The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft shoved off from the International Space Station on Saturday with two US astronauts on board, beginning their journey back to Earth despite a storm threatening Florida.
11.6-inch SZYIYUN laptop -$249.00 from AliExpress
(£195.27/AU$350.20) Chinese manufacturer SZYIYUN has attempted to revive the famous Netbook with this tiny 11.6-inch laptop. The machine packs plenty of firepower - with an Intel Celeron J4105 CPU, 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD - but other features betray its budget nature.View Deal
About 13 years ago, ASUS kickstarted the Netbook revolution that saw the launch of a pint-sized laptop (with an equally small price tag) able to run Linux or Windows XP. The EEE PC was the first of a series of devices that introduced the joys of untethered mobile computing to millions.
Fast forward to 2020 and a small Chinese company, SZYIYUN, wants to do the same with a curious unnamed machine. The device's price tag ($249.00/£195.27/AU$350.20) is reminiscent of the first Netbooks, but its innards are significantly more powerful.
The laptop packs 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, compared to the 512MB RAM and 8GB onboard storage that featured in the first EEE PC. The SZYIYUN processor, a Celeron J4105, is also an order of magnitude faster than the Celeron CPU that powered ASUS’ pioneering laptop.
Available in pink, black and white, the SZYIYUN machine draws further comparison to the Netbook thanks to its 11.6-inch screen, which has a rather large bezel - like its forebears - and weighs less than 1kg (similar to the LG Gram 14).
The rest of the specification includes a TN display with a 1366 x 768 pixel resolution (probably the only weak spot), two USB ports, an HDMI connector, audio jack, 802.11n, microSD card reader and battery life of up to five hours.
Just bear in mind, this laptop is stereotypically entry level, made entirely of plastic, and features a rather small touchpad that could frustrate some users.
If this product comes from mainland China, it will take at least a month to reach either the US or the UK (and potentially more). You may be levied a tax either directly or through the courier.
If you've managed to get hold of a cheaper product with equivalent specifications, in stock and brand new, let us know and we'll tip our hat to you.
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Redmi 9 Prime is coming, and the smartphone will be unveiled on August 4 as Xiaomi’s latest budget smartphone. Given Amazon is touting its launch as one of the Prime Day launches, the phone is pretty much confirmed to go on sale during the Prime Day sale event on August 6-7.
If you've got Verizon Unlimited, Fios and 5G Home, you can get a free year of Disney Plus. US Mobile customers are also eligible. Here are the best options for getting Disney's streaming service on the cheap.
Some of the best phones in the world come from Chinese brands like Huawei, OnePlus or Oppo. Here's what you need to know to decide if one is right for you.
Traditionally, the Mac has been regarded as a safe and secure haven compared to other desktop platforms – particularly Windows – and a common line of thinking has been that Apple computers don’t need antivirus defenses, because security is tight enough anyway, and threats are relatively scarce.
But is that still true today? The latter point most certainly isn’t…
Our definitive list of today's Mac antivirus software
Looking for even more protection? Grab the best VPN
See why we rate Bitdefender so highly in our testing
Growing threat level
Mac threats might once have been far thinner on the ground than malware targeting other operating systems, but that’s no longer the case. Just a quick glance at a recent security report will tell you that.
Malwarebytes found in its latest annual report detailing the current ‘state of malware’ that over the course of 2019, Mac threats increased by 400% year-on-year, and for the first time ever, more threats were found per endpoint (ie Mac) than with Windows machines.
If any statistic will make a Mac user sit up and take notice on the security front, it’s the revelation that there were 11 threats per endpoint compared to 5.8 with Windows – in other words, nearly double the amount with Apple machines.
That stark headline isn’t the full story, though. The big caveat here is that much more malware is still aimed at Windows PCs, with the Mac getting hit more with adware and potentially unwanted programs (PUPs), or ‘malware light’ as Malwarebytes dubs it. These kind of efforts aren’t nearly as serious or dangerous as the full-fat malware out there, but they can certainly be unpleasant in at least some cases, hijacking your browser, changing your default search engine or perhaps serving up sponsored results to the benefit of the author.
Of course, we must also bear in mind that this is just a single report, and it’s unwise to put too much emphasis on any one source in isolation. However, we’ve also seen a regular drip of articles about Mac malware hitting the headlines. Witness, for example, the recent revelation of a new strain of Mac ransomware (the first such sighting in some four years).
So given this, and the apparent increase in Mac threats – which is doubtless tied into Apple’s machines becoming more popular – anyone who has been following all this will likely have become more concerned about Mac security, and rightly so.
(Image credit: Shutterstock; Apple)
But isn’t my Mac secure by design anyway?
Despite these growing dangers, you may well ask: but isn’t my Mac secure by design anyway?
It is true that macOS is built to be seriously secure, and Apple implements a number of measures within the operating system to that end. The firm incorporates features such as XProtect antivirus protection, and the likes of Gatekeeper, insisting that all software is digitally signed (or notarized, in other words, checked by Apple for issues or malicious code). All this helps protect those downloading software from outside of the official App Store.
There’s no doubting that the level of security provided by Apple is sterling stuff – but nonetheless, these systems aren’t fool-proof, and we have seen ways to get around Gatekeeper in the past, or attempts to trick users and foil this built-in security. Vulnerabilities at a hardware level can be another dangerous potential attack vector against Mac systems, too, as we’ve seen in the past with the likes of ZombieLoad.
Besides, as Malwarebytes points out, Apple’s integrated security measures aren’t so great about picking up the ‘malware light’ efforts we mentioned above. As the security company notes: “macOS’ built-in security systems have not cracked down on adware and PUPs to the same degree that they have malware, leaving the door open for these borderline programs to infiltrate.”
And as we’ve noted, those ‘borderline’ apps may not wreak havoc on your system like a traditional piece of malware, but you still don’t want those kind of things hanging around on your Mac.
Do I really need antivirus for Mac?
When you weigh everything up, given the increasing amounts of Mac malware – albeit with much of it not as serious as the malicious software targeting Windows – and the possibility of exploits managing to get around Apple’s (admittedly good) security, there is certainly a valid argument for backing up the core protection provided by macOS with a second layer of defense in the form of an antivirus.
Particularly considering that you can easily get the best Mac antivirus app these days, and they don't even have to cost that much.
Realme 10W Wireless Charger has quietly made its way to India and is available for purchase with a price tag of Rs. 899. In addition to the new launch, India chief Madhav Sheth announced the launch of the 65W and 50W Realme Ultra-thin SuperDart Charger models in the country.
Government’s surprise move to restrict imports of TVs, announced on Thursday, will boost local manufacturing, strengthening Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship 'Make in India' drive, an industry body said.
Another $1,200 stimulus check is just one piece of the next stimulus bill that could help you. Here are the other proposed ideas to offset the worst financial effects of the coronavirus crisis.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 20 is almost certainly going to be unveiled at the Samsung Unpacked virtual product launch event on August 5, but there are still several things we don’t know about the Android phone.
Samsung has traditionally releases its stylus-packing phones in August, and it always seems to incorporate the features introduced in that year’s S-series phones from six months prior. But there’s still plenty to wonder about the Note 20.
Will the Note 20 pack all of the Samsung Galaxy S20's cameras and specs? Will it be as big, or bigger, than the Galaxy S20 Plus? Will there be a top-specced Note 20 Ultra model?
Then there are all the other Note-specific questions we have for the next phone in the stylus line: will there be more features for the S Pen? Will the display be even bigger than last year’s models? Will productivity tools like DeX get improvements, too?
We’ve still got plenty of questions, but we’re going to narrow them down to the five biggest things we still don’t know about the next flagship Samsung phone line.
(Image credit: Future)
Will there be a Note 20 Ultra in addition to a Note 20 Plus?
Perhaps the biggest question is whether we’ll see a Note 20 corollary to the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra with an appropriately huge screen and extreme specs.
At this point, it’s hard to be certain – heck, early rumors strongly suggested we might not even see a Note 20 Ultra. Given we’ve seen more and more leaked images of the supposed extra-large model, we suspect that rumors we initially assumed referred to the Note 20 Plus were, instead, about the Note 20 Ultra – especially since a recent specs leak referred to just the base and Ultra models, with no mention of the Plus.
We could still see a Plus model, but Samsung might be splitting the difference and dividing its choices between a smaller, more basic model and a max-specced Ultra version.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Will the Note 20 come in a 4G version, too?
Given most 2020 flagship phones support 5G, we’re expecting the Note 20 line to follow suit – especially since it will most likely pack the leading Snapdragon 865 or 865 Plus chipset, which require a discrete 5G modem. But given the nominal price bump we’ve seen to get 5G phone connectivity, is there a cheaper 4G-only Note 20 phone in the works?
We’ve seen pricing leaks that deliberately call out a 4G version – and recent certifications from US and Thailand regulatory agencies (FCC and NBTC, respectively) have surfaced revealing a 4G-only device is at least registered in those markets. Whether they’ll end up coming to more regions is another question, as phonemakers don’t always release all variants of their phones globally – or might wait some time to do so, like with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Lite.
(Image credit: Future)
Will it have all the S20's cameras? Or have even more advanced tech?
The Galaxy S20 line has a well-rounded suite of rear cameras, with a main 12MP f/1.8 shooter, 64MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom, and 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide camera, along with 8K at 24fps video recording and its new Super Stabilization feature. The S20 Ultra even packed a 108MP main camera, which enabled its staggering 100x ‘Space Zoom’ feature.
Is all that coming to the Note 20 line? Hard to say: leaks claim that the Plus or Ultra will have a 108MP main, 12MP ultra-wide, and 13MP telephoto lens with periscope tech, though another rumor suggests it won’t reach the 100x maximum zoom of the S20 Ultra. Instead, expect a more modest 50x zoom, but it’s unclear whether this will come to both the standard Note 20 and the Ultra.
What’s more interesting is that the Note 20’s selfie camera could ditch the punch-hole for an under-display camera, according to rumor and even a video tease by Samsung itself. While it could be a pop-up camera, that’s not really Samsung’s style (not outside of the Samsung Galaxy A80’s pop-and-flip cameras, anyway). But again, will such a prestigious feature come to both the standard Note 20 and its pricier sibling?
(Image credit: Future | Amit Mishra for TechRadar India)
What about the Note 20 chipset and specs?
We’re still not certain about the Note 20’s set of specs: given the line’s productivity focus, we expect more battery but not exactly show-stopping internals.
Some rumors presume the Note 20 will get the same Snapdragon 865 chipset as the Galaxy S20 line, while a leaker believes it will instead opt for the slightly more powerful Snapdragon 865 Plus chipset instead. While the Note 10 and Note 10 Plus didn’t upgrade its processor over the Galaxy S10 (both go the Snapdragon 855), including one would give the Note 20 an edge to compete with other mid-year flagships that have launched with the Snapdragon 865 Plus, like the Asus ROG 3.
Outside the US, we’ve heard the Note 20 will get Samsung’s Exynos 992 chipset, which would be a slight upgrade on the Exynos 990 appearing in the Galaxy S20 line, though another leak suggests the new phone could just stick with the Exynos 990, too. We love conflicting rumors!
The rest of the Note 20 specs are even less known, with one source claiming a baseline 128GB of storage, while that Exynos 990 leak also suggests the phones will come with 12GB of RAM.
There’s been more chatter about Note 20 battery life, though, with estimations from a minimum of 4,000mAh capacity in the standard Note 20, a more recent leak suggesting 4,300mAh, and up to 4,500mAh in the Note 20 Plus/Ultra. At least we have a range.
(Image credit: Future)
Will there be more S Pen gestures and productivity software?
Sadly, there’s even less we know about improvements that might come for the Note 20’s signature feature, the S Pen stylus.
We have heard rumors that you’ll be able to use the S Pen as a more proper pointer with mid-air gestures allowing navigation around the interface, which could iterate on some similar (and rather clumsy) way to get around with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 S Pen.
What’s more exciting for the productivity-minded user: DeX, the Samsung feature that used its smartphones and tablets to power a desktop-computing experience through an external monitor, may finally be going wireless. Instead of requiring a dedicated dock and/or cord, you may be able to fire up the PC experience (with a Windows-like file system) wirelessly, according to this rumor.
Storage startup Pliops has announced sampling of its Storage Processors to select tier-one cloud and enterprise companies and was on track to start commercial production of the processors later in 2020.
The Storage Processors ASICs are said to increase performance of NAND flash storage solutions, such as SSDs, by over 10 times and also decrease latency by up to 1000 times in various database applications.
“As the success of GPUs and AI processors has shown, there is a pressing need for specialized solutions that accelerate the pace of workflows,” noted Steve Fingerhut, president and chief business officer for Pliops. “Because data growth is absolutely booming at a time when storage and data processing is slowing, now is the time to take this approach and apply it to mainstream workloads like unstructured and structured databases, analytics and virtually any application that uses flash storage.”
The concept of Pliops’ Storage Processor (PSP) relies on software and hardware. The software layer consists of an NVMe driver as well as a Pliops Kernel Module that replace traditional storage engines thus removing ‘layers of the database, file, block, and storage management accumulated over decades by legacy architectures’ and eliminating bottlenecks.
Meanwhile, the ASICs designed to accelerate processing of data-intensive workloads (such as databases) offloads processing of compute-intensive functions from CPUs while using a fraction of power that a general-purpose processors need to perform the same tasks, the company said.
(Image credit: Pliops)
Applications accelerated by Pliops include MySQL, MariaDB, mongoDB, Redis, Oracle, Apache Spark, and Cassandra. The company emphasizes that deployment of its Storage Processor is relatively easy and does not require changes to ‘most’ programs that are in use today.
According to Pliops, increasing performance using its Storage Processors can reduce expenditures on CPUs and SSDs and even make lower-cost 3D QLC NAND-based drives viable for mainstream workloads. Furthermore, PSPs can also reduce power consumption of servers and datacenters. Reduction of hardware and power costs naturally lower overall costs and greatly increase value of solid-state storage.
Pliops has raised money from various companies and venture capital firms, including Intel Capital, Mellanox, Western Digital, Xilinx, SoftBank, Somv, and Viola Ventures.
The NASA Mars Perseverance Rover has successfully launched – and it's carrying a record number of cameras to help it hunt for signs of life on the red planet.
The six-wheeled robot, which is the successor to the Mars Curiosity Rover, took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and is expected to touch down on the surface of Mars on 18 February 2021.
Its younger sibling landed on Mars in August 2012 and remains there, investigating to this day, living off its radioactive isotope power source.
So why has NASA launched another Mars rover and what's so special about the many cameras it's taking for the ride? We've taken a closer look at its imaging tech – and some of it has a surprising amount in common with the earth-bound camera in your pocket...
The Mars Perseverance Rover has the same Wall-E charm as the Curiosity, but the tech inside is very different.
Curiosity has 17 cameras, Perseverance has 23, including four used to document the landing process, plus the parachute that will help this remarkable 'car' land safely.
Later on we will dig into what these 23 cameras do, but the fundamental technical upgrades deserve some attention first.
(Image credit: NASA)
Curiosity uses 1MP black-and-white cameras to capture the amazing images you can see posted regularly on the NASA website. On the other hand, Perseverance has 20MP full color sensors, much closer to the resolution of your phone or camera.
This means it can take photos without the multi exposure stitching method Curiosity uses. Some of its cameras also have wider-angle lenses, again letting it capture more of Mars’s landscape without panning.
"Our previous Navcams would snap multiple pictures and stitch them together," says Colin McKinney of JPL, product delivery manager for one of Perseverance camera families. "With the wider field of view, we get the same perspective in one shot.”
Portrait mode on Mars
Why does the old Mars Rover have such low-res hardware, which seems old-school even for 2012?
Curiosity was in development long before it launched, obviously, but there was also the data rate to consider. You can’t simply Bluetooth or AirDrop photos from the surface of Mars to Florida. Even with Bluetooth 5.0.
NASA has mitigated this problem by using spacecraft in orbit around Mars as data relays. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter MAVEN and the European Space Agency's Trace Gas Orbiter will support the Perseverance Rover in this way for two years, which is the initial period of its mission.
(Image credit: NASA)
Perseverance’s cameras also make much greater use of stereoscopy. This is where two cameras are placed near to each other, but with enough distance between that they have a slightly different view of a scene. Those differences are then analyzed to produce a 3D depth map that can distinguish near objects from far ones, and create three dimensional images.
Many smartphones use the same technique for their 'Portrait' modes, which blur the background to emulate the effect of a wide aperture DSLR-style camera lens. For those of us who prefer to read NASA’s blog than take selfies, it means we can expect amazing high-resolution color 'first person' images from the surface of Mars that we can view through a virtual reality headset or Google Cardboard.
That’s not their real role, of course. The 23 cameras and two microphones are Perseverence’s eyes and ears.
“It will sense the air around it, see and scan the horizon, hear the planet with microphones on the surface for the first time, feel it as it picks up samples to cache,” says Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
These cameras can be split into a few categories. There are ones just to record the landing process which, if all goes well, we can look forward to seeing on 18 February 2021.
Then there are the navigation and hazard detection cameras, plus its 'science cameras'. These are the eyes for Perseverance’s investigational tools like its robotic arm. Let's take a closer look at how some of these work.
The Mars rover's head
The images that we’ll see from Perseverance are most likely to come from the equivalent of the rover's 'head', if this were a Pixar character.
Two sets of 20MP Navcams sit at either side of the head on Perseverance’s main mast. These will be used by the team’s engineers to find safe paths for the Rover, and have the visual acuity to "spot a golf ball from 82 feet”, according to NASA.
This may be with the help of the Mastcam-Z units that sit right beside these 20MP “eyeball” cameras.
(Image credit: NASA)
The 'Z' part stands for zoom. Two groups of zoom lens elements sit inside the barrel, providing focal lengths of 28-100mm, comparable with a great all-rounder DSLR lens.
They can focus on objects just two meters away and their 7.4-micron pixel pitch is not far off that of the Sony Alpha A7S III (8.4 microns).
Resolution is far lower, at 2MP (so a max 1600x1200 image size), but the combination of wide and zoom cameras gives Perseverance’s head unit an incredibly versatile view of its Martian surroundings.
See that part above these cameras, which looks a little like a home cinema projector? This is the Perseverance’s SuperCam. Despite the exciting name, it’s not a traditional imaging camera. The SuperCam uses a laser to analyze rocks and soil, focusing on a target smaller than the nib of a pencil.
(Image credit: NASA)
Perseverance also has two rows of wide-angle hazard cameras that let engineers see around the Rover’s feet.
There are four of these cameras on front and two on the back.
You can think of these a little like the parking sensors of a car. They will see rocks and debris not visible to the cameras on the main mast, and can act as a guide to inform where to point the sensors on the robot arm.
Elementary, my dear WATSON
NASA is not afraid of indulging in the odd geeky reference. WATSON and SHERLOC are two teams of hardware sensors on the Perseverance’s robotic arm.
SHERLOC is a spectrometer that uses a deep ultraviolet laser to analyze objects on Mars’s surface, and is aided by the WATSON camera.
(Image credit: NASA)
This offers a wider, more eyeball-friendly view of what the highly focused SHERLOC sensors are looking at.
NASA says WATSON is “almost identical” to the MAHLI camera used on the older Curiosity Rover. That is a 1600 x 1200 (2MP) camera with a magnifying glass-like field of view, used to look at objects as close as 18.3mm. It can also record 720p video.
What's next for the NASA Mars Rover?
The Perseverance Rover will land in Mars’s Jezero Crater, which has a diameter of 49km. This spot was chosen because it is believed to be the site of what was once a body of water.
“The only way that could form geometrically was for it to be a lake,” NASA planetary scientist Dr. Caleb Fassett told the NY Times.
Night-time temperatures in the crater drop to minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 Celsius), so we're hoping the aptly-named Perseverance has taken a coat.
The rover will stay for “at least one Mars year”, which is worth just under two of our Earth years, searching for signs of microbial life, and collecting soil and samples. These will be stored in sealed tubes. Another camera is used here too – the CacheCam looks down the tube as Martian material is collected, to record the process.
One final bit of exciting tech is that Rover will also carry a helicopter drone, known as Ingenuity. It will be the “first aircraft to attempt control flight on another planet”. And thanks to transmission delays, what limited directions it is given by the engineers will have been programmed-in long before the flight actually takes place.
Perseverance is a 1,025kg, 3-meter long, $2.4 billion space car. Let’s hope it makes its way to Mars safely.
