Take a peek inside the iPhone X

As they tend to do, the folks at iFixit have descended upon Apple’s latest creation to pull it apart piece by piece. While we didn’t spot any fairie dust spilling out of the iPhone X, they did dig into its TrueDepth camera system (above) that enables all those new recognition features like FaceID and Animoji. Interestingly, Apple decided to rely on a dual-celled battery design to better utilize space behind the nearly-all-screen OLED display. In total, it packs 2,716mAh, which is just a bit larger than the iPhone 8 Plus (2,691mAh) but smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus (2,900mAh) and Galaxy Note 8 (3,300 mAh).

Source: iFixit

Amazon reportedly eyeing a ‘Lord of the Rings’ TV series

Hollywood is buzzing with rumors (Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter) that Warner Bros. and Amazon are considering a deal for a series based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos “personally” involved in the talks. None are claiming that a deal is done yet, although Warner settled a lawsuit with the Tolkien estate this summer that may make it easier to produce new projects.

Of course, Amazon has upheaval on its end with the recent removal of Studios head Roy Price, who has been replaced on an interim basis by Albert Cheng. Despite that, and the loss of drama and comedy head under separate allegations of conflict of interest, Amazon Studios recently announced it’s moving into The Culver Studios at the end of this year.

Source: Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline

You don’t need a JARVIS-style robotic arm, but you’ll definitely want this one

Why it matters to you

This five-axis robotic arm can be easily trained to carry out a wide range of tasks from the comfort of your own home.

What self-respecting tech lover wouldn’t want their very own programmable five-axis robotic arm? Fortunately, the makers of a new Kickstarter campaign are here to make your wishes come true — or, at least, to make them available for pre-order. Called Dorna, the robot arm is designed to be able to carry out a wide range of complex motions, allowing you to program it to perform tasks ranging from making a salad in your kitchen to shooting smooth, jitter-free footage with a camera.

“Compared to other robots in a similar price range, Dorna is sturdier, more powerful, and more accurate,” Sadegh Tabatabaei, one of the creators of Dorna, told Digital Trends. “Dorna can easily handle 2.5 pounds of payload when fully extended, while other competitors can usually handle one pound, at most. Also, Dorna is extremely accurate. You can expect 0.001-inch repeatability, which is significantly better than similar-priced robots, and is comparable to industrial robots priced at more than $50,000.”

While we have not had the chance to put Dorna through its paces, its creators promise that it will deliver a high-quality finish, with a body crafted from aerospace grade aluminum, and precision components used to achieve a sturdy and accurate and powerful robotic arm.

“Our ideal user is anyone who wants to get serious in robotics without spending a fortune on an industrial robotic arm,” Tabatabaei continued. “You can be a student, artist, researcher, or just a home user and find an application for Dorna in your daily tasks. Anyone with basic knowledge of computers, without knowing any specific programming language, can use Dorna. We have created a user-friendly software, called Dorna Lab, that you can use to control it by jogging around the robot to the points that you are interested in, and then asking the software to play the points consecutively and smoothly to complete a task.”

For advanced users, there is also the opportunity to write more complicated scripts, while the fact that the software and APIs are open-source means that hackers and researchers can modify or improve the software based on their own requirements. Along with the robot arm itself, Dorna can come packaged with different tool heads, including camera attachment, servo gripper, 500mw laser engraver, and two-way tool holders.

In all, it is a tantalizing prospect, and — while not the first robot arm we covered at Digital Trends — if it can deliver on its promises, it could certainly have the makings of one of the best. If you would like to get hold of a unit, you can currently pre-order Dorna on Kickstarter, where prices start at $890 for an unassembled kit. Shipping is set to take place in June.

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Groundbreaking four-in-one flu vaccine could provide a lifetime of immunity

Why it matters to you

It has only been tested on mice so far, but this flu vaccine could one day protect people from influenza for life.

You know that it is nearing winter when someone in the office starts sniffling, and you get the slow-motion horror of watching one colleague after another succumb to a seasonal bout of flu. Fortunately, virology researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are here to help. They have invented a new four-in-one vaccine which they hope may act as a “universal flu shot,” offering lifelong protection to all those it’s given to.

The vaccine combines ancestral genes from four different major strains of influenza. While it has yet to be tested on humans, in mouse trials it has proven highly successful. Mice that were given high doses of the vaccine and then subjected to lethal doses of nine different flu viruses failed to get sick. On the other hand, mice that received regular flu shots or nasal sprays got sick and died when they were exposed to the same pathogens. The researchers hope that similar effects will carry over to people, and suggest their vaccine could well be “scalable and translatable to humans” as the foundation for “complete and long-lasting” immunization against the flu.

“The ultimate goal is to be able to vaccinate once and provide lifelong protection,” lead researcher Eric Weaver, an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said in a statement. “Our idea is that these centralized antigens can set up a foundation of immunity against influenza. Because they are centralized and represent all the strains equally, they could provide a basis for immunity against all evolved strains.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 40 million Americans got sick with the flu during the 2015-2016 flu season, during which a massive 970,000 people were hospitalized with the illness. While current vaccines are definitely a good thing, Weaver suggests that they only reduce flu infections and hospitalizations by 4.75 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively. In other words, there’s a big need for better preventative measures. Hopefully, this could be it.

A paper describing the work, titled “Efficacy of an Adenoviral Vectored Multivalent Centralized Influenza Vaccine,” was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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JPEG vs. PNG: Which image-saving format is the better one to use?

In the world of digital imaging, there are two image formats that prevail above all else: JPEG (or JPG) and PNG.

At first glance, a single image shown in both formats might seem identical, but if you look close enough, and dig into the data, there is quite a difference between the two images. Further, each format is designed to be used in specific ways to make the most of its strengths and weaknesses. To help you better understand the differences, we created this guide on JPEG vs. PNG to help you know when to use which format.

JPEG

Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group — the team that developed the format — JPEG has become the standard in digital photography and online image sharing due to its careful balance of file size and image quality.

The exact ratio differs depending on the program and settings used, but the typical JPEG image has a 10:1 compression ratio. That is, if you start with a 10MB image and export it as a JPEG, you should end up with an image that’s roughly 1MB. Further, you should have almost zero perceptible difference in quality, although this depends on the content of the image.

To do this, JPEG relies on discrete cosine transform (DCT). While the math behind it is complicated, this compression algorithm takes a look at the entire image, determines which pixels in the image are similar enough to the ones around it, and merges the pixels together in tiles (groups of pixels that have the same value).

This method is extremely efficient but comes at the cost of throwing away information you can’t get back. JPEG images (with a few exceptions mentioned below) are lossy, which means after the image is saved, the data that was lost can’t be recovered. So, just like making a photocopy of a photocopy, each time you open and save a JPEG, it will look slightly worse than before.

For this reason, JPEG is not suggested as an archival image format, because if you ever need to open it and make edits again, you incur a loss of quality. Nondestructive photo editors, like Adobe Lightroom, can help skirt around this issue provided you never delete your original files, as they only save edits as metadata rather than writing over the original image.

JPEG should also be avoided with text-heavy images or illustrations with sharp lines, as defined lines tend to get blurred due to anti-aliasing. As you can see in the image below, a screenshot taken from our homepage, the text and white background show a lot of artifacts on the JPEG (right) compared to the PNG (left).

That said, there are times when you need to turn formats like PDFs into JPEGs. In those instances, it is best to ensure your compression is low and you only export once before sharing it for minimum impact on quality.

JPEG supports both RGB and CMYK color spaces in 24-bit, but its CMYK offerings leave much to be desired. (Modern printers handle RGB files just fine, so this isn’t a huge issue. You should still stick with higher-quality formats for printing, however.) An 8-bit grayscale is also an option but the compression ratios are far less impressive with grayscale compared to color images.

Over the years, many variations of JPEG have come and gone. For example, JPG-LS was designed to fix the issue of lossy compression, but it never gained a foothold and eventually fell to the wayside. JPG2000 also attempted to address the lossless issue but it, too, failed to gain traction. BPG, a new format based on the h.265 video standard, was determined to take over JPEG, but never really caught on. A likely replacement has been found in HEIF, however, which is also based on the h.265 standard. HEIF has been adopted by Apple in iOS 11, and with a such a big name behind it, it may only be a matter of time before it is as widespread as JPEG is today.

Pros
Cons
Small file size
Lossy compression
Integrated EXIF support
Not great for CMYK printing
Widely supported
No transparency support

PNG

An acronym for Portable Network Graphics, PNG is a lossless file format designed as a more open alternative to Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).

Unlike JPEG, which relies on DCT compression, PNG uses an LZW compression — the same as used by GIF and TIFF formats. Boiled down, PNG’s two-stage LZW compression takes strings of bits contained in the image’s data, matches those longer sequences to accompanying shortcodes held in a dictionary (sometimes referred to as a codebook) that is stored within the image file, and outputs those shortcodes in a smaller resulting file.

The biggest advantage of PNG over JPEG is that the compression is lossless, meaning there is no loss in quality each time it is opened and saved again. PNG also handles detailed, high-contrast images well. It’s for this reason PNG is more often than not the default file format for screenshots, as it can provide an almost perfect pixel-for-pixel representation of the screen, rather than compressing groups of pixels together.

One of the standout features of PNG is its support of transparency. With both color and grayscale images, pixels in PNG files can be transparent. This allows you to create images that neatly overlay with the content of an image or website. As seen in the GIF above, many editing programs — in this case Adobe Photoshop Mix — use a checkered background to indicate the transparency of a graphic. This makes PNG great for logos, particularly those with text, used on a website.

When it comes to photography, PNG might seem like a solid alternative for lossless image storage but the truth is there are plenty of better alternatives, such as Adobe’s Digital Negative (DNG) and TIFF. PNG doesn’t natively support a standard to store EXIF data, which stores the information such as shutter speed, aperture, and ISO from the camera it was captured with.

PNG was made for the web and it ha proven its worth. JPEG might be the format of a majority of the images, but PNG occupies an important niche that JPEG can’t effectively reach.

Much like JPEG, PNG has also had a few variations throughout the years. APNG is a still-supported format designed to replicate the animated functionality of GIFs. It’s not nearly as prevalent but is supported by many modern browsers.

Another fun tidbit is that in the early stages of PNG’s development, it was suggested it be called PING, an acronym for “PING Is Not GIF,” a cheeky dig at the creators of the GIF format.

Pros
Cons
Lossless compression
Larger file size than JPEG
Transparency support
No native EXIF support
Great for text and screenshots

Which one is better?

Ultimately, neither image format is better than the other. It’s simply a matter of which one is better suited for your needs.

If you’re wanting to share a photo from your camera on Instagram, Twitter, etc. your best bet is to use a JPEG. It’s smaller in size, it’s optimized for photography, and it’s widely supported across almost every platform and service imaginable.

If you’re taking a screenshot that you plan to annotate or archive for use later, PNG will better suit your needs. The file size might be larger than that of an equivalent JPEG, but you don’t have to worry about it losing quality with each new time it’s saved, and you know each pixel is as sharp as the last time you opened it. Most web graphics, like logos, are also better saved as PNGs since they can make use of transparent areas.

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Microsoft to end free Windows 10 upgrades — this time for good, no expections

Why it matters to you

The free upgrade to Windows 10 program is officially over on December 31, even for folks who have a need for assistive technologies.

As part of its goal to get Windows 10 onto people’s computers, Microsoft offered free upgrades to the new version of its operating system for years. To be specific, it was the company’s goal to hit the billion-device milestone in a few years after the launch of the new operating system. Giving free upgrades was Microsoft’s golden ticket to hit that number.

In other words, the free Windows 10 upgrades program always had an expiration date — and now Microsoft is ending the program without reservation. The program officially closed for most people in July but included an exception for those who have needs requiring “assistive technologies.” The exception was for those who used accessories such as Braille screens, screen readers, or magnifiers.

Microsoft’s messaging concerning the issue has been unclear, but it looks like it is finally been settled. As noticed by ZDnet, the assistive technologies loophole will be closed on December 31. The news was quietly tweeted by the Microsoft Accessibility Twitter account in October:

If you’re using assistive technologies and want to update to Windows 10, free upgrade available until Dec. 31, 2017. https://t.co/muL1wssDu9

— MSFT Accessibility (@MSFTEnable) October 17, 2017

How well has Microsoft done at getting people to upgrade to Windows 10? The numbers change depending on who you ask, but StatCounter reports that Windows 10 still has not eclipsed Windows 7 in terms of percentages. Unlike other companies, Microsoft is known for having a massive base of legacy users who are perfectly happy using Windows 7 or Windows 8. As hard as it is to believe, StatCounter says that 3.89 percent of Windows users still have Windows XP installed on their machines.

Microsoft executives admitted last year that the ambitious Windows 10 goal wasn’t going to be met: “We’re pleased with our progress to date, but due to the focusing of our phone hardware business, it will take longer than FY18 for us to reach our goal of 1 billion monthly active devices.”

The program’s closure marks the end of Microsoft’s active campaign to get people upgraded from Windows 7 and Windows 8. From here on out, Microsoft will have to rely on new device purchases to increase that number.

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Broadcom interested in buying Qualcomm for over $100 billion

We could be looking at the largest chip-maker takeover in history.

At this point, chances are you’ve heard a thing or two about Qualcomm and Apple’s dispute between one another throughout the year. Apple initially claimed that Qualcomm was charging too much for its mobile modems and taking advantage of its place in the market, and as a result of this, we’ve seen Qualcomm request that Apple stops all iPhone manufacturing and sales in China, a report that Apple shared classified Qualcomm information with Intel, and much more.

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs.

Following this ongoing contention, it’s now being reported that Broadcom is interested in acquiring Qualcomm for more than $100 billion.

At $70 per share, Broadcom would pay over $100 billion to acquire Qualcomm.

Bloomberg initially reported this news on Friday, November 3, and should the deal go through, Broadcom would purchase Qualcomm at around $70 per share with a deal that includes both cash and stock options. Broadcom will reportedly make Qualcomm the offer within the coming days, but at this time, no final decision has been made.

Most of our readers are probably familiar with Qualcomm and know that the company’s modems are used in just about every smartphone on the market, but what about Broadcom? Just like Qualcomm is the largest manufacturer of mobile modems for data connections, Broadcom is the largest manufacturer for mobile Wi-Fi chipsets.

Both Broadcom and Qualcomm declined to comment on this when asked about it, but should this deal actually go through, we’d be looking at the largest takeover for a chip-maker that the world’s ever seen. This has potential to be huge, so we’ll keep an ear to the ground over the next few days and see if anything comes of this.

Qualcomm sues Apple for giving rival Intel classified information

Amazon will sell you a 1-year PlayStation Plus membership for only $40

Grab a year of Playstation Plus for less than $3.50 monthly!

Is this deal for me?

Amazon currently has the PlayStation Plus 1-year subscription card on sale for $39.99. This item usually sells for $59.99. You can grab this deal from GameStop as well.

PlayStation Plus is Sony’s online service for its gaming consoles. With your subscription, you can begin to team up and talk with thousands of other gamers via the multi-player modes within PlayStation games. PlayStation Plus also provides its subscribers with two free games (per console, so 6 total) each month, with titles coming from both unknown studios and major ones.

My personal favorite benefit of PlayStation Plus is the added discount on PlayStation’s digital store. Even when there’s a big sale going on for everyone, PS Plus subscribers get a bonus discount on top of the sale which can lead to some pretty great deals. If you have no qualms stopping you from going digital with your games, the subscription card is a great way to save money in the future if you continue to take advantage of the discount provided.

PlayStation Plus members get access to free games every month, too. If you don’t have time to get to the new games this month, whether it be because you’re busy with work or busy dying a thousand times in Crash Bandicoot, you can click “buy” on them now and have access to play them for as long as your PlayStation Plus membership continues.

TL;DR

• What makes this deal worth considering? – This is an awesome $20 discount off what you’d pay normally for Plus! That’s like paying $3.33 monthly.
• Things to know before you buy! – November’s free PS Plus games have already been announced!

See at Amazon

Happy Thrifting!

Cricket adds data to its most affordable smartphone plans

AT&T’s low-cost Cricket brand has historically been somewhat stingy with data unless you’ve bee willing to pay almost as much as you would for a regular AT&T plan, but it’s loosening things up a bit on November 5th. The budget carrier is adding more data to its most affordable smartphone plans and increasing the worth of its unlimited service. To begin with, you now get 2GB of full-speed data on a $30 plan (versus just 1GB before), and 5GB of data instead of 4GB on the $40 plan. That may not sound like much if you’re used to watching Netflix on your phone, but it promises to make a big difference if you’re keeping your costs down — you don’t have to be quite so cautious about sharing a photo or streaming some music.

As for unlimited service: Cricket is reviving the Unlimited 2 plan, which gives you two lines for $80 per month. For a “limited time,” you can add up to four more lines for $25 each. And both solo Unlimited and Unlimited 2 customers can tack on mobile hotspot support for $10 per month.

Just remember that there are catches. Your hotspot access is still capped at 8GB of full-speed use per month. Full LTE speed on Cricket is limited to 8Mbps, and video streams at 480p. You won’t be watching 1080p live streams, unfortunately. And like most US carriers, Cricket might de-prioritize your unlimited service if you use more than 22GB in a month on a given line. Consider this, though: if you don’t need full performance, you’re getting more data with that $30 plan than you would if you signed up for Google’s Project Fi.

Source: Cricket

Razer’s new ‘Overwatch’ gear completes your D.Va cosplay

Are you into Overwatch as a broadcaster, looking to use Blizzard’s new influencer-friendly features? Or are you a super fan who’s played through every special event since the game released? Did you start playing the developer’s more traditional MOBA, Heroes of the Storm because it added the pink mech-stylings of D.Va? Then you’ll love this new gear from Razer, with an amazingly perfect D.va-styled headset, mouse and mousepad.

In the Overwatch fiction, D.Va’s real name is Hana Song. She’s a 19-year-old Korean who played competitive Starcraft (the classic Blizzard title) and dreams of being a famous actress. Her character pilots a big mech suit, and she tends to fill a tank role on teams during combat. Details about the gorgeous D.Va Razer Meka headset are thin on the ground; we’ve reached out to Razer for more information and will update this post when we hear back. Still, the images alone have us pretty excited.

The D.Va Razer Abyssus Elite has a lovely new D.Va look, as well. For $60, you can have this pink and blue gaming mouse with a 7,200 DPI optical sensor, three really responsive buttons and a design that you can use if you’re a leftie or a rightie. If you’re super committed to your D.Va theme, you can grab the D.Va Razer Goliathus mouse pad (or “soft mat,” if you prefer) for $20. It’s got a super tight cloth weave on top to let your mouse slide effortlessly suring combat, and Razer promises that it will stay flat even if you roll it up to keep in a backpack. These aren’t the first Overwatch-themed peripherals from Razer, which released a headset and mouse with styling based on the main game, but they’re likely to be the first ones we actually want.

Via: Polygon

Source: Blizzard