Topps Blog: July 2020

Friday, 31 July 2020

Musk: SpaceX Starship Prototype Could Fly ‘Soon’

SpaceX has a good thing going with the Falcon 9. It has almost perfected landings, allowing it to reuse the boosters, and NASA has certified the Falcon 9 to carry its most important cargo and even astronauts. The company is already looking toward its next launch platform, though. After blowing up a few Starship prototypes, the latest SN5 test vehicle just completed a full-duration static fire. CEO Elon Musk says that sets the stage for a “hop” in the near future.

The Starship, previously known as the BFR, is SpaceX’s upcoming all-purpose rocket. With the Super Heavy launch platform, Starship will be a heavy-lift system capable of sending large payloads into the outer solar system. Musk has also floated the Starship to colonize Mars in the next few years. Of course, Musk does tend to over-promise — he thought the Starship would be flying by spring. Instead, SpaceX is just now starting to plan the vessel’s maiden flight.

Last year, we watched as SpaceX flew the first rocket with a Raptor engine, the so-called “Starhopper.” It was essentially a stub of the eventual Starship capable of lifting off with a single engine, hovering 150 meters in the air, and then landing. The goal is to make the Starship fully reusable like the Falcon 9. Musk has claimed that a Starship launch might cost as little as $2 million once it’s in full production, which is significantly less than other rockets. The ESA’s Ariane 5 costs $165 million per launch, and the Atlas V is $110 million.

A rendering of what the Starship could look like in space.

The SN5 prototype is the latest version of the rocket, but it’s not a final configuration — you can think of it as the mid-point between the Starhopper and a real Starship. Assuming tragedy does not befall this rocket, it could complete the proposed 150-meter flight in the next week or two. Even if something does go wrong and the SN5 is lost, SpaceX has two more prototypes in production — the SN6 and SN8. The SN7 was a small-scale test tank that the company discarded after it sprung a leak during testing in June 2020.

Starship SN5 just completed full duration static fire. 150m hop soon.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2020

SpaceX also hopes the SN5 will be the first version of the Starship to complete a high-altitude test flight to around 12 miles (20 kilometers). The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy will continue handling all of SpaceX’s launch operations for the time being, but Starship development is progressing at a surprising pace.

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Nvidia in Advanced Talks to Buy ARM, Upend Silicon Industry

Those rumors about Nvidia being in talks with SoftBank about purchasing ARM have been upgraded to “advanced talks.” (Does that make these “advanced rumors?”)

Even if SoftBank can come to an agreement with Nvidia over selling ARM, which it bought for $32B, the regulatory scrutiny from various nations would be enormous, as Bloomberg reports. Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, and Intel all have architecture licenses from ARM, allowing them to design their own CPUs that are compatible with ARM’s instruction sets but that otherwise contain custom IP. Dozens more companies depend on ARM’s extensive hard-IP licenses for various CPU solutions. Given ARM’s ubiquitous position in smartphones, and its burgeoning presence in HPC and servers, everyone from Ampere to MediaTek is going to be concerned about ARM being owned by any single silicon company.

What’s the Advantage of Ownership?

In my previous story, I stated that buying ARM would give Nvidia an easy path to return to desktop and laptop computing with an integrated ARM/Nvidia SoC. What I should’ve addressed then — and didn’t — is how this would be different from Nvidia taking out an architectural license (which it already has), in the first place. After all, Nvidia already builds chips like Project Denver and its successor, Carmel, on an ARM architecture. Owning ARM doesn’t change that.

What owning ARM would do is give Nvidia control over how the entire ARM IP stack evolves in the future. If it wanted to pour development into ARM’s Neoverse server concept and develop new SIMD extensions that would speed its own HPC workloads, it could do so. Instead of being limited to an Nvidia-specific implementation, ARM could design said extensions directly into the standard.

Running multiple Docker container-based demos on Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX.

There are other potential advantages for Nvidia as well. The company could design a low-level GPU as a replacement for ARM’s own efforts, then extend the IP across its core families as well, giving the GeForce brand significant reach across the mobile ecosystem.

Regulatory issues, however, could still scuttle the deal. Historically, Nvidia has always preferred a very closed development model. The company doesn’t license CUDA to anyone and it typically prefers to develop its own value-added software and hardware capabilities as opposed to creating cross-vendor ecosystems. So long as Nvidia is just one ARM licensee among many, this presents no problem. If Nvidia were to buy ARM itself, however, the numerous firms that rely on ARM licenses would demand guarantees that their access to future products or licenses wouldn’t be impeded by anti-competitive measures. If the deal gets to this point, Nvidia will undoubtedly make a number of concessions and guarantees to avoid the appearance of favoritism.

What Nvidia would be buying, with ARM, isn’t just the ability to take out an architectural license. It has one already. What it would be buying, ultimately, is the ability to influence how ARM SoCs evolve in the future at multiple price points and markets. If Nvidia thought it would be useful to their own position to implement CUDA for mobile GPUs, they’d be able to do so. If they wanted to introduce a high-end hard-IP GPU core under the GeForce brand and position the SoC as a gaming solution, they could do that as well.

Just How Shelved Is AMD K12?

One thing I’d love to know is just how far AMD got with K12 before they shelved it and whether the chip might ever see the light of day. According to AMD contacts I spoke to when the company decided to pivot towards Ryzen, the K12 design wasn’t scrapped — AMD just decided that the ecosystem wasn’t mature enough to justify bringing the product to market. The scuttlebutt around K12 always suggested it was similar to Ryzen, with a number of shared design elements between the cores. While ARM and x86 are two different CPU architectures, it would be much easier to cross-leverage IP between ARM and x86 then between, say, x86 and Itanium. There’s no evidence that AMD finished the design or continued to evolve it in the background, but they wouldn’t have thrown the chip away, either. If ARM starts chewing into x86’s market share, I expect AMD might dust off K12, update it for the modern era, and bring it to market.

AMD’s K12 slide. This is most of what we know about the one-time product. AMD has never said how much of the work it completed before shelving the CPU.

Right now, the CPU market is more dynamic than it’s been in decades. A new ARM owner could send major ripples through the company’s long-term trajectory. Intel is struggling with manufacturing issues. AMD is gaining market share. Heck, even open-source efforts like RISC-V continue to drive engagement and interest. Any Nvidia effort to buy ARM can likely be read as an intention to push into x86’s turf in one market or another.

Feature image is Nvidia’s Orin, a self-driving car module with onboard ARM cores and an Ampere-based GPU.

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Nobody’s Applying For Big Cybersecurity Jobs. This CompTIA Certification Training Can Get You In The Door

With U.S. unemployment still over 11 percent, there are literally millions of Americans looking for work. Of course, that number is considerably smaller when you look at the pool of trained cybersecurity professionals.

And the key there is finding trained professionals. Because while cybersecurity hiring is booming, with new employment up over 7 percent in May, companies are still having an extremely tough time finding qualified candidates. In fact, 86 percent of cybersecurity job openings attracted under 10 applicants each, just because workers don’t have the right skill set.

So the conclusion is clear — if you want to work as a cybersecurity expert, get trained now. Instruction like The CompTIA Security Infrastructure Expert Bundle ($39.99, over 90 percent off) is a perfect means of landing the skills needed to get working fast in this rapidly expanding field.

As added incentive, this package includes training compiled by CompTIA, the world’s most recognized IT certification body. Once you’ve completed these four courses, you’ll be ready to sit for four of CompTIA’s most important exams and earn certifications that earn you instant credibility with hiring managers.

The CompTIA CySA+ (CS0-001) kicks things off, helping new users understand the basics of spotting, fighting and ultimately preventing cybersecurity threats with the use of all the latest security analytics and tools. Students will learn how to configure and use threat detection tools, perform data analysis, and interpret those results to spot vulnerabilities and threats to their organization.

With the CompTIA Security+ (SY0-501) course, students delve deeper into IT security knowledge and skills, including how to provide the correct levels of protection to system information, apps and infrastructure, while also maintaining critical system access guidelines for each individual user.

While much of IT security training is geared toward system management, the CompTIA CASP+ (CAS-003) course centers on what practitioners need, not managers, to implement key cybersecurity policies and frameworks.

Finally, the CompTIA PenTest+ (PT0-001) course truly tests a student’s learning, requiring hands-on demonstration of the abilities and knowledge needed to identify and defend against penetration attacks across all environments, from traditional desktops and servers to mobile devices and even the cloud.

Earn for prime CompTIA certifications with this four-course collection, a $1,180 training package now on sale for just $39.99 while this offer lasts.

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

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HMD’s Nokia 8.3 5G Will Come to the US This Year

This is the year of 5G whether you want it or not, and you can thank Qualcomm for making the new network technology mandatory in its latest ARM chips. That has led to some extremely big, expensive smartphones in 2020, but HMD plans to launch a more affordable 5G Android phone in the US this year. The Nokia 8.3 5G falls between flagships and budget phones, but we don’t know when it’ll launch or exactly how much it will cost in the US.

The Nokia 8.3 5G is not technically a new phone, but it’ll be new for the US. HMD announced the 8.5 5G back in March alongside the 5.3 and 1.3. The Snapdragon 765G inside this phone has an integrated 5G modem unlike the 865, which needs a separate modem. There are only two high-power processing cores and six low-power — the 865 has a 4×4 setup. The 765 doesn’t crush benchmarks like the 865 does, but it has better battery life, and the real-world performance is almost as good.

Odds are this 5G phone will only support sub-6 frequencies. The cost associated with millimeter wave, which is only common in the US, has thus far limited ultra-fast 5G to flagship devices. That’s not a huge loss, though. Millimeter wave only has a range of a few hundred feet and doesn’t pass through walls.

HMD equipped the Nokia 8.3 with a giant 6.8-inch 1080p display, but it’s an LCD rather than OLED. That means a bit more bezel at the bottom of the phone, but HMD has helpfully slapped the Nokia logo in there in case you forget what phone you’re using. Happens all the time, right? The 8.3 also sports a 64MP main camera sensor, a 12MP ultra-wide, a 2MP macro, and a 2MP depth sensor.

In March, there were precious few phones running the Snapdragon 765 system-on-a-chip (SoC), but this part of the market has since filled in with devices like the LG Velvet, Motorola Edge, and OnePlus Nord. That might make the Nokia 8.3 a tougher sell. HMD hasn’t mentioned US pricing just yet, but the international 8.3 5G runs €600, which is about $648. The Nord, which is available internationally and will come to the US in some form, is currently €200 less. The Velvet is slightly cheaper, and the Edge is just a bit more. So, it’s a much more crowded field in late 2020 than early 2020.

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How to Download and Install Windows 8.1 for Free (Updated)

Update 7/31/2020: Windows 8.1 is long outdated, but technically supported through 2023. If you need to download an ISO to reinstall the full version of the operating system, you can download one from Microsoft here.

If you are still using Microsoft Windows 8.1, we recommend you at least begin considering what OS you will use in the future. It’s mid-2020 and Win 8.1 will shuffle off the mortal coil in January 2023. You can still qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 10 if you own a valid Windows 8.1 license, despite the fact that Microsoft formally ended its upgrade program five years ago. Additionally, Windows 10 has the same system requirements as Windows 8.1, so if you can run the latter, you can also run the former.

If you are somehow still stuck on Windows 8.0 and do not want to go to the hassle of a full OS swap, we recommend running Windows Update immediately and downloading all available patches for your system, including the Windows 8.1 update, which will likely be offered to you by default. If you want to download just the Windows 8.1 update files, you can do so here.

Original story below, from 2013:

Windows 8.1 has been released. If you’re using Windows 8, upgrading to Windows 8.1 is both easy and free. If you’re using another operating system (Windows 7, Windows XP, OS X), you can either buy a boxed version ($120 for normal, $200 for Windows 8.1 Pro), or opt for one of the free methods listed below. To download and install Windows 8.1 for free, follow the guide below.

How to download Windows 8.1 for free

If you don’t want to wait for October 17 or 18, there are two options for downloading Windows 8.1: You can obtain a copy (and a license key) from a friend/colleague with an MSDN, TechNet, or DreamSpark (student) subscription, or you can download a Windows 8.1 RTM ISO from your favorite file-sharing website (The Pirate Bay, Mega, etc.)

While we’re not going to write a guide on how to obtain Windows 8.1 RTM from non-official sources, we will at least tell you to check the SHA-1 hash of the ISO that you download to make sure that it’s legitimate. If you hit up the MSDN Subscriber Downloads page, and then click Details under the version that you’ve obtained from elsewhere, you’ll find the SHA-1 hash. If you then use File Checksum Integrity Verifier (FCIV) on the ISO, the hash should match. If it doesn’t, assume the ISO has been compromised and download another. (But do make sure that you’re checking the right SHA-1 hash on the MSDN website; your ISO might be mislabeled).

The other easier, and completely legal, option is to download the Windows 8.1 Preview from Microsoft. It’s not as snappy as the final (RTM/GA) build, though, and has quite a few bugs/missing features. Bear in mind that if you go down this road, upgrading to a real version of Windows 8.1 will require a few more steps (discussed in the next section).

How to install Windows 8.1 for free

Once you have the Windows 8.1 ISO on your hard drive, the installation process is painless. Before you begin, you should consider backing up your important files and documents, but it’s not really necessary. You should also ensure that you have plenty of free hard drive space (20GB+).

If you’re already running Windows 8 and you downloaded the RTM ISO from somewhere other than the Windows Store, you can install Windows 8.1 by mounting the downloaded ISO in Explorer by double-clicking it, and then running the installer. If you’re on Windows 7, XP, or (bless your soul) Vista, you’ll need to burn the ISO to a USB thumb drive or DVD, or mount the ISO using a third-party virtual drive tool, like Magic ISO.

If you already have Windows 8, and you waited for the official release date, installing Windows 8.1 is as simple as visiting the Windows Store and downloading the free update.

In both these cases, the upgrade process should be very smooth, with your apps and settings fully preserved. If you upgrade from Windows 8.1 Preview, however, you will lose your installed apps, unless you first run a cversion.ini removal utility.

Once you’ve installed Windows 8.1, you should check out our extensive collection of Windows 8.1 tips and tricks, and be sure to check our Windows 8.1 review and hands-on impressions to ensure that you’re making the most of all the new features.

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Sebastian Anthony wrote the original version of this article. It has since been updated with new information.

Star Citizen Developer Publishes a Roadmap…for a Roadmap

Let’s get two things out of the way upfront: I love space combat sims, and I love Chris Roberts’ work, specifically. The original Wing Commander games are some of my all-time favorites. With that said, development on Star Citizen’s Squadron 42 — that’s the single-player component of the title — is, to all appearances, a train wreck.

Fans and backers of the game have been requesting an update on where Squadron 42 stood for months. Cloud Imperium Games, the developer behind Star Citizen, publishes regular monthly diaries that offer some insight into the single-player game’s development, but offer virtually nothing in terms of an over-arching roadmap.

Cloud Imperium wants its users to know that it has heard their issues loud and clear. That’s why the company is promising to publish a roadmap for its roadmap.

No, really. That’s what they’ve promised. CIG intends to deliver the following:

1. Give an explanation of the goals of our new Roadmap and what to expect from it
2. Show a rough mockup of the proposed new Roadmap
3. Share a work in progress version of the Roadmap for at least one of our core teams
4. Transition to this new Roadmap

This entire issue arose in March, when CIG admitted in a forum post that its existing roadmap doesn’t properly show the progress it has made on its own game. As a result, it wants to overhaul how it communicates its progress to players. Nothing wrong with additional transparency — provided, of course, that it’s eventually delivered. So far, all that’s been released is a literal roadmap for the development of a roadmap. The four bullet points above apparently took five months to write.

While the various monthly updates contain a fair amount of information, the information isn’t presented in a context that allows the reader to draw conclusions about how much work is left to do in the game or when the title might actually ship.

Is Doing Everything the Best Idea?

Whenever we discuss Star Citizen’s delays and development time, certain fans are quick to leap to its defense with the argument that no game has ever done anything like it and therefore the entire situation is reasonable and fine. In reality, it’s been a decade since Star Citizen began development, eight years since its Kickstarter, and five years since Squadron 42’s original release date. It’s not unfair to be asking if Chris Roberts can ever deliver the project he promised.

Star Citizen famously wants to be a game with unparalleled depth and scale, but at a certain point, it’s worth asking if smaller, more targeted projects would yield better results. One of the biggest reasons for Duke Nukem Forever’s endless delays was a combination of feature creep and aging engines. As the delays stretched out, 3D Realms had to port the game to new engines more than once, delaying the product even more.

Many of the milestones listed in the CIG development diaries suggest core systems of the game are being overhauled for exactly this reason. There are multiple references to the ongoing work being done to add Vulkan support, for example. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with supporting Vulkan, but the API is only four years old. If Star Citizen had hit its initial launch dates, Vulkan support would’ve been an aftermarket addition. Instead, the company is developing a Vulkan renderer, dubbed Gen12, now to keep its own product current. Except, that effort actually launched in 2017, so why isn’t the renderer done yet?

“We will publish the full roadmap to Squadron 42’s release in December.”

That quote is from CIG, but it’s dated December 2018. Needless to say, the “full roadmap” the company promised never materialized. If Star Citizen cannot figure out how to communicate its development schedule in a simplified form to its backers, how is it going to handle the incredibly complex task of integrating all of the features for the game?

Waiting five months to tell fans you’ve written a roadmap for a roadmap is a bad move on CIG’s part. Best-case, it paints CIG as incapable of effective project management. Worst-case, it raises questions of whether the various teams are in effective communication with each other.

If you can’t build a game in a decade when handed $306M, perhaps you shouldn’t be making a game in the first place. Not, at least, until you’ve got a better idea and an actual plan to deliver the product.

Squadron 42, like Star Citizen, has no release date. Perhaps when CIG is finished with the roadmap for the roadmap, they could give us a timeline for the timeline. I love Chris Roberts’ single-player storytelling, but I don’t have much faith in his ability to bring Star Citizen’s disparate parts together in the cohesive whole he’s promised his fans. I’d have sooner had a smaller Squadron 42 with several mission packs or full-blown sequels out of that $306M than one single uber-simulator that may never function as intended due to the sheer complexity of its own design. You don’t have to think Chris Roberts is a scam artist to believe the project has gone badly off the rails, and he wouldn’t be the first game developer to get stuck in the weeds this way.

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Thursday, 30 July 2020

ET Deals: Dell 2020 XPS 15 9500 Intel Core i7 & Nvidia GTX 1650 Ti Laptop $1,349, Intel Core i7-10700 $309, Apple MacBook Air Laptop for $899

Today you can save $450 on your purchase of one of Dell’s newest XPS 15 laptops. This notebook features a 16:10 aspect ratio display along with a Core i7-10750H processor and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics chip. Displays using this aspect ratio were popular a decade ago before being overtaken by the more common 16:9 aspect ratio, but they are still prized by many for offering a better view in addition to providing slightly more physical screen space.

Dell 2020 XPS 15 9500 Intel Core i7-10750H 1920×1200 15.6-Inch Laptop w/ Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti, 8GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD ($1,349.99)

Dell’s newest XPS 15 laptop features a 1920×1200 resolution display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The system also has stylish, carbon-fiber palm rests, and it comes equipped with a capable Core i7 hexa-core processor that can hit clock speeds as high as 5GHz. The system’s also fit to run games with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti. The new XPS 15 retails for $1,799.99, but with promo code STAND4SMALL you can currently get it from Dell marked down to just $1,349.99.

Intel Core i7-10700 8-Core 4.8GHz Processor ($309.99)

The Core i7-10700 is one of Intel’s newest processors with eight CPU cores able to hit a top speed of 4.8GHz. The chip also supports Hyper-Threading, and it’s now available on sale from Newegg. Regularly priced at $369.99, you can now get this chip for just $309.99.

Apple MacBook Air Intel Core i3 13.3-Inch Laptop w/ 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD ($899.99)

Apple’s MacBook Air was designed to be exceptionally lightweight at 2.8 pounds. It also has a high-quality 2560×1600 display, and Apple built the system out of durable 6000 series aluminum. If you would like to buy one of these systems, you can get it marked down today from $999.00 to $899.99 at Amazon.

Dell OptiPlex 3070 Micro Intel Core i5-9500T Desktop w/ 8GB DDR4 RAM and 256GB NVMe SSD ($566.10)

This compact desktop features solid performance thanks to a six-core Intel Core i5-9500T processor that can hit clock speeds of 3.7GHz. It’s also easy to hide out of the way to leave your work area looking clean and organized. Today you can get this system from Dell marked down from $1,055.71 to $566.09 with promo code STAND4SMALL.

Samsung 860 QVO 1TB 2.5-Inch SATA-III SSD ($109.99)

Large 2.5-inch SSDs like this one are slowly heading off the market as they are being replaced by smaller and faster M.2 NVMe drives. They are still excellent options if you are upgrading from an HDD, however, and they typically offer more storage space for the price than their faster M.2 counterparts. For a limited time, you can get this particular drive that has a 1TB capacity from Amazon marked down from $129.99 to just $109.99.

Lenovo Yoga C740 Intel Core i5-10210U 15.6-Inch 1080p Touchscreen Laptop w/ 12GB RAM and 256GB PCI-E SSD ($599.99)

Lenovo’s versatile Yoga C740 notebook features a 1080p touchscreen display that can be rotated around to put the system into tablet mode. The Yoga C740 also features a sleek aluminum body and a fast Intel Core i5 processor. Right now you can get it from Best Buy marked down from $849.99 to just $599.99.

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

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4K vs. UHD: What’s the Difference?

Now that 4K televisions and monitors have gone completely mainstream at multiple price points and feature levels, let’s look at two terms that have become increasingly conflated with one another: 4K and UHD, or Ultra HD. TV makers, broadcasters, and tech blogs are using them interchangeably, but they didn’t start as the same thing, and technically still aren’t. From a viewer standpoint, there isn’t a huge difference, and the short answer is that 4K is sticking, and UHD isn’t — though high-quality Blu-ray drives are sometimes marketed as 4K Ultra HD. But there’s a little more to the story.

4K vs. UHD

The simplest way of defining the difference between 4K and UHD is this: 4K is a professional production and cinema standard, while UHD is a consumer display and broadcast standard. To discover how they became so confused, let’s look at the history of the two terms.

The term “4K” originally derives from the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI), a consortium of motion picture studios that standardized a spec for the production and digital projection of 4K content. In this case, 4K is 4,096 by 2,160, and is exactly four times the previous standard for digital editing and projection (2K, or 2,048 by 1,080). 4K refers to the fact that the horizontal pixel count (4,096) is roughly four thousand. The 4K standard is not just a resolution, either: It also defines how 4K content is encoded. A DCI 4K stream is compressed using JPEG2000, can have a bitrate of up to 250Mbps, and employs 12-bit 4:4:4 color depth. (See: How digital technology is reinventing cinema.)

Ultra High Definition, or UHD for short, is the next step up from what’s called full HD, the official name for the display resolution of 1,920 by 1,080. UHD quadruples that resolution to 3,840 by 2,160. It’s not the same as the 4K resolution made above — and yet almost every TV or monitor you see advertised as 4K is actually UHD. Sure, there are some panels out there that are 4,096 by 2,160, which adds up to an aspect ratio of 1.9:1. But the vast majority are 3,840 by 2,160, for a 1.78:1 aspect ratio.

A diagram illustrating the relative image size of 4K vs. 1080p — except that 4K should be labelled UHD, or 2160p.

Why Not 2160p?

Now, it’s not as if TV manufacturers aren’t aware of the differences between 4K and UHD. But presumably for marketing reasons, they seem to be sticking with 4K. So as to not conflict with the DCI’s actual 4K standard, some TV makers seem to be using the phrase “4K UHD,” though some are just using “4K.”

To make matters more confusing, UHD is actually split in two — there’s 3,840 by 2,160, and then there’s a big step up, to 7,680 by 4,320, which is also called UHD. It’s reasonable to refer to these two UHD variants as 4K UHD and 8K UHD — but, to be more precise, the 8K UHD spec should probably be renamed QUHD (Quad Ultra HD). (Read: 8K UHDTV: How do you send a 48Gbps TV signal over terrestrial airwaves?)

The real solution would have been to abandon the 4K moniker entirely and instead use the designation 2160p. Display and broadcast resolutions have always referred to resolution in terms of horizontal lines, with the letters “i” and “p” referring to interlacing, which skips every other line, and progressive scan, which doesn’t: 576i (PAL), 480i (NTSC), 576p (DVD), 720p, 1080i, 1080p, and so on. So why didn’t we do that?

Because the number didn’t match the size of the resolution increase. “2160p” implies that the resolution is double that of 1080p HD, while the actual increase is a factor of 4. The gap between 720p and 1080p is significantly smaller than the gap between 4K and 1080p, though how much you notice the upgrade will depend on the quality of your TV and where you sit. Further complicating matters, there’s the fact that just because a display has a 2160p vertical resolution doesn’t mean it supports a 3,840 or 4,096-pixel horizontal width. You’re only likely to see 2160p listed as a monitor resolution, if at all. Newegg lists two displays as supporting 4K explicitly as opposed to UHD (4096×2160), but they’ll cost you. Clearly these sorts of displays are aimed at the professional set.

Now that there are 4K TVs everywhere, it would take a concerted effort from at least one big TV manufacturer to right the ship and abandon the use of 4K in favor of UHD. In all honesty, though, it’s too late. The branding ship has sailed. Also, should you find yourself unhappy with the quality of the 4K content you receive via streaming service, remember that UHD Blu-ray delivers a vastly better picture and can meaningfully improve your experience with certain kinds of content.

Sebastian Anthony wrote the original version of this article. It has since been updated several times with new information.

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This Python Masterclass Collection Can Be Just The Ticket To A New Data Science Career

In case you missed any of the memos over the past decade, it’s now confirmed — Python is very, very important to getting hired in the high paying field of data science.

In a worldwide survey of almost 20,000 data professionals, Python was used by 87 percent of those surveyed, more than double the no. 2 programming language, the database driver SQL. And that represented an increase from the previous year, proving Python is not only overwhelmingly popular, but it’s actually growing in usage too.

Even if you’re learning coding for the first time, the training in The Python 3 Complete Masterclass Certification Bundle ($29.99, over 90 percent off) is a huge first step to both learning a foundational web skill and also working as a real web development or data science pro.

Over seven courses, more than 30 hours of instruction and loads of practical exercises, projects and other teaching tools, students get a complete overview of Python from the basics through to the advanced uses that can elevate you to the standing of a true Python master.

Starting with Python begins with the four-part Python 3 Masterclass course, a gradual system for moving from novice to expert at a student’s own pace.

The building blocks are forged in Python 3 Complete Masterclass: Part 1, as new Python learners explore concepts like strings and string methods, handling syntax errors and exceptions and more with the use of examples and exercises based on real world situations.

In Python 3 Complete Masterclass: Part 2, Python’s many abilities are brought to bear on other apps, explaining how Python can be used to automate Excel sheets, build database tables and get several devices all working together.

The training continues in Python 3 Complete Masterclass: Part 3, this time getting students up to speed on the intricacies of data analysis and data visualizations. Here, students train in using PostgreSQL databases to automate tasks, reformat and process data in a variety of file formats, and use Boken to create eye-opening visualizations of your results.

Finally, the opening salvo is complete with Python 3 Complete Masterclass: Part 4, including extensive practical training in performing several key Python functions, from basic script testing to web content extraction. Students also learn 10 effective steps for turning your Python skills into a paycheck and even building a responsive portfolio that will help you land that job.

Meanwhile, the ins and outs of networking also gets some extensive coverage with the Python 3 Network Programming – Build 5 Network Applications and Python 3 Network Programming (Sequel): Build 5 More Apps courses. Aimed at experienced Python engineers and admins, this course has students put together 10 different networking apps that stretch their understanding of Python’s uses.

The training closes with the Python Regular Expressions: From Beginner to Intermediate Level, a deeper exploration of expression building in Python, including metacharacters, special sequences, extension notations and more.

Each course in this Python learning package is a $199 value, but with this collection, it’s all available for a fraction of that price, just $29.99.

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator Will Get Support for Virtual Reality

Virtual reality hasn’t exploded in popularity as many expected it would when Oculus revived the dead medium, but it is still growing. Most VR games are designed from the ground up for VR, but a few mainstream titles that are suited to that gameplay style have also added support. Soon, you’ll be able to add Microsoft’s Flight Simulator to the list.

The new Microsoft Flight Simulator will be the first edition of the series since 2006’s Flight Simulator X, but it’s part of a lineage that stretches all the way back to 1982’s Flight Simulator 1.0. The graphics were rudimentary, but the quality improved with each iteration. According to Microsoft, the latest game will simulate the entire surface of the Earth using textures and topographical from Bing. Microsoft will also create 3D representations of buildings and trees using Asure technology. It’s going to be a huge game, but Microsoft is still making it available on physical media with a set of 10 DVDs.

Microsoft now says it will roll out an update to the game in the coming months that adds support for virtual reality, placing you inside the cockpit. However, it won’t work on all headsets at launch. Microsoft has partnered with HP on its Reverb G2 headset, which should launch later in 2020. This device will work with Windows Mixed Reality and Steam VR content.

HP contends that its $600 Reverb G2 will provide a better experience than competing headsets thanks to its lighter weight and higher resolution LCDs. Although, HP is notoriously fickle when it comes to products that aren’t part of its core business. You might find support difficult to obtain down the road.

Following the G2 launch, Microsoft will add support for other headsets like those from Oculus and HTC. Microsoft didn’t say exactly when that will happen, Microsoft’s head of Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann suggested it would be “a few more months” after the G2. With a compatible headset, you’ll be able to fully immerse yourself in the simulator and look around the exquisitely accurate cockpits. Of course, that only applies to wired headsets — standalone VR devices don’t have enough power to run the new Flight Simulator.

Microsoft will launch Flight Simulator on August 18 on PC. It’s also included in the Xbox Game Pass for PC, which costs $4.99 per month during the beta.

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The Power of Perseverance: NASA’s Latest Rover Headed for Mars

NASA announced a successful liftoff for its latest Mars rover, Perseverance (also known as the Mars 2020 Rover) on Thursday. If all goes well, the vehicle will reach the Red Planet in February.

At first glance, Perseverance looks like a repeat of Curiosity. The two spacecraft are built on a similar platform, but Perseverance has larger, more robust wheels with a larger diameter. These are intended to avoid the damage Curiosity has sustained during its time on Mars. Perseverance also carries MOXIE (Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment), which will attempt to produce a small amount of oxygen using the existing atmosphere on Mars.

I am healthy and on my way to Mars, but may be too loud for the antennas on Earth while I'm so close. Ground stations are working to match my signal strength so that I can communicate clearly with my team. https://t.co/vLaRxcKomR

— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) July 30, 2020

The MOXIE unit aboard Perseverance is a 1 percent scale model of a full-sized production plant. If the experiment is successful, it may mean astronauts traveling to the planet could use Mars’ atmosphere to create both breathable air and their own supply of propellant for the return trip. This would represent a substantial weight savings — most of the weight of a spacecraft is fuel, and any journey to another planet has to either carry the fuel for the return trip or make it at the destination. If MOXIE works, NASA could land an automated facility to begin creating oxygen before astronauts even arrive on Mars, ensuring a ready supply of available air from the moment they touchdown.

The Perseverance rover. Credit: NASA

Perseverance also carries Ingenuity, a small (1.8kg / 4lb) helicopter intended to demonstrate the practicality of flight on Mars. Ingenuity doesn’t carry any scientific instruments, but it’s intended to scout potential routes for the rover and to demonstrate that flight on Mars is something we can accomplish remotely in the first place. Perseverance will also carry spacesuit samples to Mars to determine how they hold up to the rigors of the environment. Power is provided via an multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) containing enough plutonium to provide ~110W of power. The rover also carries two lithium-ion batteries to provide additional energy during peak requirements.

Both Perseverance and Curiosity use the same CPU, a RAD750 built by BAE. The RAD750 is based on the PowerPC 750, which debuted in 1997 as the CPU inside the original iMac. Once Perseverance arrives on Mars, PowerPC will dominate CPU deployments, with 60 percent of the total Mars rover market and 100 percent of the functional Mars rovers. Is this the spacecraft equivalent of being big in Japan?

Jezero Crater. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL

In all seriousness, the reason NASA continues to send such underpowered hardware into space is due to radiation hardening. Newer CMOS processes tend to be more vulnerable than old ones, and for a rover on another planet, reliability is the top concern. We can afford to wait for Perserverance to spend a while crunching data. We can’t afford for its CPUs to be scrambled by incoming cosmic rays. Perseverance appears identical to Curiosity, with 256MB of onboard RAM, a backup BAE750 CPU in case the first fails, 2GB of onboard flash memory, 256MB of RAM, and a 256K EPROM. Clock speeds between the two rovers are identical, at 200MHz.

The night before the Perseverance launch. Credit: NASA

One major difference between the two rovers is that Perseverance has the ability to drill into Martian rocks and extract core samples. These samples can then be analyzed and stored for future retrieval in an as-yet unplanned mission. The SuperCam unit is also a significant upgrade from the ChemCam aboard Curiosity and should be capable of assessing biosignatures and making a more thorough search of the environment for signs that Mars once supported life. It’s headed for Jezero Crater, which shows all the signs of having held a substantial body of water for a long period of time, making it one of the better places to search for life.

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PlayStation 5 May Let You Leap Directly into Games

Sony and Microsoft have made it very clear that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are focused on eliminating load times. To date, most of the discussion has focused on getting rid of long in-game transition scenes. Game developers have long used transitions like long hallways or elevator rides to hide data loads. With the Xbox Series X and PS5, such moments are supposed to belong to the past.

But the PS5, at least, will apparently support another feature — the ability to leap directly into gameplay, bypassing any kind of loading screens at all. A yanked article by Gamereactor, preserved by Gematsu, stated that World Rally Championship 9 (WRC9) would have a deeplink feature allowing you to jump straight into races from the PS5 main menu. This is apparently part of the unrevealed “Activities” feature that Sony is keeping a lid on.

Gamereactor preview article for WRC 9 mentioned an unannounced #PS5 feature. Article was here but was taken offline: https://t.co/BIKFZEAhnL

Archive: https://t.co/zVtjk94ux0 pic.twitter.com/5VdNwyEPpQ

— Gematsu (@gematsucom) July 28, 2020

Is the Idea of Launching a Game Itself Obsolete?

For as long as we’ve had games, we’ve had game launchers. The idea of selecting game modes and changing options from inside a dedicated launcher screen is common to both PC and console games. Even multi-title arcade cabinets had game launchers from their earliest incarnations. The only real difference is whether the launcher runs before you start the game, or whether it runs from within the game itself.

I’m not saying logging into a game directly via launcher isn’t useful for a lot of things, mind you. If you want a central location for tweaking visual settings, changing keybindings, or using a different set of default servers, game launchers are great. But most of us only do those things when setting up the title for the first time.

This PS5 feature sounds like a kissing cousin to the Xbox capability to resume multiple games seamlessly after pausing them, though the actual mechanics would likely differ, with the Xbox possibly restoring saved states while the PlayStation 5 may just remember what tracks or levels you’ve previously unlocked and allow you to jump right back to them.

When Nintendo launched its NES and SNES Classic systems, one feature it copied from PC emulators was the ability to save state and restore a given game to exactly where it was the last time you hit the “Save State” button. This mechanic allows games that don’t support saved games to support them and gives players the ability to save right before a difficult boss fight rather than having to replay an entire level. But why should this apply only to old titles like Super Mario Bros.? What if you had the option to load your save game directly from the console dashboard (or the PC desktop), leaping directly back into the title with a double-click?

Of course, thanks to all those storage-side optimizations, the PS5 and Xbox Series X shouldn’t really have loading speed issues in the first place. But this kind of time-saving isn’t really about the handful of seconds you save in any given launch, but the time you save over the 4-6 years you might own the console. It’s interesting to contemplate how gaming might look different if level loads and save game resumes were essentially atomized in this fashion, however. Most of us only watch introduction movies a handful of times at most, and mods that stop them from playing are always popular PC-side. Giving people the option to leap directly back into the game as an expected feature could be a notable advance we see rolling out on consoles this generation.

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Konami Entering Gaming PC Market With Spendy Arespear Lineup

Konami has been making games for decades, but now it’s making gaming PCs. Konami Amusement, a subsidiary of Konami Holdings, is now accepting orders for its new line of Arespear gaming PCs. The company expects to begin shipments for the Japanese market in September, and they are decidedly not cheap.

The Arespear computers come in three different versions, all of which have the same custom “wiffleball” cases, measuring a compact 575.3 x 501.5 x 230mm. They also have a dedicated Asus Xonar XE sound card. The C300 is the base model, while the C700 and C700+ offer better specs. The C700+ is also the only one of the three with a transparent side panel.

The C300 will have respectable internals with an Intel Core i5-9400F CPU (air-cooled), 8GB of DDR4 memory, a 512GB M.2 SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650. With that GPU, you’re limited to a single DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.0b, and a DVI-D port. You’re probably thinking that sounds alright for a modest gaming PC, but the price is anything but modest. The C300 will cost 184,800 yen, which works out to $1,760.

The C300 without a window or RGB but still priced at nearly $2,000.

If you step up to the C700 Arespear, you get a water-cooled i7-9700 CPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 512 M.2 SSD, a 1TB hard drive, and an Nvidia RTX 2070 Super. You’ve got many more display options with these computers in the form of three DisplayPort 1.4 ports and an HDMI 2.0b on the video card. There is also an additional DisplayPort and HDMI on the motherboard. The C700 costs 316,800 yen ($3,016), and the C700+ is 338,800 yen ($3,226).

The only difference between the two 700-series is the window and RGB lighting on the C700+. That distinction really drives home the wild pricing. Are people going to pay $200 more just for some RGB? Probably, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. We don’t know when or if Konami Amusement, which also makes arcade games, will launch the computers in other markets.

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Rumor: TSMC Won’t Build New Capacity for Intel, Views Orders as Temporary

Intel’s decision to tap pure-play foundries like TSMC for potentially any future project has sent shockwaves through the industry. One of the biggest questions raised in the wake of the announcement is just how temporary it truly is. Intel is definitely positioning the delay as a pragmatic matter of getting its house in order, and for now, TSMC seems to agree.

According to DigiTimes, TSMC has no plans to expand its fab capacity for Intel, viewing it as a temporary customer rather than a long-term win. If you’re a fan of Intel manufacturing (or would like to be again), this is a very good sign. While Intel isn’t one of the five largest semiconductor manufacturers any longer, all of which are capable of over 1,000,000 wafer starts per month, it’s still one of the largest at an estimated 817,000 wafer starts per month. And unlike TSMC, Samsung, or GlobalFoundries, Intel uses its own capacity almost entirely for its own products.

Image by IC Insights

Further complicating the issue is the fact that Intel manufacturers the majority of its products on its leading-edge nodes, while pure-play foundry wafer starts will be spread across all of the nodes the foundry manufacturers, not concentrated in 1-2 processes. In short, the capacity gap between Intel and any foundry Intel wanted to tap to handle its manufacturing is likely to be large. TSMC is said to currently view itself as Intel’s “rescuer,” not its long-term manufacturing partner.

Intel Could Be Snared by the Same Trap That Once Caught AMD

Before AMD and Intel settled their antitrust lawsuit, AMD was under a much more restrictive x86 license than it currently holds today. One of those restrictions was the requirement to own its own fabs. AMD was not allowed to pay TSMC, UMC, or any other pure-play foundry to manufacture x86 CPUs. It had to use its own facilities. Intel, of course, is under no such restriction, but there’s a variation of this problem haunting the semiconductor stage nonetheless.

Intel’s foundries are explicitly optimized to build Intel x86 CPUs, and its CPU designs are intended for fabrication at its own foundries. This hand-in-glove engineering is the advantage of being an integrated device manufacturer (IDM), and it’s one of the reasons Intel used to give to explain its industry-leading performance. So long as Intel is building and filling its own fabs, this model works well. Shifting business to a different foundry, however, creates problems.

The fact that Intel’s fabs are so specialized means they principally have value to Intel. Every dollar that Intel invests in paying TSMC to implement a specialized product line is a dollar it isn’t investing in fixing its own fabrication technology. Every facility that TSMC brings online for Intel to use is a facility it’ll probably need to use for something else as soon as Intel can return to its own fabs.

What happens if Intel can’t return to its own fabs? This doesn’t actually fix anything in the near term. TSMC doesn’t have the capacity to absorb Intel’s entire business because 1). Intel’s business is huge, 2). Fabs take 3-5 years to build. Even if Intel wanted to dump all of its own manufacturing today and TSMC actively wanted to take over as Intel’s manufacturer, it would take years to bring up new factories or modify existing Intel fabs to meet TSMC’s new guidelines.

I wrote the other day that Intel had given itself a 24-36 month deadline to fix its manufacturing, but upon further reflection, I’m not sure that was the most accurate way to summarize the problem. Intel can’t afford to wait 24-36 months to begin making plans to move its manufacturing to TSMC or Samsung. Given the difficulty and complexity of such transitions, Intel would need to be making an announcement more like this:

“We intend to deploy our own Xnm node and will transition to TSMC for Ynm beginning in 2022 / 2023.”

It seems unlikely anything less would suffice. Intel’s foundry partner would want the assurance of a publicly announced roadmap and would need the lead time to either build or allocate capacity. Intel, in turn, would have an obligation to inform its investors and to develop plans for how it would dispose of its foundry business. Building on n-nanometer at Intel and n+1 at TSMC would also smooth the roadmap rather than forcing Intel into further delays.

Given these facts, I’d modify my own earlier statement. The fact that Intel is still committing to a late 2022 – early 2023 timeline for its 7nm CPUs shortens the window the company has to pull the trigger on a production change. Should it decide to shift to TSMC or Samsung, it would need to make that announcement within the next 12-18 months to avoid the likelihood of even larger delays. The bring-up time on new fabs is long enough that Intel would almost certainly need to either license a process node, pay TSMC directly to build a fab, or operate its fabs in tandem with TSMC to avoid severe production shortages.

I still think it’s more likely that Intel deploys its own 7nm node and moves ahead with its efforts to overtake the pure-play foundries and re-establish process leadership than that the company pulls the plug on its own IDM status. The timeline for making that decision just may be a little shorter than I initially implied.

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MIT: ‘Snowball Earth’ Came From Huge Drop in Sunlight

The last ice age on Earth ended about 11,000 years ago, but that was just a few flurries compared to so-called Snowball Earth scenarios. Scientists believe Earth experienced several of these periods when the entire surface was covered by ice and snow. New research from MIT points to a potential mechanism for Snowball Earth events, and that could help explain the development of complex life. It may also impact the search for exoplanets around other stars.

An ice age is simply a period during which global temperature drops sufficiently for polar ice caps and alpine glaciers to expand. A Snowball Earth is on a completely different level, and that’s made it difficult to identify causes. Researchers have long assumed that it has something to do with a reduction in incoming sunlight or drop in retained global heat, but the MIT team points specifically to “rate-induced glaciations” as the primary cause.

The findings suggest that all you need for a Snowball Earth is a sufficiently large drop in solar radiation reaching the planet’s surface. Interestingly, the modeling done by graduate student Constantin Arnscheidt and geophysics professor Daniel Rothman show that solar radiation doesn’t have to drop to any particular threshold to trigger a Snowball Earth. Rather, it just needs to drop quickly over a geologically short period of time.

When ice cover increases, the planet reflects more light and the glaciation becomes a “runaway” effect. That’s how you get to a Snowball scenario, but luckily for us, these periods are temporary. The planet’s carbon cycle is interrupted when ice and snow cover the entire surface, and that causes a build-up of carbon dioxide. Eventually, this leads to a warming trend that breaks Earth out of a snowball period.

The research suggests a few ways solar radiation could decrease fast enough to trigger global glaciation. For example, volcanic activity could deposit particles in the atmosphere that reflect sunlight before it reaches the surface. It’s also possible that biological processes could alter the atmosphere, producing more cloud cover to block the sun.

The two suspected snowball Earth periods most likely happened around 700 million years ago, which is a notable time in the planet’s history. That’s also when multicellular life exploded in the oceans. So perhaps, Snowball Earth cleared the way for the development of complex life. It might be the same on other planets, too. We may eventually spot exoplanets around distant stars in the “habitable zone” covered in ice. That doesn’t mean they’ll be icy forever, and big things could be coming as they thaw.

Top image credit: Stephen Hudson/CC BY 2.5

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Wednesday, 29 July 2020

ET Deals: Intel Core i9-9900K $449, Dell XPS 13 7390 Intel Core i7 Laptop $999, WD Black SN750 500GB NVMe SSD $69

You can now get Intel’s powerful Core i9-9900K eight-core processor for just $419. To make things even better, it comes with a free bundle of games including Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, Total War: Three Kingdoms & Eight Princes, and The Circle.

Intel Core i9-9900K 8-Core 5GHz Processor ($419.99)

The Core i9-9900K is one of Intel’s most powerful processors with eight CPU cores that can hit speeds as high as 5GHz. The processor is also unlocked, giving you the ability to overclock it in an attempt to extract extra performance from the chip. Currently, you can get it from Newegg along with a few free games marked down from $499.00 to just $419.99.

Dell XPS 13 7390 Intel Core i7-10510U 13.3-Inch 1080p Laptop w/ 8GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD ($999.99)

Dell designed this notebook to be a high-end solution for work and travel. The metal-clad notebook features a fast Intel Core i7-10510U quad-core processor and a 1920×1080 display. According to Dell, this system also has excellent battery life and can last up to 19 hours on a single charge. Right now you can one from Dell marked down from $1,149.99 to $999.99 with promo code 50OFF699.

Ring Alarm 8-Piece Kit + Amazon Echo Show 5 ($224.99)

This eight-piece Ring Alarm kit comes with two motion sensors and three contact sensors to detect people walking around and opening doors in your home. The system also comes with a speaker that works as an alarm, a keypad for arming and deactivating the system, and a range extender to keep the various components connected. The bundle also comes with an Amazon Echo Show 5 that can be used to control the security system with voice commands. You can get it from Amazon right now marked down from $389.98 to $224.99.

Western Digital Black SN750 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD ($69.99)

This WD M.2 SSD has a capacity of 500GB and it can transfer data at a rate of up to 3,430MB/s. This makes it significantly faster than a 2.5-inch SSD, and it’s also fairly inexpensive, marked down at Amazon from $129.99 to $69.99.

Dell Vostro 15 5490 Intel Core i5-10210U 1080p 15.6-Inch Laptop w/ Nvidia MX250 GPU, 8GB DDR4 RAM and 256 M.2 NVMe SSD ($629.09)

Dell upgraded this laptop with one of Intel’s new 10th generation Core i5-10210U processors that has four CPU cores clocked at 1.6GHz. The system also comes with a fast NVMe SSD storage device and a 1080p display, which makes it well suited for just about any type of work or any non-gaming activity. That said, the system does have an Nvidia Geforce MX250 graphics chip, which can run some games with low settings, but it’s far from an ideal solution. You can get it now from Dell marked down from $1,284.29 to just $629.09 with promo code STAND4SMALL and SAVE35.

Apple Watch Series 3 38mm w/GPS & Cellular ($169.00)

Apple’s Series 3 smartwatch is powered by a dual-core S3 processor and it features a built-in GPS as well as a cellular connection. It can also keep count of your steps and display information from your smartphone. This watch originally sold for $379.00, but you can get it today from Amazon for $169.00.

Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information. For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.

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