Philips 40W Equivalent Candelabra LED review – CNET

The Good You won’t be able to dial the light down, but this non-dimmable candelabra LED from Philips offers sufficient brightness and efficiency with adequate light quality at the lowest price of any candelabra LED we tested.

The Bad The bulb wasn’t a standout in any of our tests, and its 11,000-hour lifespan is the shortest of any of the bulbs we tested.

The Bottom Line At just over three bucks per bulb, and with no significant weakness aside from the lack of dimmability, this candelabra LED is a legitimate value pick.

The non-dimmable 40W equivalent candelabra LED from Philips.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

What’s the difference between a non-dimmable LED and a dimmable LED that you’d never want to dim?

Answer: about five or six bucks.

At least, it is if you’re talking about candelabra LEDs. After eighteen hours of tests, I couldn’t find a single dimmable option that dimmed without flickering. The average price of those dimmable bulbs? A little over nine dollars. Each.

That makes the explicitly non-dimmable candelabra LED from Philips — which sells in a $10 three-pack at Home Depot — a pretty appealing option. You won’t be able to dial the light down, but it does offer sufficient brightness, efficiency, and light quality. It’s nothing special, but at a few bucks per bulb, it really doesn’t have to be.

The non-dimmable candelabra LED from Philips didn’t win any of our performance tests, but it didn’t lose any of them, either. At 322 lumens, it offers brightness that’s just below average, but high enough to earn a passing grade as a 40W equivalent. At a power draw of 4.5 watts, it’s putting that brightness out at about 71.6 lumens per watt. In terms of efficiency, that’s almost the exact average for the entire candelabra LED category.

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Philips also found the middle of the pack in our thermal management tests, where we test to see how much heat affects each bulb’s performance. After switching it on in our integrating sphere and waiting ninety minutes, the brightness had flat-lined at about 86 percent. Though not the impressive 92.4 percent we saw from a $7 EcoSmart bulb, it’s still an acceptable result, and good enough for fifth place out of eleven bulbs tested.

Virgin Media continues to take on Netflix with MMA drama Kingdom exclusive

After exclusively bringing Ash vs Evil Dead to the UK, Virgin Media continues to take on the likes of Netflix and Amazon Video by offering a new series you can only get through its paid TV service.

Mixed martial arts drama Kingdom has been secured by Virgin Media as an exclusive for its TV customers.

The first two seasons of Endemol Shine International’s TV show will be available for Virgin TV XL customers to watch at no extra cost on its on demand platform. The first six episodes will be available from 1 April with new episodes to be added each week thereafter.

The final episode of season one will be available with the first episode of season two, joining the both together for fans.

Kingdom stars Frank Grillo as a retired MMA fighter, now trainer, and former boy band member of the Jonas Brothers, Nick Jonas, as his son and upcoming fighter.

“We want to bring our customers something distinctive which they won’t otherwise see on British TV. Kingdom ticks all of these boxes and I know our customers are going to love it,” said David Bouchier, chief digital entertainment officer at Virgin Media.

“We’ve got huge plans for Virgin TV this year and there’s no better way to start than with a Kingdom-sized roundhouse kick.”

Sonos announces layoffs as the company realigns for the future of music

Sonos CEO John MacFarlane announced in a blog post on the company website that changes will be occurring at the home audio manufacturer. The main highlight of said changes involves the layoff of some Sonos employees as the company better positions itself for the future of music.

MacFarlane mentions both music streaming and voice-connected speakers available from both Amazon and Google, noting that the company will invest in these areas to ensure Sonos remains competitive in the long term. It’s no longer deemed feasible for Sonos to focus so heavily on media fans who have massive offline libraries.

“Sonos is taking the long view in how best to bring voice-enabled music experiences into the home. Voice is a big change for us, so we’ll invest what’s required to bring it to market in a wonderful way. Our mission is to fill every home with music. I start every day by asking myself how we can do that better, and how we can serve our music lovers better now and over the long haul. We know the future is one where paid streaming and voice control play significant roles, and we’re committed to running a sustainable, profitable business so that we can fund innovation in these and other areas for decades to come.”

It’s always uneasy to read about anyone losing their job and we wish the Sonos employees who will be migrating elsewhere all the best in the future. That said, we’re also fairly stoked to see what the company has planned for future hardware releases, with regards to tighter integration with streaming services and voice commands.

You could be watching Star Wars 8 in your own home on its 2017 release day

If Napster founder Sean Parker gets his way, you will be able to watch the latest films from the comfort of your own home on their cinematic release dates.

Films like Star Wars: Episode VIII, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Alien: Covenent could be available to view without heading to the local theatre. And for just the price of three adult cinema tickets.

Parker and chief content officer at SFX Entertainment, Prem Akkaraju, are proposing new service Screening Room, which will deliver digital versions of day-and-date movies. Users will just need to pay $150 (£105) for a dedicated set-top-box and each film would cost $50 (£35) to rent.

Like most online movie rental services, members would have a set time to view the movie once – 48 hours in this case.

To also urge them to visit theatres too, two free movie tickets to see a film of their choice will also be given with each rental. That way cinemas could continue to pick up revenue from concessions.

READ: Which is the best movie streaming service in the UK? Netflix vs Amazon Prime vs Now TV and more

Parker and Akkaraju still have one hurdle to overcome to get Screening Room to market, although it’s a massive one; they have to convince movie studios to come on board.

They have both been visiting the studios to convince them that a day-and-date movie service will help rather than hinder the industry. For a start, the business will pay a majority of each rental fee directly to the studios.

In addition, the duo claims to have devised fail-safe copy protection to prevent piracy.

People “familiar with the matter” have told Variety that the studios, including Universal, Fox and Sony, are all seriously interested.

There’s no word yet on whether Screening Room is also planned for the UK.

BMW i5 rumours get official comment on Range Extender feature

BMW is heavily rumoured to be releasing an electric version of its X5 SUV which should be called the BMW i5. Now an official comment suggests this model will come with a Range Extender option.

Head of product for BMW, Henrik Wenders, commented to Car and Driver on the company’s next i model electric vehicle: “We are thinking of a new i model above it to attract families, and that means it must be capable of being the first car in the household.”

The family comment adds weight to the larger SUV style vehicle like an X5, only dubbed an i5. To help make that transition while still maintaining range Wenders pointed out that BMW would use lightweight cabon-fibre for the i5, something the i3 already uses.

Wenders went on to comment on the Range Extender in the i5: “The range-extender plays an important part in the next years when range remains a limiting factor and a source of anxiety.”

The Range Extender is a small two-cylinder engine that’s used to enhance the distance a solely electric BMW can manage. On the BMW i3, for example, the full electric model is limited to 81 miles while the Range Extender version tops out at 150 miles.

Rather interestingly Wenders says that 60 per cent of i3 purchases were with Range Extenders but only 5 per cent of those people regularly use it. “Itr was purely a psychological thing,” Wenders says.

Don’t expect the BMW i5 to arrive before 2020.

READ: Mercedes-Benz E-Class 2016 first drive: The Einstein of luxury cars

Opera’s desktop web browser gets built-in ad blocking

If you use a major desktop web browser, you usually have to hunt down an ad blocking add-on if you’re determined to purge intrusive promos from your internet experience. You won’t have to go scrounging if you’re an Opera fan, however: the company has released a developer version of its desktop browser with ad blocking built-in. It not only saves you the trouble of finding an extension, but takes the challenge out of it — there’s a simple on/off switch, and you’ll get a mix of benchmarking and stats to show how effective the blocking is in real life.

It’s early days for the feature, which is still some distance away from reaching a polished version of Opera. If it works as well as promised, though, it could give Opera a much-needed edge over the competition. While rivals like Google and Microsoft aren’t in a rush to include native ad blocking in their browsers (it’d cut directly into their web ad businesses), Opera doesn’t have that problem — it can give users a feature they want without worrying about a conflict of interest.

Source: Opera

Google’s Deepmind AI beats Go world champion for a second time

Google’s Deepmind AI has done it again: it’s beaten Go world champion Lee Sedol in the second of a five-match challenge. After forcing the 9-dan professional to resign in yesterday’s test, today’s four-and-a-half hour match went into overtime before the South Korean admitted defeat. AlphaGo now only needs one more win to become champion and claim the $1 million prize.

Google’s artificial intelligence shocked many when it beat a Go world champion for the first time. AlphaGo had already dispatched the European champion in an earlier test, but as an 18-time world champion and Go grandmaster, Lee poses a much tougher challenge. The Korean believed he would win the series 5-0, or 4-1 at worst, but there’s currently no stopping AlphaGo.

Google is livestreaming the encounters, and for the second match, as many as 90,000 people were tuned into the YouTube livestream to see the result. Korean and Chinese media have also dedicated various TV channels to the event. Lee now needs to win the last three tests if he is to stand any chance of claiming the pot (AlphaGo will donate the prize to charity if it wins). Man and machine will now have a rest day before meeting again on Saturday.

#AlphaGo wins match 2, to take a 2-0 lead!! Hard for us to believe. AlphaGo played some beautiful creative moves in this game. Mega-tense…

— Demis Hassabis (@demishassabis) March 10, 2016

Twitter adds Unity support to its mobile development toolkit

Game developers with a love for Unity and social networking just got a little present: Twitter has announced Unity support for its mobile software development toolkit. For most of us, this simply means looking forward to more mobile games with Twitter integration — but for developers, it’s an easy way to add crash reporting, mobile analytics and monetization tools to the development environment. Adding Fabric for games to Unity is apparently as simple as installing a plugin.

Twitter’s Crashlytics reporting and Mopub advertising tools are definitely boons for developers, but at the end of the day, the social network giant’s game is still social. If developers start using Fabric for its development tools, they’re more likely to bake native Twitter integration into their apps — a natural way of bringing more users to its platform.

Eddy Cue Fears Surveillance State if FBI Wins iPhone Unlock Case

Apple VP Eddy Cue says the U.S. government could force Apple to secretly implement surveillance technology in its devices if the FBI’s current demands in the ongoing iPhone encryption dispute are met.

The company’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services made the worrying prediction during an interview yesterday with U.S.-based Spanish-language TV network Univision, a transcript of which was provided by Apple to Business Insider.

In the extensive interview, the Apple executive reiterated a number of arguments offered by the company over the last weeks, but Cue put special emphasis on the risk of facing a slippery slope that could invite more insidious demands should the FBI get its way and be provided a backdoor to iPhone users’ data.

“When they can get us to create a new system to do new things, where will it stop?” Cue asked. “For example, one day the FBI may want us to open your phone’s camera, microphone. Those are things we can’t do now. But if they can force us to do that, I think that’s very bad.”

The Apple VP offered a fresh analogy to explain the company’s issue with the FBI’s demand, likening it to giving someone a key to the back door of your home.

What they want is to give them a key to the back door of your house, and we don’t have the key. Since we don’t have the key, they want us to change the lock. When we change the latchkey, it changes for everyone. And we have a key that opens all phones. And that key, once it exists, exists not only for us. Terrorists, criminals, pirates, all too will find that key to open all phones.

Cue also accused the FBI of being out of step with other government agencies, stating that the Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, who is responsible for the NSA, “wants encryption to continue getting more and more secure, because he knows that if we create some way to get in, criminals and terrorists will get in. They don’t want that.”

Cue explained that Apple engineers are continually working to make its devices more secure, and that people should not view the current case as Apple versus the government, but rather an example of Apple’s attempts to keep the public safe from criminals and other dangerous actors.

It’s Apple engineers against terrorists, against criminals. They are the people we are trying to protect people from. We are not protecting the government. We want to help. They have a very difficult job, they are there to protect us. So we want to help as much as possible, but we can not help them in a way that will help more criminals, terrorists, pirates.

He also underlined the U.S. government’s recent poor record of keeping the public’s information – and even that of its own employees – secure, arguing that “the only way we can protect ourselves is to make the phone more safe.”

Cue is the second Apple executive to publicly comment on the case, following Craig Federighi’s Monday op-ed in The Washington Post in which he criticized the FBI for wanting to turn back the clock to a less-secure time.

Apple has officially opposed an order that would require it to help the FBI break into the iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook and will now face off against the government in court on March 22.

Eddy Cue’s full interview can be read on the Univision website.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tags: Eddy Cue, Apple-FBI
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Win Pocket-lint’s $1000 Apple Store giveaway

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