lot more useful. Still, one of the biggest changes is in the browser. Safari for iOS, iPadOS and macOS now blocks all third-party cookies by default and is the first mainstream browser to do it. Google has announced it will do the same with Chrome, but not until 2022. The team calls this a "significant improvement for privacy since it removes any sense of exceptions or that "a little bit of cross-site tracking is allowed." I feel more secure already, and I use Android. -- Richard