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(credit: HP)

Microsoft has a new partner building Windows-powered phones: HP. HP Inc, the computer and printer portion of the newly split Hewlett-Packard—has announced the HP Elite x3, a high-end flagship spec phone running Windows 10 Mobile.

Hardware-wise, the Elite x3 ticks all the boxes and then some: Quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 running at 2.15GHz, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage, 5.96 inch 2560×1440 AMOLED screen with Gorilla Glass 4, 2×2 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, LTE-Advanced, 16MP rear and 8MP front cameras, both iris recognition and a rear-mounted fingerprint reader, microSD, USB 3 Type-C, dual SIM, a 4150mAh battery with wireless charging using both the Qi and PMA standards, and IP 67 water resistance (safe against immersion in 1 metre of water for 30 minutes).

HP is positioning the machine squarely at corporate, enterprise customers. HP sells a lot of PCs to the enterprise, and some of those corporate buyers have expressed the interest in buying their smartphones from the company too to simplify procurement and support. Accordingly, it's heavily promoting the phone's security credentials: not only the dual biometrics, but FIPS 140-2 cryptography, 256-bit key full disk encryption, TPM 2.0, protection against firmware rollbacks, and so on.

(credit: Microsiervos)

The FBI sent Ars a statement late Saturday further clarifying its role in resetting the iCloud password on the seized iPhone 5C central to the San Bernardino terrorism investigation.

Earlier in the day a spokesman for the San Bernardino County Health Department confirmed to Ars that his agency changed the iPhone’s associated iCloud password at the request of the FBI. That action had the unintended effect of making any further iCloud backup attempts impossible, likely frustrating the terror probe. The San Bernardino County Health Department, which owns the phone, was shooter Syed Rizwan Farook’s employer.

However, the Saturday evening statement, written by FBI Los Angeles Field Office spokeswoman Laura Eimiller, also claimed that "we know that direct data extraction from an iOS device often provides more data than an iCloud backup contains." She did not respond to further questions by phone and e-mail.

According to some linguists, language fundamentally affects the way we see and interpret the world around us. This phenomenon is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and it was discussed by WNYC’s RadioLab show in their episode “Why Isn’t the Sky Blue.”

One of the ideas in this linguistic theory is that humans find it easier to identify different categories of color (green versus blue) once we’ve learned the words for them. A study published in PNAS shows that distinct regions of the brain are when pre-linguistic (non-speaking) infants are shown different colors. This indicates that color categories develop in the brain before language.

The researchers used near infrared spectroscopy to determine which areas of the infants’ brains were activated when they looked at either green or blue objects. They also showed infants two different shades of the same color. These experiments were repeated with adults to compare the prelinguistic infants’ brain activity to that of people who had mastered language.

The Vive Pre dev kit looks much more like a consumer product than early prototypes from last year.

The HTC Vive virtual reality headset, the first such headset powered by Valve's SteamVR technology, will ship starting on April 1 for $799 (~£650), according to leaked reports ahead of an official Mobile World Congress announcement expected Monday. Pre-orders will reportedly be offered starting on February 29.

That price comes in significantly higher than the $599 (£499) price Oculus revealed for the Rift last month, but an HTC executive warned us months ago to expect "a slightly higher price point" for the Vive at launch. Keep in mind as well that the Vive's price includes two hand-tracking wand-like controllers—Oculus' similar, optional Touch controllers won't be available for sale until the second half of the year at an unknown price. The Vive package also comes with two Lighthouse laser tracking boxes, used to measure the position of the headset and controllers as a user walk around the room.

The news, which comes nearly a year after the HTC Vive was first revealed at GDC 2015, was leaked ahead of an apparent embargo by German site ComputerBild, leading other outlets to confirm the same info. The Vive was originally announced for a late 2015 release, but that launch plan was severely scaled back in August before being officially delayed in December to the current April window..