Nvidia’s GTX 1060 and 1080 cards may come with faster memory at a lower price

Why it matters to you

Nvidia is diversifying ahead of AMD’s Vega launch. That competition is good for all consumers, as more options mean more hardware catered to your budget and needs.

Alongside the new, supremely powerful GTX 1080 Ti, Nvidia has also announced some potential changes to its existing GTX 1060 and 1080 cards. As well as a price drop for the latter, both cards may now come with faster memory, if partner firms choose to implement it.

Nvidia’s Pascal lineup of graphics cards runs the gamut from low-end GTX 1050s right up to the newly announced 1080Ti. They come with a mix of GDDR5 and GDDR5X memory, the latter of which is an order of magnitude faster than the former. However, certain cards in that mix are now compatible with some faster memory options, regardless of original configurations.

The GTX 1060 will still be using GDDR5 memory, but may now come with 6GB of 9 GT/s memory, rather than 6GB of the original 8 GT/s memory. The GTX 1080s of the world, can now sport 11 GT/s GDDR5X, a 10 percent improvement over its original specifications.

More: How well does your system handle VR? Nvidia’s new FCAT VR benchmark will tell you

Partners won’t be offering these as special-edition cards –they will merely be designated as “factory overclocked,” according to TechReport. The faster memory should be good for a few percentage points of performance, which along with any clock bumps to the core, should help cards like the GTX 1080 remain relevant now that its bigger brother has debuted — especially since Nvidia dropped the price by $100 as part of its Game Developers Conference talk.

By making this change-up optional for hardware partners, Nvidia is making it easier for them to offer a wider array of graphics cards to consumers, at more varied price points. That will help it combat AMD’s upcoming Vega cards, which many consumers are excited about. Indeed, if they manage to fulfill their promise like Ryzen seems poised to do, then Nvidia will need all the help it can get.

Food at your feet: Pie Tops shoes let you place an order from Pizza Hut

Why it matters to you

Why use your voice to order a pizza when you can use your shoe?

Step into the future in Pizza Hut’s new smart shoes that, what else, order a pizza for you. Because apparently, shoes are no longer made for walking you over to the pizza joint — they’re made for ensuring the pizza comes to you with no movement required.

Named Pie Tops (you can’t make this stuff up), the high-top sneakers have a tongue that doubles as, you know, the key to your tongue. In other words, there is a button hidden in the tongue of the Pie Tops, which when pressed, will order you a pizza. Of course, there is a companion mobile app that allows you to set exactly what you’re ordering and how you have to press the button to trigger the transaction (because how awful would it be if you ordered a pizza every time you took a step…right?).

More: Pizza Hut and Alexa are latest enablers of ordering food without moving

But don’t get too excited. Like many of these kitschy, over-the-top promotions, the Pie Tops can’t actually be purchased by us regular folks. Rather, David Daniels, Pizza Hut’s vice president of advertising and media, told Ad Age, “The bulk of these will go to influencers (and) media, just to create buzz and talk value and we’ve reserved some for the opportunity for a select few Pizza Hut super fans to receive a pair of these custom Pie Top high-top tennis shoes.”

A pity, really.

Hopefully, the Pie Tops, or at least the buzz they generate, will help Pizza Hut turn itself around. Although the restaurant chain is still the nation’s largest when it comes to pizza, its performance in the fourth quarter of 2016 left something to be desired — it was beat by both Domino’s and Papa John’s.

But that could all change now that the Pie Tops are set to be featured in NCAA March Madness integrations thanks to Pizza Hut’s collaboration with Turner. “We’re planning to feature the pie tops with on-air talent,” Daniels said. It’s unclear as of yet, however, who that talent will be.

Philips has a new curved display with a huge color depth, AMD FreeSync support

Why it matters to you

This should be a great, affordable curved display solution for PC gamers on a budget due to its AMD FreeSync support, low response time, and great color coverage.

One of Philips’ distributors announced the upcoming launch of the curvy 278E8QJAB desktop monitor. Slated to arrive sometime in March for $300, the panel measures 27 inches and has a curvature of 1,800R. That number essentially means that if the curve made a complete circle, the radius would be 1,800mm. Thus, the larger the number/radius, the flatter the curve appears when facing the panel.

The whole point of having a curved form factor is to make viewing easier on the eyes. Adding to the panel’s curvature is Flicker-Free technology provided by Philips to help reduce the flashing as the panel refreshes the screen every second. The 278E8QJAB is also based on Vertical Alignment (VA) technology that promises great viewing angles, reducing eye strain.

Here are the specs:

Name:
278E8QJAB
Screen size:
27 inches
Screen resolution:
1,920 x 1,080 @ 60Hz
Panel type:
VA
Backlighting:
W-LED
Aspect ratio:
16:9
Response time:
4ms gray to gray
Brightness:
250 nits
Contrast ratio:
3,000:1
Dynamic contrast ratio:
20,000,000:1
Pixel pitch:
0.311mm x 0.311mm
Viewing angles:
178 degrees (V), 178 degrees (H)
Display colors:
16.7 million
Supported color spaces:
sRGB (130 percent)
NTSC (104 percent)
Audio:
2x three-watt speakers
Ports:
1x VGA
1x HDMI
1x DisplayPort
1x PC audio input
1x Headphone jack

As the specs show, the new desktop monitor completely covers the sRGB and NTSC color spaces, and then some. Normally we see this type of coverage with displays based on In-Plane Switching technology (IPS), which is notable for having brilliant colors and wide viewing angles. VA technology is actually the next step down, serving as the best of both worlds between IPS technology and the older, widely used Twisted Nematic (TN) display tech.

That said, the new curved monitor from Philips would be a great solution for the mainstream market wanting better colors than their old, TN-based display. Given it only supports sRGB and NTSC, graphic artists, ad designers, and professional photographers may want to look elsewhere for a panel that fully supports the Adobe RGB space.

More: MMD jump-starts new line of Philips displays with ultrathin 24-inch monitor

Other notable features provided in this new desktop panel include SmartContrast, which automatically adjusts the colors and backlight intensity based on the on-screen content. There’s also SmartImage Lite that enhances the contrast, color, saturation, and sharpness of images based on a selectable scenario. The included stand merely provides a tilt between negative-5 and 20 degrees.

Finally, the new panel supports AMD’s FreeSync technology. This is great for PC gamers with an AMD Radeon graphics card installed, as the tech will automatically sync the frame output of the Radeon graphics card with the refresh rate of the display. This eliminates annoying screen tearing, input lag, and stuttering.

Ultimately, the Philips 278E8QJAB curved desktop panel may be a great, affordable solution for PC gamers. There aren’t all the PC gaming bells and whistles as seen with gaming-dedicated panels, but with the color depth, low response time, FreeSync support, and low price, PC gamers may want to give this curvy product a second look when shopping for a new desktop panel.

Startup that gives a voice to the speechless wants you as a donor

Why it matters to you

You can help give a voice to those who can’t speak by becoming a speech donor.

Giving a voice to the voiceless sounds more like a discarded Occupy Wall Street tagline than it does the mission brief of a Boston-based synthetic speech startup. In fact, it perfectly describes the work being carried out by Vocalid: A tech company which creates custom text-to-speech communication tools for people who can’t speak.

A bit like a search engine for voices, Vocalid users can find and download their own speech tools from the startup’s massive database of global voices. And you can help.

More: Microsoft’s new speech recognition system achieves human parity in audible words

“There are still relatively few voices that exist in the text-to-speech space,” Vocalid founder Rupal Patel told Digital Trends. “It’s not uncommon to have a scenario where a little girl is using an adult man’s voice, for example. One of the people we work with has ALS, and he told me about going to an ALS fundraiser with his wife. Virtually all the men there were using the same voice, and it made it impossible for my wife to find him if they got separated because she kept hearing his voice coming from everywhere. For most of us, this kind of thing doesn’t affect us. The way that we use text-to-speech is for information transmission. We want to get directions for GPS, or to find out which stop to get off on the train. It’s not your avatar or your voice that’s being conveyed. That’s the difference.”

The voices that Vocalid create aren’t completely human sounding. They are synthetic composites of speech parts that are recorded from users around the world and then stitched together to create fully digital voices. But the technology is getting better all the time, and — most importantly — there is enough variety to make sure that users can pick a voice which sounds appropriate to them.

Customers find them by logging onto Vocalid’s system, uploading short vocal sounds (even short utterances like “ahh” are enough to perform a search) and locating ones which match their tone and accent.

This is where you come in. At present, the Human Voicebank has more than 14,000 members all around the globe, each contributing millions of sentences to the platform. However, Patel says they’re always looking for more and this can be done for free by any user willing to give up a short amount of time to read a few sentences into a microphone from their home computer.

It’s an amazing project and the idea that your act as a “voice donor” could transform someone’s life for the better is exactly the kind of awesome use-case which makes us glad to be living in the digital age.

Now get talking!

Startup that gives a voice to the speechless wants you as a donor

Why it matters to you

You can help give a voice to those who can’t speak by becoming a speech donor.

Giving a voice to the voiceless sounds more like a discarded Occupy Wall Street tagline than it does the mission brief of a Boston-based synthetic speech startup. In fact, it perfectly describes the work being carried out by Vocalid: A tech company which creates custom text-to-speech communication tools for people who can’t speak.

A bit like a search engine for voices, Vocalid users can find and download their own speech tools from the startup’s massive database of global voices. And you can help.

More: Microsoft’s new speech recognition system achieves human parity in audible words

“There are still relatively few voices that exist in the text-to-speech space,” Vocalid founder Rupal Patel told Digital Trends. “It’s not uncommon to have a scenario where a little girl is using an adult man’s voice, for example. One of the people we work with has ALS, and he told me about going to an ALS fundraiser with his wife. Virtually all the men there were using the same voice, and it made it impossible for my wife to find him if they got separated because she kept hearing his voice coming from everywhere. For most of us, this kind of thing doesn’t affect us. The way that we use text-to-speech is for information transmission. We want to get directions for GPS, or to find out which stop to get off on the train. It’s not your avatar or your voice that’s being conveyed. That’s the difference.”

The voices that Vocalid create aren’t completely human sounding. They are synthetic composites of speech parts that are recorded from users around the world and then stitched together to create fully digital voices. But the technology is getting better all the time, and — most importantly — there is enough variety to make sure that users can pick a voice which sounds appropriate to them.

Customers find them by logging onto Vocalid’s system, uploading short vocal sounds (even short utterances like “ahh” are enough to perform a search) and locating ones which match their tone and accent.

This is where you come in. At present, the Human Voicebank has more than 14,000 members all around the globe, each contributing millions of sentences to the platform. However, Patel says they’re always looking for more and this can be done for free by any user willing to give up a short amount of time to read a few sentences into a microphone from their home computer.

It’s an amazing project and the idea that your act as a “voice donor” could transform someone’s life for the better is exactly the kind of awesome use-case which makes us glad to be living in the digital age.

Now get talking!

Remember Intel’s 300-drone light show at the Super Bowl? China just did one with 1,000

Why it matters to you

Like drones? Want to watch 1,000 of them take to the sky to perform an epic UAV light show? Of course you do.

Never let it be said that China doesn’t know how to do things at scale!

Following the Super Bowl’s recent halftime show, which consisted of hundreds of swarming drones, the Chinese drone company EHang has upped the ante with an epic, record-setting drone light show — consisting of a whopping 1,000 quadcopters.

The so-called “Meteor Sky”performance was recently carried out in the densely populated city of Guangzhou to mark the Chinese Lantern Festival. If you’ve ever thought the use of unmanned aerial vehicles was limited to recording video and potentially one day delivering your Amazon packages, the spectacle of 1,000 drones changing color in synchronization with one another will change your mind forever.

More: Intel gives fireworks a run for their money with a 500-drone ‘shooting star’ show

According to EHang, the demonstration was a test to see whether drones may potentially represent an environmentally-friendly alternative to fireworks. Based on this performance, we certainly wouldn’t be against it — although you’d have to wonder about the necessary FAA clearances to fly this number of drones over so many people in the U.S.

The drones participating were all identical models of EHang’s GhostDrone 2.0, a mid-priced quadcopter best known for its 4K filming capabilities and first-person view VR goggles. Laying out all the drones for launch took up an area of 951 feet x 62 feet, and required a staff of thirty EHang engineers to orchestrate the display. Between choreographing and testing the spectacular show, these engineers spent thousands of hours making sure everything worked as well as possible.

Amazingly, no drones crashed into one another during the resulting flight — and they were each able to stay at least 5 feet apart throughout the performance.

Perhaps most impressive of all? The whole thing was controlled from just one single computer on the ground. Now that’s a time you don’t want your MacBook to crash…

Microsoft is working hard on privacy, updates in Windows 10 Creators Update

Why it matters to you

You’ll have much more control over how updates happen in the Windows 10 Creators Update, and a better idea of what private date is being transmitted to Microsoft.

While Windows 10 has a lot of happy users and continues to enjoy steady growth, two issues remain serious sore spots. Many people are concerned with the data that Microsoft collects via Windows 10, and Windows 10 updates create some consternation given how automatically and aggressively they’re applied.

Microsoft has been working on both issues, and it’s rolled out some changes in the latest Windows Insider preview builds that will be coming to all Windows 10 users in the impending Creators Update. The company took to its blog today to provide some additional details on its efforts to improve privacy and make updates less intrusive.

More: Windows 10 Insider Program: latest windows builds, updates, and news

First up is how Windows 10 is updated, a process that’s important to Microsoft’s goal of making Windows 10 the most secure operating system ever. By making updates mandatory and timely, the company can help make sure that security patches are applied and vulnerabilities resolved.

At the same time, forcing updates that interrupt user’s work and occur without their control causes frustration and potentially even data loss as applications aren’t always closed correctly when an update requires a reboot. That’s why Microsoft is implementing some changes in Creators Update to give users more control over when updates are applied.

In Microsoft’s own words, “[We are] excited to share that you will have considerably more flexibility when specifying the best time to install updates on your devices. We are also making other improvements to the update deployment experience in the Creators Update. For example, downloads will have less impact on device performance while they are in progress. You should experience fewer reboots, which will reduce the likelihood that an update will be installed at an inopportune time.

Specific changes include giving users the power to control exactly when updates occur, with a new dialog that allows users to pick a time when an update will restart a machine as well as a snooze function that will let the user pause the restart for up to three days. “Active Hours,” or the time window during which Windows 10 will install updates, is also being expanded. A new icon in the Windows Update Settings page will provide an at-a-glance indication of whether a machine is fully updated.

More: Microsoft is giving users more control over the private data Windows 10 collects

In terms of privacy, Microsoft already provided the details of some upcoming changes to how privacy settings are enabled and that provide more feedback and transparency regarding the data that Windows 10 transmits to the company. Today’s update provided some up-to-date screenshots of how those changes have progressed, and while the company may not please everyone with the changes, they’re arguably steps in the right direction.

Windows 10 Creators Update is expected to arrive in April 2017, and so there’s roughly a month remaining for Microsoft to polish things up. If you’re a Windows Insider, then you’re already familiar with what’s coming, of course. If not, then you don’t have too terribly long to wait to see what’s new.

With Pilgrim, Foursquare wants other mobile apps to be able to find you, too

Why it matters to you

The most important thing Foursquare has to offer is location data, and now it’s offering it to mobile app developers via Pilgrim

Foursquare isn’t just helping you find new hot spots — the company is also helping other companies find you. According to a new report from Mashable, the location app is taking a step away from its consumer focus and instead looking to help other mobile apps with a new platform known as Pilgrim, which any mobile app developer can use to help garner insights into location-based information and mobile notifications.

While it may not look a lot like the original Foursquare, founded in 2008 by Dennis Crowley, the goal of Pilgrim remains firmly in line with the app’s goals. As Crowley told Mashable, “We not only build cool things but build tools that help other people build cool things. We knew that someday we would have to build something that was a check-in button you would never have to press, without the person having to open their phone or even do anything.”

More: Give your friends a Glympse of your location with this helpful GPS app

In some ways, Pilgrim is just the next phase in Foursquare’s evolution, and leverages what the app does best — know where you are. Any app that makes use of the Pilgrim software development kit (SDK) can now figure out exactly where its users are located (assuming users have their location services turned on). How exact? As Mashable points out, it gets pretty granular, down to which coffee shop you’re doing work in, or what store your’e browsing.

“The lines of code are telling people that the app is inside of a bakery, the app is inside a bar in the Lower East Side. They’ve been to this bar three times,” Crowley said. “We’ve all been building off of GPS for the last 10 years. GPS is just latitude and longitude, but it’s not good as, ‘Are you at the sneaker store?’”

While Foursquare isn’t the only company with this kind of information (tech giants like Google and Facebook have these capabilities as well), Foursquare differentiates itself by its willingness to share.

“It’s one thing to have it and another thing to give everyone the ability to do this. We designed this for people around the world,” Crowley said. “I don’t doubt that Google and Facebook have the ability to do this, but if you talk to a lot of developers, you’ll learn that people don’t want to use the tools that these companies use because Google and Facebook [are] trying to take them out of business.”

A real price cut comes to virtual reality as Rift + Touch bundle drops to $598

Why it matters to you

The price reduction of the Oculus Rift means the platform will not only achieve more market share, but reel more customers into the pricey virtual reality market.

HTC has taken a few punches over the last few days regarding the virtual reality industry. First, device maker LG revealed during the Games Developer Conference that it has teamed up with Valve Software to produce a new VR headset based on SteamVR, the very platform HTC uses with the Vive. Now HTC is facing a very immediate threat: A drastic price reduction of the Oculus Rift.

Oculus VR announced on Wednesday that the Oculus Rift headset and Touch controller bundle now sells for $598, down from the previous $798 pricetag. On their own, the Oculus Rift headset now costs $499, the Touch controller pair costs $99, and the Oculus Sensor sells for $59. By contrast, the competing HTC Vive bundle retails for $800.

More: HTC details release plans for Vive Tracker, announces Vive finance program

The cost has undoubtedly been one of the big barriers keeping a good chunk of mainstream customers from purchasing a VR headset. But that is expected with any new technology and prices typically drop over the following year as hardware components become more readily available and sold at a lower cost. However, that is likely not the case of the new Oculus Rift price reduction.

The HTC Vive has reportedly been the biggest selling virtual reality headset followed by the PlayStation VR headset ($400). That likely pushed Facebook and Oculus VR to slash the prices of the Rift to better compete with the other platforms. And because Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemingly sit upon mountains of cash, there is breathing room to knock $200 off the bundle’s price point.

One of the big problems the Oculus Rift seemingly faces is the platform’s appearance of a walled garden based on its “closed” Oculus Home marketplace. But in reality, the Oculus Rift is capable of playing games sold on Oculus Home as well as Steam whereas the HTC Vive plays games sold on Steam and Viveport but can’t access titles sold in Oculus Home.

The deal with the Oculus Rift accessing Steam games stems from OpenVR. Valve Software used the OpenVR software developer kit’s driver interface to connect the OpenVR platform to the Oculus SDK. In other words, games sold on Steam that support OpenVR will automatically be compatible with the Oculus Rift and the Touch controllers.

“Oculus Home installs the Oculus SDK runtime libraries,” Valve’s Joe Ludwig recently said. “The OpenVR adapter drivers for Rift call into the Oculus’ public runtime libraries to interact with Rift and Touch hardware. Users who purchase a Rift and install Home will have the Oculus SDK runtime libraries and they will be kept up to date by Oculus.”

One of the obstacles the Oculus Rift may be facing is the Steam branding associated with the HTC Vive. PC gamers automatically recognize the Steam platform and Valve Software’s overall history in the gaming business. The price reduction of the Rift, along with the emerging support for the headset in games sold on Steam, should help Facebook and Oculus VR command more of the VR market share over the next several months.

Microsoft’s mixed-reality headsets aim to bridge gap between HoloLens and VR

Why it matters to you

Microsoft’s mixed reality push is finally kicking into high gear with plans to hit retail shelves in 2018.

In late 2016, Microsoft announced a partnership with companies like Acer to bring Windows Mixed Reality to a broader audience. On Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft delivered on that promise, announcing that Windows Mixed Reality devkits will start shipping later in March.

The headsets will be among the first to deliver built-in inside-out tracking, so you won’t need to set up any lighthouses or external sensors. Microsoft claims that it will provide a plug-and-play setup forgoing any complicated calibration issues, but that will remain to be seen.

More: How well does your system handle VR? Nvidia’s FCAT VR benchmark will tell you

“When we begin the phased rollout of the developer kits this month, the kits will include the Acer headset, along with documentation and access to Windows 10 Insider preview builds, and the software development kit to enable developers to build mixed reality applications,” wrote Alex Kipman, a Microsoft technical fellow.

In the same way that Asus, Acer, Dell, etc., produce Windows 10 laptops, Microsoft likely hopes getting the headsets out to developers first will kickstart mixed reality support. It is a different slightly different tack than VR headset manufacturers Oculus and HTC have taken with their own products.

“We’re also excited to share that Windows Mixed Reality experiences will light up on other devices over time, beyond desktop and Microsoft HoloLens. Our plan is to bring mixed reality content to the Xbox One family of devices, including Project Scorpio in 2018,” Kipman continued.

The first step in that plan? The Acer mixed reality headset, which Microsoft detailed at GDC on Wednesday. Not only will it feature built-in inside-out tracking, but two high-resolution LCD displays at 1440 x 1440, capable of a native 90 Hz refresh rate.

It’s exciting news for anyone interested in augmented reality or mixed reality, these new headsets follow Microsoft’s well-established strategy for inspiring and working with other companies to get Windows products in as many hands as possible.