Intel responds to AMD’s Ryzen onslaught with some Core i7 and i5 updates

Why it matters to you

AMD’s new Ryzen CPUs could force Intel to cut prices and pump up performance, giving you even more powerful PC gaming options.

AMD is getting ready to roll out its new Ryzen CPUs, promising significantly improved performance not only over AMD’s previous processor line but also in comparison to the best that Intel currently has to offer. AMD will be releasing a host of new CPUs ranging from quad-core versions with four threads up to octa-core versions with 16 threads.

Intel is rolling out its seventh-generation, or Kaby Lake, architecture, which is focused more on efficiency than outright performance. However, Intel isn’t standing still in the face of Ryzen’s impending release, Hexus reports.

More: Leaked roadmap shows AMD may release three classes of Ryzen desktop processors

According to Canard PC, a French publication, Intel is planning to both adjust Kaby Lake pricing and push out some new versions directly in response to Ryzen. The new CPUs could be unlocked versions of both Core i7 and Core i5 Kaby Lake, as such:

• Intel Core i7-7740K, 4.3GHz with Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz, a thermal design power rating of 100W, and with 8MB of L3 cache.
• Intel Core i5-7640K, 4.0GHz, TDP of 100W or more, 6MB of L3 cache, and support for Hyperthreading. This would be a first for recent Core i5 chips, which typically do not have Hyperthreading enabled.

AMD has not yet announced pricing for its Ryzen CPUs, and that will likely dictate how aggressively Intel adjusts its own cost structure for the Kaby Lake line. And, Intel will be releasing its own new generation Cannonlake architecture, which will be focused on switching to a new 10nm fabrication process and not necessarily on massive performance increases. In the meantime, it appears that Intel will be somewhat limited in its ability to respond to Ryzen.

We’re still not certain which of AMD’s new CPUs will be released the soonest and how long it will take the company to roll out the complete line including the highest-end parts. AMD will also be releasing its new Vega GPU architecture, meaning that Nvidia will face its own competitive pressures.

If you’re Intel or Nvidia, then AMD is giving you a headache about now. If you’re a PC gamer or anyone looking to build a high-performance machine, then you have good reason to be excited. Even if Ryzen isn’t your cup of tea, its mere presence in the market should force Intel and Nvidia to be that much more aggressive in rolling out their own improvements.

The best Amazon Kindle and Fire Tablet deals

For a short time, Amazon is cutting prices on its popular lineup of Kindle tablets and ebook readers. Rather than picking just one Kindle deal, however, we’ve put together a quick list of the top five models to give you a few more options. With Amazon offering discounts of up to 25 percent off, now is a great time to grab a Kindle if you’ve been eyeing one.

Kindle 6-inch ebook reader

The first Kindle deal on our list is the one that started it all. The classic ebook reader is now being offered for a 25 percent discount, bringing it down to $60. This is essentially the same basic ebook reader that kicked off the Kindle family years ago, the current eighth-generation iteration features a few new refinements like a thinner, lighter body and a greatly-increased resolution.

The touchscreen display uses a glare-free finish and multiple shades of black, white, and grey to mimic the appearance of paper and eliminate eye strain, just as if you were reading a real book. The Wi-Fi capable device lasts for weeks on a single charge and has enough room to store thousands of ebooks. Prime members can enjoy free access to thousands of titles, as well.

Buy it for $60 on Amazon

Kindle Fire 7-Inch tablet

If you want a full-fledged tablet, Amazon has you covered with its Fire Tablet lineup. The basic model, available for just $40, is an excellent entry-level option that is now 20 percent off. The Fire boasts a vibrant 7-inch IPS touchscreen display and runs on a 1.3GHz quad-core processor.

The tablet comes equipped with the cloud-based Alexa service that gives you complete control of your device with easy voice commands, and Amazon Underground offers thousands of totally free apps and games. The standard 8 or 16GB of internal storage can be expanded via the MicroSD slot, and Prime members can enjoy exclusive access to millions of free movies, TV shows, books, and more. Coming in at just $40 after the current $10 discount, the 7-inch Fire Tablet is a great budget-friendly tablet.

Buy it for $40 on Amazon

Kindle Paperwhite ebook reader

Our third Kindle deal and a unique twist to the classic ebook reader, the Paperwhite brings a few upgrades to the standard model. Now $20 off the original price, the Kindle Paperwhite has a pixel density of 300ppi for razor-sharp text rendered in Amazon’s custom Bookerly font. Like the classic Kindle, the Paperwhite features a glare-free screen that mimics the appearance of paper for easy viewing in all daylight conditions, but with the addition of a built-in adjustable light for reading in the dark.

The unique illumination system guides light toward the front of the display, an improvement over eye-straining back-lighting. Educational features like Word Wise, Vocabulary Builder, Smart Lookup, and an instant translator make the ebook reader ideal for learners both young and old. The discounted Kindle Paperwhite can be had for $100.

Buy it for $100 on Amazon

Fire Tablet Kids Edition

If you are considering a tablet for a little one, then our fourth deal should be right up your alley. The Fire Kids Edition Tablet features the 7-inch Fire Tablet along with a colorful kid-proof case that insulates the housing against bumps and bruises. The Kids Edition bundle also includes one year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited which gives complimentary access to more than 10,000 books, shows, movies, games, and educational materials.

Parental controls let you decide what content your child can access and for how long, and best of all, Amazon offers a free two-year worry-free warranty on the device. This guarantees that they will replace it if it gets broken with no questions asked. Taken together, the bundle extras represent a $110 value on top of the current $20 discount which brings the Kindle Fire Kids Edition down to just $80 for a limited time.

Buy it for $80 on Amazon

Kindle Voyage

With its sleek lines and advanced features, the Kindle Voyage is an expertly-crafted ebook reader for serious reading enthusiasts. The crisp high-resolution display features smart lighting that detects your environment and adjusts itself accordingly so you don’t have to fiddle with brightness settings. The paper-like picture can be viewed in bright daylight and pitch black with its adaptive illumination feature.

Unique PagePress sensors on the side of the unit eliminate the need for buttons – a press of your thumb creates a haptic response which turns the page. The lightweight 7.6mm-thin body can be comfortably held with one hand for hours of reading and the housing boasts an elegant and modern look. Now offered for $20 off the usual price, the Kindle Voyage can be yours for $180.

Buy it for $180 on Amazon

PlayStation VR add-on experiences ranked!

PlayStation VR add-on experiences deliver new content in ways you might not expect.

There are already plenty of new games available on PlayStation VR, but what you might not expect are the new VR add-ons to PlayStation 4 games you’re already playing. There aren’t many of these floating around, but we’ve got the details on each PlayStation 4 add-on experience here today.

Read more at VRHeads.com

What I learned from playing Pokémon Go for 6 months

Catching Pokemon in the real world brought childhood dreams to life.

I am what you might call a member of the Pokémon generation. I played Pokémon Red on Gameboy Color, I collected the cards, and I definitely watched the television shows and spent what little money I had on checking out the movies. So when plans for Pokémon Go were released by Niantic, I was all in to play. I spent hours hunting for Pokémon, walking miles along the way, and exploring my neighborhood in a way I never had before. I also happened to learn a few things in the process.

It was awesome

I actually got started a few days late, since Pokémon Go premiered while I was camping on top of a mountain that had no internet access. As soon as I got home, I took a quick walk with my dog around the block and got way too excited. In 15 minutes I’d caught a Psyduck, an Eevee, and a handful of Pidgeys and Rattatas.

It’s such a small, silly, little thing, to take a walk and see pocket monsters pop up on your phone screen. I may have actually squealed out loud the first time that my favorite Pokemon — Vulpix — popped up for me to capture. This wasn’t just true for existing Pokémon fans like me. My mother was playing, her mother-in-law was playing, and everyone was having an absolutely amazing time. The sheer amount of people who were playing turned this game into an amazing experience that brought camaraderie to thousands of people worldwide. I know i wasn’t the only one who felt this way either.

I found so much

One of the coolest parts for me was finding so many neat places around my neighborhood and my city. PokéStops were set up at a variety of places from schools and post offices to art installations. I live just south of Baltimore, and while it gets a bad rap for a lot of things, there are some amazing art installations in the city.

I spent a full day wandering around with my phone, a portable battery, and tons of places to explore. From beautiful murals that stole my breath away to a tiny little café tucked into a corner. While Pokémon Go definitely got me out of the house and exploring my surroundings for the first time, it did more than just that. It got me looking up from my phone to take in everything around me happily. I’d never noticed just how much of the world I was missing and more to the point, how much was tucked into my little suburban neighborhood.

It was totally worth it

While there were definitely some issues that I found with Pokémon Go — namely the relative dearth of interesting catches near to home — overall it was an absolutely amazing experience. I walked more than I have since I got hooked on Run, Zombies, and I got so many ridiculous memories from it. I met neighbors while playing at a local playground, and going to venues with multiple PokéStops meant I ran into literally dozens of other Pokémon Go players.

When the weather turned cold and the teams became more entrenched in the territories they controlled, I slowly stopped playing so much. There’s every chance that when the weather warms back up I’ll boot the app back up and enjoy it anew, but I doubt the massive outpouring of players will ever return. Even if the craze only lasted a few short months, I had more fun with an app than I have ever had before, and it was totally worth every moment of a dying battery or my feet hurting after a 4-mile hike.

Are you still playing?

Have you been playing Pokémon Go through the winter? Has the novelty worn off? Will you play again when things warm up? Let us know in the comments below!

Pokémon Go

• Join our Pokémon Go forums!
• How to deal with GPS errors in-game
• Which team should you choose?
• How to play without killing your battery
• The Ultimate Pokémon Go Game Guide!
• Listen to the Pokémon Go podcast!

YouTube mobile live streaming is here, starting with channels above 10,000 subscribers

You can now go live with just a few taps.

YouTube has been talking about live streaming straight from your phone since mid-2016, and now it has expanded to make it available to everyone … who has more than 10,000 subscribers on YouTube. Thankfully, this is only a limited-time restriction, as the ability to live stream directly from your phone will expand to everyone very soon.

Live streams can start up right away with just a few taps in the standard YouTube app, and videos that are created live are treated the same as any other uploaded video. They can be found through search, recommendations and playlists — so people don’t necessarily have to find them directly on your channel. YouTube also claims to have done plenty of optimization to make sure your feed gets out clearly no matter what network you’re on, including slowing down incoming live chat to prioritize your video bandwidth.

Soon everyone will be able to go live on YouTube, no matter the subscriber number.

So, how about that pesky problem of monetizing your time on YouTube live streaming? It’s called “Super Chat.” Viewers watching your video can pay to get a front-row seat in the chat room where they can stand out from the thousands watching and get the creator’s attention. Super Chat messages stay on the top of the chat window for up to five hours. YouTube is describing this as “a little money on the side,” so it isn’t likely to add up to the type of ad revenue you can see with millions of subscribers on uploaded videos, but making sure live streaming can be worth a creator’s time is important.

Not many of us have 10,000 YouTube subscribers so we’ll be waiting for a while before we can stream ourselves, but in the meantime you’ll likely start to notice live streams from the people you already follow on YouTube — like perhaps MrMobile and Modern Dad!

Twitter is taking new steps to stop abuse — no, really this time

Twitter has a problem. Well, it has several problems.

The biggest issues that people deal with on a daily basis when using Twitter are unnecessary abuse and harassment. Today, Twitter is announcing three new initiatives it hopes will cut down on theses issues, making the social network a more approachable and inclusive place. It’s calling these steps an update on “safety,” to give you an indication of just how bad the situation is for many.

There are always trolls, mean-spirited replies and passive-aggressive quoted tweets, and unfortunately simply muting and blocking doesn’t always get the job done if the person just creates new accounts. Starting today, Twitter is making it harder for people who have been suspended for harassment to create new accounts — though, of course, Twitter can’t disclose how it’s doing this, for obvious reasons.

In the end, you’re still going to see some portion of the garbage that fills Twitter.

For more casual run-ins with questionable tweets, Twitter is also working on a “safe search” feature that removes tweets that have sensitive content or tweets from muted and blocked accounts. The content will still be there if you want to go beyond the safe search, but it won’t get in the way of general searches anymore.

Finally, Twitter is implementing a system in your notifications to by default hide what it deems “low-quality tweets.” Much like Twitter has tinkered a bit to move away from the purely chronological feed, your replies will now hide mentions that were deemed low-quality or potentially abusive. Just like safe search you can still find these mentions by tapping “show less relevant replies” in the conversation.

These changes are rolling out incrementally over the course of the next few days and weeks, and with any luck we’ll all start to enjoy a cleaner — and dare I say nicer — Twitter experience.

Introducing Ask Daniel, the most caffeinated place to get your questions answered!

AC’s Managing Editor answers your questions in a new forum!

Everyone has a story. How they got where they are, and what they want to do next. I have been very lucky to be able to do a lot of wonderful and interesting things in my life, and it’s a privilege to be able to write for a living, turning some of those experiences into narratives.

The humble editor and his favorite t-shirt.

But tech isn’t all there is, and after the success of Ask Jerry (the dopest place to get your questions answered), we thought it would be a good idea to expand the idea to include some other editors, beginning with, well, me.

Introducing Ask Daniel, the most caffeinated place to get your questions answered!

I love hearing from the people that visit this site every day, and there’s nothing better than building a relationship out of a community that has been here for a long time. Android Central’s forums are vital and alive, and they’re full of inquisitive and intelligent people looking for, and offering, thoughtful and intelligent answers every day. I hope I can add a small amount to that general knowledge base. With ☕️ in hand. I drink way too much of it.

If you’re curious about my first phones or what inspires me to write about Android, join me in the forums!

Join me in the Ask Daniel forums!

US and UK among the most civil nations online, Microsoft says

Today is “Safer Internet Day,” so Microsoft has released some stats showing relative safety and civility by nation. It turns out that people find each other pretty civil online in the US, as the nation placed third on Microsoft’s “Digital Civility Index.” It can’t hold a candle to the UK, however, which has the nicest internet community by a comfortable margin. By contrast, the worst places to be online are South Africa, Mexico and Russia, nations that also happen to struggle with high violent crime rates in the real world.

To come up with the index, Microsoft conducted a study across 14 countries, asking teens and adults about four risks: behavioral, reputational, sexual and personal/intrusive. The top five mentioned were unwanted contact, mean treatment, trolling, unwanted sexts and online harassment. Two of three respondents fell victim to at least one of the 17 risks , and 78 percent said it happened to at least one friend or family member. 62 percent were unsure where to get help.

It may seem obvious, but the software giant recommends living by the Golden Rule (yep), respecting differences, pausing before replying and standing up for yourself and others. The latter is particularly important, says the Tyler Clementi Foundation behind the #endbullying campaign. “We could eradicate most cruelty, bullying and humiliation that occurs online if every bystander became an ‘upstander,’ ” executive director Sean Kosofsky tells Microsoft. “We can interrupt harassment, report it and reach out to the affected person.”

While saying it doesn’t necessarily have the answer, Microsoft published best practices for civility in various industries to kickstart a larger conversation. “Our hope is that policymakers, companies and organizations will consider our suggestions and build on our initial efforts through fresh digital civility-related projects and programs,” the company wrote. What it left unsaid, unfortunately, is that one of the biggest bullies online is now the President of the United States — something that has already trickled down to real and online communities.

Source: Microsoft

Engadget giveaway: Win a Pixel smartphone courtesy of TurboTax!

It’s tax time again, where many fight sloth and memory lapses until mid-April, when procrastinating is no longer an option. Whether you get them sorted early or wait until the last minute, Intuit’s TurboTax is always there to make the process fast, easy and convenient. Using the mobile app, you can take a photo of your W-2 and it will automatically fill in your info. Since the web and mobile experiences are synced, you can even start the process on your phone and finish on your laptop, right where you left off. TurboTax also offers its service for free if you’re doing a basic return and its SmartLook feature offers one-way video assistance if you get stuck. To help brighten up this financially burdensome time of year, TurboTax has provided a Google Pixel smartphone for one lucky reader this week! All you need to do is head to the Rafflecopter widget for up to three chances at winning. So, good luck and get to those taxes, the process could be a lot easier than you think.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

• Entries are handled through the Rafflecopter widget above. Comments are no longer accepted as valid methods of entry. You may enter without any obligation to social media accounts, though we may offer them as opportunities for extra entries. Your email address is required so we can get in touch with you if you win, but it will not be given to third parties.
• Contest is open to all residents of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so direct your anger at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
• Winners will be chosen randomly. One (1) winner will receive one (1) Google Pixel smartphone (Quite Black, 128GB, $749 value).
• If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of being contacted. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen. Make sure that the account you use to enter the contest includes your real name and a contact email. We do not track any of this information for marketing or third-party purposes.
• This unit is purely for promotional giveaway. Engadget and AOL are not held liable to honor warranties, exchanges or customer service.
• The full list of rules, in all its legalese glory, can be found here.
• Entries can be submitted until Feb. 8th at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!

Control your connected home with a wave of your hand

The IoT-powered smart home has caught the tech world’s fancy for years, promising domestic command at your fingertips. But beyond set-and-forget environmental preferences, connected devices are usually configured via smartphone app or voice-controlled through a hub. But if you want to flick on your IoT machines with a wave or table tap, Hayo will soon launch an Indiegogo to bring spatial remotes to your living room.

Each Hayo device is a camera-equipped cylinder you park in a corner of a room. Turn it on, connect it to WiFi, and it will scan the area, creating a spatial map. You can use its dedicated smartphone app to assign specific triggers corresponding to particular places in the room: Tap the end of the table to flick off the lights, wiggle your hand in front of the TV to turn it on, and so on.

Of course, it’ll still take a minute to link your web of devices and corresponding activation areas, and perhaps tapping your bookshelf might be more of a hassle than walking over to fiddle with the thermostat yourself. It’s also unclear just how fine the gesture control is: Will I accidentally turn off the lights if I dance into its assigned signal window? Is the system sensitive enough to tell that I’m making the wrong hand shape?

Regardless of its sensitivity, there’s no denying the potential to create a masterful setup, like waving to turn on the coffeepot while you’re still in bed or rearranging controls around your workspace so you don’t have to get up to change the room temperature. Finally, this could be a very cool IoT-controlling alternative to voice-control hardware like Echo or Dot for the deaf or vocally-impaired. Or those of us who feel bad yelling at our devices. (They’re trying so hard, you guys.)

Source: Hayo