‘Halo 5: Guardians’ is getting Warzone Firefight this July
With the Halo Wars 2 beta freshly ended, Halo fans are likely looking for something solid to sink their teeth into. Halo 5: Guardians developer 343 Industries has come forward with exactly that: The big Warzone Firefight update, which launches on July 29th. Get ready to dust off those Needlers.
Warzone Firefight is a cooperative game mode that hearkens back to the Firefight mode originally seen in Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach, where each round the opponents get a little tougher as you stave them off. Alongside a few new bosses and vehicles like the UNSC VTOL and AV-49 Wasp, there are new maps, REQs items, and a new Forge level to build levels upon.
In a bid to keep as many players interested as possible, 343 Industries is also making Halo 5: Guardians entirely free as well from June 29th through July 5th for all Xbox Live Gold members. If you want to purchase it and make it your own, it’s also going to be 50% off during that time too. You might want to pick it up and keep it as the original Halo 5: Guardians campaign is also getting a new Score Attack campaign where you can play with others via online co-op or go solo.
Take a look at the Warzone Firefight beta in action below.
Source: Xbox Wire
DARPA’s ‘Virtual Eye’ lets soldiers see around obstacles
Intel’s virtual FreeD replay tech used in the NBA and other sports is cool, but it requires a lot of cameras and GPU horsepower. DARPA, the US military’s science fiction arm, thinks the same technology could give soldiers and rescuers better situational awareness. Since there’s no way personnel can lug all those computers and cameras into a battle or disaster, it worked with NVIDIA to create Virtual Eye. The system fuses two images into a live synthetic 3D scene using just a powerful laptop and a pair of cameras.
First responders could send a pair of camera-equipped drones or robots into a burning or unstable building, place them in separate locations, and let the software take over. Running on a laptop with a dual NVIDIA K20 GPUs, it fuses the images into a live virtual scene, using extrapolation to fill in the missing pixels. While the images aren’t as pretty as Intel’s FreeD replays, users get a continuous video feed that they can rotate around in real time, unlike the still images from the replay tech.
The resulting synthetic view would help personnel find someone trapped in a fire by looking around objects, or even through them, as shown above. Soldiers could also peer over and around obstacles to spot enemies or booby traps. They could then create a plan for a rescue or incursion with better information than from, say, a single camera.
The researchers also think that Virtual Eye tech could be used for sports, but not just in replays. By adding support for additional cameras, networks could do 3D broadcasting in real time, letting you control exactly what you’re watching. That would give you something else to do with that pricey VR headset.
Source: NVIDIA
The best tech and apps for your home office
By The Wirecutter Staff
This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. Read the full article here.
You don’t need the thinnest, lightest, or most elegantly designed items for your home office. You want reliable, comfortable, efficient tools—but it doesn’t hurt if they look nice, too. That’s why a team of three experienced remote workers spent more than 150 hours researching and testing new gear and apps, and picking the most office-friendly items from The Wirecutter’s guides, to give you a selection of tools that we’re sure will earn a place in your workspace.
Home-office laptop
The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display offers the best balance of power and portability. Photo: Kevin Purdy
For most home-office users, we recommend the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display. It offers the best balance of power and portability for a range of work, plus it has a fantastic screen, keyboard, and trackpad. We like the 13-inch model with an Intel Core i5 processor and 8 GB of RAM for most people, but if you regularly work with complex spreadsheets, compile large blocks of code, or edit photos and video, you may want to step up to 16 GB of RAM.
Its superior specs will keep the Pro relevant and working well for longer than the more portable MacBook Air; it also offers a higher-resolution screen and a Force Touch trackpad. Because the Pro has an HDMI port and two Thunderbolt ports, you can connect an external display and still have another left for connecting a Thunderbolt dock, storage devices, or other peripherals. At 3½ pounds, the Pro is still portable enough for occasional business trips.
In addition to its fantastic hardware, the MacBook Pro with Retina Display runs Apple’s stable, easy-to-use, bloat-free OS X. And if you ever have a problem, AppleCare plans and Apple’s Genius Bar Support are peerless in their quality.
Business laptop
Lenovo ThinkPad laptops are the quintessential business notebooks, thanks to their rock-solid construction, easy serviceability, and excellent, deep-throw keyboards. Photo: Marshall Troy
Most people, even actual businesspeople, don’t need a “business laptop” anymore—any ultrabook (such as the MacBook Air or Dell XPS 13) will do just fine for most office work. But if you need a laptop that will still be kicking in five years despite knocks, bumps, and spills, and you’re willing to pay a little extra, you should get the Lenovo ThinkPad T460, specifically the configuration with a 1080p screen, a backlit keyboard, 16 GB of RAM, and a 512GB solid-state drive.
After more than 30 hours of research and testing, we found that the ThinkPad T460 is fast and durable (with a military-specification certification for ruggedness) and still reasonably light, thanks to its magnesium-alloy body. It has dedicated buttons for the TrackPoint and one of the best keyboards of any laptop, period. It even has batteries you can swap in and out while the system remains running. It’s the best option for anyone who needs more ruggedness and more ports than an ultrabook can offer.
27-inch monitor
The Dell UltraSharp U2715H has a fantastic high-resolution display and a great combination of connections, adjustability, and USB 3.0 support. Photo: Kevin Purdy
The Dell UltraSharp U2715H is the best large monitor for your home office. It has a beautiful 27-inch IPS display and ultrathin side bezels that make the screen look even larger. Its stand is among the most adjustable we’ve found, which is crucial for a monitor you’re going to spend hundreds (or even thousands) of hours looking at every year. It can tilt, swivel, and easily rotate from landscape to panel mode.
The 2560×1440 display is large enough to put two windows side by side, but not so high-resolution that you run into weird scaling issues. Its factory-calibrated display is near-perfect, as we discovered when we tested it with a $1,200 X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer and a $170 Spyder4 Pro colorimeter. No other 27-inch monitor we tested looked as good.
The U2715H has two HDMI 1.4 connections, one Mini DisplayPort 1.2 connection, and two standard DisplayPort 1.2 connections—one for going from your PC to your monitor, and the other for hooking up a second monitor to the first. Many monitors have the DisplayPort input; not as many have the output. You also get an audio jack for connecting your own set of speakers or headphones to the monitor (if your computer can pass audio signals over HDMI or DisplayPort), as well as five USB 3.0 ports—including one specialized for quick-charging devices (up to 1.5 amps).
Wireless mouse and Bluetooth keyboard
The Logitech MX Master and the Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboard are pricey, but the investment is worthwhile for people who spend all day using these devices. Photo: Kevin Purdy
After spending more than 100 hours testing 28 mice and 21 Bluetooth keyboards over the past year, we found that the Logitech MX Master is the best wireless mouse for home office professionals, and that Logitech’s Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboard (for Mac or Windows) is the best Bluetooth keyboard. The MX Master has five programmable buttons, a second (programmable) scroll wheel for your thumb, and a rechargeable battery, plus it can pair with up to three Bluetooth devices at the same time. It’s comfortable, too.
Logitech’s Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboards have long been the gold standard for Bluetooth keyboards because of their smooth, well-spaced keys, their adjustable key backlighting, their platform-specific layouts for Mac and Windows, and their ability to switch instantly between multiple paired devices. Both the Logitech MX Master and the Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboard are more expensive than the other mice and Bluetooth keyboards we recommend, but we think the investment is worthwhile for people who spend all day using these devices.
Portable document scanner
The Fujitsu is speedy, accurate, and portable, with easy-to-use software. Photo: Amadou Diallo
Don’t let the “portable” label fool you: The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i is the best tool for getting a large amount of scanning done at your desk, keeping your space tidy and your documents organized. After more than 70 hours of research and hands-on testing, the S1300i delivered the best combination of accuracy, speed, and portability, and it came with the easiest-to-use software of any we tested. It can load as many as 20 sheets of regular laser paper and scan them, duplexing if needed. And it’s small and capable of drawing power from a single USB port, so it’s great for carrying on business trips or simply moving to another room.
Printer
Because the Brother Hl-L2340DW is a laser printer, it’s low-drama compared with any inkjet.
We’ve spent more than 200 hours researching and testing printers over the past few years, and of the 100 cheap printers we’ve come across, the Brother HL-L2340DW (or—if it’s cheaper—the HL-L2360DW, which adds an Ethernet port but is otherwise nearly identical) is the safest bet for most home offices.
For home offices where printing is mostly limited to mailing labels, packing slips, and the occasional document, the dirt-cheap cost of ownership is the best thing about the HL-L2340DW. Each page costs just 2.7 cents’ worth of toner and drum wear, less than with any other printer out there. The HL-L2340DW also provides automatic two-sided printing, and supports mobile printing standards like AirPrint and Google Cloud Print, as well as printing over Wi-Fi (though in a small office connecting to the printer via USB is probably easier).
Because it’s a laser printer, the Brother is relatively low-drama. Toner cartridges have a high capacity, which reduces the chance that you’ll find yourself out of toner when you really, really need to print. Laser printers don’t need to run lengthy cleaning cycles, either. You give up color printing with a cheap laser printer, but that’s more trouble than it’s worth at this price.
Webcam and Web-meeting app
The Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 has the best call quality for frequent video meetings. Photo: Kimber Streams
If you need a webcam, we recommend the Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920, our choice after we researched 15 different webcams and tested two head-to-head in Skype calls, Google Hangouts, and Zoom meetings. It has great image quality and helpful software, and reviewers universally love it. The C920 sits on top of your laptop screen or monitor and braces itself against the back of the screen, or you can mount it on a tripod.
The best Web-meeting software for people who work from home and get to select their own is Zoom, which works on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry. Zoom’s free Basic plan contains enough features and free connection time to cover most teams’ meeting needs, and it works across the vast majority of devices. Among the 20 services and plans we considered, it’s the fastest, most painless route between “We need to have a meeting” and being in that meeting.
Time-tracking and invoicing apps
Harvest conveniently tracks time, and FreshBooks provides robust, multiplatform tools for billing, payment tracking, and expenses.
If you don’t have a good time-tracking or invoice-generating service already set up, the easiest services to try out are Harvest and FreshBooks. If you’re a one-person shop and need time tracking, project management, and simple create-and-send invoices, we recommend Harvest. If you generate trickier invoices, have many expenses, and need to closely track payments from different clients, FreshBooks will help you get paid. Both are easier to set up for most people than the 40 other invoicing and tracking services our experienced freelancers considered.
USB 3.0 docking station
Anker’s Dual Display Universal Docking Station offers the best selection of ports plus fast-charging USB. Photo: Kimber Streams
We researched 30 docking station models, tested six top contenders for more than five hours, and found that Anker’s Dual Display Universal Docking Station is the best for most home offices. In a field of very similar products, Anker’s dock offers the best combination of high-speed drive transfer, fast-charging USB ports, and 4K video support at the lowest price.
Anker’s dock has two USB 3.0 ports and an additional four USB 2.0 ports. In our tests, the USB 3.0 ports put out 0.5 A (enough for some small accessories such as Bluetooth headsets), and the USB 2.0 ports were more impressive at 1.5 A. That’s still a slower rate than what many smartphones and tablets support, but it isn’t bad. And 4K video support from both the HDMI and DVI connectors worked without issue.
Router and modem
The AC1750 Netgear R6400 is faster than the TP-Link Archer C7, and the ARRIS SurfBoard SB6141 supports most of the fastest Internet packages. Photo: Kevin Purdy
The router and modem we recommend for home office users are the the Netgear AC1750 R6400 and the Arris SURFboard SB6141 DOCSIS 3.0, respectively. The Netgear AC1750 R6400 was faster at most tests than the router we recommend for most people—40 percent faster at longer distances under ideal conditions—and it offers power features usually found in much more expensive routers, such as a built-in VPN server to provide a secure connection to your network while you’re on the road, and a QoS feature to prioritize certain apps’ traffic. Meanwhile, the Arris SURFboard SB6141 is more than fast enough for the Internet plans most people have. Though it’s compatible with most of the fastest Internet packages from seven of the eight major ISPs, you should confirm that it works with your Internet plan before you buy it; if it doesn’t, you’ll want to buy one of the cable modems your provider recommends instead.
This guide may have been updated by The Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.
Pluto’s moon Charon features a massive, deep chasm
While humans are still a long way away from going canyoneering on the moons of Pluto, we can at least start scoping out the terrain. In images shot last summer by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, we can see one immense and interesting feature of Charon: a deep canyon dubbed the Argo Chasma that slices through one hemisphere of Pluto’s largest satellite.
Thanks to the viewing angle New Horizons got on its closest approach to Charon last July, scientists were able to estimate the depth of the Argo Chasma. In sections, the canyon is believed to be about 5.5 miles (or 9 kilometers) deep with sheer cliff faces several miles tall. Without a complete picture of the canyon, scientists believe Argo is about 430 miles (700 km) long. For reference: Earth’s Grand Canyon is about 280 miles (450 km) long and a mile deep. Argo’s massive scale means it also beats the three-mile-high cliffs at Verona Rupes on Uranus’ moon Miranda for the tallest (known) cliff face in the solar system.
Until extra-planetary rock climbing becomes a reality, however, Earthbound humans hoping to explore Argo will have to be content to don our cardboard VR headsets and gaze up at Charon from Pluto’s virtual surface.
Tune in to watch President Obama and Mark Zuckerberg live at 1:45 PM ET
This afternoon, President Obama will meet with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and a panel of other young entrepreneurs at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit on Stanford’s campus in Palo Alto. While the discussion is scheduled to focus on business, Zuckerberg has recently been celebrating the power of live video to bring “more openness to the political process.” Earlier this week, Facebook Live and its competitor Periscope proved invaluable for bringing a sit-in on the House floor to millions of people.
The stream goes live at 1:45 PM ET. And you can watch via WhiteHouse.gov or the embedded YouTube stream below.
Genes, germs and bacon: A look inside my own DNA
There are times in your life when bad news smashes into your gut like a sledgehammer into the solar plexus. “You’ve got those double dots next to your CYP1A2*F, which means that we class you as a fast metabolizer.” But the man on the other end of the phone was not complimenting me. Rather, he was explaining that my body can’t cope with the chemicals produced by smoked or chargrilled meat. It meant that, despite my love of meat, I would have to limit myself to “just one or two servings of grilled or smoked meat per week,” and even that was excessive. The news got worse when I was told that, for a similar reason, I should also avoid fried bacon — which I eat every morning to pep up my protein-and-fat rich breakfast of eggs. My genetic makeup, the bastard, has rendered me incapable of enjoying bacon, which is a hard way to be introduced into the world of DNA fitness testing.
Every cell in your body contains DNA, a series of instructions, like computer code, that tell your body how to behave. It dictates everything from the color of your eyes and height through to how long you’ve got left to live. Between 1990 and 2013, a coalition of countries mapped the human genome, opening new frontiers into biological research. Companies such as 23andMe and DNAFit are then able to leverage this knowledge to bring nuggets of insight out of the lab and into our homes. DNAFit’s service is primarily designed for athletic types looking to secure those mythical marginal gains; small improvements that give you an edge over your competitors. But there’s no rule against schlubby tech journalists trying it out, so I signed up with DNAFit to find out if my genes held the key to me becoming a healthier person.
The process begins with you rubbing a cotton swab inside your cheek for a minute, sealing it in a plastic tube and sending it off to the lab. After a few weeks, you’ll receive a link to the company’s website that, depending on the package you choose, offers insights into your diet and/or exercise. I opted for a package that included an analysis of both, as well as a consultation with one of the company’s experts. Specifically, Craig Pickering, a former international athlete who has represented Great Britain as both a sprinter and a bobsledder. Previously considered a hot prospect for medals at both London 2012 and Sochi 2014, a series of back injuries forced him to retire in 2014.
Image Credit: DNAFit.
Pickering patiently went through my results, explaining what they mean and what I can do differently. I learned that there are roughly three types of athlete that a person can be: endurance, power or mixed. About 25 percent of DNAFit’s clients turn out to be endurance athletes: people whose bodies can deal with the lengthy pain of climbing a mountain or running a marathon. Another 25 percent are power athletes, better at sprinting over short distances and power lifting. The remaining 50 percent are more balanced, with my makeup coming out at 45.5 percent power and 54.5 percent endurance. It meant that my weight-heavy workout was good, but I needed to work with my personal trainer to get in more endurance exercises.
In other areas, my body is crushingly middle of the road, with a normal lung capacity and a fairly standard 48-hour turnaround on post-exercise recovery. As for injury risk, my genes suggested that I was at greater risk of soft-tissue damage. But beyond that, I shouldn’t have to worry about devoting lots of time towards injury-prevention work, simply because I’m quite robust. That was in stark contrast to Pickering himself, whose own injury results were some of the most extensive the company had ever seen. But I was safe to do three intensive workouts a week, with at least a day of rest between each one.
We then moved on to my diet profile, which is where the bad news kicked in, since my body is deficient in a wide variety of areas. For instance, I have a predisposition to Coeliac disease, with a 1 in 35 chance of actually suffering from the condition — greater than the average of 1 in 100. It’s a similar situation with carbohydrates, with both my ACE and PPARG genes showing signs of extra sensitivity. If that wasn’t bad enough, I lack the gene that produces the GSTM1 enzyme, meaning that I struggle to process carcinogens and free radicals, making me prone to oxidative stress. Which, in layman’s terms, means that I’m more likely to get Parkinson’s, Alzheimers and cancers than other people.
The section in my DNAFit report explaining my genetic failings with regards to meat.
Writer Michael Pollan once coined a very brief, useful manifesto for how one should go about dieting. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” It’s the rule of thumb that everyone in the world knows to be true, and yet so many of us struggle with. If you’ve read Engadget over the last five years, you may have followed my journey from being a 20-stone lump to a slightly thinner lump. But despite knowing that there was more that I could be doing, when it’s laid out in front of you it’s hard to take.
So, I resolved that I need to make some severe lifestyle changes in order to compensate for my body’s staggering flaws. The advice here was, perhaps, a little more generic than genetic, since around 98 percent of DNAFit’s customers are recommended one of two diets. Either they’re prescribed a Low Carbohydrate plan, or a Mediterranean, both of which recommend a low-carb, low-meat diet and lots of fresh vegetables and, especially in my case, cruciferous greens to fill in on what my body doesn’t produce.
I had to ask Pickering what the justification is for splashing out on a DNAFit test when I could just as easily have binged on kale. His response was that, when it comes to genetically matched diets, “people find them slightly easier to stick to.” He says that’s mostly because they feel that the diet has been “personalized to them,” although really it’s the opposite. Diet advice like this is available in plenty of other books, but it’s the warning of what happens if you don’t change that’s more compelling.
“It’s the warning of what happens if you don’t change that’s more compelling.”
A few days later, I sat down with DNAFit’s founder, Avi Lasarow, who said that the diet advice isn’t as generic as I’d suspected. After all, the company predominantly operates in the United Kingdom, where genetic factors would be common to British caucasians. In other locations where there are cultural variations in diet, such as Holland and Latin America, Lasarow told me that the eating advice would be different.
I also wanted to ask what he’d say to people who are skeptical about the potential for genetic science to impact people’s dieting. His commitment to pushing his business includes the publishing of clinical trials and funding research into furthering the technology. He’s also certain that it won’t be long before DNAFit can offer a much broader quantity of tests in the hope of saving people the “tedious trial and error” inherent in working out what’s best for you.
At the moment, DNAFit tests for a limited number of “snips,” or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These tiny variations in our DNA are key markers that show our vulnerability to various conditions like sickle-cell anaemia. But Lasarow says that eventually his company, and others like partner firm 23andMe, will be able to examine 800,000 of these characteristics at a time. That opens up a whole new frontier of testing opportunities, and those who have already been tested will be able to learn more things about themselves for an additional cost.
DNAFit advisor Craig Pickering after winning the 60-meter sprint in 2010 (Julian Finney / Getty).
Few have heard of DNAFit right now, but it’s entirely likely that it’ll become well known in sporting circles in the near future. Lasarow is a “proud South African” who has been in talks with the government in teaming up with his country’s Olympic athletes. “We’ve averaged seven medals at the last three games,” he tells me, “and this is a real opportunity to increase the medal count.” After all, in his mind, “the difference between getting the bronze medal and no medal at all is so minute,” that squeezing an athlete’s DNA for marginal gains is worth the effort.
As for me, I’m not expecting to win any medals any time soon, but I am going to try and ditch my morning bacon for something involving kale. An effort which, believe you me, will be on a par with winning gold at the Olympics.
Source: DNAFit
New Thunderbolt Display With Integrated GPU Still in the Works
Apple yesterday announced plans to discontinue the 5-year-old Thunderbolt Display, leaving it unclear if Apple’s display business is coming to an end or if another model is in the works for a future release. According to BuzzFeed’s John Paczkowski, Apple isn’t done with Thunderbolt displays.
In a tweet shared this morning, Paczkowski said he’s heard from unspecified sources that a next-generation display will feature an integrated GPU, a possibility that was first bandied about in early June, ahead of WWDC.
Thunderbolt Display takes dirt nap as expected. Sources telling me next-gen display will indeed have integrated GPU https://t.co/kx6n0vQGMf
— John Paczkowski (@JohnPaczkowski) June 24, 2016
A Thunderbolt Display with a built-in graphics card would be able to work with almost any Mac because it would be driven by an internal graphics card rather than the machine it’s connected to.
It’s believed Apple has not introduced a 5K display to match the 5K iMac because there are no machines that could run it over a single stream cable, a fact that will remain true even in upcoming machines like a rumored Skylake Retina MacBook Pro.
Paczkowski doesn’t include other details about the display Apple has in the works, but rumors have suggested it will feature a resolution of 5120 x 2880 and it’s also likely to include USB-C ports that support Thunderbolt 3.
Stock shortages ahead of the Worldwide Developers Conference led to speculation that Apple could refresh the Thunderbolt Display at the event, but that did not end up happening. There is no word on when Apple might release a new display, but with an integrated GPU, it would not have any specific requirements and could theoretically debut at any time.
If a new Thunderbolt Display is planned for 2016, a logical guess at a release date might be in the fall alongside rumored redesigned Retina MacBook Pros.
Related Roundup: Thunderbolt Display
Buyer’s Guide: Displays (Don’t Buy)
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7 surefire ways to annoy your Instagram followers – CNET
With so many fun filters and editing tools, it’s easy to get carried away on Instagram. And while most of our “gramming” habits are harmless, too many of these may end up costing you friends.
1. Insta-lying
We’re probably all guilty of staging a photo once in a while to be a more interesting depiction of what actually happened. But if you’re going out of your way to lie about what you’re doing on a daily basis, there may be a problem.
After all, there’s only so much of your perfectly curated life that people can stand to look at, especially if your entire feed is too good to be true.
2. Selfie overload
Nothing wrong with a flattering selfie once in a while, or a group-shot selfie when there’s no one around to take it. But if your feed has become an ode to your face, it may be time to rethink your strategy.
Also, be aware of your surroundings when taking a selfie. Bathroom selfies with the toilet in the background are not appealing.
3. Post before every meal
There are some culinary experiences that genuinely warrant a post, but save it for the ones that resemble art or homemade dishes that truly make your mouth water. Most meals are not worthy of the “food porn” hashtag and are probably best savored in private.
4. Load up on #Hashtags
Hashtags are incredibly useful tools to crowdsource pictures from specific places or events, and a pretty well known tactic to get more followers. But use them wisely and in moderation. Excessive hashtagging can seem desperate and often won’t add value to a post. Also, never comment with more hashtags. Caption limits are there for a reason.
5. Retouch until unrecognizable
Smartphones have made it possible for anyone to have celebrity-worthy photoshopping features at their fingertips.
Most new Android phones come with a “beauty” feature on the front camera allowing you to even out skin, slim the jawline or even make your eyes appear wider on the fly. Or you can retouch after the shot with apps like Facetune and CreamCam. But just because they’re out there doesn’t mean you should abuse them.
Minor tweaks are fine, but a heavy finger on the smoothing feature may leave you looking like a wax figure. And it won’t be long until your followers catch on.
6. Excessive use of filters
Filters are what brought us to Instagram in the first place. The ability to make a landscape look like a scene from an old western film, or a page right out of a storybook.
But you can have too much of a good thing. And if your landscapes start to look psychedelic from oversaturation, you may want to dial it back.
7. Spamming
One picture is great, two is fine, but more than that can start to get tricky. Posting 20 images of the same birthday party back to back will saturate your friends’ feeds and likely garner some animosity. If you have 100 amazing shots of your birthday bash, spread them out over a couple of posts, create a collage, or post an album on Facebook. Instagram “purists” will argue that you only need a few good ones per event.
6 location-specific IFTTT recipes you should be using – CNET
Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
Once you get the hang of it, automation service IFTTT (which stands for “If This, Then That”) is incredibly convenient. There’s nothing quite like automating stupid little everyday tasks — such as turning off the lights at a specific time, or cross-posting Facebook posts to multiple social networks — to help you reclaim your valuable time and sanity. And the only thing more convenient than standard-issue IFTTT recipes are location-based IFTTT recipes.
IFTTT connects to both Android’s and iOS’ location channel, which means that you can use your phone’s location — which, for all intents and purposes, is your location — to trigger automated actions. You can set up location-based triggers to fire whenever you exit a defined area (such as your home, your office or the gym), whenever you enter a defined area or when you enter or exit a defined area. If you have a smart home setup, the possibilities are endless — but even if you don’t, there are plenty of IFTTT recipes that will help streamline your life.
Turn the lights off when you leave home
You didn’t invest in smart lightbulbs such as the Philips Hue White Ambiance Starter Kit just to leave them on all day long. You can open up the Hue app and turn your lights off (or on) remotely with just a couple of taps, but it’s even easier to let IFTTT’s location-based recipes do that for you. This recipe switches off your Hue bulbs whenever your phone leaves the area you’ve defined as your home.
There are lots of versions of this recipe for different smart home setups. Here’s one for WeMo Insight Switch users (and WeMo Light Switch users), here’s one for D-Link Smart Plug users, and here’s one for Lutron users.
Mute your phone when you leave the house
If you’re like me, your phone is almost always on silent mode — except when you’re sitting at home playing Yo-Kai Watch Wibble Wobble. Instead of manually switching your phone back to silent mode whenever you leave the house to do real-world things (like go to work), use this recipe to automatically change your phone’s volume settings.
This only works with Android phones, because iOS doesn’t allow IFTTT to change phone settings. However, you can use this recipe to send yourself a reminder to mute your phone whenever you leave your home.
Track how much time you spend at the office
Are you staying too late at work? This recipe tracks how much time you spend hanging out at work, and logs the hours in a Google Doc.
Meanwhile, this recipe logs each of your gym visits in a Google Doc.
Text your significant other when you leave the office
Assuming you don’t spend all your time at work, this recipe sends your significant other (or roommate, or dog) a text or an email when you leave the office to come home.
Let friends know when you’re back in town
Have you been traveling? This recipe automatically posts a Facebook post when you get back in town. You can customize your city, so this will also let people know when you get back to your hometown.
Your router isn’t as fast as you think it is. Here’s why. – CNET
Let’s cut to the chase: Wired network connections will always be faster, more secure and more reliable than wireless.
If you want top speeds in your home, you’ll want to save room in your remodeling budget for running gigabit Ethernet network cables (CAT5e or better yet CAT6) to every room in your home. Ethernet is the only connection standard where the real-world speeds are very close to, or in some cases match, the lofty theoretical speeds.
Of course, wired networking has several drawbacks. Wires are a pain to install, they’re unsightly — and it’s just not fun to be tethered. And, of course, not every device is even compatible with wired Ethernet. For your tablet and smartphone, your streaming stick and even many newer printers, you will have to use Wi-Fi. But that’s when you may find yourself poking along at slower speeds than you’d like.
So, why the slowdown? You need to be aware of the huge gap among these three different attributes: real-world speed, ceiling speed and the advertised speed. (By the way, if you’re really want to dive in on networking, I’d recommend reading my in-depth look at networking basics.)
Ceiling speed vs. real-world speed
The ceiling speed is the maximum theoretical speed of a connection standard determined in a controlled environment, without factors that would adversely affect the connection’s throughput data rate. For example, the ceiling speed of a Gigabit Ethernet connection is 1,000Mbps, fast enough to transfer a Blu-ray disk worth of data (25GB) in less than 3.5 minutes. And in this case, the wiring that delivers this speed is protected inside your network cable by a layer of plastic, isolating it from outside environment. This is why an Ethernet connection is able to deliver real-world speeds close to or on par with the ceiling speed of the standard.
Note, however, the network speed’s rule of thumb: The ceiling speed of a connection is that of the slowest device in the chain. In other words, a connection is only as fast as its weakest link. So if you connect an Fast Ethernet device (100Mbps), like a Roku 3, to a Gigabit Ethernet (1,000Mbps) router using a network cable, the connection speed between the two (and only those two) will be capped at 100Mbps.
Wi-Fi, however, is totally different since it uses radio waves to transfer data. Wi-Fi devices share the same airspace not only with each other, but other home appliances as well. That means the speed of a Wi-Fi connection is subject to the Wi-Fi environment it’s operating in. That’s why your wireless speeds can flatline when you (or a nearby apartment) fires up the microwave.
Here are the main factors that adversely affect Wi-Fi speed:
- Distance: The farther out, the slower the connection gets.
- Obstacles: Walls and large objects will block the signals and shorten the Wi-Fi range.
- Interference: The more devices of the same radio frequencies being used in the same area, the slower they get.
- Compatibility: When devices of different Wi-Fi speed tiers, standards and manufacturers are used together, they must adhere to a lower speed standard in order to all function together properly.
This is why the real-world speed of a Wi-Fi connection is always significantly lower than the ceiling speed of the Wi-Fi standard being used. In my experience, at best, the actual sustained speed of a Wi-Fi connection is between a third and a half of its ceiling speed.
Take the Asus RT-AC68U, for example. It’s a dual-band router, which means that it can operate on the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz wireless band. (The latter one is far less prone to interference from household items.) The top ceiling speeds on those bands in this case are 600Mbps and 1,300Mbps, respectively. That means the real-world speeds are closer to 300Mbps and 550Mbps, at best.
Advertised vs. ceiling vs. real-world speeds of popular Wi-Fi routers
| Advertised speed | Max ceiling speed | Max real-world speed (tested by CNET Labs using optimal settings) |
| 1,000 Mbps | 1,000 Mbps | 1,000 Mbps |
| 5,400 Mbps | 2,167 Mbps | 685.2 Mbps |
| 3,100 Mbps | 2,167Mbps | 643.6 Mbps |
| 2,533 Mbps | 1733 Mbps | 437.8 Mbps |
| 2,400 Mbps | 1,733 Mbps | 504.4 Mbps |
| 1,900 Mbps | 1,300 Mbps | 521.4 Mbps |
| 3,200 Mbps | 1,300 Mbps | 601.7 Mbps |
| 3,200 Mbps | 1,300 Mbps | 482.2 Mbps |
| 2,350 Mbps | 1,733 Mbps | 381.7 Mbps |
| 1,900 Mbps | 1,300 Mbps | 520 Mbps |
| 900Mbps | 450 Mbps | 131.9 Mbps |
| 1,000 Mbps | 100 Mbps | 100 Mbps |
Advertised speed: The art of marketing
The question is why all networking vendors always use the unachievably high numbers for the Wi-Fi ceiling speeds? That’s because, as inaccurate as it is when it comes to the real-world speed capabilities of Wi-Fi devices, the ceiling speed is constant and therefore can be used to differentiate one Wi-Fi standard from another. However, to cover their asses, all networking manufacturers precede the top Wi-Fi speed number with “up to.” It’s kind of like the speedometer on your car: it may top out at 160 mph or 260 km/h. And maybe the engine is capable at driving at that speed. But you’re not going to be going anywhere near that fast in real life.
Take, again, the Asus RT-AC68U. It’s classified as an AC1900 product because it uses the latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. The 1900 is derived by adding the router’s top speeds on both of its bands: 2.4GHz at 600Mbps and 5GHz at 1,300Mbps. But that implication of “1,900Mbps” is completely misleading, because a Wi-Fi connection takes place on one band at a time (the router itself can work on both bands simultaneously but each client can only connect to one of the two bands at a time) so at most the ceiling speed of this router would be 1,300Mbps.
But the good news is that even those “slower” real-world speeds are often more 2 to 10 times faster (or more) than you need on many residential internet connections, which generally range from 20Mbps to 150Mbps (download) and 2Mbps to 20Mbps (upload). Netflix, for example, recommends 5Mbps for HD video streaming and 25Mbps for Ultra HD (4K) streaming. And this also means, getting even the most expensive router won’t necessarily improve your online experience, if you have a slow internet connection.
The notion that this AC5400 router has the Wi-Fi speed of 5.3Gbps (or 5,400Mbps) is completely false.
Dong Ngo/CNET
But adding up the numbers is a networking manufacturer’s favorite way of naming its routers. For this reason, a router with three Wi-Fi bands (two 5GHz bands and a single 2.4GHz band) can have an outrageously high number after “AC.” Tri-band routers are only necessary when you have a lot of 5Ghz clients (a dozen or more) being used at the same time. The D-Link DIR-890L/R for example, is a tri-band AC3200 router, suggesting a speed of 3,200Mbps. Completely untrue. The router has two 5GHz bands each caps at 1,300Mbps and one 2.4GHz band that tops at 600Mbps. Add those numbers together and you get 3200. In reality however, at best, the fastest connection you can get from this router is the same as that of any AC1900 router, like the Asus above.
This kind of naming convention is also confusing because a dual-band AC2400 router (1,733Mbps on 5GHz band and 600Mbps on 2.4GHz band) or an AC2600 router (1,733Mbps on 5GHz and 800Mbps on 2.4GHz) are actually faster than a tri-band AC3200 router, though it supports fewer concurrent 5GHz clients before slowing down.
And, again, two caveats apply:
Cut all of those ceiling speeds in half anyway to account for real-world performance.
Your AC speeds will drop to the maximum Wi-Fi speed of the connected device — so if you’re using a phone or tablet with 802.11g or 11n limits, expect even slower speeds.
Best practices
Now that you know what to expect out of a Wi-Fi router, here are some tips on how to get the fastest home network. These are what I do for my own home.
Run network cables when possible: I actually have CAT6 cables running to every room in my house with all of them converging in a single room where my internet comes into the house. This one-time time-consuming investment pays off big in the long run since allows all stationary devices (servers, network media streamer, game consoles, etc.) to connect via wired Gigabit connections, giving them the fastest network speed possible.
Use extra access points (or routers running in access point mode): Access points connected to the main router via Ethernet cables is the best way to extend your Wi-Fi network while maintaining the best Wi-Fi speed. You can name the access point’s Wi-Fi network the same as that of the main router (with the same password and other settings) if you want devices to move from one network to another automatically. If you’ve run network cables (given each room a super-fast wired connection,) adding access points is super easy.
Get a router and access point of the just-right standard: Currently AC1900 is the sweet spot for Wi-Fi. AC1900 routers are affordable and support the speed the fastest Wi-Fi clients on the market, which is 1,300Mbps. If you have many Wi-Fi clients being used at a time, a tri-band AC3200 router will do, since you can can have multiple devices connected to each of its bands without adversely affecting performance too much. While it doesn’t hurt to get a router with a higher ceiling speed (AC5300, AC2600, etc.) that won’t result in faster Wi-Fi speeds. Routers with a ceiling speed faster than 1,300Mbps might be appealing thanks to new features (such as extra network ports, security and so on), but their Wi-Fi speeds are only for future-proof purposes.
AIVAnet 