Month: November 2024

Starlink's home Internet service has come to the National Radio Quiet Zone after a multi-year engineering project that had the goal of minimizing interference with radio telescopes. Starlink operator SpaceX began "a one-year assessment period to offer residential satellite Internet service to 99.5% of residents within the NRQZ starting October 25," the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Green Bank Observatory announced last week.

"The vast majority of people within the areas of Virginia and West Virginia collectively known as the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) can now receive high speed satellite Internet service," the announcement said. "The newly available service is the result of a nearly three-year collaborative engineering effort between the US National Science Foundation (NSF), SpaceX, and the NSF National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO), which operates the NSF Green Bank Observatory (NSF GBO) in West Virginia within the NRQZ."

There's a controversy over the 0.5 percent of residents who aren't included and are said to be newly blocked from using the Starlink Roam service. Starlink markets Roam as a service for people to use while traveling, not as a fixed home Internet service.

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Microsoft is officially ending mainstream support for Windows 10 in October, 2025. And the company really wants users to migrate to Windows 11 – either by updating the operating system on an existing PC or buy purchasing a new PC if their current computer doesn’t meet the minimum system requirements (and a lot of fairly recent […]

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The MINISFORUM MGA1 is an external graphics dock that lets you connect an AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT GPU to a mini PC, laptop, or other devices that might not already have discrete graphics built in. Since the dock has an OCuLink connector, it supports a high-speed external PCIe connection with theoretical support for data transfer […]

The post MINISFORUM launches MGA1 OCuLink graphics dock with Radeon RX 7600M XT appeared first on Liliputing.

Amazon is selling a Beelink EQR6 mini PC with a Ryzen 9 6900HX processor, 24GB of RAM, and a 500GB SSD for $329 for a limited time when you click the on-page coupon. Woot is running a sale on Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro smartphones. And there are a lot of PC games available […]

The post Daily Deals (11-01-2024) appeared first on Liliputing.

It's no secret that the new spinoff series, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, was inspired by the 1985 film The Goonies. Executive Producer Kathleen Kennedy (who co-produced The Goonies) has publicly confirmed as much. The latest trailer really leans into that influence: The series feels like something not created specifically for kids, but rather telling a story that just happens to be about kids going on an adventure.

As previously reported, the eight-episode standalone series is set in the same timeframe as The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. Per the official premise:

Skeleton Crew follows the journey of four kids who make a mysterious discovery on their seemingly safe home planet, then get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy, crossing paths with the likes of Jod Na Nawood, the mysterious character played by [Jude] Law. Finding their way home—and meeting unlikely allies and enemies—will be a greater adventure than they ever imagined.

Jude Law leads the cast as the quick-witted and charming (per Law) "Force-user" Jod Na Nawood. Ravi Cabot-Conyers plays Wim, Ryan Kiera Armstrong plays Fern, Kyriana Kratter plays KB, and Robert Timothy Smith plays Neil. Nick Frost will voice a droid named SM 33, the first mate of a spaceship called the Onyx Cylinder. The cast also includes Fred Tatasciore as Brutus, Jaleel White as Gunther, Mike Estes as Pax, Marti Matulis as Vane, and Dale Soules as Chaelt. Tunde Adebimpe and Kerry Condon will appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles.

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Apple kontrolliert Globalstar bereits fast vollständig. Nun erwirbt das Unternehmen auch Anteile an dem LEO-Betreiber. (Satelliten, Apple)

Pixelmator, the Lithuania-based firm that makes popular Mac-based photo editing tools, has agreed to be acquired by Apple.

The company says that, pending regulatory approval, there will be "no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time," but to "Stay tuned for exciting updates to come." The Pixelmator team, now 17 years old, states that its staff will join Apple. Details of the acquisition price were not made public.

Fans of Pixelmator's apps, which are notably one-time purchases, unlike Adobe's tools, may be hoping that those "exciting updates" do not include the sublimation of Pixelmator into an Apple product at some future time, while the Pixelmator apps disappear.

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Humane’s Ai Pin was already struggling to take off, but the company's troubles deepened on Thursday as it recalled the product's portable charging case.

Humane released the Ai Pin in April 2024. It’s a lapel pin that features an integrated camera and speaker, AI voice assistant, and laser projector. The device launched at a $700 starting price before dropping to $500 in June. The Ai Pin also requires a subscription ($24 per month without fees). The wearable lacks a screen or app support, and despite marketing claims that it could replace smartphones, initial reviews of the product were abysmal (YouTuber Marques Brownlee famously dubbed the pin "The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed").

The Ai Pin's wireless Charge Case Accessory is sold separately; it differs from the home charging dock included with the Ai Pin, which isn't impacted by this week's recall. The Charge Case Accessory is charged via USB-C.

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Apple kauft die Firma, von der die Bildbearbeitungssoftware Pixelmator stammt. Die Software soll es weiterhin geben. (Pixelmator, Apple)

Many species of bats use echolocation to avoid obstacles like tree branches and hunt small insects as they fly through the dark. But it turns out echolocation for bats is much more than just a short-range obstacle-avoidance and prey-targeting system. A recent study shows that one species of bats can stitch together thousands upon thousands of sound signatures into acoustic maps they use to successfully navigate several kilometers over their hunting grounds. The maps work even if the bats are completely blindfolded.

Blindfolded bats

“What echolocating bats do is they emit sounds, ultrasonic or not, and use the characteristics of the reflected echo to sense objects they have in front of them. We wanted to know if they use it for large-scale navigation. Most people think, 'Of course they do,' but the reality is we didn’t know that,” says Aya Goldshtein, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany. Goldshtein collaborated with scientists at Tel Aviv University on a study of how a species of bats called Kuhl’s pipistrelle navigate in their natural environment.

There were several reasons that navigation via echolocation wasn’t obvious at all. For starters, echolocation is hopelessly limited when it comes to range. Bats can use it to sense objects that are at most a few dozen meters away. It’s a tool closer to an ultrasonic parking sensor in a car than to a long-distance sonar in a submarine. It is also not omnidirectional. The cone of coverage bats get from echolocation is usually a maximum of 120 degrees, although they can modulate it to an extent, depending on the shape of their mouths.

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