3 Watching Brazil's rain forest burn is causing a lot of us to freak out a bit. Referring to it as "the world's lungs" may be an overstatement, but the rain forest is a critical global resource, and its destruction undoubtedly will worsen global warming. Given that the U.S. government has dismantled many environmental protection rules, companies are beginning to step up to work on offsets. One of the firms doing this is HP, which has announced a major initiative to focus the tech industry on renewable resources and to protect old-growth forests.
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3 Manjaro Linux 18.1, released on Sept. 12, is one of the most complete Linux OSes you will find. It is a powerhouse distro that offers a better Arch Linux computing platform, and it is the de facto standard for comparing Arch family options. After six months of development, the latest series is a fast, user-friendly, desktop-oriented operating system based on Arch Linux -- but its independent nature makes this distro a hallmark of out-of-the-box computing. Arch Linux itself is renowned for being exceptionally fast, powerful and lightweight.
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3 Smartwatches outsold traditional watches in the fourth quarter of 2018. The category saw a 51 percent increase in dollar sales for last year, along with a 61 percent increase in unit sales, according to recent data from NPD Group. One in four Americans aged 18 to 34 now own a smartwatch, and that is likely to increase. Traditional watches did regain the majority of the market in Q1 2019, suggesting that not all consumers are ready to have a mini-computer on their wrists just yet.
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3 Facebook has announced three additions to the Portal family: a new Portal, Portal Mini and Portal TV. The devices let users make calls using Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. The Portal has a new design that resembles a picture frame. The Portal Mini is similar but smaller. The Portal TV looks like a set-top box and comes with its own controller. The Portal TV blends the functionality of a set-top box with social media and video conferencing, observed Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
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3 Early reviews on the new iPhone models are appearing, and for owners of older versions of Apple's flagship mobile, an upgrade may be in order. Reviewers had plenty of praise for Apple's more expensive iPhone models -- the 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max. However, it was the baseline iPhone 11 that came out the clear winner in the kudos game. Although the iPhone 11 is the lowest-priced of the three new models, Apple didn't skimp on the device. Reviewers found the 11's camera to be a solid performer. They also praised the iPhone 11 line's video prowess.
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3 While open source enthusiasts still await the year of the Linux desktop, hardware developer Pine64 is advancing the cause of a $25 Linux-powered smartwatch, dubbed "PineTime." The Pine64 community has invited FreeRTOS or ArmMbed developers with an interest in smartwatches to join in its efforts to bring the product to market. Pine64 makes inexpensive Linux-based single board ARM computers that cost $15 to $20. It also makes an $89 Linux laptop called "Pinebook," which runs on the Pine A64 board. A few Linux distributions run on Pine A64.
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3 The Wi-Fi Alliance has released certification standards for Wi-Fi 6 devices, signaling that the technology is ready for prime time. The certification program assures buyers that products carrying the Wi-Fi Certified 6 label will deliver the best user experience with devices supporting IEEE 802.11ax. Wi-Fi 6 includes innovations to create faster network performance and to decrease the latency that can result from adding devices to a network. "Wi-Fi Certified 6 is ushering in a new era of WiFi," said Wi-Fi Alliance CEO Edgar Figueroa.
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3 At Apple's annual new products and devices event earlier this week, CEO Tim Cook told the crowd gathered at its Cupertino headquarters that the new Apple TV+ streaming service will be available for $4.99 per month. Consumers who buy a new iPad, iPhone or Apple laptop will receive a year of the subscription-based streaming video service for free. It was a shot across the bow at Disney, which recently announced at its D23 event in Anaheim, California, that the Disney+ streaming service will be available for $6.99 per month.
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3 Apple raised the curtain on its latest iPhone models, introduced a new iPad, refreshed its watch, and announced pricing for its subscription game and premium TV services at an event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California. The highlight of the presentation was the new iPhone lineup: the iPhone 11, the 11 Pro and the 11 Pro Max. The iPhone 11 comes in six colors -- black, green, yellow, purple, red and white. It has a 1,792 x 828 Retina display and runs on Apple's A13 Bionic chip.
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3 The new larger version of Google's Nest Hub smart display has been garnering mixed reviews. It has a 10-inch screen, compared to its predecessor's 7-inch display, and it sells for $229, compared to $129 for the Nest Hub introduced at Google's I/O conference in June. "I like the big screen on the Nest Hub Max, since I was able to watch a football game in the kitchen and still see the score," wrote Todd Haselton. One of the best things about the Nest Hub, and now the Nest Hub Max, is viewing pictures from Google Photos, he added.
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3 At a briefing by IBM on its joint project with MIT to build a better AI, it struck me that some of the training concepts could improve the quality of political decisions to shift attention more to fixing problems rather than using them as weapons against opponents. I'm not talking about using artificial intelligence systems directly. I'm suggesting that we apply methods similar to those we now are considering for building and training them in order to make decisions that would fix major problems instead of just arguing about them forever.
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3 Users of a multi-cloud storage strategy may be twice as likely to face a security breach as those that use hybrid or single clouds, suggests a report from UK-based security specialist Nominet. Fifty-two percent of survey respondents who adopted a multi-cloud approach suffered a data breach over the past 12 months, compared to 24 percent of hybrid cloud users, and 24 percent of single-cloud users, the firm found after polling nearly 300 C-Level executives and IT professionals.
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3 Amazon is testing scanners that can identify a human hand to use as a payment method for in-store purchases. The company plans to introduce "Orville" to some Whole Foods stores by the beginning of 2020, and later expand it to all locations in the United States. Employees at Amazon's New York offices are said to be using the technology to buy items such as sodas, chips, granola bars and phone chargers from specially equipped vending machines. The high-tech sensors used in the pilot use computer vision and depth geometry.
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3 Apple reportedly has been developing sleep tracking functionality for the Apple Watch. The new "Time in Bed Tracking" feature will let users who wear the Apple Watch to bed track their sleep patterns. Consumers who have multiple Apple Watches can designate one for wearing in bed. he "Burrito" feature will let Apple Watch track a user's quality of sleep, including movement, heart rate and noises, using the device's multiple sensors. Sleep data will be made available in the Health app and a forthcoming new Sleep app.
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3 As more Web traffic comes from mobile devices -- particularly traffic to e-commerce sites -- it's becoming ever more important for businesses to have content that loads onto small screens easily, quickly and effortlessly. To some degree, native mobile apps until now have filled that need, but they have significant limitations. They must be downloaded, and they don't necessarily have all the functionality of full-fledged websites. It's at this juncture that progressive web applications come in. PWAs exist in a space between apps and websites.
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3 There was an interesting dialog between Elon Musk and Jack Ma last week. Two of the most powerful men in the world, they both have invested heavily in artificial intelligence. Ma, who is the Alibaba Group cofounder and a huge advocate for the 12-hour a day six-day Chinese work week in tech, indicated that he believed AI would reduce the work week from 72 hours, where it now is in China, to 12 hours -- that is, three 4-hour workdays. Both he and Musk then spoke about how future workers will have training pumped into their brains.
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3 In the Internet of Things -- or the "Intelligence of Things," which is more apt -- the automotive segment has become a leading center of innovation. Only healthcare offers the same ability to leverage advances in sensors, processing, connectivity and artificial intelligence technology to advance an industry while simultaneously improving society. As a result, the entire electronics and automotive ecosystem is racing to develop self-driving/autonomous vehicles. However, changing an established industry does not come without challenges.
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3 Drauger OS is a relatively new Linux distro for users with a penchant for games. Several design elements make this Linux gaming platform different from typical distributions that merely pack digital titles. However, it lacks a few productivity tools that otherwise would make it a daily computing driver out of the box. Based on Xubuntu, Drauger OS uses a modified Xfce4.12 desktop environment and runs only on 64-bit computers; no 32-bit gear is supported. This is a distro targeting game players who want good desktop performance.
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3 Verizon, the No. 1 mobile carrier in the United States, this week introduced a free version of its robocall-blocking app, which will be standard on all new Android devices. The company further announced that it will auto-enroll eligible Android users to its Call Filter service and block what are seen as "high-risk" calls. This includes calls from numbers that have been reported as fraudulent. Those calls will be sent to voicemail, while the display on caller ID will indicate "Potential Spam" to warn callers that it is likely a robocall.
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3 A new application may be in the works that allows Instagram users to share real-time information with their closest friends. Called "Threads," the app allows users to set up automatic sharing with their closest Instagram buddies of such information as location, movement and battery life, as well as text, video and photo messages generated using Instagram's tools. Once you choose to activate Threads, it will automatically alert people on your Instagram "close friends" list about your location, movements and more.
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