Google has essentially owned the premium Chromebook market ever since it launched the first Chromebook Pixel way back in 2013. Now, Samsung is about to dive in with its Galaxy Chromebook, which it unveiled at CES 2020. Samsung has finally announced a release date for the laptop, which starts at $1,000. You’ll be able to get the Galaxy Chromebook at Best Buy starting on April 6th.
Many Chromebook aficionados were expecting Google to refresh the Pixelbook in 2019, but the company instead announced the less expensive Pixelbook Go. Samsung worked closely with Google on the Galaxy Chromebook, and many think of it as the true successor to the 2017 Pixelbook. Not only does it have impressive specs, but the design is also reminiscent of the Pixelbook. It’ll come in an understated gray color or the lovely “Fiesta Red” seen above.
The centerpiece of Samsung’s new Chromebook is the 13.3-inch 4K OLED screen. Yes, $1,000 is objectively a lot of money to spend on a Chromebook, but this will be one of the least-expensive, high-resolution OLED laptops available. It will also have 256GB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and a 10th generation Intel Core i5 CPU. At CES, Samsung said it would have a version with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, but there’s no sign of that variant yet. Like other Samsung notebooks, the Galaxy Chromebook comes with a fingerprint sensor and a built-in stylus.
The stylus docks inside the Galaxy Chromebook when not in use.
Google has worked to improve the value proposition of Chromebooks over the years with support for Android and Linux applications. The former is included on every Chromebook out of the box, but Linux support is still in beta and requires you to jump through some hoops. Still, the additional software capabilities help to justify the powerful hardware on a device like the Galaxy Chromebook.
The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook is going to be a tough sell when other Chromebooks offer almost the same experience for much less. The Asus Chromebook Flip C434 is under $600, and the Google Pixelbook Go is $649. Samsung is probably hoping that 2017 Pixelbook owners will want an upgrade, but Google didn’t sell many of those until the prices dropped. Nevertheless, you can pick up a Galaxy Chromebook next week at Best Buy. There are no pre-orders available at this time.
A few months ago, we covered how Mathwork’s Matlab software didn’t run workloads on AMD CPUs at full speed. These products use the Intel Math Kernel Library, which will only run fully optimized code on Intel CPUs. AMD CPUs were shunted into using a different and much slower code path. Despite widespread speculation from the community that MathWorks might either be unable or unwilling to patch the issue, the company has surprised us all and fixed it.
According to NedFlanders1976 (the same individual who made the original Reddit report), MathWorks has incorporated a permanent path fix into Matlab 2020a, the latest version of its application. Essentially, Matlab now always starts in a mode that allows it to run AVX2 code on AMD CPUs. Previously, you could only force this capability by creating a System Environment Variable or a special batch file to launch the program.
Kudos to Matlab
I’d like to acknowledge and thank MathWorks for being willing to resolve this issue and for doing so quickly. I’ve had a number of conversations on this topic with my colleague David Cardinal, who has more experience than I do with the software development side of things. One of the points he made in our discussions is that these sorts of situations play out very differently from the software developer’s perspective.
Matlab performance from our 3970X review. Top scores are from a non-optimized run, bottom scores use AVX2.
Individual developers may not be aware that the Intel MKL doesn’t execute AVX2 code on non-Intel CPUs. Even if developers do know, many applications have user bases that are almost entirely Intel-based. If 90-99 percent of your customers own Intel hardware to begin with, the AVX2 codepath issue isn’t going to look very pressing. Working with Intel to maximize performance on an application with a user base that has chosen to buy Intel processors doesn’t necessarily look unfair from the software developer’s perspective. The low performance of AMD’s Bulldozer-derived CPUs made these questions moot until the launch of Ryzen, and just because AMD launched Ryzen in 2017 doesn’t mean everyone running Matlab instantly ran out and bought one.
Given that developers may not be aware of the impact of these issues, I think it’s only fair to judge them by how they address the problem rather than by assuming immediate bad faith just because the issue exists. Evaluated by these criteria, MathWorks’ response is excellent — the company fixed the issue in the next major application update. While NedFlanders1976 notes that “If you use other software including the MKL, e.g. Anaconda, SymPy, etc. along with Matlab, you actually might want to keep that system-wide variable as the new fix only applies to Matlab,” but he states that Matlab itself has been updated appropriately. MathWorks also confirmed the update to ExtremeTech in a separate discussion, even though the fix is not listed in the Matlab 2020a release notes.
There aren’t that many applications that rely on Intel’s compiler or libraries in this manner, but it’s encouraging to see MathWorks react this quickly to guarantee best performance on both Intel and AMD hardware. There’s nothing wrong with using an Intel-optimized library, but if companies are going to do so, they ought to inform their users that they do so, allowing customers to buy the best hardware for the task. Ideally, they would also work with other CPU vendors to offer optimized code paths for their architectures or take action to allow AVX2 code to run unimpeded on CPUs that support it. MathWorks has opted for this last approach and we hope other vendors in similar situations either follow its example or release alternately-optimized code paths that don’t rely on the Intel MKL when running on an AMD CPU if a different library would produce faster results.
Being a smart person does not preclude making foolish mistakes. Case in point: Australian astrophysicist Daniel Reardon. With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Reardon decided to tinker with a magnetic system that would warn people not to touch their faces. A noble idea, yes, but what followed was a comedy of errors that ended with Reardon in the hospital with four magnets stuck in his nose.
As doctors are frequently reminding us lately, touching your face can cause infection via virus particles on your hands. It’s good advice to follow, but we all absentmindedly do it from time to time. Dr. Reardon’s idea was to use a magnetic field detector and neodymium magnets to set off an alarm if the wearer’s hand got too close to their face. Reardon studies pulsars and gravitational waves, but he admits to having no particular experience with electronic circuitry. Therein lies the problem.
Reardon started by putting two small magnets inside his nostrils and two on the outside to hold them in place. This allowed him to test the magnetic field detector, moving it toward and away from his face. The fatal flaw in his plan was using powerful rare-earth magnets. He attempted to remove the magnets with another magnet, but the shape of the nostril prevents the sandwiched magnets from sliding out. As he attempted to pluck the magnets from his nose, he lost his grip and all the magnets became stuck to each other. This left Reardon with three powerful magnets in his left nostril and one in the right, all stuck together with his septum in between. “At this point, I ran out of magnets,” Reardon said.
If this happened to you (and don’t go thinking you’re too smart to get yourself in this situation—Reardon is an astrophysicist, after all), you’d probably go for pliers or tweezers to try and get the magnets out. That’s what Dr. Reardon attempted, but the magnets just magnetized the pliers, making it impossible to grab them.
Luckily, Reardon’s partner works at a Melbourne hospital and took him to the emergency room so all her coworkers could get a laugh. Dr. Reardon was a good sport about it, and the staff was able to remove the magnets. The emergency room discharge paperwork shows that Reardon denied there are any more magnets in his nose. Thank goodness. We at ExtremeTech applaud Dr. Reardon’s outside-the-box thinking.
Enjoy your games to the fullest with a blazing 240Hz monitor! In addition to its extreme refresh rate, this display features support for both FreeSync and G-Sync and a fast 1ms response time giving you a highly responsive gaming experience. Right now you can get this display from Dell marked down from $509.99 to $384.99.
Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 7 tablet features a 10th Gen Intel Core i3 processor and 4GB of RAM. Although it isn’t particularly powerful, its compact size and high-resolution display make it excellent to use while traveling. The tablet also comes with a type cover that lets you use the tablet as a PC, and the whole system weighs in at just 1.7 pounds. Best Buy is currently selling the Surface Pro 7 marked down from $959.00 to just $599.00.
It’s dangerous to go outside right now, but with a drone, you are free to explore the outside world without the risk of contracting coronavirus. This drone features a high-quality quad HD camera and it comes bundled with tons of extra accessories including a 64GB SD card, a cleaning kit, and a bag for carrying and storing the drone and equipment in. Right now you can get it from Adorama marked down from $796.29 to just $499.00.
Featured Deals
Alienware AW2521HF 24.5″ 240Hz 1ms 1080p IPS Gaming Monitor for $384.99 at Dell (list price $509.99)
DJI Mavic Mini Fly More Combo Foldable Drone with 2.7K Camera and Remote + Bonus Accessories for $499 at Adorama (list price $796.29)
Microsoft Surface Pro 7 Intel 10th Gen Core i3 12.3″ 2736×1824 Tablet with Type Cover for $599 at Best Buy (list price $959)
Alienware m17 Intel Core i7-9750H 6-core 17.3″ 1080p IPS Gaming Laptop with GTX 1660Ti for $1099.99 at Dell (use code: 50OFF699 – list price $1368.98)
There’s a lot of uncertainty around how long we’ll be self-isolating during this COVID-19 outbreak. Whether we’re hunkering down for the next couple weeks or several months, why not use this time to focus on a bit of personal development? In fact, if there’s any silver lining to this ordeal, it’s that we all have considerably more time to jump online and learn something new.
This membership plan is truly the keys to the kingdom as Integrity opens up full access to more than 600 courses, each with its own completion certificate to prove your new skills. When it comes to business and IT, good luck finding a topic that an Integrity Training course doesn’t cover, including everything from IT certifications and project management to sales and marketing.
In addition to all those categories, you’ll also be able to choose from a wide array of training geared toward preparing you to get certified with some of the world’s most popular systems and providers. If you wanted to get certified with Microsoft services, Office or Azure, you can find the training you need here. CompTIA help? Also here. PMI Project Management certification prep? Affirmative.
Meanwhile, all this training is coming from expert instructors with serious experience in their fields, each with at least 15 years of experience and multiple certifications from providers like CompTIA, Cisco, Microsoft and more.
This kind of universal access for life is usually available for $1,450, but with the current deal, it’s on sale for just $59.
Note: Terms and conditions apply. See the relevant retail sites for more information.For more great deals, go to our partners at TechBargains.com.
Ford's Dave Jacek, 3D printing technical worker, with a prototype of a 3D-printed medical face shield done at Ford’s Advanced Manufacturing Center. (Photo: Ford)
Eighty years ago, automakers called themselves the “Arsenal of Democracy” as they built bombers, tanks, and heavy trucks for World War II. Now as Ford, GM and other carmakers in the US ramp up to manufacture ventilators and even masks, they’ve been labeled the “Arsenal of Health.”
It’s possible because automakers are more than mile-long assembly lines. They also have expertise in procuring parts, they have specialized short-run assembly lines for development work, and they have 3D printers. They also have a workforce that is otherwise unoccupied since automobile manufacturing has been shut down beginning March 18. Even Tesla shut down after a short-term holdout on the part of its CEO.
In the US, 17 million motor vehicles were produced in North America last year. Ramping up production of tools for dealing with coronavirus isn’t instantaneous, so the country has been hurt by the lag between the first knowledge of coronavirus in early January and early March when life as we know it started shutting down. Early January is when US intelligence services first learned of the magnitude of problems in China and the odds of the epidemic becoming a pandemic.
Medtronic ventilator. (Photo: Medtronic)
General Motors says it will work with Ventec Life Systems of Washington State “as soon as April” to build 10,000 ventilators a month at an electrical components factory in Kokomo, Indiana. The plan is to produce up to 200,000 ventilators, which would mean production through the end of 2021. Separately, GM at a Warren, Michigan facility will start producing masks in early April, ramping up to 50,000 a day; GM says it could later double the number.
Ford will work with GE Healthcare to do additional production of GE ventilators, meanwhile developing a simplified ventilator design that Ford would build. Similarly, Ford will partner with 3M to build additional 3M respirators and, again, designing a simpler respirator it would build. And it is designing and tooling for face shields that could be turned out 100,000-per-week at a Michigan plant.
Tesla said it will reopen its idled Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo, NY, to produce Medtronic ventilators. The factory has been an alternate source of pride and anger upstate. The so-called Buffalo Billion, a state grant of that amount, went to create high-tech factories. Much of it went to a factory that was, in alliance with Panasonic, to build solar panels through Tesla subsidiary SolarCity. Then it was repurposed to build lithium-ion battery cells for Teslas, and Tesla had a deadline of April to show the factory was up and running, building batteries in quantity. Now, it’s being repurposed, at least for the time being, to build ventilators.
The major makers of ventilators, pre-coronavirus, have capacity to build ventilators in the hundreds of units per month. Now they’re ramping to double or quadruple production but the needs are in the tens of thousands per month. A hundred thousand units in April would still not meet the spike in demand.
Praise, Criticism, Praise From the White House
General Motors has been alternately praised and criticized by President Trump. Friday he said he was invoking the Defense Production Act to produce ventilators. A White House statement Friday said:
Our negotiations with GM regarding its ability to supply ventilators have been productive, but our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal course. GM was wasting time. Today’s action will help ensure the quick production of ventilators that will save American lives.
Other reports have said GM already had the project in motion and that it was unclear if the president had invoked DPA before Friday. At several news conferences, reporters tried to get the president to say if he earlier had invoked DPA. At Friday’s event, the president talked in the same sentence about getting “General Motors” to make ventilators and then referring to “General Electric.” That was the point where he spoke of $2 billion in relief funds then said $2 trillion. (The Coronavirus Aid Package, or stimulus, is for $2 trillion.)
Blacksmiths, not watchmakers: B-24 production at Ford Willow Run (MI) plant in World War II. (Photo via Wikipedia)
History of Repurposed Auto Factories
The automakers and Michigan media love “Arsenal of Health” because it harks back to World War II and the “Arsenal of Democracy.” In early 1942, the US ended auto production and turned to build weapons of war. One of the greatest advantages the US and the Allies held over the Axis powers was its ability to vastly outproduce armaments as well as food and clothing.
The automakers also reveled in their ability to produce complex weapons (tanks) and even more complex weapons (bombers) when the aviation industry doubted Ford, GM, and other carmakers had the skill. James Dutch Kindelberger, then-president of North American Aviation (P-51 Mustang and other planes), ridiculed the idea that mere auto factory workers at Ford’s Willow Run, Michigan, plant could build an 18-ton aircraft such as the B-24 Liberator. (A 3,000-pound car of the 1930s had about 15,000 parts. The B-24 had 450,000.)
“You can’t expect a blacksmith to make a watch overnight,” Kindelberger famously said. He was wrong. By war’s end, four genuine aircraft company factories run by Consolidated Aircraft, Douglas Aircraft, and North American Aviation turned out 9,808 Liberators, while Ford’s mile-long factory (included a turntable and 90-degree turn halfway through) built 8,465, each with four Buick-built, 1,200-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp engines.
Now, it’s the automakers’ turn again, including the ones who got a billion-dollar bailout a decade ago.
Top image: Ford’s Dave Jacek, 3D printing technical worker, with a prototype of a 3D-printed medical face shield done at Ford’s Advanced Manufacturing Center. (Photo: Ford)
End users are waking up to the idea that AI-based products can demonstrate practical use cases for ordinary people. About a month ago, I covered my early work upscaling Deep Space 9 for the modern era — and I’m not the only one working on this sort of project. I was inspired by the work of CaptRobau back in 2019, and now a new individual has launched a project of his own, this time to remaster Star Trek: Voyager.
Reddit user theboomsterz remastered the TV show using Topaz Gigapixel AI initially before switching to Topaz Video Enhance AI. He’s published a couple of clips to show the net effect, and it’s interesting to see them now that I’ve been working on DS9 for the past few months. One bit that theboomsterz states in his Reddit thread is that he’s run some of these episodes through the application more than once. I admit, I haven’t tried that, but there is a theoretical method for doing so — Topaz VEAI has recently added the ability to run a video file through without upscaling it, in order to remove noise and other visual artifacts. I haven’t tested the impact of running it 3-4x in a row, though.
Here’s a second clip. This clip implies that Voyager suffers from the same problem Deep Space 9 does — namely, it’s quite dark. I’ve been collaborating with a few interested readers who wanted to contribute to the Deep Space 9 project by looking for solutions to this issue.
It’s great to see more fans taking up this kind of work. ExtremeTech, again, does not condone piracy or working from downloaded torrents — if you want to perform this kind of upscaling work, you should work from the original DVD source — if only because, believe me, you’re going to want every single bit of detail you can scrape out of these DVDs. It doesn’t amount to nearly as much as you might hope.
The big question, of course, is whether these various fan efforts have a chance in hell of persuading Paramount to actually do the job itself. The answer to that is probably no. I really hate to type that, because Paramount is capable of doing some absolutely stunning work. Here’s a clip from the DS9 episode Sacrifice of Angels that Paramount remastered for the What We Left Behind DS9 documentary.
Nothing anyone is going to be able to do with source footage is going to approach this kind of fidelity, and each series of ST brings it own challenges. Voyager was apparently filmed in variable frame rate, which theboomsterz discusses as a challenging issue to deal with. I’ve been grappling with some issues myself, but I’ll drop an update on my own progress into a separate story.
Feature image from the first upscaled video clip posted above. Video by theboomsterz.
