Amazon is running a sale on select Chromebooks, Windows laptops, and monitors. Among other things, that means you can pick up an Acer Swift X 14″ laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U processor, NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti graphics, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for just $900 today. That’s a lot of horsepower […]
That’s a lot of horsepower for a notebook that weighs just under 3.1 pounds. An Acer Swift X with those specs has a list price of $1070, by the way, which means that you can save $170 if youbuy one from Amazon today.
“Each one of these tells us a chapter of the story that we’re all a part of.”
Enlarge/ Atlas V with the Lucy spacecraft aboard an SLC-41 on the morning of October 15 as media set their sound-activated remote cameras. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)
Less than five years have gone by since NASA selected the "Lucy" mission for development as part of its Discovery Mission program, and now the intriguing spacecraft is ready for launch.
The $981 million mission will fly an extremely complex trajectory over the span of a dozen years. The spacecraft will swing by Earth a total of three times for gravitational assists as it visits a main-belt asteroid, 52246 Donaldjohanson, and subsequently flies by eight Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun.
The Lucy mission is scheduled to launch on Saturday at 5:34 am ET (09:34 UTC) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. An Atlas V rocket carrying the 1.5-ton spacecraft rolled to the launch pad on Thursday in advance of the launch attempt. The weather looks fine Saturday morning, with a 90 percent chance of favorable conditions. The launch will be covered live on NASA TV.
The MINISFORUM EliteMini HM90 is a 5.9″ x 5.9″ x 2.2″ desktop computer with support for up to an AMD Ryzen 9 4900H processor, 64GB of RAM, and dual storage thanks to an M.2 2280 slot and a 2.5 inch drive bay. MINISFORUM is now taking pre-orders for the little computer for $479 and up. […]
The MINISFORUM EliteMini HM90 is a 5.9″ x 5.9″ x 2.2″ desktop computer with support for up to an AMD Ryzen 9 4900H processor, 64GB of RAM, and dual storage thanks to an M.2 2280 slot and a 2.5 inch drive bay.
MINISFORUM is now taking pre-orders for the little computer for $479 and up.
The starting price will get you a barebones system with an AMD Ryzen 5 4600H processor and no memory, storage or operating system – you have to supply your own. But you can upgrade to a Ryzen 9 4900H chip for just $20 more during pre-orders.
Retail prices are expected to start at $559 for the Ryzen 5 model and $629 for the Ryzen 9 version after the pre-order promotional pricing ends.
If you don’t want to hassle with adding your own memory and storage, you can also pay extra to get a system configured with up to 32GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB of PCIe 3.0 solid state storage. These models will also come with Windows 10 Pro pre-installed.
The MINISFORUM EliteMini HM90 also features support for up to three displays thanks to HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB 3.0 Type-C ports, all capable of driving 4K displays at 60 Hz. Other ports include:
1 x 2.5 Gbps Ethernet
1 x Gigabit Ethernet
2 x USB 3.1 Type-A
4 x USB 3.0 Type-A
1 x 3.5mm audio
Other features include support for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 and a cooling system that the company says includes a “breathable mesh” design that allows air to be drawn in through the top of the chassis and pushed out through the sides.
MINISFORUM also says it applies liquid metal to the CPU to enhance cooling… a claim that caused a bit of controversy when the company made it for the pricier, higher-performance EliteMini HX90 earlier this year. But while early reviews suggested sloppy application of liquid metal on the HX90, if it could be found at all, MINISFORUM sent out newer units to reviewers which do in fact seem to have liquid metal applied properly… even if it’s not entirely clear how much benefit you’ll get from it in a relatively low-power PC with a laptop-class processor.
Im Kampf gegen Kryptomining haben chinesische Behörden entdeckt, dass auch in staatlichen Unternehmen und Behörden Strom abgezapft wurde. (Kryptomining, Bitcoin)
Im Kampf gegen Kryptomining haben chinesische Behörden entdeckt, dass auch in staatlichen Unternehmen und Behörden Strom abgezapft wurde. (Kryptomining, Bitcoin)
Der Aurora verwendet ein neues, von Alienware entwickeltes Gehäuse. Das soll durch eine bessere Kühlung und geringere Lautstärke überzeugen. (Alienware, Computer)
Der Aurora verwendet ein neues, von Alienware entwickeltes Gehäuse. Das soll durch eine bessere Kühlung und geringere Lautstärke überzeugen. (Alienware, Computer)
Je mehr politisch rechts, desto mehr für neue Atomkraftwerke – Im Nachbarland gibt es einen eigenartigen Überbietungswettbewerb “pro Atom”. Macron will neue AKW zum Klimaschutz
Je mehr politisch rechts, desto mehr für neue Atomkraftwerke - Im Nachbarland gibt es einen eigenartigen Überbietungswettbewerb "pro Atom". Macron will neue AKW zum Klimaschutz
The PinePhone Pro is a $399 smartphone that looks nearly identical to Pine64’s original Linux-friendly phone, but it has a significantly faster processor, more memory and storage, better cameras, and faster WiFi, among other improvements.
Most modern smartphones ship with Android or iOS, but there’s also a small, but growing number of phones designed to run Linux-based operating systems. And it’s likely that no phone has been more successful in spurring the development of mobile Linux distributions than the PinePhone, an inexpensive phone that’s made mobile Linux accessible.
But while the PinePhone’s $150 starting price makes the device attractive, it’s only possible because the phone’s hardware is… not great. So now the folks at Pine64 have introduced a new phone for folks that want to run mainline Linux on a phone with more powerful hardware. Meet the PinePhone Pro.
The PinePhone Pro looks virtually identical to the original PinePhone, but under the hood it’s powered by a Rockchip RK399S hexa-core processor which should bring a significant performance boost. It also brings more RAM and storage, better cameras, and faster WiFi.
It’s still a phone aimed at tech-savvy early adopters rather than the general public. But with significant hardware upgrades, it’s capable of delivering a better user experience for folks interested in running work-in-progress mainline Linux-based software on a phone.
The new model also keeps some of the features that made the original PinePhone special, including a removable, replaceable battery, hardware kill switches for the cameras, microphones, and wireless features, pogo pins for optional add-ons, and the same 4G LTE modem that hackers have already developed open source firmware for.
Pine64 will continue to sell the original PinePhone alongside the new model, but notes that the PinePhone Pro offers the kind of performance you’d expect from a mid-range Android device, which could make it a better option for folks that want to use a Linux smartphone as their daily driver (acknowledging that mobile Linux is still very much a work in progress and may not yet do all the things you want, even with more powerful hardware).
Here’s a run-down of PinePhone Pro specs compared with those for the original PinePhone, which is still available for $150 and up:
PinePhone Pro
PinePhone
SoC
Rockchip RK3399S
2 x ARM Cortex-A72
4 x ARM Cortex-A53 @ 1.5 GHz
Allwinner A64
4 x ARM Cortex-A53 @ 1.2 GHz
GPU
ARM Mali-T760 4-cores @ 500 MHz
ARM Mali-400MP2
RAM
4GB LPDDR4 @ 800 MHz
2GB or 3GB LPDDR3
Storage
128GB eMMC
16GB or 32GB eMMC
Display
6 inch
1440 x 720 pixel IPS LCD
Gorilla Glass 4
5.95 inch
1440 x 720 pixel IPS LCD
Camera (rear)
13MP Sony IMX258
LED flash
5MP Omnivision OV5640
LED flash
Camera (front)
5MP Omnivision OV5640
2MP GC2035
Modem
Quectel EG25-G with global GSM and CDMA
4G LTE
GPS, A-GPS, GLONAS
Quectel EG25-G with global GSM and CDMA
4G LTE
GPS, A-GPS, GLONAS
While the specs are better, the form-factor of the PinePhone Pro is very similar to the original. The new model is about 2mm thicker and the back cover now has an oleophobic coating to make it a little more resistant to fingerprints. But it’s generally the same shape and size as its older sibling, and the camera, pogo pins, and other hardware are in the same places.
That means that accessories like the PinePhone Keyboard should work with both phones.
Unfortunately, Pine64 notes that enough things under the hood have changed, including the cameras, display panel, daughterboard and thermal dissipation that it’s unlike existing PinePhone owners would be able to simply buy a Pro mainboard and upgrade their existing devices.
The default operating system for the new PinePhone Pro will be Manjaro Linux with the KDE Plasma Mobile user interface, but users aren’t stuck with the operating system that comes with the phone.
There are currently more than 20 different operating systems available for the original PinePhone, and the folks at Pine64 are hoping that developers will port most, if not all of them to work with the PinePhone Pro.
One down side though, is that unlike the PinePhone, the new Pro model will not support booting from a microSD card, as the Rockchip RK3399S chipset doesn’t support that feature. So trying out alternate operating systems currently requires writing them to the phone’s built-in storage, although as LinMOB points out, it’s possible that developers might be able to create a custom bootloader that will get around this and allow you to boot from removable storage.
And it’s not like members of the Pine64 community are inexperienced when it comes to working with Rockchip processors – the smartphones’ RK3399S processor is very similar to the RK3399 chip used in the company’s PineBook Pro laptop. But Pine64 says it worked with Rockchip to alter the processors so it could work within the thermal and energy-consumption restraints of a smartphone.
The chipset also supports key features including support for high-resolution cameras, USB 3.0 data transfer speeds, and video output via the USB-C port, which allows you to use the PinePhone Pro as a portable desktop computer by hooking up an external display.
The company says that means that the PinePhone Pro is about 20% slower than a PineBook Pro in terms of sheer horsepower. But it also has a lower-resolution display, which means the processor doesn’t have to work quite as hard, so real-world performance should be similar when used as a phone.
Pine64 plans to ship a limited number of developer units first, in order to get the phones in the hands of folks responsible for actually creating and improving mobile Linux distributions. But the company is also planning to begin production of a PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition aimed at early adopters next month, in the goal of shipping units to customers in early 2022.
While most folks will have to wait a little while to get their hands on a PinePhone Pro, a handful of developers have already been testing pre-production models for a few months.
Megi, developer of custom kernels and other software for the PinePhone, has shared some thoughts in a “quick review,” noting that the phone’s processor is faster than the one used in the PinePhone or Librem 5, but it’s also more power hungry, which will likely take a toll on battery life. The eMMC storage is also much faster, with data transfer speeds up to 150 MB/s, which helps with performance. But there are still multiple software kinks to work out.
PostmarketOS developer Martijn Braam has also been spending some time with one, and has a posted hands-on video looking at the hardware, general performance, and how the new phone compares with the original PinePhone.
Soldaten müssen bald nicht mehr um ihr Leben fürchten. Wozu auch, wenn sie aus sicherer Entfernung Roboter in den Krieg schicken können. Ein IMHO von Oliver Nickel (Roboter, Technologie)
Soldaten müssen bald nicht mehr um ihr Leben fürchten. Wozu auch, wenn sie aus sicherer Entfernung Roboter in den Krieg schicken können. Ein IMHO von Oliver Nickel (Roboter, Technologie)
COO Balwani hired his longtime dermatologist to run Theranos’ lab.
Enlarge/ Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former CEO of blood-testing and life sciences company Theranos, leaves the courthouse with her husband, Billy Evans, after the first day of her fraud trial in San Jose, California, on September 8, 2021. (credit: Nick Otto / AFP)
In yesterday’s installment of the Elizabeth Holmes criminal trial, the jury heard some eye-opening testimony from Sunil Dhawan, the doctor Theranos hired to replace its previous lab director.
Dhawan was the longtime dermatologist of Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who will be facing the same fraud charges as Holmes in the spring. Dhawan was a board-certified doctor, so he met state and federal requirements to be a lab director.
But unlike Adam Rosendorff, the previous director who resigned over the questionable accuracy of the company’s test results, Dhawan was not board certified in laboratory science, nor did he have any prior experience running a lab of that scale or scope. Dhawan also admitted that he had to google Theranos’ tech when Balwani initially approached him—before he was recruited, he hadn’t known much about the company’s technology.
Was am 15. Oktober 2021 neben den großen Meldungen sonst noch passiert ist, in aller Kürze. (
Im Kampf gegen Kryptomining haben chinesische Behörden entdeckt, dass auch in staatlichen Unternehmen und Behörden Strom abgezapft wurde. (
Der Aurora verwendet ein neues, von Alienware entwickeltes Gehäuse. Das soll durch eine bessere Kühlung und geringere Lautstärke überzeugen. (
Soldaten müssen bald nicht mehr um ihr Leben fürchten. Wozu auch, wenn sie aus sicherer Entfernung Roboter in den Krieg schicken können. Ein IMHO von Oliver Nickel (
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