HP’s new 4K display lineup has USB-C connectivity

HP made its focus on its business audience clear with its latest range of laptops, and now the brand has rolled out a new lineup of 4K displays, and a multiple display dock, to further reinforce its commitment to professional users. The collection includes the new EliteDisplay S270n, plus three Z-series displays in sizes from 27 to 43 inches.

The standalone S270n is a 27-inch IPS display that can operate with a single USB-C cable, supporting an eye-watering 10000000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 14ms response time and 4K native resolution at 60Hz. The new HP Z27, Z32 and Z43 (the numbers correspond to the display size, in case you missed that) can also be used with a single USB-C cable, offering 4K resolution at 60Hz, 5000000:1 contrast ratio and 10-bit color displaying over a billion colors. The Z27 and Z32 come ready-calibrated from the factory – good news for designers and engineers.

An interesting addition to the range, however, is the Thunderbolt Dock G2. This can support up to two 4K displays and can be rigged with an optional audio conferencing module. Like HPs new laptop range, the focus is clearly on optimum presentation and conferencing quality here, and the dock facilitates this without wires and connections cluttering up the place. It’s not available until May, with pricing to be confirmed, but the displays are available now, starting at $549 for the S270n, $559 for the Z27, $899 for the Z32 and $799 for the Z43.

Via: Windows Central

Source: HP

Microsoft tests a password-less Windows 10 S

Microsoft’s latest Insider Preview update is a huge one, and for Windows 10 S users, it means being able to ditch system passwords. The tech giant is testing the ability to unlock the security-focused Windows flavor through an Authenticator App you can install on your phone. You simply have to set up Windows Hello with the app, and you won’t see Password as a sign-in option anymore anywhere in the platform’s interface. Even if you don’t use Windows 10 S right now, you might be able to access this feature someday. According to reports, Microsoft plans to drop 10 S as a standalone product in order to offer it as a mode to both Home and Pro users.

In addition to giving Windows 10 S users a password-less experience, the latest version of Insider Preview also enables HDR video playback in more computers. Microsoft says a lot of modern machines are capable of playing HDR but need to be calibrated in the factory to be able to do so. This update adds a calibration tool to the platform: just go to Video Playback settings and click “Change calibration settings for HDR video on my built-in display.”

If you’re worried about your privacy after Windows Insider Build 17083 installed a Diagnostic Data Viewer on your computer, then you’ll love this update. You can now delete whatever data the tool collected by going to Diagnostics & feedback under Privacy. Microsoft has also given Windows 10’s experimental eye control capabilities a boost. The Windows team made it easier to scroll emails and websites, added direct left and right click capabilities into the launchpad and added quick access to Start, Timeline and settings. If you don’t want to accidentally click stuff with your eyes while reading or watching videos, you can now pause and hide the eye control launchpad. Reactivating it is as sample as glancing at the pause button placed at the top or at the bottom of the screen.

The latest Preview gives the Game bar a makeover, as well. It now comes with new buttons that give you quick access to your captured footage, lets you toggle your microphone and camera and allows you to quickly change the title of your stream. Other features include Bluetooth improvements, fullscreen mode on Edge, multi-lingual text predictions and a long list of bug fixes. You can now download and install all these features if you’re a Windows Insider in the Fast Ring or if you’ve opted to Skip Ahead all the Fall Creators Update builds.

Source: Microsoft

iTunes Launches $20 ‘Award Winning’ Movie Bundles Ahead of 90th Academy Awards

Following a discount on bundles for movies in the Cloverfield and Mission: Impossible franchises earlier this week, Apple on iTunes has now launched a collection of “Award Winning” film bundles focused on categories from the Academy Awards. The sale is debuting just under one month before the 90th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 4.

The categories include Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Picture, and vary from time periods like Classic to Contemporary. Each HD bundle is priced at $19.99, allowing those interested to grab four movies for the price of about two.

There are also a few “Under $10” Oscar film categories lined throughout the iTunes Movies store, broken into sections including “Best Original Screenplay” and “Best Adapted Screenplay.” In the list below you’ll find all of the Award Winning bundles, a few films from the Under $10 categories, and some other recent releases on iTunes that received notable discounts this week.

$19.99 Award Winning Bundles (HD)

• Classic Best Pictures – Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, An American in Paris, Ben-Hur

• Classic Best Actor – Yankee Doodle Dandy, Captains Courageous, Sergeant York, The Philadelphia Story

• Classic Best Actress – Gaslight, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, Jezebel, Cabaret

• Musicals – Gigi, The Great Ziegfeld, Singin’ in the Rain, An American in Paris

• Contemporary Best Pictures – Argo, Unforgiven, The Departed, Chariots of Fire

• Contemporary Best Actress – Driving Miss Daisy, The Blind Side, Million Dollar Baby, The Color Purple

• Contemporary Best Actor – The Aviator, Shine, Mystic River, Training Day

• Dramas – Gravity, A Streetcar Named Desire, LOTR: The Return of the King, Network

2018 Oscar Nominations

• Blade Runner 2049 (4K) – $14.99, down from $19.99

Under $10 Oscar Winners

• La La Land (4K) – $6.99, down from $19.99

• The Pianist – $7.99, down from $12.99

• The Imitation Game – $7.99, down from $12.99

• Django Unchained – $7.99, down from $9.99

• Manchester by the Sea – $7.99, down from $14.99

• The Big Short – $9.99, down from $14.99

Recent 4K Price Drops

• It (2017) (4K)- $14.99, down from $19.99

• Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (4K) – $14.99, down from $19.99

• Deadpool (4K) – $9.99, down from $14.99

For more of the Oscars-related discounts on iTunes, you should be able to find the Award Winning bundles and Under $10 films featured heavily in the storefront’s rotating carousel and just below the New and Noteworthy section, respectively.

If you don’t yet have the Apple TV 4K to watch 4K iTunes movies on, don’t forget that DirecTV Now’s sale on the device remains ongoing in 2018 after initially launching last November. With the offer, when you sign up for four months of the streaming TV service at an upfront cost of around $140, you’ll get the 32GB Apple TV 4K for free.
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This means that you can get the latest 32GB Apple TV 4K for about $40 cheaper than its traditional price point of $180, and if you’re not a fan of DirecTV Now when the four months end, you can cancel the service at any time. Check out our original blog post on the DirecTV Now/4K Apple TV offer for more information, and head over to our full Deals Roundup to discover other sales happening this week.

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Microsoft’s Windows 10 Store is getting more web apps

Thanks in a roundabout way to Google, you’re about to see more apps on the Windows 10 Store. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are like app versions of websites that work even when you’re offline and offer services like push notifications — minus the installation fuss of regular apps. Android popularized them by letting you add them to your home screen when you load certain websites. Now, Microsoft is introducing Progressive Web Apps to the Windows 10 Store, making them “first-class app citizens in Windows,” on par with Universal Windows Apps (UWAs).

Microsoft emphasized that PWAs use modern HTML tech like service worker, fetch networking, cache API and others to provide a more app-like experience. However, they must run without platform-specific code, so that they could work not just on Windows 10, but Linux or MacOS too. From a user point of view, there’s less fuss, because such apps update automatically behind the scenes without any user intervention.

UWAs can be easier for developers to create, as they’re often simply advanced versions of websites. It should be fairly easy for developers to convert “Electron” Windows 10 apps to PWAs, because they’re also powered by HTML and CSS. Presumably, developers could easily port Android Progressive Web Apps by just creating a Windows 10 wrapper, too. (Apple is also working on incorporating the tech in Safari.)

Much as Google has with Chrome, Microsoft will start introducing PWA tech to the next version of its Edge browser via EdgeHTML. It will start previewing PWAs for the Windows 10 Store on Insider builds soon, and plans to release them to everyone later in the year.

Source: Microsoft

Twitter made its first profit, but still can’t grow its user base

Back in October, Twitter promised that by the time the fourth quarter rolled around, it would be profitable, or just about. Since then, however, the company lost its de-facto CEO and continues to raise the ire of figures on both sides of the aisle. It comes as something of a surprise then, that Twitter has managed to turn its first ever quarterly profit of $91 million. If there was ever cause for optimism that the 12-year-old company will survive, it’s the fact that it’s now making money.

But for every silver lining, there’s a grey cloud, and Twitter can’t rely upon rosy user numbers to bolster the good mood. In the second quarter, the company claimed that it had lost around a million users, but later admitted that its math was wrong and the figure was much worse. Three months later, and figures had rebounded to 330 million monthly active users. In the fourth quarter that number has held steady, with a million-user fall in US users cancelling out the commensurate increase internationally.

Twitter blames the fall in numbers on two things: a change to Safari’s app integrations, and the project that’s euphemistically-titled “information quality efforts.” The latter is, unsurprisingly, the project which is attempting to purge the site of automated accounts that are designed to spread “malicious activity.”

If there’s reason for optimism, it’s that (otherwise-secret) daily active user figures have increased by 12 percent year-on-year, so the people who use Twitter are using it more. It appears that the 280 character limit change has had the desired effect to bring folks back to the platform who were frustrated at having to be so succinct. In addition, Twitter believes that the relatively-new ability to thread tweets has pleased Seth Abramson plenty of users.

The profit that Twitter has turned seems not to be coming from the US, where it has 68 million users, but from the 262 million living overseas. Domestic advertising revenue fell by 8 percent year-on-year, to $406 million, but foreign ad sales increased by 17 percent to $326 million.

Twitter’s 2017 financial year, as a whole, can’t be entirely saved by a profitable quarter, and overall yearly revenues fell 3 percent compared to 2016. On the positive side, net losses overall were down to $108 million, compared to $457 million in the previous year, although all red ink is still red ink.

Source: Twitter (.PDF)

Buzz Aldrin wants you to buy this $150 solar backpack

Buzz Aldrin: revered engineer, astronaut of our time and now, the face of high fashion backpacks. Bag brand Sprayground has released a new collection, “Mission to Mars”, and the campaign sees Aldrin playing the role of a flight coach, modelling the collection’s pieces as he hangs around Mars surrounded by attractive astronauts going about their space business. At the center of the collection is a limited edition solar backpack which comes with a power pack, so it’s as useful as it is futuristic looking, which you’d expect for its $150 price tag. Aldrin has been increasingly vocal in recent years about his plans to get astronauts to Mars, so at least we know they’ll look good when they get there.

Source: Sprayground

Screenshots of WhatsApp’s First Peer-to-Peer Payments System Surface Online

Over a year ago now, we reported on claims that popular mobile chat platform WhatsApp was looking at introducing a peer-to-peer payments system, beginning with a rollout for users in India. Today, the first iPhone screenshots of such a system appeared online via social media, revealing a list of Indian banks that will apparently support the service at launch.

The images indicate that the WhatsApp payment method will utilize the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of India that facilitates inter-bank transactions.

UPI is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India and works by instantly transferring funds between two bank accounts on a mobile platform. The same system is also used by Swedish-based phone number lookup service Trucaller, which introduced user-to-user payments in India via a tie-in with ICICI Bank last April.

WhatsApp’s UPI setup process appears to involve just a couple of steps, after which users can presumably instantly transfer cash to other WhatsApp users’ bank accounts. The payment system could be ready for launch in India in the first quarter of 2018, although WhatsApp’s plans for a similar payments system for users in other countries remain unclear.

Facebook has had a payments system in its Messenger app for some time in the U.S., but WhatsApp remains far more popular in India and is heavily used there as an e-commerce portal, despite not yet offering any features that specifically support the practice.

Tags: WhatsApp, India
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Apple Adds Chinese Firms to its Pool of 3D Sensing Module Suppliers for 2018 iPhones and iPads

Apple will work with two Chinese suppliers in 2018 to ensure a stable supply of 3D sensing modules for use in this year’s iPhone and iPad line-up, according to a report on Thursday by ET News.

Last month The Investor claimed Apple was planning a $820.9 million investment in LG Innotek to secure supply of 3D sensing modules, which are key components of the iPhone X’s new TrueDepth camera system, enabling features such as Face ID and Animoji.

However, according to today’s report, Apple has selected two Chinese companies to shore up supply. One is said to be an emerging supplier amongst smartphone part markets, and the other is a popular semiconductor packaging company. Nevertheless, LG Innotek is expected remain the biggest main vendor out of the three module suppliers, while the two Chinese companies will provide the rest.

Apple plans to launch a refreshed iPhone X, a larger iPhone X Plus, and a mid-range iPhone each with Face ID later this year, according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Apple will also release at least one iPad Pro model with Face ID this year, according to Bloomberg.

It’s unusual for Apple to source Chinese suppliers for key parts, but the additional help could mean Apple avoids the temporary supply chain issues it experienced with 3D sensing modules late last year.

In addition, the extra supply could benefit Apple in the long term if it looks to combine the front-facing camera and Face ID on future iPhones, as claimed by ETNews back in January.

According to the report, industry sources claim Apple’s plan to combine these features would increase the number of parts used in iPhones, however it’s unlikely we’ll see such a design this year, given that the 2018 line-up of iOS devices are expected to have the same TrueDepth sensor housing as the iPhone X.

Related Roundup: 2018 iPhones
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First HomePod Orders Start Shipping Out to Customers in the U.K.

Apple customers in the United Kingdom who pre-ordered HomePod have started receiving shipping despatch notifications this morning. Those who ordered before initial supplies began dwindling earlier this week can expect deliveries to arrive sometime on Friday, which is Apple’s official launch day for HomePod.

Images via @ryancarter_94
As expected, it looks as if Apple is relying on DPD to courier the majority of HomePods to homes across the U.K. Using their tracking information provided by Apple, customers can use the DPD website or download and install the DPD iPhone app and request a time slot for delivery, which are subject to availability.

Earlier today, customers in Australia who ordered a HomePod for February 9 began receiving shipment notifications. It’s Thursday evening on February 8 in Australia, so the first HomePod deliveries will begin in the country in just a matter of hours.

Customers expecting launch day delivery in the United States may be able to locate their HomePod’s shipping information by going to the UPS website, selecting the track by reference number option, and entering the phone number associated with a HomePod order.

Apple is no longer offering the HomePod for February 9 delivery or in-store pickup, but John Lewis, Argos, EE, and Currys PC World may have stock available for U.K. customers, while Apple will likely have a supply of HomePods available for walk-in purchase in retail stores in the U.S., UK, and Australia on launch day.

(Thanks, Ryan!)

Related Roundup: HomePodTag: United KingdomBuyer’s Guide: HomePod (Buy Now)
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Media Watchdog Advises Journalists in China to Avoid Using Apple iCloud Accounts, Citing Privacy Fears

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RWB/RSF) has urged journalists using iCloud in China to migrate away from Apple’s cloud service this month, before control of their data is handed over to a Chinese company (via Hong Kong Free Press).

Beginning February 28, Apple’s iCloud services in mainland China will be operated by Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data (GCBD), which is owned by the Guizhou provincial government in southern China.

The firm is set to manage Apple’s new $1 billion data center, which opened in the region last year. The operational change was agreed between Apple and the Chinese government, bringing the tech giant into compliance with the country’s new cloud computing regulations.

Apple says the partnership with GCBD will improve the speed and reliability of iCloud services and products, and has assured iCloud customers that no backdoors had been created into any of its systems. However, press freedom advocates fear that user data will become accessible to the Chinese state as a result of the switch. Earlier this week, RWB/RSF explicitly criticized Apple’s “readiness to accommodate China’s authoritarian regime”.

“Apple promises that it will never give governments a backdoor to content, but there is no way of being sure about this,” Head of RSF’s East Asia bureau Cédric Alviani said.

“Knowing the Chinese government’s determination and the extent of the means of pressure at its disposal, it will end up getting its way sooner or later, if it hasn’t already.”

Last month, Apple contacted and advised customers in China to examine new terms and conditions, which include a clause that both Apple and the Chinese firm will have access to all data stored on iCloud servers. Customers who did not want to use iCloud operated by GCBD were also given the option to terminate their account before the February 28 switch.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: China
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