Month: September 2022

Enlarge / Alienware's latest QD-OLED monitor, the AW3423DWF. (credit: Alienware)

Alienware announced today a new QD-OLED monitor SKU that looks awfully similar to the Alienware AW3423DW released for $1,300 this spring. The AW3423DWF has many of the same specs but skips Nvidia G-Sync certification and hardware in favor of AMD's and VESA's open standards for fighting screen tears, while costing $200 less than its predecessor.

Like the AW3423DW, the AW3423DWF uses QD-OLED technology from Samsung. This is a form of OLED that uses a blue self-emitting layer as its light source, which goes through a layer of quantum dots. The primary goal is better color coverage, including more consistent colors across brightness levels, combined with the deep blacks and incredible contrast for which OLED displays are known.

The 34.18-inch AW3423DWF and AW3423DW's specs sheets match closely, including 3440×1440 resolution, an 1800R curve, 99.3 percent DCI-P3 and 149 percent sRGB color coverage, up to a 165 Hz refresh rate via DisplayPort and 100 Hz via HDMI 2.0, and 0.1ms gray-to-gray (GtG) response time.

Enlarge / An overview of the improvements coming to Intel's 13th-gen desktop chips. (credit: Intel)

If there's one thing Intel has gotten good at in the last few years, it's refining a CPU architecture. Between 2015 and 2020, manufacturing troubles pushed Intel to release not one, not two, but five processor generations based on iterations of the sixth-gen Skylake core, while still managing to increase clock speeds and core counts enough to stay competitive through most of that timespan.

It's an approach Intel is returning to for its 13th-generation Core CPUs, the first of which are being officially announced today. Codenamed Raptor Lake, Intel says it has made some improvements to the CPU architecture and the Intel 7 manufacturing process, but the strategy for improving their performance is both time-tested and easy to understand: add more cores, and make them run at higher clock speeds.

Intel is announcing three new CPUs today, each with and without integrated graphics (per usual, the models with no GPUs have an "F" at the end): the Core i9-13900K, Core i7-13700K, and Core i5-13600K will launch on October 20 alongside new Z790 chipsets and motherboards. They will also work in all current-generation 600-series motherboards as long as your motherboard maker has provided a BIOS update, and will continue to support both DDR4 and DDR5 memory.

Enlarge / The Mercedes-Benz EQE sedan's shape has been designed to create as little drag as possible.

DENVER—No one has more experience with launching new cars than Mercedes-Benz, the world's oldest existing automaker. The company is at the start of a new phase of its existence, as it transforms into a carbon-neutral company that mostly builds electric vehicles. But it's sticking to some tried and true strategies as it does.

So, like the smaller, cheaper E-Class that follows the S-Class sedan, the EQE sedan will arrive this fall in the US to follow last year's bigger, more expensive EQS sedan.

Built using Mercedes' new EVA2 platform for EVs, the EQE is obviously related to the EQS; the two cars look similar, having been optimized to the nth degree by the wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamics. It's an evolution of the cab-forward "four-door coupe" look that the company pioneered on the CLS, but with any rough edges polished away to aid the air's passage over and around the bodywork as efficiently as possible. Mercedes hasn't published the EQE's drag coefficient, but I'd be surprised if it was higher than the EQS's remarkable 0.2, given that it rides on smaller 19-inch wheels.

Enlarge (credit: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/blinkee-city-rental-scooter-is-seen-in-warsaw-poland-on-news-photo/1031626648)

Google and Apple have removed hundreds of apps from their app stores at the request of governments around the world, creating regional disparities in access to mobile apps at a time when many economies are becoming increasingly dependent on them.

The mobile phone giants have removed over 200 Chinese apps, including widely downloaded apps like TikTok, at the Indian government’s request in recent years. Similarly, the companies removed LinkedIn, an essential app for professional networking, from Russian app stores at the Russian government’s request.

However, access to apps is just one concern. Developers also regionalize apps, meaning they produce different versions for different countries. This raises the question of whether these apps differ in their security and privacy capabilities based on region.

Enlarge / Nreal depicts someone using the Air glasses to extend their MacBook desktop. (credit: Nreal)

As augmented reality (AR) glasses continue to try carving a place among tech enthusiasts, we're seeing another option hit mass availability in the US. In addition to selling the sunglass-like Nreal Air specs in America, Beijing-based company Nreal also announced today a version of its Nebula AR operating system that will work with Apple M1 and M2-powered MacBooks.

The Mac version of Nebula works with MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops with Apple silicon and is launching as a beta. Attaching the Air glasses to a MacBook won't give you the same Nebula "AR Space" experience available to supported Android phones. AR Space includes a mixed-reality interface and games and other AR apps made for the glasses. Instead, Mac users will see a virtual UI that Nreal's calling AR Desktop and projects up to three virtual displays at a time, an Nreal rep told Ars Technica. An Nreal rep wouldn't specify when AR Space would come to MacBooks or iOS.

In a statement, Nreal co-founder Peng Jin said the company expects AR glasses to initially gain traction among consumers by serving as a display technology, so "the thinking behind Nreal Air is very focused on the aesthetics, display quality, and its connectivity with other hardware devices."