Tech

nothing-on-phone-3a-pro-design:-“some-people-will-hate-it”

Nothing on Phone 3a Pro design: “Some people will hate it”

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Nothing, the smartphone venture from OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, is on its third generation of Android smartphones. The Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro will be officially announced on March 4, but there won’t be much left to reveal. Not only has Nothing teased the phones a few times, there’s also a new video highlighting the Nothing Phone 3a Pro’s design. In it, Nothing’s design team speaks at length about how they tried to incorporate the chunky camera module, but what they came up with is going to be divisive.

As we approach 20 years since the iPhone made touchscreen smartphones the default, the form factor is very fleshed out. Some of today’s most popular smartphones have almost reached the point of anti-design—flat, unremarkable bodies that are intended to be covered up with a case. There’s something to be said for that when most people slap a sheet of plastic on their phone and only remove it once in a blue moon. Nothing, however, designs phones with transparent panels and glowing “Glyphs” that are intended to be seen. In the case of the 3a Pro, there’s also a camera module so big it’s sure to stand out.

People generally want big screens and big batteries that don’t make phones too thick or heavy. Some components have shrunk or been dropped entirely to free up space (a moment of silence for the dearly departed headphone jack). Camera modules, however, can’t shrink infinitely. Smaller lenses and sensors have an impact on image quality, so expensive phones often have gargantuan camera arrays that can make phones top-heavy. For example, look at the Google Pixel 9 series, which features a camera bump that towers above the rest of the back.

The Nothing Phone 3a Pro isn’t a flagship device, but it’ll have more cameras than the Nothing Phone 3a that will release at the same time. The new design video shows off the phone’s three rear-facing sensors: a 50MP primary, an 8MP ultrawide, and a 50MP periscope telephoto (focal length unknown). The Nothing Phone 3a Pro has three of those glowing Glyphs on the back, framing the enormous camera module. The phone’s PCB also needed some tweaks to make room for the folded periscope assembly, which is much thicker than the other sensors.

Nothing on Phone 3a Pro design: “Some people will hate it” Read More »

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PSA: Amazon kills “download & transfer via USB” option for Kindles this week

Amazon, Amazon Kindle, DRM, ebooks, kindle, Tech / /

Later this week, Amazon is closing a small loophole that allowed purchasers of Kindle books to download those files to a computer and transfer them via USB. Originally intended to extend e-book access to owners of very old Kindles without Wi-Fi connectivity, the feature has also made it easier for people to download and store copies of the e-books they’ve bought, reducing the risk that Amazon might make changes to their text or remove them from the Kindle store entirely.

The “Download & transfer via USB” option on Amazon’s site is going away this Wednesday, February 26. People who want to download their libraries to their PC easily should do so within the next two days. This change only affects the ability to download these files directly to a computer from Amazon’s website—if you’ve downloaded the books beforehand, you’ll still be able to load them on your Kindles via USB, and you’ll still be able to use third-party software as well as the Send to Kindle service to get EPUB files and other books loaded onto a Kindle.

Downloading files to your PC through Amazon’s site is still possible, but it’s going away later this week. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

For typical Kindle owners who buy their books via Amazon’s store and seamlessly download them to modern or modern-ish Kindle devices over Wi-Fi, you likely won’t notice any change. The effects will be noticed most by those who use third-party software like Calibre to manage a local e-book library and people who have hopped to other e-reader platforms who want to be able to download their Kindle purchases and strip them of their DRM so they can be read elsewhere.

The download-and-transfer option was useful for DRM haters partly because the files are delivered in the older AZW3 file format rather than the newer KFX format. AZW3 is the file format used by those older, pre-Wi-Fi Kindles, and its DRM is generally easier to remove.

Getting your files

If you’re trying to download your Kindle purchases to your PC and Mac before the deadline, you’ll need to have a somewhat older Kindle or Fire device attached to your account. If you only have one of the 2024 Kindles associated with your Amazon account (the newest Paperwhite, the second-generation Scribe, or the Colorsoft), you won’t be offered the download option. Amazon’s site will also only allow you to download a single book at a time, which could take quite a while, depending on the size of your library.

PSA: Amazon kills “download & transfer via USB” option for Kindles this week Read More »

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As the Kernel Turns: Rust in Linux saga reaches the “Linus in all-caps” phase

Biz & IT, C language, C#, christoph hellwig, greg koah-hartman, Linus Torvalds, Linux, linux kernel mailing list, LKML, rust, Tech / /

Rust, a modern and notably more memory-safe language than C, once seemed like it was on a steady, calm, and gradual approach into the Linux kernel.

In 2021, Linux kernel leaders, like founder and leader Linus Torvalds himself, were impressed with the language but had a “wait and see” approach. Rust for Linux gained supporters and momentum, and in October 2022, Torvalds approved a pull request adding support for Rust code in the kernel.

By late 2024, however, Rust enthusiasts were frustrated with stalls and blocks on their efforts, with the Rust for Linux lead quitting over “nontechnical nonsense.” Torvalds said at the time that he understood it was slow, but that “old-time kernel developers are used to C” and “not exactly excited about having to learn a new language.” Still, this could be considered a normal amount of open source debate.

But over the last two months, things in one section of the Linux Kernel Mailing List have gotten tense and may now be heading toward resolution—albeit one that Torvalds does not think “needs to be all that black-and-white.” Greg Kroah-Hartman, another long-time leader, largely agrees: Rust can and should enter the kernel, but nobody will be forced to deal with it if they want to keep working on more than 20 years of C code.

Previously, on Rust of Our Lives

Earlier this month, Hector Martin, the lead of the Asahi Linux project, resigned from the list of Linux maintainers while also departing the Asahi project, citing burnout and frustration with roadblocks to implementing Rust in the kernel. Rust, Martin maintained, was essential to doing the kind of driver work necessary to crafting efficient and secure drivers for Apple’s newest chipsets. Christoph Hellwig, maintainer of the Direct Memory Access (DMA) API, was opposed to Rust code in his section on the grounds that a cross-language codebase was painful to maintain.

Torvalds, considered the “benevolent dictator for life” of the Linux kernel he launched in 1991, at first critiqued Martin for taking his issues to social media and not being tolerant enough of the kernel process. “How about you accept that maybe the problem is you,” Torvalds wrote.

As the Kernel Turns: Rust in Linux saga reaches the “Linus in all-caps” phase Read More »

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Robot with 1,000 muscles twitches like human while dangling from ceiling

AI, clone, Clone Robitcs, creepy, machine learning, Protoclone, robot, robot prototype, robotics, Tech / /

Plans for 279 robots to start

While the Protoclone is a twitching, dangling robotic prototype right now, there’s a lot of tech packed into its body. Protoclone’s sensory system includes four depth cameras in its skull for vision, 70 inertial sensors to track joint positions, and 320 pressure sensors that provide force feedback. This system lets the robot react to visual input and learn by watching humans perform tasks.

As you can probably tell by the video, the current Protoclone prototype is still in an early developmental stage, requiring ceiling suspension for stability. Clone Robotics previously demonstrated components of this technology in 2022 with the release of its robotic hand, which used the same Myofiber muscle system.

Artificial Muscles Robotic Arm Full Range of Motion + Static Strength Test (V11).

A few months ago, Clone Robotics also showed off a robotic torso powered by the same technology.

Torso 2 by Clone with Actuated Abdomen.

Other companies’ robots typically use other types of actuators, such as solenoids and electric motors. Clone’s pressure-based muscle system is an interesting approach, though getting Protoclone to stand and balance without the need for suspension or umbilicals may still prove a challenge.

Clone Robotics plans to start its production with 279 units called Clone Alpha, with plans to open preorders later in 2025. The company has not announced pricing for these initial units, but given the engineering challenges still ahead, a functional release any time soon seems optimistic.

Robot with 1,000 muscles twitches like human while dangling from ceiling Read More »

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Asus’ new “Fragrance Mouse” is a wireless mouse that also smells

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Aside from the customizable stink, the Fragrance Mouse is a reasonably full-featured functional PC accessory. It supports Bluetooth as well as the USB wireless dongle, three DPI levels (1,200, 1,600, and 2,400) for customizing responsiveness, and understated white and pink color options. Asus says the mouse’s switches are rated for 10 million clicks, ensuring that you will be able to smell your mouse for years to come.

We’ve emailed Asus to ask about pricing and availability and will update the article if we get a response.

Strange as it is, the Fragrance Mouse isn’t totally without precedent; in the summer of 2024, Asus released a laptop called the Adol 14 Air that included a compartment in the lid that could hold a switchable “fragrance pack.” But this laptop was only released in China, so laptop buyers in the US and other countries weren’t given an opportunity to smell it firsthand.

The Fragrance Mouse doesn’t feel like a thing that anyone was asking for, but it’s also probably something that no one thought not to ask for. And that, my friends, is the place where imagination and innovation thrive.

Asus’ new “Fragrance Mouse” is a wireless mouse that also smells Read More »

nvidia-geforce-rtx-5070-ti-review:-an-rtx-4080-for-$749,-at-least-in-theory

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti review: An RTX 4080 for $749, at least in theory

Blackwell, gaming, GeForce, NVIDIA, Reviews, rtx 50-series, rtx 5070 ti, Tech / /

may the odds be ever in your favor

It’s hard to review a product if you don’t know what it will actually cost!

The Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5070 Ti. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5070 Ti. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Nvidia’s RTX 50-series makes its first foray below the $1,000 mark starting this week, with the $749 RTX 5070 Ti—at least in theory.

The third-fastest card in the Blackwell GPU lineup, the 5070 Ti is still far from “reasonably priced” by historical standards (the 3070 Ti was $599 at launch). But it’s also $50 cheaper and a fair bit faster than the outgoing 4070 Ti Super and the older 4070 Ti. These are steps in the right direction, if small ones.

We’ll talk more about its performance shortly, but at a high level, the 5070 Ti’s performance falls in the same general range as the 4080 Super and the original RTX 4080, a card that launched for $1,199 just over two years ago. And it’s probably your floor for consistently playable native 4K gaming for those of you out there who don’t want to rely on DLSS or 4K upscaling to hit that resolution (it’s also probably all the GPU that most people will need for high-FPS 1440p, if that’s more your speed).

But it’s a card I’m ambivalent about! It’s close to 90 percent as fast as a 5080 for 75 percent of the price, at least if you go by Nvidia’s minimum list prices, which for the 5090 and 5080 have been mostly fictional so far. If you can find it at that price—and that’s a big “if,” since every $749 model is already out of stock across the board at Newegg—and you’re desperate to upgrade or are building a brand-new 4K gaming PC, you could do worse. But I wouldn’t spend more than $749 on it, and it might be worth waiting to see what AMD’s first 90-series Radeon cards look like in a couple weeks before you jump in.

Meet the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti

RTX 5080 RTX 4080 Super RTX 5070 Ti RTX 4070 Ti Super RTX 4070 Ti RTX 5070
CUDA Cores 10,752 10,240 8,960 8,448 7,680 6,144
Boost Clock 2,617 MHz 2,550 MHz 2,452 MHz 2,610 MHz 2,610 MHz 2,512 MHz
Memory Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 192-bit 192-bit
Memory Bandwidth 960 GB/s 736 GB/s 896 GB/s 672 GB/s 504 GB/s 672 GB/s
Memory size 16GB GDDR7 16GB GDDR6X 16GB GDDR7 16GB GDDR6X 12GB GDDR6X 12GB GDDR7
TGP 360 W 320 W 300 W 285 W 285 W 250 W

Nvidia isn’t making a Founders Edition version of the 5070 Ti, so this time around our review unit is an Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5070 Ti provided by Asus and Nvidia. These third-party cards will deviate a little from the stock specs listed above, but factory overclocks tend to be inordinately mild, and done mostly so the GPU manufacturer can slap a big “overclocked” badge somewhere on the box. We tested this Asus card with its BIOS switch set to “performance” mode, which elevates the boost clock by an entire 30 MHz; you don’t need to be a math whiz to guess that a 1.2 percent overclock is not going to change performance much.

Compared to the 4070 Ti Super, the 5070 Ti brings two things to the table: a roughly 6 percent increase in CUDA cores and a 33 percent increase in memory bandwidth, courtesy of the switch from GDDR6X to GDDR7. The original 4070 Ti had even fewer CUDA cores, but most importantly for its 4K performance included just 12GB of memory on a 192-bit bus.

The 5070 Ti is based on the same GB203 GPU silicon as the 5080 series, but with 1,792 CUDA cores disabled. But there are a lot of similarities between the two, including the 16GB bank of GDDR7 and the 256-bit memory bus. It looks nothing like the yawning gap between the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080, and the two cards’ similar-ish specs meant they weren’t too far away from each other in our testing. The 5070 Ti’s 300 W power requirement is also a bit lower than the 5080’s 360 W, but it’s pretty close to the 4080 and 4080 Super’s 320 W; in practice, the 5070 Ti draws about as much as the 4080 cards do under load.

Asus’ design for its Prime RTX 5070 Ti is an inoffensive 2.5-slot, triple-fan card that should fit without a problem in most builds. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

As a Blackwell GPU, the 5070 Ti also supports Nvidia’s most-hyped addition to the 50-series: support for DLSS 4 and Multi-Frame Generation (MFG). We’ve already covered this in our 5090 and 5080 reviews, but the short version is that MFG works exactly like Frame Generation did in the 40-series, except that it can now insert up to three AI-generated frames in between natively rendered frames instead of just one.

Especially if you’re already running at a reasonably high frame rate, this can make things look a lot smoother on a high-refresh-rate monitor without introducing distractingly excessive lag or weird rendering errors. The feature is mainly controversial because Nvidia is comparing 50-series performance numbers with DLSS MFG enabled to older 40-series cards without DLSS MFG to make the 50-series cards seem a whole lot faster than they actually are.

We’ll publish some frame-generation numbers in our review, both using DLSS and (for AMD cards) FSR. But per usual, we’ll continue to focus on natively rendered performance—more relevant for all the games out there that don’t support frame generation or don’t benefit much from it, and more relevant because your base performance dictates how good your generated frames will look and feel anyway.

Testbed notes

We tested the 5070 Ti in the same updated testbed and with the same updated suite of games that we started using in our RTX 5090 review. The heart of the build is an AMD Ryzen 9800X3D, ensuring that our numbers are limited as little as possible by the CPU speed.

Per usual, we prioritize testing GPUs at resolutions that we think most people will use them for. For the 5070 Ti, that means both 4K and 1440p—this card is arguably still overkill for 1440p, but if you’re trying to hit 144 or 240 Hz (or even more) on a monitor, there’s a good case to be made for it. We also use a mix of ray-traced and non-ray-traced games. For the games we test with upscaling enabled, we use DLSS on Nvidia cards and the newest supported version of FSR (usually 2.x or 3.x) for AMD cards.

Though we’ve tested and re-tested multiple cards with recent drivers in our updated testbed, we don’t have a 4070 Ti Super, 4070 Ti, or 3070 Ti available to test with. We’ve provided some numbers for those GPUs from past reviews; these are from a PC running older drivers and a Ryzen 7 7800X3D instead of a 9800X3D, and we’ve put asterisks next to them in our charts. They should still paint a reasonably accurate picture of the older GPUs’ relative performance, but take them with that small grain of salt.

Performance and power

Despite including fewer CUDA cores than either version of the 4080, some combination of architectural improvements and memory bandwidth increases help the card keep pace with both 4080 cards almost perfectly. In most of our tests, it landed in the narrow strip right in between the 4080 and the 4080 Super, and its power consumption under load was also almost identical.

Benchmarks with DLSS/FSR and/or frame generation enabled.

In every way that matters, the 5070 Ti is essentially an RTX 4080 that also supports DLSS Multi-Frame Generation. You can see why we’d be mildly enthusiastic about it at $749 but less and less impressed the closer the price creeps to $1,000.

Being close to a 4080 also means that the performance gap between the 5070 Ti and the 5080 is usually pretty small. In most of the games we tested, the 5070 Ti hovers right around 90 percent of the 5080’s performance.

The 5070 Ti is also around 60 percent as fast as an RTX 5090. The performance is a lot lower, but the price-to-performance ratio is a lot higher, possibly reflecting the fact that the 5070 Ti actually has other GPUs it has to compete with (in non-ray-traced games, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX generally keeps pace with the 5070 Ti, though at this late date it is mostly out of stock unless you’re willing to pay way more than you ought to for one).

Compared to the old 4070 Ti, the 5070 Ti can be between 20 and 50 percent faster at 4K, depending on how limited the game is by the 4070 Ti’s narrower memory bus and 12GB bank of RAM. The performance improvement over the 4070 Ti Super is more muted, ranging from as little as 8 percent to as much as 20 percent in our 4K tests. This is better than the RTX 5080 did relative to the RTX 4080 Super, but as a generational leap, it’s still pretty modest—it’s clear why Nvidia wants everyone to look at the Multi-Frame Generation numbers when making comparisons.

Waiting to put theory into practice

Asus’ RTX 5070 Ti, replete with 12-pin power plug. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Being able to get RTX 4080-level performance for several hundred dollars less just a couple of years after the 4080 launched is kind of exciting, though that excitement is leavened by the still high-ish $749 price tag (again, assuming it’s actually available at or anywhere near that price). That certainly makes it feel more like a next-generation GPU than the RTX 5080 did—and whatever else you can say about it, the 5070 Ti certainly feels like a better buy than the 5080.

The 5070 Ti is a fast and 4K-capable graphics card, fast enough that you should be able to get some good results from all of Blackwell’s new frame-generation trickery if that’s something you want to play with. Its price-to-performance ratio does not thrill me, but if you do the math, it’s still a much better value than the 4070 Ti series was—particularly the original 4070 Ti, with the 12GB allotment of RAM that limited its usefulness and future-proofness at 4K.

Two reasons to hold off on buying a 5070 Ti, if you’re thinking about it: We’re waiting to see how AMD’s 9070 series GPUs shake out, and Nvidia’s 50-series launch so far has been kind of a mess, with low availability and price gouging both on retail sites and in the secondhand market. Pay much more than $749 for a 5070 Ti, and its delicate value proposition fades quickly. We should know more about the AMD cards in a couple of weeks. The supply situation, at least so far, seems like a problem that Nvidia can’t (or won’t) figure out how to solve.

The good

  • For a starting price of $749, you get the approximate performance and power consumption of an RTX 4080, a GPU that cost $1,199 two years ago and $999 one year ago.
  • Good 4K performance and great 1440p performance for those with high-refresh monitors.
  • 16GB of RAM should be reasonably future-proof.
  • Multi-Frame Generation is an interesting performance-boosting tool to have in your toolbox, even if it isn’t a cure-all for low framerates.
  • Nvidia-specific benefits like DLSS support and CUDA.

The bad

  • Not all that much faster than a 4070 Ti Super.
  • $749 looks cheap compared to a $2,000 GPU, but it’s still enough money to buy a high-end game console or an entire 1080p gaming PC.

The ugly

  • Pricing and availability for other 50-series GPUs to date have both been kind of a mess.
  • Will you actually be able to get it for $749? Because it doesn’t make a ton of sense if it costs more than $749.
  • Seriously, it’s been months since I reviewed a GPU that was actually widely available at its advertised price.
  • And it’s not just the RTX 5090 or 5080, it’s low-end stuff like the Intel Arc B580 and B570, too.
  • Is it high demand? Low supply? Scalpers and resellers hanging off the GPU market like the parasites they are? No one can say!
  • It makes these reviews very hard to do.
  • It also makes PC gaming, as a hobby, really difficult to get into if you aren’t into it already!
  • It just makes me mad is all.
  • If you’re reading this months from now and the GPUs actually are in stock at the list price, I hope this was helpful.

Photo of Andrew Cunningham

Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti review: An RTX 4080 for $749, at least in theory Read More »

small-study-suggests-dark-mode-doesn’t-save-much-power-for-very-human-reasons

Small study suggests dark mode doesn’t save much power for very human reasons

BBC, bbc sounds, dark mode, laptop displays, lcd, light mode, oled, Purdue University, smartphone displays, Tech / /

If you know how OLED displays work, you know about one of their greatest strengths: Individual pixels can be shut off, offering deeper blacks and power savings. Dark modes, now available on most operating systems, aim to save power by making most backgrounds very dark or black, while also gratifying those who just prefer the look.

But what about on the older but still dominant screen technology, LCDs? The BBC is out with a small, interesting study comparing the light and dark modes of one of its website pages on an older laptop. Faced with a dark mode version, most people turned up the brightness a notable amount, sometimes drawing more power than on light mode.

It’s not a surprise that dark modes don’t do anything to reduce LCD power draw. However, the study—not peer-reviewed but published as part of the International Workshop on Low Carbon Computing—suggests that claims about dark mode’s efficiency may be overstated in real-world scenarios, with non-cutting-edge hardware and humans at the controls.

A 2017 MacBook Pro, a power monitor, and the brightness keys

The BBC R&D team’s small-scale brightness testing setup: a power monitor, a testing laptop (with LCD screen), and a monitoring laptop.

Credit: BBC

The BBC R&D team’s small-scale brightness testing setup: a power monitor, a testing laptop (with LCD screen), and a monitoring laptop. Credit: BBC

The R&D arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation got to wondering just how useful a dark mode was in lowering broader power consumption. So the team “sat participants in front of the BBC Sounds homepage and asked them to turn up the device brightness until they were comfortable with it,” using both the light and dark mode versions of the BBC Sounds website.

BBC website, split in half (somewhat crudely) to show its light and dark modes.

The BBC Sounds website responds to user preferences for light or dark mode. Light mode is shown here on the left, dark on the right.

Credit: Kevin Purdy/BBC

The BBC Sounds website responds to user preferences for light or dark mode. Light mode is shown here on the left, dark on the right. Credit: Kevin Purdy/BBC

Faced with the dark mode version of the site, 80 percent of participants turned the brightness up “significantly higher” than in light mode, the BBC writes in its blog post. In the study, the Beeb posits something broader:

Our findings suggest that the energy efficiency benefits of dark mode are not as straightforward as commonly believed for display energy, and the interplay between content colourscheme and user behaviour must be carefully considered in sustainability guidelines and interventions.

The study used a physical power monitor (a Tektronix PA1000) and two laptops, one for testing—a 2017 MacBook Pro with a 13.3-inch LCD display—and another for monitoring. The LCD laptop seems like a curious choice, given that dark mode’s savings are largely tied to OLED pixel technology. The BBC study suggests that, “given that most devices still use LCDs, where power consumption may not be reduced by displaying darker colours” (British spelling theirs), broad claims about energy savings may not be appropriately scaled.

Small study suggests dark mode doesn’t save much power for very human reasons Read More »

apple,-lenovo-lead-losers-in-laptop-repairability-analysis

Apple, Lenovo lead losers in laptop repairability analysis

Apple, laptops, Lenovo, Macbooks, right to repair, Tech / /

“When consumers can easily access information on how to fix devices, it makes it easier for people who can’t afford the latest and greatest technology to still be able to access the tools they need,” Nersisyan added.

Apple lags but shows some improvement

Apple’s MacBook repairability scores placed it at the lowest grade of the US PIRG’s list, save for Lenovo.

US PIRG laptop repairability scores

Credit: US PIRG

However, Apple’s overall repairability score improved from 4.3 last year to 5.1 this year. It gained a quarter of a point in this year’s score because it supported right-to-repair legislation in California within the last year. Apple’s support was a divergence from previous repairability stances from Apple, which had fought right-to-repair efforts for a decade before its about-face on California legislation starting in August 2023. Some have suggested that the change was due to Apple wanting input in legislation that, at the time, seemed likely to pass (California’s bill did eventually pass). Apple has also made notable self-repairability efforts lately, though, including launching and expanding a Self Service Repair program.

Still, Apple has room to grow, with the manufacturer earning the lowest total disassembly score (97)—besides Lenovo, whose score (14) only included one device. Apple also had the lowest disassembly average score (4.9 versus an average of 7.4) out of brands examined. Last year, Apple had an average disassembly score of 4.

In a deeper breakdown of the scores below, Apple’s disassembly scores improved compared to 2024 (9.7 versus 8), as did its parts pricing score (10.9 versus 9.8). However, parts availability declined (13.2 versus 12.8), per US PIRG.

Credit: US PIRG

Overall, Apple wasn’t able to compete with Asus and Acer, last year’s and this year’s winners. According to the report, “Asus and Acer continue to manufacture the most repairable laptops due largely to their ease of disassembly.”

Looking ahead, tariffs and other things impacting laptop availability and pricing, like the supply-chain disruptions witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, could drive demand for more easily repairable PCs.

“When [laptops and electronics] cost more or are harder to get, I’d expect shoppers to want to keep them in use for as long as possible and value their repairability,” Gutterman said.

Apple, Lenovo lead losers in laptop repairability analysis Read More »

“truly-a-middle-finger”:-humane-bricking-$700-ai-pins-with-limited-refunds

“Truly a middle finger”: Humane bricking $700 AI Pins with limited refunds

AI, HP, Tech, wearables / /

After launching its AI Pin in April 2024 and reportedly seeking a buyout by May 2024, Humane is shutting down. Most of the people who bought an AI Pin will not get refunds for the devices, which debuted at $700, dropped to $500, and will be bricked on February 28 at noon PT.

At that time, AI Pins, which are lapel pins with an integrated AI voice assistant, camera, speaker, and laser projector, “will no longer connect to Humane’s servers,” and “all customer data, including personal identifiable information… will be permanently deleted from Humane’s servers,” according to Humane’s FAQ page. Humane also stopped selling AI pins as of yesterday and canceled any orders that had been made but not yet fulfilled. Humane said it is discontinuing the AI Pin because it’s “moving onto new endeavors.”

Those new endeavors include selling off key assets, including the AI Pin’s CosmOS operating system and intellectual property, including over 300 patents and patent applications, to HP for $116 million, HP announced on Tuesday. HP expects the acquisition to close this month.

Notably, Humane raised $241 million to make its pin and was reportedly valued at $1 billion before launch. Last year, Humane was seeking a sale price of $750 million to $1 billion, according to Bloomberg.

But the real failure is in the company’s treatment of its customers, who will only get a refund if they “are still within the 90-day return window from their original shipment date,” Humane’s FAQ page says. “All device shipments prior to November 15th, 2024, are not eligible for refunds. All refunds must be submitted by February 27th, 2025.”

AI Pins “will no longer function as a cellular device or connect to Humane’s servers. This means no calls, texts, or data usage will be possible,” according to the startup, which noted that users can’t port their phone number to another device or wireless carrier. Some offline features “like battery level” will still work, Humane said, but overall, the product will become $700 e-waste for most owners in nine days.

“Truly a middle finger”: Humane bricking $700 AI Pins with limited refunds Read More »

nvidia’s-50-series-cards-drop-support-for-physx,-impacting-older-games

Nvidia’s 50-series cards drop support for PhysX, impacting older games

Batman: Arkham City, CUDA, gaming, NVIDIA, PhysX, seamus blackley, Tech, the witcher 3, Tim Sweeney / /

Nvidia’s PhysX offerings to developers didn’t always generate warm feelings. As part of its broader GamesWorks package, PhysX was cited as one of the reasons The Witcher 3 ran at notably sub-optimal levels at launch. Protagonist Geralt’s hair, rendered in PhysX-powered HairWorks, was a burden on some chipsets.

PhysX started appearing in general game engines, like Unity 5, and was eventually open-sourced, first in limited computer and mobile form, then more broadly. As an application wrapped up in Nvidia’s 32-bit CUDA API and platform, the PhysX engine had a built-in shelf life. Now the expiration date is known, and it is conditional on buying into Nvidia’s 50-series video cards—whenever they approach reasonable human prices.

Dune buggy in Borderlands 3, dodging rockets shot by a hovering attack craft just over a sand dune, in Borderlands 3.

See that smoke? It’s from Sweden, originally.

Credit: Gearbox/Take 2

See that smoke? It’s from Sweden, originally. Credit: Gearbox/Take 2

The real dynamic particles were the friends we made…

Nvidia noted in mid-January that 32-bit applications cannot be developed or debugged on the latest versions of its CUDA toolkit. They will still run on cards before the 50 series. Technically, you could also keep an older card installed on your system for compatibility, which is real dedication to early-2010’s-era particle physics.

Technically, a 64-bit game could still support PhysX on Nvidia’s newest GPUs, but the heyday of PhysX, as a stand-alone technology switched on in game settings, tended to coincide with the 32-bit computing era.

If you load up a 32-bit game now with PhysX enabled (or forced in a config file) and a 50-series Nvidia GPU installed, there’s a good chance the physics work will be passed to the CPU instead of the GPU, likely bottlenecking the game and steeply lowering frame rates. Of course, turning off PhysX entirely raised frame rates above even native GPU support levels.

Demanding Borderlands 2 keep using PhysX made it so it “runs terrible,” noted one Redditor, even if the dust clouds and flapping cloth strips looked interesting. Other games with PhysX baked in, as listed by ResetEra completists, include Metro 2033, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and the 2013 Star Trek game.

Commenters on Reddit and ResetEra note that many of the games listed had performance issues with PhysX long before Nvidia forced them to either turn off or be loaded onto a CPU. For some games, however, PhysX enabled destructible environments, “dynamic bank notes” and “posters” (in the Arkham games), fluid simulations, and base gameplay physics.

Anyone who works in, or cares about, game preservation has always had their work cut out for them. But it’s a particularly tough challenge to see certain aspects of a game’s operation lost to the forward march of the CUDA platform, something that’s harder to explain than a scratched CD or Windows compatibility.

Nvidia’s 50-series cards drop support for PhysX, impacting older games Read More »

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Acer CEO says its PC prices to increase by 10 percent in response to Trump tariffs

Acer, china tariffs, Donald Trump, PCs, Policy, Tech, Windows / /

PC-manufacturer Acer has said that it plans to raise the prices of its PCs in the US by 10 percent, a direct response to the new 10 percent import tariff on Chinese goods that the Trump administration announced earlier this month.

“We will have to adjust the end user price to reflect the tariff,” said Acer CEO Jason Chen in an interview with The Telegraph. “We think 10 percent probably will be the default price increase because of the import tax. It’s very straightforward.”

These price increases won’t roll out right away, according to Chen—products shipped from China before the tariffs went into effect earlier this month won’t be subject to the increased import taxes—but we can expect them to show up in PC price tags over the next few weeks.

Chen also said that Acer was considering moving more of its manufacturing outside of China as a result of the tariffs, something that Acer had done for some of its desktop PCs after Trump imposed similar tariffs on Chinese imports during his first term. Manufacturing systems in the US is also “one of the options,” according to Chen.

Acer CEO says its PC prices to increase by 10 percent in response to Trump tariffs Read More »