Latest news

Intel has barely gotten past the horrendous Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, and we've got some bad news for owners of Intel chips.

Processors released after 2011 have been found to have a new vulnerability called ZombieLoad, TechCrunch reports. Just like the previously mentioned vulnerabilities from last year, ZombieLoad abuses a common technology in modern processors called speculative execution.

As the name suggests, the processor speculates on what type of task might need handling next, and does the calculations to be either used or discarded. A few bugs associated with this feature allows ZombieLoad to capture data straight from the processor.

Essentially, ZombieLoad floods the processor with data which makes the CPU turn to its microcode in order to not crash. According to Intel, the exploit uses four different bugs to deliver the attack. One of these bugs allows full access to data processed by the microcode, even though usually it is unavailable to normal applications.

The Chinese company OnePlus is primarily known of course for its flagship killing smartphones, but the company has been also developing headphones, or earbuds to be more exact, for a few years.

After couple iterations of wired buds, the company reveled last year their first wireless offering, the Bullets Wireless. Yesterday they announced that there's an upgraded version.

New Bullets Wireless 2 headphones offer an updated design, improved charging, and better sound quality.

The design still features the neck strap with controls, but the plastic buds have been upgraded to sturdier metal design. They still have the Magnetic Control feature which allows pausing and resuming music by attaching or detaching the buds using magnets.

Bullets Wireless 2 also now have the same Warp Charge technology from freshly announced OnePlus 7 Pro, which allows 10 hour charge with just 10 minutes of charging.

When it comes to sound, OnePlus says that a trio of drivers – two Knowles balanced armature drivers for high frequencies and one dynamic Goerlek driver for lower frequencies &ndahs; provide an improved sound quality.

Here we review Roomba's most affordable robot vacuum cleaner, Roomba 605, which is also sold as Roomba 606 and Roomba 620. The only difference reflected by the various model numbers is the color of the unit; the hardware is exactly the same otherwise.

The model we are reviewing is the Roomba 606, which is black. Roomba 605 comes in white.

Roomba 605 is the cheapest model available (from the current line) from the American firm iRobot, which has made a wide range of robot vacuum cleaners for twenty years.

For our test, we let the Roomba 606 loose in a 70m2 (753.4ft2) apartment as its only floor cleaning tool for a couple of months. This period of time gives us a good indication of how tidy this cleaner can keep a typical apartment long-term.

Additionally, we tested the vacuum cleaner for a few week at another location that provided a myriad of capets and other obstacles for it to manouver around.

Roomba 605 / Roomba 606 - Let's examine the device!

Roomba 605/606 sales package

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus has today released their newest lineup of smartphones. The company's first series of smartphones includes the regular OnePlus 7, a larger and better OnePlus 7 Pro, and their first 5G smartphone, OnePlus 7 Pro 5G.

All OnePlus 7 models include the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 system-on-a-chip, from six up to 12 gigabytes of RAM, new faster UFS 3.0 storage (128/256GB), Dolby Atmos stereo speakers, in-screen fingerprint sensor, improved camera with UltraShot feature, and improved fast charge with Warp Charge.

The regular OnePlus 7 (pictured above) features a double camera with a 48 MP Sony IMX586 -sensor and a secondary 5 MP camera. The camera is optically and electronically stabilized and features a f/1.7. However, the regular model won't be officially available in the United States.

With the OnePlus 7 Pro (pictured below) you'll instead get a triple camera that got the second best result on DxOMark with a score of 111. In addition to the 48 MP sensor you'll get a 16 MP wide angle camera and a 8 MP telephoto camera with 3x zoom.

The display of Pro is larger, sharper and smoother. The 6.67-inch and QHD resolution AMOLED diplay is the first OnePlus display to feature 90hz refresh rate.

Most of the computer fans know the legendary Commodore 54. Even those of you who are too young to personally experience machine might have heard of the computer. But very few have ever heard about Commodore 65, C=64's planned successor.

Commodore, noticing that during the era of 16-bit computers, their old cashcow, Commodore 64 was quickly losing its sales, set up a team to milk the last pennies out of the decade-old Commodore 64. They built a backwards compatible Commodore 65 that added features similar to Commodore's other computer line, Amiga.

C=65 had a built in 3.5" disk drive, high-resolution graphics and CPU at 3.54MHz (C=64 ran at 1MHz) with 128kB of memory (expandable to 1MB) - and most importantly, a C=64 mode, allowing the computer to run C=64's massive software and game selection. Commodore 65 never made it to the market and only appx. 50 - 200 prototypes were ever built.

After Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, its assets were liquidated and the prototypes were sold all across the world.

Since those days, the Commodore 65 has begun one of the most sought-after collectibles in the computing history and some of those few prototypes tend to appear in various online markets for sale. We reported of one such incident 2 years ago when an "almost complete" Commodore 65 was on sale at eBay.

Google has over a billion users around the world every month, and their reach is increasing with every Android phone sold, every search made, and every Android app launched.

One of the ways Google takes advantage of their massive reach is to follow their users, and what they do, to gain valuable data. Now that they are in the pockets of a billion users, they can also literally follow where people around.

Fortunately there's a fairly easy way to block Google from tracking your movements via your devices and apps. First head to Activity controls.

If the direct link doesn't work, you'll have to head to Google's Privacy Checkup page.

After pressing Start Now, you'll be presented with options to Personalize your Google experience. The second option should be Location History, under which you can find a link to Manage Location History. Press the link.

This will open the map view of your locations over time. Below it you'll find another link to Manage Location History, press the link. Now you should be in the Activity controls page.

Samsung's first ever folding smartphone was unveiled in San Fransico's Unpacked 2019 earlier this years, and the company promised a fairly rapid launch schedule.

They of course wanted to be the first to the market, as Huawei was looming in the background with their own upcoming foldable phone. Samsung got the devices in reviewers hands pre-launch, and everything seemed good – for a day or two.

The issues with the display were quickly uncovered, and while at first Samsung kinda brushed them off, soon they had to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, called back all devices, and delayed the original launch that was planned for April 26.

Samsung has already polled the preorderers whether they would still be interested in the device, and you could cancel the order if that wasn't the case. Samsung also said that the order would be automatically cancelled if they couldn't deliver on it by the end of May.

Well, we aren't quite at the end of May yet, but people have been questioning for a reason whether Samsung will be able to fix the phone in less than a month, or if even they know when this device is slated for a re-launch.

Google has some massive services that reach hundreds of millions or even billions of people. Whether it is the all-encompassing search or Gmail, millions upon millions of people around the world use them.

Where the Mountain View, CA, company hasn't managed to succeed yet? Paid entertainment.

Bloomberg reports that Google's and YouTube's paid music streaming services, Google Play Music and YouTube Music, have only 15 million subscribers, combined.

This is a far cry from market leading Spotify, who've just passed 100 million paid subscribers, and even from the U.S. #1 Apple Music, which is north of 50 million and racking up record profits to Cupertino.

YouTube, or Google as a whole, hasn't revealed their subscription figures officially, so this might be a little off. However, it doesn't seem that Google is even in the same ballpark with the market leaders.

Semiconductor giant Intel has spoken about their timeline for upcoming chip process technologies. In a call during their Investor Day, Intel revealed plans about 7 nm chips in fairly near future.

Intel has been stuck developing chips with larger processes which hinders both efficiency and power consumption. However, while 9th gen chips are still developed with 14 nm technology, this year Intel promises to start delivering 10 nm processors.

The company's first 10 nm Cannon Lake chips were already revealed in 2017 but they haven't been produced to mass market.

The company's 10 nm technology will be followed by upgraded 10nm+ and 10nm++ technologies, after which the company is readying the launch of their first 7 nm chips.

The upcoming 7 nm technology is still a little ways off, but Intel intends to launch the process in 2021 alongisde 10 nm++. In the following two years they are going to upgrade the process to 7 nm+ and 7nm++.

The bigger density chips usually end up in the most mobile devices first, since they provide greater power to area ratio and improve upon power consumption.

However, they are harder and more expensive to make, so on platforms where surface area is not necessarily a problem, they might not be available among the first. One of the 7 nm "lead products" in 2021 will be Intel's general-purpose GPU, or GPGPU.

Google officially announced yesterday their newest Android version, Android Q. The tenth version of Google's mobile operating system is still in beta, but fortunately for the ones dying to try it, they've also expanded the beta program to more devices than ever.

This time around Google has made the beta version available to a total of 23 phones, all the Pixel phones plus 15 others. Own one of those devices and you'll be able to try out the early versions of Android Q no questions asked, well except to agree to beta program TOS.

Here are the 23 phones:

At this point Android Q is in the third beta stage. In early June, Google has promised the fourth beta and the final release is set for September.

If you have one of the aforementioned phones, and you want to jump right in at this stage, all you need to do is to head over to Google's developer preview site. You'll find a list of partners and under each of them a GET THE BETA link.

Google's 2014 acquisition of Nest for $3.2 billion hasn't turned out to be the most profitable of deals, as of yet at least. Now the search giant is trying to blow some additional wind to Nest's sails with some of their Google Home line of devices.

Yesterday at their annual Google I/O developer conference Google announced that they'll move Google Home Hub products under the umbrella of Nest. From now on Google Home Hub is called Google Nest Hub.

However, this doesn't seem to affect the smart speakers, Google Home and Google Home Max. Those still seem to retain their names. Perhaps new and upgraded smart speakers, if and when they'll arrive, will be renamed accordingly.

Nonetheless, not only did they rename some older devices, they also introduced a brand new Nest Hub Max. This new smart display is essentially a bigger and better version of Nest Hub (formerly Google Home Hub).

Instead of a 7-inch display it has a 10-inch one and it now comes with a camera that can be used for video calling with smart focusing and supports gesture controls, like pausing music by raising your hand up.

The camera also enables face recognition and multiple users. This means that walking up to the display it will recognize the user and show only information relevant and privy to that specific person.

Yesterday Google announced some new products and services at their annual developer conference Google I/O. Alongside announcing official the tenth Android version, Android Q, they also first time ever announced a new Pixel device at the event.

As expected, Google unveiled the new Pixel 3a and its bigger sibling Pixel 3a XL. This is the cheaper option to traditional Pixel line of smartphones.

The phones have the same OLED screens (although in 5.6 and 6" sizes), similar body design albeit polycarbonate, same 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, and same amazing camera as last year's Pixel 3, but instead they are powered by a lesser Snapdragon 670 chipset. With the less powerful processor, however, also comes less expensive price tag.

Pixel 3a starts at $399 and Pixel 3a XL at $479.

Pixel 3a also has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, Active Edge support, and a 3000 or 3700 mAh battery that supports 18W fast charge and Google promises will last all day and night, or up to 30 hours.

Both the models ship with Android 9.0 Pie but will be among the first devices to get the Android Q. You can also already get the Android Q for them in beta form.

It comes in three color options: Just Black, Clearly White, and Purple-ish. You can get it in the U.S. via Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, US Cellular, Spectrum Mobile (Charter), C Spire and Google Fi, and is available starting immediately.

Google's developer conference Google I/O started yesterday with keynote from CEO Sundar Pichai and myriad of announcements from his fellow execs.

One of the most anticipated annoucements was of course Android Q, the tenth version of the company's mobile operating system. While the final version of the OS will be released in the fall alongside likely the next-gen Pixel phones, there's already a beta version to try out and see for yourself what the new Android has to offer.

Most of the new features are already built-in to the beta version, although it might not work perfectly.

Android Q is going to focus a lot on privacy and security, which isn't a sexy theme but it is important, and is often under the hood and for no one to really see. There are, however, also nice security features like updates that can be installed without rebooting the device.

You'll get support for foldable devices, including screen continuity between multiple different sized displays on the device, which are said to come out of multiple manufacturers this year, we'll see if Samsung is still one of them.

Rather obviously Android Q also brings along a native 5G support, as many of the first 5G phones will enter the market later this year or early next year.

A long time ago it was thought that Microsoft would battle against Linux for the world domination in a platform war of ages. That epic war never happened, of course, at least not how many of us imagined, and nowadays Linux and Microsoft get along fairly well.

Microsoft has been slowly warming up to Linux over the years, and now they were apparently ready, for the first time, to bring a full Linux kernel to a Windows 10 release.

That is right, the company revealed at their Build 2019 developer conference that new development versions of Windows 10 will feature a full-fledged Linux kernel within.

According to Microsoft, Windows 10 will feature in-house built LTS release of Linux kernel, which is v4.19. Later it will continue updating to newer LTS versions bringing the most up-to-date features for developers.

Linux kernel is part of update to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) which has previously supported Linux development on Windows but not featured a full Linux kernel.

The company also announced the new Microsoft Terminal, which is a combination of Command Prompt (cmd), PowerShell as well as WSL.

Robots are becoming more common in regular households, and robot vacuums are probably the most common example of that. While they are not even close to intelligent, or humanoid, they are somewhat relatable with all their faults.

They are like clumsy animals that instead of leaving things around, collect and clean them. The manufacturers have realized this too, and allow users to name their pet robots.

While some argue that making robots more relatable might be the biggest problem we do with artificial intelligence, some do want their robots to be more human-like.

One of these people is robotics YouTuber Michael Reeves who has finally filled his promise of delivering a screaming Roomba. So what would a Roomba that feels pain for every wall or furniture collision sound like?

Here's your chance to indulge into that experience. For those who can't play the video and are wondering, it sounds like someone perpetually stubbing their toe.

Hilarious? Yes. More relatable? Probably. Also probably a bad idea in many ways.

Fortunately if you still want to give your own try, you only need a Roomba, a Raspberry Pi, and a speaker of sorts.