The season 27 Mirrorball champion insisted that Julianne would ‘get no slander from’ him despite saying he ‘was not the best dancer’ on the show.
The season 27 Mirrorball champion insisted that Julianne would ‘get no slander from’ him despite saying he ‘was not the best dancer’ on the show.
Here’s a summary of what happened at the ‘Love Island USA’ reunion, from reconciliations to shocking reveals.
Here’s a summary of what happened at the ‘Love Island USA’ reunion, from reconciliations to shocking reveals.
It’s back to school season, which means many students and/or their parents are on the lookout for a laptop on which they can get schoolwork done. Depending on your needs, though, a tablet may do the trick (but you’ll likely still want a keyboard attachment for extended typing sessions). Tablets offer flexibility in terms of study and play, and it’s pretty hard to go wrong with a recent iPad.
As luck would have it, the 13-inch iPad Air M2 has dropped to its lowest price since Apple released it in May. The blue and space gray models are available for $729. That’s $70 off the regular price.
While it’s not the most powerful iPad around — the latest iPad Pro is the first device to use Apple’s M4 chips — the M2 iPad Air is a great option. It’s our recommendation for the best iPad for most people and we gave it a score of 91 in our review.
The M2 iPad Air delivers a great balance of performance, features and price. The 13-inch model has a brighter screen than its 11-inch sibling, and more screen real estate to get things done on. However, the 60Hz refresh rate is not as smooth as the 120Hz OLED panel on the latest iPad Pro.
The 8GB of included RAM and 128GB of base storage should be enough for basic tasks. The iPad Air will run for up to 10 hours on a single charge too.
There are cheaper and less-powerful iPads, but you’ll be futureproofed to a certain degree with this one. AI-driven Apple Intelligence features will be available on the M2 iPad Air when Apple rolls those out later this year, and you can play some modern games such as Death Stranding and the Resident Evil 4 remake on the tablet (there’s always the option to stream games from the cloud or local hardware too). One other feature we appreciate about this model is that Apple finally moved the front-facing camera to the horizontal edge, which makes much more sense for FaceTime or video calls in landscape mode.
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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-13-inch-ipad-air-m2-drops-to-a-record-low-price-143504371.html?src=rss
The Prime Video series starring Emily Bader was canceled less than two months after season 1 was released.
The Prime Video series starring Emily Bader was canceled less than two months after season 1 was released.
What if you could take the benefits of solid-state speaker drivers — specifically, their extreme thinness and lack of moving parts — and bring them to cooling fans? That’s what xMEMS aims to do with its new XMC-2400 µCooling (microcooling) chip. It’s a 1mm-tall solid-state fan on a chip that can actively cool extremely thin devices like smartphones and tablets. Based on the same MEMS (Micro-electromechanical systems) technology as the company’s upcoming ultrasonic driver inside headphones, the micro-cooling chip could lead to slim devices that are less prone to overheating and capable of better sustained performance.
Consider this real-world example: If my fan-less M2 MacBook Air had xMEMS’ XMC-2400 chips installed, it wouldn’t have died on me while I was working in the sun at Apple’s WWDC last year. It’s not hard to imagine other potential solutions: Headphones that can cool down your ears; gaming controllers that can keep your paws from getting sweaty; tablets that can eke out even more speed from their hardware.
In earbuds like Creative’s Aurvana Ace, xMEMS’ solid-state drivers excelled at reproducing mid- and high-range, but they were paired together with a traditional bass driver to handle low-end frequencies. xMEMS’ next-generation solid-state driver, dubbed Cypress, holds its own across all frequencies—-and it’s that same air-pushing power that the new micro-cooling chip relies on.
According to Mike Housholder, xMEMS VP Marketing and Business Development, the XMC-2400 µCooling chip uses ultrasonic modulation to create pressure pulses for air movement. It weighs less than 150 milligrams and can move “up to 39 cubic centimeters of air per second with 1,000 Pascals of back pressure,” xMEMS says. Since it’s a solid-state device, there aren’t any moving parts like rotors or fins to fail, and its thin design means it can be placed directly atop heat-generating components like APUs and GPUs. It’s also resistant to dust and water damage with an IP58 rating.
xMEMS isn’t the only company pursuing ultra-thin, solid-state cooling. Frore’s AirJet Mini and Mini Slim can both generate 1,750 Pascals of back pressure, but they’re also larger and thicker than the XMC-2400, measuring 2.8mm and 2.5mm thick, respectively. Frore showed off its technology by hacking it into a MacBook Air, and according to The Verge, it pushed out heat and led to improved sustained performance.
As Housholder puts it, xMEMS’ technology is more flexible since its far thinner, and manufacturers can also choose from side- and top-venting options. He expects the XMC-2400 to cost under $10 per chip, and that “four to five” existing partners will get their hands on it by the end of the year. Other manufacturers can snag it in the first quarter of 2025. xMEMS’ fabrication partners, TSMC and Bosch, can easily switch from building its speakers today to constructing micro-cooling chips tomorrow, Housholder says. There’s no need to change equipment or production lines.
As devices like the iPad Pro juggle extreme thinness with powerful performance, the need for some sort of ultra-thin active cooling solution is clear. We can’t escape physics, after all—that’s something I learned when my MacBook Air died on Apple’s own campus. While we still need to see the xMEMS micro-cooling chip in action to form any sort of judgment, theoretically, it could end up being indispensable in the future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/this-1mm-fan-on-a-chip-could-put-active-cooling-inside-ultra-thin-gadgets-130014002.html?src=rss
A game developer called Amazing Seasun Games is demonstrating NVIDIA’s Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) technology through its upcoming multiplayer mecha game Mecha BREAK at Gamescom this year. NVIDIA unveiled ACE at Computer 2023, presenting it as a “custom AI model foundry service” that developers can use to make their games more interactive. Specifically, it will allow players to interact with NPCs without the constraints of pre-programmed conversations and will be able to give them appropriate responses.
When NVIDIA launched the technology, it showed a player talking to an NPC called Jin at a ramen shop. The player asked how the character was, and Jin was able to respond naturally to tell them about his worries about his city’s rising crime rates. NVIDIA said the developer will use its technology to bring Mecha BREAK’s “characters to life and provide a more dynamic and immersive gameplay experience on GeForce RTX AI PCs.”
The chipmaker also said that more developers are incorporating ACE into their creations. Perfect World Games, a Chinese developer, is using the technology to power its demo for Legends. In that game, or at least the demo of it, a character is able to identify people and objects in the real world through the computer’s camera, thanks to ChatGPT-4o.
In addition to the ACE demo in Mecha BREAK, NVIDIA has also announced that PC Game Pass access on GeForce NOW will become seamless starting on August 22. Players will only have to link their Xbox profile once to be able to easily stream Game Pass titles in the future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nvidias-ace-virtual-human-tech-is-making-its-way-into-an-actual-game-130055827.html?src=rss
Waymo’s self-driving cars no longer honk when near each other, Waymo’s Director of Product and Operations Vishay Nihalani said yesterday when he appeared on software engineer Sophia Tung’s livestream. The vehicles were spotted honking at each other a few weeks ago, prompting Waymo to issue a software patch.
As reported by NBC Bay Area, residents living near the parking lot full of Waymo taxis reported that despite the patch going live, the taxis still honked at each other. Tung, who lived near the idling taxis, set up her live stream to capture the cacophony of honking vehicles.
No good stream is complete without a soundtrack, and Tung’s stream included lo-fi music in the vein of the ubiquitous “LoFi Girl” on YouTube. The title, “Self Driving Taxi Depot Shenanigans To Relax/Study To,” was an obvious tribute to the LoFi Girl channel. (And yes, she had permission to use the music.) Despite a fix being pushed out, the stream captured the cars continuing to honk at 4AM this past Saturday.
Nihalani joined the stream to speak to Tung about the ongoing honking. According to the director, the cars’ honking was an intentional feature for taxis cruising on public roads to avoid collisions, but honking at each other while idling in the parking lot was never intentional. The taxis have now all been updated to solve the issue.
The Waymo service is available for those living in San Francisco, Phoenix, and 79 square miles of Los Angeles, stretching from Santa Monica to Downtown. In May, the company announced that its taxis were making 50,000 paid trips per week. Back in San Francisco, though, you can still tune in to Tung’s chill livestream of a parking lot — just without the honking.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/waymo-director-says-the-companys-cars-wont-honk-at-each-other-anymore-132812747.html?src=rss
Though he only played a president on screen, Tony hosted the first night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
Though he only played a president on screen, Tony hosted the first night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
Lucasfilm has decided not to renew The Acolyte for a second season, according to Deadline and Variety. Fans won’t get to see how the show was supposed to end and won’t get to know how the plotlines its creator, Leslye Headland (Russian Doll), teased at the end of the first season would unravel. Engadget Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar called The Acolyte “Star Wars at its best” in his review, discussed how unique its premise was, and drew parallels between the series and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Deadline says the show had a strong start and garnered 4.8 million views in the first day it became available for streaming, reaching 11.1 million views after five days. However, viewership fell in the coming weeks, and its finale was reportedly the poorest performing finale for a Star Wars series.
The Acolyte was a mystery-thriller story featuring a former Jedi trainee played by Amandla Stenberg, who’s suspected of committing a series of crimes. Her former Jedi Master played by Lee Jung-jae (Squid Game) now has to find her to get to the bottom of things. Manny Jacinto, who played the smuggler Qimir, gained a lot of attention online due to this shirtless scenes. It was revealed in the later episodes that he plays a bigger role in the story, and viewers were even supposed to learn his real name in the next season.
The show is still available to watch on Disney+ for those who don’t mind not getting closure for its story.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/star-wars-the-acolyte-isnt-getting-a-second-season-120033350.html?src=rss
The next entry in the Pacific Rim franchise could be an origin story for the universe, set before the events of the 2013 film by Guillermo del Toro. According to Variety, the franchise’s producer Legendary Entertainment has signed a first-look TV deal with Eric Heisserer. One of the first projects he’s developing with Carmen Lewis, his co-founder for his production company called Chronology, is a prequel series for Pacific Rim. Heisserer won several awards for his screenplay for Arrival, the Denis Villeneuve-directed sci-fi movie starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. He also wrote the script for the Netflix post-apocalyptic movie Bird Box, which starred Sandra Bullock.
It sounds like the project is still in its very early stages, so we’ll have to wait for its storyline and projected release date if it does get the green light. Seeing as it’s supposed to be the Pacific Rim origin story, though, we may get to see the first kaijus emerging from the interdimensional portal at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. We may also get to see how the first Jaegers, or the gigantic mechas controlled by human pilots to fight the alien monsters, were designed and created.
The original Pacific Rim movie was followed by Pacific Rim Uprising, its 2018 sequel film that starred John Boyega and was directed by Steven S. DeKnight. If the series pushes through, it’ll follow Pacific Rim: The Black, an anime series that streamed on Netflix in 2021 and 2021, which serves as the continuation of the two films.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/a-pacific-rim-prequel-series-is-being-developed-by-the-scriptwriter-of-bird-box-110043597.html?src=rss
