Month: February 2020

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  The Lenovo ThinkPad T14S is one of the company's premium business models. [credit: Lenovo ]

Lenovo has announced updates to its ThinkPad lineup with a number of improvements, chief among them the option for some models to include AMD Ryzen Pro 4000 mobile CPUs. The updated models are expected to launch in the second quarter of 2020. These are the models Lenovo plans to refresh, along with their starting prices:

• ThinkPad T14 ($849)
• ThinkPad T14s ($1,029)
• ThinkPad T15 ($1,079)
• ThinkPad X13 ($849)
• ThinkPad X13 Yoga ($1,099)
• ThinkPad L13 ($679)
• ThinkPad L13 Yoga ($799)
• ThinkPad L14 ($649)
• ThinkPad L15 ($649)

AMD's Ryzen 4000 Pro is available as an optional pick on the ThinkPad T14, T14S, X13, L14, and L15 models. The highest-end of the new AMD Ryzen 4000 Pro chips has eight cores and gives Intel a run for its money.

Intel chips are available picks across the line too, though (10th-generation Intel Core vPro later in 2020). And Intel-equipped T or X series laptops get a CAT 16 WWAN option. For the L14 and L15, CAN 9 WWAN is available. All the new ThinkPad models have Wi-Fi 6, and several models (all but the L13 and L13 Yoga) offer LTE configurations.

Enlarge / Team leader of the joint mission between World Health Organization (WHO) and China on COVID-19, Bruce Aylward shows graphics during a press conference at the WHO headquarters in Geneva on February 25, 2020. (credit: Getty | Fabrice Coffrini)

Fresh off a plane from China, epidemiologist Bruce Aylward sat before members of the press at the World Health Organization’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday and laid out key insights from the coronavirus front lines.

Aylward, a nearly 30-year veteran of outbreak and emergency responses with the WHO, had just led a joint mission through the COVID-19 trenches to appraise the outbreak and China’s control efforts. His assessment was glowing: China had responded swiftly, on a mind-boggling large scale, and with differential outbreak responses tailored to curb disease spread in different settings—from the outbreak’s blazing epicenter in a highly populated city to the spotty disease clusters in rural areas.

He pointed to humped graphs of cases over time—they are the shape of an epidemic that has been hobbled, he said. Disease spread has been in decline since the beginning of the month, and doctors in China are honing their ability to treat patients. “If I had COVID-19, I’d want to be treated in China,” he said candidly.

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  The IQoo 3. [credit: iQoo ]

It's Qualcomm's world, and we're all just living in it.

Phones are starting to trickle onto the market with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865 SoC, and the company's unchecked monopoly power over the mobile industry is really coming to a head with this new chip. Qualcomm is forcing 5G on everyone with the Snapdragon 865, increasing the size, cost, and complexity of smartphones, even if the world's 5G networks are not ready yet. This week, we're seeing an absurd new wrinkle in the Mandatory 5G Saga: manufacturers are sticking to Qualcomm rules and shipping its 5G modems, but they are also disabling them, because 5G just doesn't work in some markets.

Meet the "iQoo 3." As pointed out by XDA Developers, in India, this phone ships the Snapdragon 865 in a first-ever "4G" configuration. Apparently, BBK subsidiary iQoo does all the work of paying for Qualcomm's mandatory 5G modem, integrating it into the phone design, and then the company just, uh, disables the 5G functionality completely.

Enlarge / The "barcode" pattern of light and dark points along the seam of a pair of jeans. (credit: -Bine- / Flickr)

Is every pair of jeans like no other? According to the testimony of FBI forensic analysts, the patterns seen on denim are reliably unique and can be used to identify a suspect in surveillance footage.

The problem is, this technique has never been subjected to thorough scrutiny, and evidence acquired through it may not be as strong as it has been claimed to be. A paper published in PNAS this week puts denim-pattern analysis through its paces, finding that it isn’t particularly good at matching up identical pairs of jeans—and may create a number of “false alarm” errors to boot.

Shoddy evidence

For some time, there have been rumblings about the reliability and quality of commonly-used forensic techniques. In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences published a weighty report observing that, apart from nuclear DNA analysis, “no forensic method has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source.”

Intrepid camera crews braved harsh nighttime conditions and used all the technical ingenuity at their disposal for Night on Earth, a new nature documentary series from Netflix that lets viewers see familiar animals in a startling new light. There's also a fascinating behind-the-scenes standalone episode, "Shot in the Dark," that details everything that went into several highlighted shoots.

Per the official synopsis: "When the sun goes down, a new world awakes. New technology reveals wonders of the planet in a completely new light. Across the globe we discover a hidden side to the world's greatest landscapes and animals." Creating the series required 60 separate shoots over one year, in 30 different countries, tapping pretty much everyone who works professionally in the wildlife filmmaking community.

"We wanted to show the color and magic of the night," series producer Bill Markham told Ars. That said, finding stories of things that happen in the wild after dark was quite difficult, because not many scientists stay up all night to observe animal behavior, although there is much they can infer from tracking data, for instance. There was also the technical challenge of modifying various cameras, picking the correct lenses, and finding camera crews willing to brave extreme conditions all over the globe—all in the dark.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a new one-day Amazon Gold Box sale with a number of deals on PC gaming gear. More specifically, our favorite discount of the bunch is a $50 drop on ViewSonic's XG2402 monitor. That brings the 24-inch display down to $190, which is the lowest price we've seen in the past year outside of a very brief drop to $156 in December. In general, drops below $200 have been few and far between.

We deemed the ViewSonic XG2402 our top budget pick in our gaming monitor buying guide last August, and at this price, it remains an excellent value for anyone looking for smooth PC gaming on a budget. The poor viewing angles and contrast ratio of its TN panel make it a less-than-ideal option for everyday work, but its 144Hz refresh rate and outstandingly clear motion handling allow it to play fast-paced games without visible blurring or ghosting. It's a particularly strong option for budget buyers who often play competitive shooters like Overwatch or Counter-Strike. Just note that it only has a 1080p resolution, which isn't as much of a nuisance on a smaller 24-inch display like this but is still less sharp than a 1440p panel.

If you don't need a new gaming monitor, though, we also have deals on Amazon's Fire TV lineup, Xbox Live Gold subscriptions, wireless noise-cancelling headphones from Bose and Jabra, and much more. Have a look at the full rundown below.

Enlarge / Space Channel 5 hero Ulala (center, in yellow) deserved so much better. (credit: Grounding Inc.)

For anybody in the tiny Venn diagram of users who have heard of and are anticipating this week's Space Channel 5 VR, I have very bad news: it's the worst value proposition of any PlayStation VR game ever made. And while this Dreamcast-era revival's issues could be forgiven in isolation, the game's mix of price, brevity, simplicity, and ho-hum aesthetics makes it a bummer for anybody with hopes of a new, solid VR-dancing option.

Space Channel 5, for the uninitiated, is a beloved rhythm game made by Sega for the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. It pioneered a "mods in space" aesthetic, as if a groovy British dance club from the '60s took off in a rocketship. Its star, an intrepid "space reporter" named Ulala, engages in Simon-style dance battles with monsters; she watches a pattern of button taps to the beat of the music, then responds in kind. It's similar to rhythm-gaming classics like Parappa the Rapper.

The best thing I can say about Space Channel 5 VR: Kinda Funky News Flash!, which is currently a PlayStation VR exclusive, is that it neatly translates the original game's formula to a version with motion controls. The original game limited its players to tapping four cardinal directions and a single button, while SC5VR replaces all button taps with arm motions. Move your hands up, to the sides, down, or forward, then mix and match these for approximately 15 dance moves.