Make your ink and paper last longer with these 8 simple tips

Why it matters to you

We all hate buying printer ink, so here are some best practices to make sure your printer is running as lean as possible.

There are few things as frustrating as running out of printer ink in the middle of a job. Buying new ink is about the last thing anyone wants to spend money on, but it’s also one of life’s apparent inevitabilities. Fortunately, there are things you can do to squeeze out as many prints as possible from each milliliter of ink, as HP’s Chief Inkologist (yes, it’s his real job title), Thom Brown, recently shared with Digital Trends in the following tips – applicable for any printer, not just those from HP. Some of these may be old news to you, but many are likely novel and may save you time and money.

1. Try changing the font or reducing the font size of your document. This makes sense once you think about it, but most people probably have never considered that some fonts use more ink than others. Brown recommends using Century Gothic, Ecofont, or Times New Roman to keep your ink cartridges fuller, longer. Arial is a particularly bad one, apparently.

2. Change your settings to reduce paper and ink usage. When possible, print double-sided documents and widen your margins to squeeze more text onto the page. This may not directly save ink, but saving paper is also important – especially for documents that may not be needed long-term, like memos and notes.

3. Use print preview. Have you ever printed a web page only to find you’ve wasted ink by printing the ads at the bottom of the page? Always open your document in print preview to ensure no pages are wasted.

4. Print only portions of a web page. If print preview does show lots of adds or other unwanted content, the free HP Smart Print app can help. It reduces paper and ink usage by removing headers, footers, and ads from web pages, leaving you with just the content you want to print. The app isn’t exclusive to HP printers.

5. Print in black and white. Wasting color ink on documents that don’t need it will only lead to headaches down the road. Ensure you only print in color when necessary by changing your default setting to print in black and white only. This will extend the life of your color ink cartridges.

6. For times when the best quality is not needed, print in draft mode. Not only does this use less ink than the “normal” setting, it also prints faster. The results won’t be as high quality, with slightly lighter text, but there are many applications where this is a good tradeoff.

7. Replace ink cartridges only when they are empty. Your printer will alert you when ink is running low, but Brown cautions that this is just a warning; there’s no need to panic (yet). Your printer may continue working normally for some time to come, so keep using those cartridges until they are completely empty.

8. Use “N-up” printing in the printer driver. If you don’t need to print every page on individual pieces of paper, and if you don’t mind potentially squinting at small text, this option will allow you to print multiple pages on a single sheet of paper, saving both ink and paper.

HP is in the business of selling printers and ink — lots and lots of ink. So it may come as a bit of surprise that the company wants to make sure customers are getting the most mileage out of their cartridges, but we certainly appreciate it. Printer companies have been increasingly moving toward more consumer-friendly ink policies in recent years, including the production of tank-based (rather than cartridge-based) printers, but knowing how to push your current printer to its limits is important no matter what type of printer you have.

There’s a storm brewing over the graphics chip inside the iPhone

Why it matters to you

A future iPhone may have a custom Apple designed graphics chip inside, but a patent battle may precede it

There’s a storm brewing over the graphics processor (GPU) used in the Apple iPhone, the iPad, and various other Apple mobile devices. At the moment, Apple uses a PowerVR chip from Imagination Technologies, usually alongside its own custom A10 processor; but this is likely to change in the next two years, and it’s believed Apple may be designing its own GPU for use in future devices.

It’s speculation for now, but it comes from Imagination Technologies itself. In a press release, it’s stated, “Apple has asserted that it has been working on a separate, independent graphics design in order to control its products and will be reducing its future reliance on Imagination’s technology.”  Apple will stop using Imagination Technologies chips in 15 months to two years time, it says.

More: Drool over these pictures of the new iPhone 7 (RED)

Where’s the problem? If it happens, the existing license agreement between the two will end, and when the time comes, Apple will stop paying royalties to Imagination Technologies. It’s bad news as Imagination takes around half of its revenue from Apple, which has an eight percent stake in the company.

However, Imagination believes Apple is mistaken if it thinks by developing its own chip, it can do so without using its patents, intellectual property, or information previously shared. It has asked Apple to provide evidence proving it doesn’t need Imagination’s technology to build its own chips, but apparently none has been provided yet.

This means Imagination Technologies and Apple may be on the brink of a patent war, if Apple can’t defend its own chip design, or a new agreement between the two cannot be reached. Imagination makes it clear that, “alternative commercial arrangements” are being discussed with Apple, ensuring licenses and royalties continue in the event the pair split up. Imagination says more announcements on the matter will be made in the future.

It’s a drastic reversal of the events of last year, when Apple confirmed it had discussed an acquisition deal with Imagination. No offer was made, but it’s evidence Apple has been considering the idea of designing, or at least controlling, its own GPU for some time.

The Galaxy S8 has face recognition and iris scanning, and you have to choose one

There are two ways to unlock the Galaxy S8 with your face. Here are the differences.

The Galaxy S8 contains more ways than ever to keep your content safely locked behind a password: in addition to the traditional PIN, pattern or password option (cumulatively the most secure), there’s fingerprint recognition, iris scanning (which debuted on the Galaxy Note 7) and, oldie-but-goodie, face recognition.

In the beginning…

Back in 2011, Google debuted support for face recognition as an unlock option on select devices. It was available on phones like the Galaxy Nexus, HTC EVO 4G LTE and HTC One X, but eventually manufacturers stopped supporting it because it didn’t work very well.

The idea of face recognition is a good one: all phones have a front-facing camera, and all (most) people have unique faces, and phones are computers that can figure out that the person stored in the phone is the same one holding his or her phone in front of the camera. But two things stopped it from gaining popularity: for a long time, front-facing cameras had small, low-quality sensors, making them slow and generally terrible in poor lighting. You need your unlock method to work all the time, not just in particular lighting. The second reason is less obvious: the proliferation of fingerprint sensors made alternative forms of fast-but-relatively-safe unlock methods less necessary.

Then came Smart Lock

When Lollipop debuted in 2015, Google created something called Smart Lock, a service across its major platforms (Android, Chromebooks, and Chrome OS) to make it easier for people to unlock their devices without passwords. On Android, that early and little-used face recognition feature that debuted in 2011 eventually became just another part of Google Play Services alongside on-body detection, trusted voice, trusted places, and trusted devices. But still, even today, very few people use it.

Fingerprint sensors made face unlock less necessary — and way less popular. Until now.

To be fair, Google’s implementation hasn’t always been very good — in fact, it’s still pretty unreliable on most phones — but most people don’t even know it’s there, buried as it is within Google’s Play Services. It’s also not included on every device, which makes advertising the feature a hit-and-miss affair. Trusted places — your house, or workplace — uses location, which is more easily detectable, and trusted devices allows a smartwatch or other Bluetooth device to act as a nearby authenticator. Again, super simple. With fingerprint sensors being integrated on most devices, facial recognition just isn’t that necessary.

What’s old is new(s) again

When the Galaxy Note 7 was released last year, it arrived with a fair amount of buzz surrounding its iris scanner. But because the scanner actually matched the details from the inside of your eye against a stored copy — which is nearly impossible to duplicate or imitate — it worked slowly, and often failed. So Samsung decided to bring back the face scanner in the Galaxy S8, and improve upon Google’s implementation in a number of ways.

The Galaxy Note 7’s iris scanner failed a lot. But it was still a great idea worth pursuing.

Face scanning works by taking a photo of your whole face, and using the front-facing camera to match specific details to the live photo in front of it. On the Galaxy S8, this works incredibly quickly — far quicker than any other face unlock method, and often more quickly than the fingerprint sensor — for a couple of reasons. First, the Galaxy S8 is just plain fast — its Snapdragon 835 or Exynos 8895 chips have incredibly advanced image signal processors that perform the work in a fraction of the time it took just a few years ago. And the 8MP front-facing camera inside the Galaxy S8, which has autofocus and is therefore much more likely to find a subject lock.

But as you may have seen plastered around the internet, face recognition is not foolproof. Indeed, it’s fairly easy to spoof if you have a high-resolution photo of the subject, and some persistence. This isn’t to say that opening Facebook and showing a photo of your friend to his phone while he’s in the bathroom will unlock it (let’s be honest, too, he’s bringing that phone with him to the bathroom) but Samsung doesn’t recommend you use face unlock if you have sensitive material on the phone.

That said, it’s so fast, and much more likely to find a match in low-light situations, a common scenario that Note 7 owners found themselves frustrated by with the iris scanner last year.

Focusing on the iris

Iris scanning is a more secure form of biometric authentication, and is likely more secure than a fingerprint since it is basically impossible to recreate, even using the most advanced methods.

The iris scanner has made a return to the Galaxy S8 after it ignominiously disappeared in the Note 7 last fall. It’s also much, much faster than before — which is good, because the damn thing needed it.

Iris scanning on the Galaxy S8 is at least twice as fast as the Note 7, and fails less in low light. In other words, you’ll want to use it.

On the Galaxy S8, I’ve found iris scanning to be very reliable and quite fast most of the time, though not as instantaneous as a fingerprint sensor or face unlock. That said, I’ve been impressed with its ability to unlock in low light — the iris scanner likely uses a combination of the dedicated infrared sensor and front-facing camera to get a match — which had led to considerably fewer moments of frustration.

I’ve also noticed that the iris scanner, while it still needs to have your eyes in its sights, doesn’t need to be perfectly aligned the way the Note 7’s did; I can have my hands close to my chest and tilt the phone up towards me, and as long as my eyes are in the viewfinder it unlocks most of the time. It’s still not perfect, and I occasionally find myself having to find the fingerprint sensor to finish the job, but it’s rare.

You can only choose one

For safety reasons, you can only choose one method of facial unlocking on the Galaxy S8: face recognition or iris scanning.

• If you’re concerned with security above all else, use the iris scanner.
• if you’re concerned with speed above all else, use the face recognition.

Of course, either of these methods can be combined with the existing fingerprint unlock, which despite being on the back is fairly easy to reach and may end up being faster than either. The main upside to the visage-based methods is that you don’t have to poke around on the back of the phone for the fingerprint sensor; you can merely turn on your phone, look at the camera, and go.

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Apple ends partnership with Imagination Technologies, will design and produce its own graphics chip within two years

British-based technology Imagination Technologies has announced that Apple has ended its long-running partnership and will instead design and produce its own graphics chip for use in the iPhone and iPad.

The company confirmed the news in a statement, saying: “Apple has asserted that it has been working on a separate, independent graphics design in order to control its products and will be reducing its future reliance on Imagination’s technology,” 

Imagination’s PowerVR graphics technology has been used by Apple in the GPU of its mobile iOS devices for years, so the news that the partnership is ending is certainly surprising. Although it may not come as much of a shock to industry insiders, as Apple has been quietly hiring staff from Imagination for some time. 

Shares in Imagination Technologies plunged 60 per cent following the announcement, as Apple is the Imagination’s largest customer, and the Californian tech giant even holds an 8 per cent stake.

Apple is expected to introduce its own chips and graphics technology within the next 15 months to two years, and is expected to show up in the iPhone released in September 2018, whatever it may be called. 

Imagination Technologies isn’t convinced that Apple will be able to make its own chips without infringing on its patents, and has asked the tech giant for proof that this won’t happen, but Apple has yet to respond. 

“Imagination believes that it would be extremely challenging to design a brand new GPU architecture from basics without infringing its intellectual property rights, accordingly Imagination does not accept Apple’s assertions.”

The British company has added that it will attempt to strike up a new commercial deal with Apple.

The Morning After: Monday, April 3rd 2017

Hey, good morning!

Welcome to the work week. April 1st is finally done, and in these days of fake news, we’re all increasingly numb to the corporate non-ideas that barraged our inboxes and social networks over the weekend. Meanwhile, Apple is apparently sketching out TV service plans aimed at convenience, and Archer, the mobile game, requires you to fire up your old printer.

HBO, Showtime and Starz for one price?
Apple hopes to sell premium TV channels in a bundle

Apple’s attempts to offer its own TV service haven’t panned out. However, it appears to have a Plan B: offer a bundle that includes just a handful of channels you can already watch on its devices. Recode sources understand that Apple is pitching a deal that would offer HBO, Showtime and Starz for one price. It’s not certain whether or not you’d get a discount over the $35 per month it costs to subscribe to each network individually, but the focus would be on convenience. There’s even talk of Apple potentially selling the bundle as a stand-alone product — presumably, as more than just a collection of existing apps.

The worst.This April 1st, you’re not fooling anyone

Featuring energy drinks, garden gnomes, onesies, and other things you don’t normally buy anyway.

‘PES 2017’ allegedly uses his likeness without permission.
Soccer icon Maradona threatens to sue Konami for using his face

You may have been excited to see sports legend Diego Maradona in Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2017, but the superstar himself is… less than thrilled. Maradona has threatened to sue Konami for allegedly using his likeness in the game without permission.

The victim has also been subject to online bullying.
Police make first arrest in Facebook Live sexual assault case

Law enforcement is taking sweeping action following a horrific sexual assault streamed on Facebook’s live broadcast feature. Chicago police report that they’ve made the first arrest in the case, bringing a 14-year-old boy into custody. There will be more arrests soon, according to the CPD, including a 15-year-old who’s next in line. Details of the case are mostly under wraps beyond a connection between the victim and one of her attackers (their age prevents disclosing some of the facts). However, it’s already clear that the livestream wasn’t the end to the internet-based trauma.

Augmented reality meets old-school ink.The ‘Archer’ mobile game asks you to break out your printer

By their very nature, most augmented reality games are at least a little bit futuristic. The creators of Archer, however, are embracing the past. The Archer, P.I. mobile game will have you pointing your Android or iOS device at your TV, Facebook and even billboards to scan for clues to a hidden story inside Archer: Dreamland, the film noir-inspired eighth season of the animated series. If you want to claim your rewards and unlock every mystery, though, you’ll also have to print and assemble physical objects based on what you see in the show.

But wait, there’s more…

• Roland founder and music legend Ikutaro Kakehashi dies
• Recommended Reading: Beats 1 is a powerful music marketing tool
• Tesla’s SUV demand is catching up to its sedan
• Expect to see BlackBerry’s name (and tech) on more devices

Apple is building its own GPU for the iPhone and iPad

Imagination Technologies is famous for one thing: it’s the company that provides the graphics for the iPhone. But today, Imagination announced that its longstanding relationship with Apple is coming to an abrupt end. In a statement, the outfit has conceded that Apple will replace the PowerVR GPU at the heart of its iOS devices with a graphics chip of its own design.

When Apple started making the iPhone, it used a generic, Samsung-made ARM system that was paired with a PowerVR GPU. Over time, Apple began crafting more and more of its own silicon, thanks to its purchase of various chip design firms. These days, the PowerVR chip on the A10 Fusion is one of very few components that Apple didn’t have entire control over.

The decision to dump Imagination was probably inevitable given the company’s trend towards control, but there may be another story here. Third-party analysts The Linley Group spotted that the iPhone 7 used the same PowerVR GT7600 GPU that was used for the iPhone 6S. That piece of silicon, while powerful, couldn’t sustain its performance for very long and so throttles the component to avoid overheating.

Apple’s unsentimentally when it comes to ditching chip makers when they can’t meet performance targets is well-known. After all, the company ditched PowerPC CPUs because — so the legend goes — Intel’s X86 silicon was getting faster while IBM and Motorola dragged their feet.

It’s clearly a massive blow for Imagination, which has already said that it’s planning to take the matter to the courts. After all, building a graphics platform from scratch is likely to involve using technology that other companies like Imagination has already patented. The famously-secretive Apple is also not going to look favorably upon one of its suppliers going public with this licensing dispute.

Imagination shares down 67% after end of agreement with Apple pic.twitter.com/jBazTt6IjT

— Francisco Jeronimo (@fjeronimo) April 3, 2017

As TechCrunch explains, the split could spell doom for Imagination, since it relies upon Apple for the bulk of its cash. Even worse, is that the news has already caused Imagination’s stock to freefall, dropping between 60 and 70 percent in the last few hours.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Imagination Technologies

Feral Announces ‘F1 2016’ Coming to Mac on April 6 for $49.99

Feral Interactive announced today that F1 2016 is coming to the Mac on April 6 and has been refined using Apple’s new graphics API, Metal.

F1 2016 is Codemasters’ official game for the 2016 FIA Formula One World Championship and features extensive online multiplayer game modes that allow players to compete against up to 21 rivals on any of the 21 Grand Prix circuits.

“It’s been three years since a new F1 game graced the Mac and a lot has happened since then,” said David Stephen, managing director of Feral. “F1 2016 is a massive step forward for the franchise, greatly improving upon the fastest and most thrilling on-track racing experience in gaming.”

At the heart of the game is an all-new career mode that Feral is calling the most immersive, in-depth mode ever featured in the franchise, and lets players pursue legendary status in the sport over up to ten back to back Formula One seasons.

The game includes the iconic Safety Car and Virtual Safety Car, the paddock, key figures from the world of F1 and all the drivers, teams and circuits. Players can also experience the height of the pre-race tension and feel the pressure of the all-important start with the introduction of the Formation Lap and manual starts.

The minimum system requirements for F1 2016 are a 2.8GHz Intel Core i5 processor running macOS 10.12.4, 8GB of RAM and a 2GB NVIDIA 680, AMD R9 280M, Intel Iris 540 or better. The recommended system requirements are a 3.3GHz Intel Core i7 processor running macOS 10.12.4, 16GB of RAM and a 4GB AMD R9 395X or better.

F1 2016 will be available through the Feral Store and Steam for $59.99 (£39.99) and available on the Mac App Store for $49.99 (£48.99). The game is also for pre-order on Feral’s official store.
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Facebook Testing ‘Rocket Ship’ Mobile Feed With Recommended, Local Content

Signs of Facebook’s silent testing of new features for its mobile app appear to be continuing apace, after some users noticed a rocket ship-shaped icon appearing at the bottom of their news feed.

(Image from iOS app via Wired)
The icon has been appearing from time to time at the bottom of the iOS app’s main news feed icon and displays a different type of feed made up of posts, articles, photos, and videos from sources users haven’t followed, like Facebook Pages or posts from news media organizations, for example.

A lot of the content that shows up in the rocket feed appears to be sourced locally, suggesting the feature may rely on live location information. Some posts have been spotted that are directly relevant to users’ interests, such as content from pages that are similar to those users have liked, so it’s possible the content stream is being selectively weighted by algorithms based on likes, friends, and groups.

(Image from Android app via Stan Schroeder/Mashable)
It’s unclear if the feature will ever get an official rollout to all mobile users – Facebook has a habit of trialing features just to see if they prove popular among a select few. Last month, the company began testing “Facebook Stories”, a Snapchat feature clone that lets users post a time-limited photo or video at the top of the Facebook app.

Tag: Facebook
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U.K. drone owners are causing a multitude of complaints

Why it matters to you

While the vast majority of drone owners fly their machines responsibly, it seems there are a growing number doing just the opposite.

The last couple of years has seen drone ownership skyrocket around the world, with growing sales coming off the back of increased affordability. Folks across the pond in the U.K. have clearly bought into the technology, though new figures suggest a marked increase in complaints about the way the remotely controlled flying machines are being used.

Obtained by the Press Association following a recent Freedom of Information request, the police data shows drone-related complaints hit 3,456 in 2016, nearly triple that of the 1,237 complaints logged a year earlier. And in 2014, when drone ownership numbers were relatively small, a mere 283 complaints were made.

The data included a broad range of incidents, from neighbors complaining that others were using drones to spy on them in their back yards, to reported near-misses with passenger jets flying close to major airports, with 59 such cases brought to the attention of the authorities in the last 12 months alone.

Some of the incidents described criminals using the camera-equipped machines to “scope out” properties ahead of a potential burglary, while others have been attempting — and in some cases succeeding — to fly contraband to prison inmates.

One guy threatened to shoot down a drone with an air rifle, while another complained that his neighbor was flying one of the machines “just to annoy him.”

Commenting on the data, David Dunn of Birmingham University told the Associated Press that the technology was impacting privacy in a big way.

“Previously you had a hedge, you had a wall and you could do whatever you wanted in your garden without people disturbing you. That has changed because of drones,” Dunn said.

He added that burglars are “using them to fly behind properties to see if the lights are on, to see what sort of French windows they have or whether there are windows open” before deciding whether to enter a property.

More: Canada tightens the rules on recreational drone use

Lawmakers are currently considering whether to implement a registration scheme forcing all U.K.-based drone owners to add their machine and personal details to a national database, similar to the one launched by the Federal Aviation Administration at the end of 2015. It’s believed such a scheme would encourage more responsible flying while helping the authorities to identify an owner in the event of a complaint or serious incident.

This delivery drone lands in the street before driving right to your doorstep

Why it matters to you

Large-scale drone delivery services are still some way away, but engineers are continuing to explore different designs for when such services eventually take off.

Sure, drone delivery may one day take off in a big way, but until advances in technology satisfy those who set the rules for flight safety, that day is still a ways off.

In the meantime, a number of tech firms have been developing wheel-based robots for deliveries to your door, with Domino’s just last week announcing plans to use such a machine for pizza delivery.

But little has been said about how a robot like this would see off ne’er-do-wells who might try to kidnap it for a free meal after spotting it trundling along the street. After all, we all remember what happened to poor ol’ hitchBot when he was out and about by himself.

In an apparent effort to combine the speed and security of aerial drones with the convenience of a true doorstep delivery service, California-based Advanced Tactics (AT) has announced that it recently completed the successful test of the Panther, a rugged-looking contraption that’s both a drone and an autonomous robot that can move along the ground. Besides taking packages right to the door, the system also offers the deliverer more options as it can land close to the customer’s yard if it happens to be inaccessible because of trees or other obstacles.

“It’s believed this is the first successful test of its kind,” AT said in a release, adding that the Panther “can land with a 5-pound package and safely drive up to the door with no propellers turning to deliver a package to the doorstep of a customer.” The mention of “no propellers turning” is a reference to the Panther’s safety features, after all, a paying customer would be pretty put out if they accidentally got their fingers sliced off when they went to grab their delivery. And anyway, the company is planning to house those propellors inside cages, providing extra reassurance in case anyone’s close by when it takes off.

AT said that “the combination of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) flight with off-road driving capabilities in a package delivery drone make the Panther … unlike anything else previously seen.” The hexacopter can lift packages weighing up to 15 pounds and can be fitted with not only cameras but also a robotic arm to lift the consignment onto a doorstep, or straight into a waiting customer’s hand. There’s even talk of adding a video screen so the recipient can interact with delivery personnel back at base of desired.

But the Panther’s versatility comes at a price, with its hefty 44-pound weight limiting its flight time to no more than 10 minutes.

More: Watch this UPS truck launch a drone on a delivery run

The Panther, which has been in development for several years (check out last year’s demo video above), recently went on sale in the U.S. with a $2,500 price tag until April 5, after which hobbyists will have to pay a wallet-busting $8,000. But if any delivery firms are interested in the Panther, they may have a long wait putting it into service as current FAA rules prevent drones from being used as commercial delivery vehicles.

However, the wait for friendlier regulations at least gives AT time to develop and refine its technology to create a more affordable, more powerful machine that offers a new take on the idea of drone-based deliveries.