Picking up right where you left off in the event of a failure will now be possible for those running Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) instances on AWS.
Previously, if customers wanted to set an EC2 instance to recover automatically, they could only do so by setting up an alarm in Amazon CloudWatch.
Now though, if an underlying hardware problem comes along, EC2 instances will be automatically recovered on Amazon’s cloud computing service where they’ll receive a new instance ID, private IP addresses, public IPv4 IP address, Elastic IP addresses and all instance metadata. Unfortunately though, data in memory will still be lost in the event of a failure.
Automatic recovery of EC2 instances
While automatic recovery of EC2 instances will likely be a big deal for businesses that run their workloads in the cloud, AWS only released a brief announcement regarding the new feature.
While the announcement also contained a link to the company's documentation on how to recover instances, it didn’t mention anything about recovery points for data on disks or the time required for an auto-recovered instance to resume operations.
EC2 customers will also be able to disable the new auto-recovery feature. For most customers this probably isn’t a good idea but AWS points out in its documentation that those running instances in placement groups might want to disable the feature so that their instances are restored to the same placement group.
Still though, hardware faults in a server could indicate that there is a problem in a server rack or even an entire row which is why having an instance auto recover to another availability zone or region makes sense.
Consider this the other shoe dropping. Almost three months after deciding to make the E3 gaming conference an all-digital event, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has pulled the plug on the entire affair.
"We previously announced that E3 would not be held in person in 2022 due to the ongoing health risks surrounding COVID-19," the ESA told TechRadar. "Today, we announce that there will also be no digital E3 showcase in 2022."
The news came first via an industry insider, Will Powers, PR lead, Americas for popular gaming gear company Razer. He tweeted the news of the apparent cancellation on Thursday:
Just got an email... It's official, E3 digital is official cancelled for 2022. Lots of mixed feelings about this...March 31, 2022
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That's the bad news. The good news is, as of today, the ESA is planning to bring back E3 in 2023. The organization told TechRadar, "E3 will return in 2023 with a reinvigorated showcase that celebrates new and exciting video games and industry innovations."
The ESA added that it will "devote all our energy and resources to delivering a revitalized physical and digital E3 experience next summer."
It's been a rough few years for E3. In the face of the pandemic, it canceled the event in 2020, successfully held an all-digital one last year, but was forced to again cancel in-person festivities for 2022 in the face of the Omicron surge.
While we're mostly through that COVID variant wave, ESA has made another tough decision for the once-bustling event (66,000 attendees in 2019), pulling the plug on the digital experience, as well.
The loss of even a virtual event could be a tough pill to swallow for gamers who see it as more than just an industry trade show. As TRG's Vic Hood wrote when E3 canceled this year's in-person event:
"[E3] has grown to become a celebration of gaming: media attend to report on the biggest upcoming games, while fans attend to get their hands on the newest releases and to be among like-minded individuals. I can only describe it as a paradise for gamers."
It's not, according to the ESA the end of E3, and it's been through rough patches before. In 2016, multiple major game studios, including EA and Activision Blizzard, pulled out of the show, holding their own game showcases nearby. Plus, interest has waxed and waned in the periods between new console launches and major title releases.
E3 has, in general, rebounded and was looking strong right up until the pandemic when virtually all in-person tradeshows around the world were either canceled or shifted to virtual events.
As we write this, the ESA has not updated its social media or its news blog, though we assume it will soon. Notably, the E3 Twitter account page still has an E3 2021 logo on it and has posted nothing about any change in status for the event.
The official E3 page does say, "E3 2022 See you next year," with no hint of irony that we're already well into 2022. Subscribers to the E3 newsletter get a welcome message that still includes "E3 2021" in the header art.
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Netflix has confirmed that Top Boy, the British gangster drama it rebooted in 2019, will end after a third and final season.
The drama, which ran for two seasons on British broadcaster Channel 4 before being dropped in 2014, has just debuted its second season on the streamer.
Top Boy stars Ashley Walters and Kane Robinson (better known to some as rapper Kano) and is set in the heart of London on the fictional Summerhouse estate. It follows partners Dushane and Sully, two notorious drug dealers who, despite a wish to lead honest lives, are corrupted by the promise of increased wealth and respect in their borough.
The show's first two seasons aired on Channel 4 in 2011 and 2013 before Netflix came in 2017 with a reboot, a decision that was partly helped by the presence of rapper Drake as one of the show's executive producers.
Netflix launched the show's new season, which they referred to as its first, with the Channel 4 era then referred to as Top Boy: Summerhouse, in 2019, before ordering a follow-up, which arrived on March 18.
Top Boy will return for a third and final season! pic.twitter.com/yp9UC28coQMarch 31, 2022
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Stars Walters and Robinson, who also serve as executive producers, have released a statement as the news of the show's final bow was unveiled.
Speaking about the decision, they said: "For those that have followed the journey from the start, you will know how much this show means to everyone on our team and we wholeheartedly know how much it means to you. These characters have been a part of our lives for over a decade now and without everyone’s support we couldn’t have come this far."
They continued: "Whilst the journeys of Dushane and Sully have remained at the core of the show, the new characters that have entered the world of Top Boy have become a key part of the show’s legacy, representing each new storyline in a raw, authentic way. With all this being said, and staying true to our original goal, every story must have an ending and so season three will be our finale. A chance to come full circle and end the journey in the right way."
Newly discovered code on Twitter’s TweetDeck site points to the company possibly making TweetDeck an exclusive feature to Twitter Blue subscribers.
TweetDeck is a (currently) free platform that lets desktop users scroll through multiple timelines of different accounts, topics, or hashtags at once. Big proponents of the feature are media workers and businesses with multiple PR accounts that search for trending topics and interact with other Twitter users.
The rumor mill was started up when Twitter user @wongmjane, an established tipster, posted that the company is filling in a new TweetDeck signup page, advertising an ad-free experience as a big selling point.
Previously, Wong posted that code gates on the TweetDeck app may ask for a Twitter Blue subscription in the future, and redirects a user to the signup page if they aren’t subscribed.
Twitter has been teasing “a new & improved” TweetDeck for a while now, implying that upon launch, the app will be reworked and redesigned.
We reached out to Twitter for any comment, and a spokesperson told us that they had nothing to share at this moment.
Analysis: All signs point to exclusivity
Keep in mind that this is just a report, but the rumors are pretty strong. If they hold true and TweetDeck does become a paid feature, it’d be another expense for businesses that take advantage of it to keep up with the numerous interactions that company accounts often receive.
TweetDeck would also be another feature in Twitter Blue’s slim portfolio and could prove interesting when paired with the rumored “ad-free experience” touted on the incomplete new site.
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As long as gaming laptops have existed, there have only been two companies that have produced GPUs for them. Nvidia and AMD have had an iron grip on the market for years, and now Intel Arc mobile graphics processors are finally here. I don't know if an Arc 7 GPU is going to be faster than an RTX 3080 Ti – it probably won't – but since it's Intel at the helm, I at least know it's going to result in a good experience.
To be clear, while Intel has said that laptops using its Arc 3 graphics are available now, I have not even seen one in person, so all I have to go off of is the information that Intel has provided. I'm not exactly in the business of trusting internal benchmarks, and neither should you.
But let's be honest, while AMD and Nvidia both make mobile graphics solutions, the best gaming laptops on the market are using a combination of Intel processors and Nvidia graphics. AMD Navi started to chip away at Team Green's dominance, but Intel can hit a lot harder, and it's about more than raw frame rates.
(Image credit: Nvidia)
A stable platform
Intel has had a rocky few years, as it tried to catch up with AMD's Zen architecture. But even when Intel was furthest behind in terms of raw performance, it still excelled where it really matters – especially for laptops – reliability. When you're looking at charts and numbers it's pretty easy to forget about what the experience of actually using something is like, and Intel processors have never really had the same kind of adjustment period as AMD processors do.
It seems like every time a new AMD chipset comes out on desktop, there are a number of critical bugs that Team Red has to jump on after release. For instance, shortly after the release of its 5000-series processors there were widespread reports of USB problems, where devices would just stop responding, according to Tom's Hardware.
Intel generally doesn't have the same kind of problems with its new platforms. And while Intel is admittedly going to be new at the whole discrete graphics thing, the company has proven that it puts a lot of value on the experience of the user. So even if performance isn't quite there with this first generation of Arc graphics, it at least will likely result in a user-friendly product. Maybe that's why Intel prioritized laptop GPUs instead of trying to take on the RTX 3080 immediately.
(Image credit: Intel)
An actual competitor for DLSS
It's impossible to overestimate the impact DLSS has had on PC gaming since it debuted with the RTX 2080 in 2018. While it wasn't as exciting as first, it's become a critical technology for AAA game developers that want people to actually be able to play their games on affordable hardware.
And while AMD has come up with a competing technology in FSR, or FidelityFX Super Sampling, it just doesn't have the same visual quality as DLSS. However, it does have the advantage of being usable on any GPU.
What keeps DLSS out of reach of FSR is that it uses the Tensor Cores in Nvidia's RTX graphics cards to apply a deep learning algorithm specific to each game, that lets you render the game at a lower resolution with the regular CUDA cores, then use the Tensor cores to scale it up to your display's native resolution. Because this is a hardware accelerated approach that is so fine tuned, it's hard to even tell a difference between native resolution and DLSS on a Quality preset.
But XeSS could be a legitimate alternative to DLSS with a similar visual quality – because it's taking a similar approach. Let's, uh, break that down really quick.
But XeSS could be a legitimate alternative to DLSS with a similar visual quality – because it's taking a similar approach.
For example, the Intel A370M, one of the first GPUs the company is launching, comes equipped with 8 Xe cores. Intel has thankfully released the layout for each of these cores. Each Xe core will come with 16 Xe Vector Engines (XVE) and 16 Xe Matrix Engines (XMX). The XVE threads will basically serve the same function as CUDA cores in Nvidia GPUs. Then, the XMX cores are specially designed for AI workloads, and are able to perform this specialized workload a lot faster than the standard Vector units.
I won't go too much into why because I'm not an engineer, but this is a very similar structure to Nvidia Ampere, and should be just as efficient at upscaling workloads – at least on paper.
XeSS won't actually be available until later this year, but I can't wait to get my hands on it to see how it performs, and more importantly, how games look when the technology is turned on.
Because let's face it, performance gains between Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR are pretty similar – to the point where we get the same framerate in Cyberpunk 2077 when switching between them on the new RTX 3090 Ti – but the image quality is so much better with Nvidia's tech.
The technology is definitely there for Intel, too, and it looks like XeSS is going to be just as important for PC gamers as the other upscaling technologies. But, it's also important to keep in mind that it took a while for Nvidia to get DLSS looking as good as it does now. I remember when the tech first became available in Battlefield 1 and Metro Exodus, and it has come a long way. It'd be fantastic if Intel is going to be able to avoid those growing pains, but there will probably be some issues along the way.
But because it is an Intel technology it will more than likely actually work, and you probably won't have to mess with it too much to get it going.
Although a bit later than initially expected, the US Department of Defense (DOD) has announced that it plans to award up to $9bn in cloud infrastructure contracts in December of this year.
Following the controversy surrounding its now canceled Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure or JEDI contract, the Pentagon announced its new Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC) initiative back in November of this year. Unlike with the previous JEDI contract, the US military will now rely on multiple cloud providers as opposed to just a single one.
Although Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and other cloud providers competed to win the $10bn JEDI contract, in the end the Pentagon awarded it to Microsoft before deciding to cancel it altogether.
In a recent call with reporters, Pentagon CIO John Sherman explained that the US military's timeline was a bit too bold which is why it will now be wrapping up bidding for the JWCC initiative in December. When JWCC was first announced in July of last year, the Pentagon initially intended to award contracts in April 2022.
Unclassified, secret and top secret networks
Sherman provided further details on how the JWCC initiative will provide enterprise cloud capabilities for the DOD in a recent press briefing, saying:
“In terms of what it comprises, the JWCC, it is going to be a multi-cloud effort that will provide enterprise cloud capabilities for the Department of Defense at all three security classifications: unclassified, secret, and top secret. All the way from the continental United States here, out to the tactical edge.”
Once the contracts have been awarded, the Pentagon expects to immediately have access to its unclassified network. From here, secret networks will come online 60 days after contracts have been awarded while both top-secret and tactical edge networks will come online no later than 180 days following the awarding of contracts to cloud service providers.
Just like with the JEDI contract though, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle are all competing for government contracts once again and the Pentagon reached out to all four companies in November of last year according to Sherman. These new contracts will have a three-year base period and two-year option periods.
We'll likely hear more towards the end of the year when the DOD actually begins awarding contracts for its new JWCC initiative.
My OnePlus 9 Pro battery is so swollen it split open the case.
I discovered this potentially dangerous situation by accident when I noticed the one-year-old Android phone sitting imperfectly in its carbon-fiber case. Absentmindedly, I reached over and pushed one corner of the phone down, trying to reseat it. It popped back out. After a few attempts, I removed the case and discovered the truth: The battery had expanded and split the chrome case along one long-glued seam, creating, in one area, a quarter-inch chasm.
"Not again," I thought.
A few years ago, a Google Pixel 3 XL that I mostly keep on a Pixel charging stand by my bed appeared to jump off the charger of its own accord. It turned out that the battery has expanded so much that the case no longer sat flush with the charging base.
I eventually sent the phone back to Google and got a replacement; at least that phone was more than a few years old. But I reviewed the OnePlus 9 Pro just over a year ago. At the time, I called it "a gorgeous device," and "one of the best devices I've used in the Android space." Even with the split back, it still looks pretty good.
Does it still work? Sure. I powered it up and it launched, like Head Wound Harry, as if there wasn't any critical damage.
Still, I won't use it now or ever again.
As soon as I posted a short video of the split phone on Twitter, I got a fast flood of responses and at least one warning: "I'd, uh, turn it off."
This is concerning. OnePlus 9Pro 5G battery is now bursting the phone’s seams. Not the first time I’ve seen an Android phone do this pic.twitter.com/5HfdokTXG5March 28, 2022
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I also found a community of people who have suffered similar battery calamities on a variety of Android phones and iPhones. I've owned and tested every iPhone since the iPhone 4 and never had a battery balloon or case split.
Still the tales of puffy batteries traveled through numerous Samsung handsets, iPhones, MacBooks, and Pixels.
It's a big enough problem that there are FAQs and services devoted to it. I found a place called Bebat that tries to explain why cellphone Lithium-Ion batteries balloon and what to do about it. Yes, it's also selling a repair service.
No one, including Bebat, is certain why all these batteries occasionally puff up. It could be:
Overheating
Overuse
Too much charging
A defective part
It's almost like no one quite understands how these batteries work. Though we know they do - most of the time.
An expanding phone battery and concerns over what could happen next if I keep using or charging it (explosion and fire come to mind) take me back seven or so years to Samsung's Galaxy Note 7.
The Galaxy Note 7 was an Android industry darling right up until units began to explode and catch fire. The culprit was the lithium-Ion battery.
Before you can understand what goes wrong with such a power source, it helps to understand how most Lithium-Ion batteries work. It's something we all got a crash course in back in 2016.
(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Like most batteries, there's a positive and negative side, usually made of two different conductive materials (say, aluminum and graphite). Since a battery creates power through chemistry and flow of charged ions, there's also a liquid (called an electrolyte), and a thin plastic layer made to separate the positive and negative sides. The cells charge when we plug the phone in.
Unlike the batteries in, say, your remote control, phone batteries can't be round and thick, nor can everything sit neatly in just two layers. Usually, smartphone batteries fold the layers over and over, sandwiching them to make them thin and as flat (and store as much energy) as possible.
As you can imagine, if all this isn't done perfectly, something can go wrong. In Samsung's case, it was a huge battery being squished into too small a space, deforming some layers, as well as a production issue in which a bad weld perforated these layers in some devices.
(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Samsung learned its lesson and instituted some rigorous battery oversight and testing for all future devices. There has not been a notable incidence since.
Which is good. But why are our phone batteries still expanding?
Since this issues cuts across devices, it's clearly some intrinsic lithium-ion issue.
Even experts like Bebat don't offer any clear-cut idea of why or what companies could do to prevent this. They do know what you can't do though:
There is no point waiting for the battery to “shrink”. The ever growing pressure can cause damage to the entire device. Leave the battery in the device only if it is stuck. Never try to “solve” the swelling yourself by pricking a hole in it or with any other creative stunt. That is very dangerous: not only is the gas flammable, but also toxic.
In every support forum, the advice is the same. Stop using the device immediately and get it to a service center. One MacBook user claimed to me on Twitter that an Apple Store genius told him to give the laptop to them and "we can put it in back in the special safe in case it explodes."
I don't think I'm in any imminent danger here, but I have turned off the OnePlus 9 Pro and reached out to the company's representatives for comment. My more immediate concern is that, while hardly common, I'm not sure expanding, gas-filled batteries are uncommon.
Making these incidents public is the first step, I hope, in pushing phone manufacturers to be more transparent, to work on safer, less expansion-prone batteries, and to look for a less volatile power storage system than lithium-ion. It's a tall order, I know.
Now, where do I store this scary OnePlus 9 Pro?
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We recently heard a leak about the new iPad for 2022 - that's the entry-level slate that Apple refreshes every year. This leak suggested that the device could get a big design update, possibly including the removal of the home button and a sizeable reduction in the bezel size, to bring it more in line with Apple's more modern tablets.
If this information is true, Apple is bringing its last family of tablets in line with its new design, which it's slowly been rolling out to its different iPads for the last few years.
This design matches the specs of these tablets, and suits them well for businesspeople or creatives looking for a sleek device. But Apple seems to be forgetting something - it has a much wider audience than that.
A history of iPads
I first bought the iPad 9.7 in 2017 - I was a student at the time, and needed a device that I could take to campus and work on, that also wasn't as chunky or fragile as a low-end laptop.
For just £300 (around $395 / AU$525 - I got it for a discount, I don't remember why, but also bought a case that offset the saving), I had an incredibly portable device that served me well for years after.
We gave the 2017 iPad full marks in our review(Image credit: Future)
I used the tablet for university essays, creative writing (I minored in creative writing - yeah, I really wasted my youth), screenplays, watching movies at home, listening to music out loud and Duolingo too, which really took over one peculiar year of my life.
When my smartphone broke, I didn't buy a new one - I just used my old flip phone for calls and texts, and relied on the iPad for all social media.
I could use my iPad in the university library, in the media room for the student newspaper I was an editor at, in various cafes and pubs around campus, at home on my desk or bed, at my partner's house, even in the bath. It was a perfect utility device.
The main reason I loved it was its portability - I studied in a fairly small city that you could traverse without public transport, so I spent an hour or more every day on bikes and walking, and wasn't burdened by a massive laptop.
The iPad sat within my budget and fit my needs, and I couldn't find a laptop that did the same. And I'm not alone.
The iPad's audience
The entry-level iPad has remained a tablet designed for people exactly like I was - not particularly fussed about tech, who just want a useful, portable and inexpensive tablet to use.
Students don't need the iPad Pro(Image credit: Future)
I know plenty of people who don't care about tech but use their iPads all the time - seniors who find phones too small, musicians who need a big screen to see sheet music, reading fans who don't want a Kindle, the list goes on and on.
These people don't need the fastest, flashiest processor, or a super top-end screen, and also don't want to spend loads of money on a fancy tablet when they're only going to use 10% of the features.
And that's the thing Apple doesn't seem to realize.
The slow slipping of the iPad
iPads were great products for normal people, like I was as a student, but Apple's new tablets aren't catering to that kind of audience.
Admittedly the iPad Pro line was never designed for the everyday user - Pro is short for 'professional' after all - but the entry-level and Air lines used to be.
The iPad Air was once a great option for people who wanted something like the entry-level tablet, but with a larger display - well, that was the state of things by the iPad Air 3.
The fourth-gen option changed up the design quite a bit, eschewing the classic iPad design for iPad-Pro-inspired sleekness, and the fifth-gen option brought 5G connectivity and a super-powerful chipset.
The new device isn't one that any average buyer should consider. Not only is it more powerful than anyone needs (including professionals), but it's a lot pricier than the iPad Air 3, so people with limited budgets have been forgotten.
(Image credit: Future)
I'm worried that the standard iPad range is going to go the same way. Previously, these tablets have used the same processors as the iPhones, which makes them powerful enough as it is, without getting the unnecessarily powerful - and expensive - Apple M1.
This might seem outlandish - but the iPad Air getting the M1 also sounded unlikely, until it happened - and thanks to the high price tag, it's arguably a less tempting tablet compared to its predecessor as a result.
Students don't need the M1. Seniors don't need the M1. Musicians and readers and teachers and children don't need the M1. What all those people do need is affordable tech.
There might be some people who really want an M1 chipset in a tablet - but the only apps that will benefit from that are a select few work or creativity apps, so these people will be professionals. If only there was an iPad for them - an Pro iPad, say...
I wouldn't buy any of these
If I was a student now, in 2022, I wouldn't buy the iPad Pro or Air or even Mini - the iPad 10.2 from 2021 would be my only option. And if the new iPad for 2022 does bring some of the unnecessary improvements I'm expecting, and costs more as a result, it'll be ruled out too.
There have been several years of on-and-off recession where I live, and in many places around the world. There's currently a cost of living crisis going on, so buying tech isn't really a priority to many people.
That is to say, Apple should be making its tech more affordable, not bumping up the specs for no good reason. Sure, its new devices might be more tempting to current or aspiring creatives or professionals, but for the legion of Apple buyers who need a familiar and reliable device, there's nothing out there worth buying anymore.
