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There was a time when laptops with 16GB of RAM or 256GB of solid state storage more fell firmly into premium territory. But it’s becoming increasingly common to find models with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage in the mid-range category… e…
There was a time when laptops with 16GB of RAM or 256GB of solid state storage more fell firmly into premium territory. But it’s becoming increasingly common to find models with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage in the mid-range category… especially if you’re willing to opt for a model with a year-old processor. […]
The post Daily Deals (7-20-2023) appeared first on Liliputing.
We found discounts on laptops, board games, and back-to-school equipment.
Enlarge / Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11, which not-confusingly-at-all feature 13th-generation Intel Core processors. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
As always, the web is loaded today with good deals on gadgets, video games, board games, and plenty of other stuff. In this edition of Dealmaster, you'll find curated deals on Apple gear, Lenovo laptops, and home accessories—some of which will be great back-to-school buys, if that's a need for you. Let's dig into what we could find today!
Open it up, and it looks quite a bit like the 14-inch MacBook Pro from this angle. (credit: Samuel Axon)
The satin metal exterior doesn't hold on to fingerprints too much. (credit: Valentina Palladino)
DeWalt drill kit with carrying bag. (credit: DEWALT)
The Nothing Phone 2 all lit up. (credit: Ron Amadeo)
Lenovo ThinkPad T16. (credit: Scharon Harding)
Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.
This post was updated on July 17 and July 18 to reflect the most recent deals.
One side is all helium, and the other side is all hydrogen, baffling astronomers.
Astronomers have discovered an unusual blue-tinted white dwarf star with two distinct "faces": one side is hydrogen and the other side is helium, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature. Naturally they nicknamed the star Janus, after the two-faced Roman god of duality and transition.
As previously reported, a white dwarf is essentially the burnt-out core of a dead star. One of the first white dwarf stars discovered, dubbed 40 Eridani B, had a density over 25,000 times that of the Sun, packed into a much smaller volume (roughly the size of Earth)—an observational deduction that astronomers initially deemed impossible. A second white dwarf, Sirius B (orbiting the star Sirius), was discovered soon after and also appeared to be incredibly dense (about 200,000 times as dense as Earth).
That extreme density arises from the unusual mechanism behind the star's internal pressure to keep it from collapsing under the force of gravity. Regular stars rely on energy released via nuclear fusion, but fusion has stopped in white dwarfs. So gravity has compacted all the star's matter inward so tightly that its electrons are smashed together, forming "electron-degenerate matter." This happens because of quantum mechanics, notably the Pauli exclusion principle, which holds that only two electrons can be in the same energy level. Normal gases don't violate this principle because there's sufficient space between electrons to keep all the energy levels in the atoms from filling up. But in a degenerate gas, the electrons do fill up all the energy levels, and this results in an outward-pressing force to halt the star's collapse.
US agency urged Microsoft to expand access to logs that can identify cyberattacks.
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | SOPA Images )
Microsoft will expand access to important security log data after being criticized for locking detailed audit logs behind a Microsoft 365 enterprise plan that costs $57 per user per month. The logging updates will start rolling out "in September 2023 to all government and commercial customers," the company said.
"Over the coming months, we will include access to wider cloud security logs for our worldwide customers at no additional cost. As these changes take effect, customers can use Microsoft Purview Audit to centrally visualize more types of cloud log data generated across their enterprise," Microsoft announced yesterday.
Microsoft Purview Audit Premium is available on the $57-per-user Microsoft 365 E5 plan for businesses as well as the similar A5 education plan and G5 government plan. There's also a Purview Audit Standard service that comes with a much wider range of plans, including the Microsoft 365 Business Basic tier that costs $6 per user per month.
Ukrainische Einsatzkräfte haben eine für russische Propaganda genutzte Botfarm vom Netz genommen und dabei 150.000 SIM-Karten beschlagnahmt. (Cybercrime, Politik)
Ukrainische Einsatzkräfte haben eine für russische Propaganda genutzte Botfarm vom Netz genommen und dabei 150.000 SIM-Karten beschlagnahmt. (Cybercrime, Politik) 24 years later, it’s still fun to micromanage your ragtag soldiers of fortune.
Enlarge (credit: THQ Nordic)
The first Jagged Alliance game was published nine months after X-COM: UFO Defense, despite being developed at nearly the same time, in the same genre, with neither knowing about the other. X-COM took the throne as the progenitor of turn-based tactics games. Jagged Alliance sold okay and became a minor cult classic but is not mentioned in even a fraction of as many histories or ranked lists.
Jagged Alliance 2 was a richer, cruder, funnier, far better game. The sequel more fully meshed '80s action movie tropes and stereotypes with the peculiar fun of micromanaging a jungle gunfight, while also managing a cast of real characters. Like Soldier of Fortune magazine, or dozens of VHS box covers from the "Action" section, it's only realistic at a glance. As Darius Kazemi puts it in his wonderful book on the game: "No matter what a war-themed video game claims to do, it inevitably simulates the cultural fantasy of war and never war itself."
Like its predecessor, Jagged Alliance 2 had exponentially more developer cred than sales. It racked up editors' awards and high review scores, but its most notable nod was a nomination for "Best Game Nobody Played" in 1999. Nobody expected a true sequel 24 years later. But here we are, with a Jagged Alliance 3 that feels very direct in its sequel-dom.
24 years later, it’s still fun to micromanage your ragtag soldiers of fortune.
Enlarge (credit: THQ Nordic)
The first Jagged Alliance game was published nine months after X-COM: UFO Defense, despite being developed at nearly the same time, in the same genre, with neither knowing about the other. X-COM took the throne as the progenitor of turn-based tactics games. Jagged Alliance sold okay and became a minor cult classic but is not mentioned in even a fraction of as many histories or ranked lists.
Jagged Alliance 2 was a richer, cruder, funnier, far better game. The sequel more fully meshed '80s action movie tropes and stereotypes with the peculiar fun of micromanaging a jungle gunfight, while also managing a cast of real characters. Like Soldier of Fortune magazine, or dozens of VHS box covers from the "Action" section, it's only realistic at a glance. As Darius Kazemi puts it in his wonderful book on the game: "No matter what a war-themed video game claims to do, it inevitably simulates the cultural fantasy of war and never war itself."
Like its predecessor, Jagged Alliance 2 had exponentially more developer cred than sales. It racked up editors' awards and high review scores, but its most notable nod was a nomination for "Best Game Nobody Played" in 1999. Nobody expected a true sequel 24 years later. But here we are, with a Jagged Alliance 3 that feels very direct in its sequel-dom.
Forscher der Stanford University und der UC Berkeley haben die von GPT generierten Antworten über Monate untersucht. Das LLM lässt nach. (KI, Deep Learning)
Forscher der Stanford University und der UC Berkeley haben die von GPT generierten Antworten über Monate untersucht. Das LLM lässt nach. (KI, Deep Learning) Outlook for Windows client is still a preview with some missing features.
Enlarge / The Outlook for Windows web app is included by default in the latest Dev channel Windows Insider build. (credit: Microsoft)
Windows 11's next major release continues to take shape in the company's Dev channel Insider Preview builds, and last month, Microsoft added the first preview of the AI-powered Windows Copilot feature. This week's build makes a few other noteworthy changes, replacing Windows' built-in Mail and Calendar apps with the work-in-progress Outlook for Windows app, changing how the operating system displays emoji, improving Windows' local file-sharing capabilities, and more.
Microsoft has been working on the Outlook for Windows progressive web app for a couple of years now. The version in the Windows 11 build is labeled as a preview, and it's still missing fairly significant features, including IMAP support for third-party mail services, iCloud Mail support, and an offline mode (though it does support multiple accounts now). It also left the Mail and Calendar apps installed on my test PC, though this may change by the time it's released to the public—Microsoft has said that it will continue offering Mail and Calendar in the Windows Store through the end of 2024 before discontinuing both of them.
For third-party services that Outlook for Windows does support, like Gmail, the Outlook app will sync a copy of your email, calendar, and contacts with Microsoft's servers rather than communicating directly with Google's servers and storing files locally as a traditional mail client would. This makes it so third-party mail accounts get all the same features and benefits as Microsoft accounts when used in Outlook for Windows, but it also means there's a second copy of all of your data out there, subject to both companies' privacy policies and security breaches.
Outlook for Windows client is still a preview with some missing features.
Enlarge / The Outlook for Windows web app is included by default in the latest Dev channel Windows Insider build. (credit: Microsoft)
Windows 11's next major release continues to take shape in the company's Dev channel Insider Preview builds, and last month, Microsoft added the first preview of the AI-powered Windows Copilot feature. This week's build makes a few other noteworthy changes, replacing Windows' built-in Mail and Calendar apps with the work-in-progress Outlook for Windows app, changing how the operating system displays emoji, improving Windows' local file-sharing capabilities, and more.
Microsoft has been working on the Outlook for Windows progressive web app for a couple of years now. The version in the Windows 11 build is labeled as a preview, and it's still missing fairly significant features, including IMAP support for third-party mail services, iCloud Mail support, and an offline mode (though it does support multiple accounts now). It also left the Mail and Calendar apps installed on my test PC, though this may change by the time it's released to the public—Microsoft has said that it will continue offering Mail and Calendar in the Windows Store through the end of 2024 before discontinuing both of them.
For third-party services that Outlook for Windows does support, like Gmail, the Outlook app will sync a copy of your email, calendar, and contacts with Microsoft's servers rather than communicating directly with Google's servers and storing files locally as a traditional mail client would. This makes it so third-party mail accounts get all the same features and benefits as Microsoft accounts when used in Outlook for Windows, but it also means there's a second copy of all of your data out there, subject to both companies' privacy policies and security breaches.
