Hyperloop pod reaches fastest speed yet in Elon Musk’s latest contest

The Hyperloop has a need for speed and a team of students from the Technical University of Munich is providing it.

At the third SpaceX pod contest on Sunday, Germany’s WARR Hyperloop team pulled off a hat-trick of wins for the fastest self-propelled pod ride by taking its design to an impressive 290 mph (466 kph).

Congratulations to @WARR_Hyperloop for winning the 2018 Hyperloop Pod Competition with a peak speed of 290 mph!

— Hyperloop (@Hyperloop) July 22, 2018

As well as beating its own previous best of 201 mph, WARR’s effort also smashed the existing Hyperloop speed record set by Virgin Hyperloop in December, when its pod hit 240 mph. It posted a video (below) of the winning ride on Twitter.

We’re excited to announce that our team WARR Hyperloop is the winner of the 2018 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition!!!!!

We managed to go almost 50% faster than last year, reaching a final speed of 467 km/h (290 mph)!

We’d like to sincerely thank all our sponsors! pic.twitter.com/YpPTURnHp5

— WARR Hyperloop (@WARR_Hyperloop) July 23, 2018

WARR faced off against more than 15 rivals from around the world, including second-place Delft Hyperloop from the Netherlands, and third-place EPFLoop from Switzerland. Technical difficulties scuppered both teams’ chances of victory, leaving Delft Hyperloop with a top speed of 88 mph, while EPFLoop’s effort reached only 53 mph.

The teams’ unmanned vehicles were sent along a 0.8-mile (1.5 km) ground-level test track at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk first proposed the Hyperloop idea for an ultra-fast transportation system five years ago, and since then he’s been using the regular contests to give students the opportunity to develop the pods.

If the ambitious plan one day becomes a viable transportation option, it’ll carry people inside a near-vacuum environment at speeds of up to 760 mph. At that rate, a journey between Los Angeles and San Francisco would take a mere half hour as opposed to six hours by car.

While several firms are currently working on developing the track technology for the Hyperloop, it is engineering students who are being encouraged to design the pods that passengers could one day ride in. WARR is making serious progress, as its first effort scored it a speed win at the debut contest in January 2017, when its design reached just 58 mph.

In another indication of how the pod technology is advancing, this latest contest was also the first where teams no longer had the option to propel their pod with a so-called “pusher” vehicle, meaning that all the pods had to be self-propelled.

Musk made an appearance at Sunday’s event, taking time to encourage the participants and congratulate the winners. He commented that the skill and ingenuity displayed by those taking part in the contest “kinda blows my mind.”

A number of countries are interested in using the Hyperloop technology for domestic transportation projects. Talks are already taking place with two of the biggest companies that have ambitions for developing large-scale Hyperloop systems, namely Virgin Hyperloop and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies.

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Email shows Nvidia’s GTX 11 Series will start being released in late August

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

A leaked email purportedly written by a Nvidia graphics card partner for a retailer provides the release dates of the upcoming GeForce GTX 11 Series. The letter also seems to confirm rumors we’ve heard over the last several months: That Nvidia pushed back the launch due to an abundance of unsold GTX 10 Series stock currently on the market. Of course, the letter could be 100 percent fake, so let’s tread carefully with this info.

“We have an overstock of 10xx GPUs and were in the middle of transitioning our manufacturing over from the 10xx to the 1xx series in preparation for releasing the new cards,” the letter states.” However, because we and other partners and manufacturers have an abundance of unfinished or unsold 10xx GPUs, Nvidia decided to have us delay the release of the 11xx cards.”

Here is the supposed new release schedule. Since product availability is usually a few weeks after a formal reveal/launch, the schedule confirms rumors that Nvidia will introduce the new family – or the GTX 1180 at the least – at a special event just prior to or during the Gamescom convention in Germany that starts August 22.

• August 30, 2018: GTX 1180
• September 30, 2018: GTX 1170 and GTX 1180+
• October 30, 2018: GTX 1160

What’s interesting here is the GTX 1180+, an entirely new branding and likely not another name for a GTX 1180 Ti. Could this be a rebranding of the Founders Edition, or will this be an enhanced card with higher clock speeds for a higher price? Maybe the “plus” refers to additional onboard memory?

The letter also notes that the graphics card partner will conduct a conference call for retailers on August 21, 2018, indicating that the GTX 11 Series nondisclosure agreement will already be lifted by that time.

In addition to the leaked email, the GTX 1170 reportedly appeared on a recent benchmark, showing it to be faster than the $700 GTX 1080 Ti. According to the benchmark, the card will run at around 2.5GHz and include 16GB of GDDR6 memory running on a 256-bit memory interface. It scored an alleged 29,752 graphics points in the 3DMark FireStrike benchmark, surpassing the GTX 1080 Ti’s 28,391 score and the Radeon RX Vega 64’s 22,931 score.

But like the email, this benchmark could be 100 percent bogus. For starters, the information stems from a photograph taken of the benchmark, and not from an actual screenshot. The benchmark also isn’t listed in 3DMark’s online database, nor does it sport the Nvidia “generic VGA” entry typically seen in early benchmark leaks. There’s no way to correctly identify the card prior to its official release,” which is why you would see the “generic VGA” label instead.

All new GTX 11 Series cards will likely be based on Nvidia’s new “Turing” architecture and 12nm process technology rather than the Volta design used in the $3,000 Titan V add-in card. In the case of Nvidia’s GTX 1170, cards will be based on the GT104 chip packing around 2,688 CUDA cores with a base speed of around 1.5GHz and a maximum speed of around 1.8GHz. The power draw is expected to be between 140 watts and 160 watts.

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Best Family Charging Stations for Android

Seems like everyone, their brother, and even their dog have a phone these days. These stations can help keep them all charged.

If you live in a household with a family of three, four, or more, and you have kids who are at the smartphone stage, then keeping them all charged up all the time can be a bit of a pain. Smaller wall chargers go missing, the cat chews the cables, and kids can just outright forget (a lot of good a dead phone is in an emergency!).

These family charging stations can help you charge multiple devices at once, all in one spot.

• Anker PowerPort 4
• Vogek 6-port charging station
• RAVPower desktop charging station
• Simicore charging dock
• iClever BoostStrip
• SIIG 10-port charging station
• Unitek 10-port charging station with USB-C

Anker PowerPort 4

Anker makes some of the finest charging products you can buy, from cables to wireless charging pads to charging stations. The PowerPort 4 has four USB ports and simply plugs into any AC wall outlet (can also accept an adapter when traveling abroad), and it can supply up to 2.4A per port.

You can snag one of these for around $25 in either black or white, and Anker provides an 18-month warranty should anything go wrong.

See at Amazon

Vogek 6-port charging station

This sleek, round charging station kind of looks like something out of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and it has six ports around its circumference, so everyone can get juiced up at once. It features an LED indicator to let you know when it’s properly plugged in, and the silicone pad on the bottom makes it perfect for the kitchen counter, nightstand, or coffee table. The power cable is nearly 5 feet long, so you won’t have to awkwardly place this near an outlet and then even more awkwardly get your phones and other devices hooked up to it.

It comes in black, blue, silver, or white, starting at around $16.

See at Amazon

RAVPower desktop charging station

RAVPower’s desktop charger has six ports and provides up to 2.4A per port, not offering fast charging, though it does provide that 2.4A to all six ports simultaneously. Its compact design makes it fairly inconspicuous, and it provides overcharge/overcurrent/overvoltage protection so that all six of your devices don’t get fried should some electrical calamity strike.

Comes in black or white for about $25.

See at Amazon

Simicore charging dock

Simicore’s charging dock is similar to Pezin & Hulin’s, but it has a more modern design and charges up to four devices, organizing them for you in slots. The minimalist design is sleek and should fit right in on your desk or wherever you need to charge up. The four ports provide up to 2.4A simultaneously, and the on/off switch is handy for when no one’s charging and you want to conserve some energy.

Comes in silver or space gray for around $30.

See at Amazon

iClever BoostStrip

For about $20, you can snag this charging station that has four USB ports and three AC outlets, so you can charge up to seven devices at once if you have three adapters handy. Coming in black or white, this station essentially resembles a power bar with an on/off switch for the USB ports and for the AC outlets, so you can conserve some energy when not using either.

Each of the USB ports supplies 5V at 2.4A, and if you have a quick charging adapter, you can make use of that with the AC outlets. Comes in black or white.

See at Amazon

SIIG 10-port charging station

If the whole family comes over for the holidays, then a 10-port charging station will likely come in quite handy. The 90W charging station from SIIG has a silicone surface so that your phones and tablets don’t slide around as they charge up in their slots. Each port provides up to 2.4A, and there are eight slots for phones and a larger pad for resting your smartwatch or other devices while they charge. One great detail is that the slots are wide enough to fit phones that are in bulkier cases. At $50, this is one of the most expensive charging station on this list, but it’s worth it if you want to charge all the things at once.

See at Amazon

Unitek 10-port charging station with USB-C

The Unitek charging station truly can charge it all; it features 10 charging ports — 8 2.4A USB-A ports, one Quick Charge port, and a USB-C PD port. This lets you quickly charge phones of every type, laptops, Chromebooks, tablets, and more. And the best part is that no one ever has to wait for an open charging port (unless you’re one of the Duggars).

At $90, this type of charging doesn’t come cheap, but it does provide you with virtually every option you could need or want.

See at Amazon

Bototek 6-port charging station with USB-C

This 6-port station has five 2.4A USB-A ports and one USB-C, so you can charge up to five devices at normal speed and one quickly simultaneously. The upright slots organize your devices so that they’re not just strewn all over your counters, and at roughly $28, this is a great way for the whole family to get its charge on. Bototek even throws in the USB-C cable.

See at Amazon

Netgear’s latest smart home gadget is the Arlo Audio Doorbell

There’s also a new Arlo Chime accessory.

Netgear’s Arlo brand has become fairly well-known for its wireless security cameras, and now the company’s expanding its reaches in the smart home market with the Arlo Audio Doorbell.

The Audio Doorbell (left) and Arlo Chime (right)

As soon as someone rings the Arlo Doorbell, you’ll receive a call on your phone through the free Arlo app. Once you get the call, you can either accept it or send a prerecorded message. Also, if you have an Arlo camera, you’ll get a live video feed of your front door with that call once someone arrives.

The Audio Doorbell will be available for purchase this fall.

This is a different approach to smart doorbells like Nest Hello and Ring’s lineup that cram a camera into the doorbell itself, but if you’re already invested in the Arlo ecosystem, this will likely be a much more cost-effective way of upgrading your front door. And, just like Arlo’s other products, the Audio Doorbell promises a very user-friendly installation process.

Additionally, Netgear also announced the Arlo Chime. This essentially replaces your regular doorbell chime and simply plugs into any outlet around your house. There aren’t any wires to mess with and you can place multiple throughout your home to ensure you never miss an Arlo notification even if you’re away from your phone.

Although pricing for the two products has yet to be announced, Netgear says that they will be on sale at some point this fall. To ensure you get all the latest info as soon as it’s available, you can register for updates on Arlo’s site with the button below.

See at Arlo

Logitech’s $140 Circle 2 Security Camera stores footage in the cloud when motion is detected

It works anywhere you want it to.

Logitech’s Circle 2 Wired Home Security Camera is down to $139.99 at Amazon for a limited time. Considering it regularly sells for $180, this deal saves you $40 off its normal price. This is also a match for its lowest price ever.

This wired camera is Wi-Fi enabled allowing it to upload footage to a secure, private cloud. It can also connect with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, and Google Assistant. It records in full 1080p HD with its 180-degree wide-angle lens and includes night vision which is visible up to 15-feet. It begins recording when motion is detected and will then send the footage to the cloud for up to 24 hours where you can view it or save it. You can also buy a subscription which will keep your recordings for longer starting at just $3.99 per month. A membership includes additional advanced features too such as Motion Zones.

The camera will send a screenshot to your mobile device when motion is detected so you can see what’s going on even while you’re away. It also includes a built-in speaker and microphone and is suitable for both indoor and outdoor use.

Logitech also offers a Plug Mount for $29.99 which allows you to plug this camera into a wall outlet.

See at Amazon

Ringke Fusion Case for Samsung Galaxy S9+ review: Latch onto this grippy clear case

Ringke lets you show off every inch of the Galaxy S9+’s graceful figure with a case that’s clear as glass.

The Samsung Galaxy S9+ is a phone that has been refined and resculpted to glassy brilliance, and while we want to keep that fine mirror-finish from scratching or shattering, hiding it away inside a vault of an Otterbox seems like a waste, no matter how vibrant or stylish the case might seem.

There are plenty of clear cases out there to keep your phone secure while still showing it off, but Ringke’s Fusion Case for the Samsung Galaxy S9+ has a feature that most case makers have long abandoned: an anchor point for a lanyard, wrist strap, or phone charm. Do they still make phone charms these days?

Ringke Fusion Case for Samsung Galaxy S9+

Price: $10.99

Bottom line: This clear case is easy to clean, easy to shine, and comes with a handy strap and built-in lanyard anchor point to help you hang onto it.

The Good

• Crystal clear case allows the S9+’s beauty to shine through.
• Ample port cutouts and an easy-to-use tether point for wrist straps or phone charms

The Bad

• Gets a little slick in sweaty hands
• Keep a cleaning cloth at the ready

See at Amazon

Ringke Fusion Case for Samsung Galaxy S9+ What I like

The Ringke Fusion clear case is fairly straightforward in construction and quality. The hard-plastic back perfectly matches the Galaxy S9’s camera and fingerprint sensors and allows the Samsung name and color from the glass back to shine through. Port cutouts are adequate and the buttons on the TPU bumper are solid without a hint of mushiness. Despite the soft curves and flat faces of the Fusion, the case is quite grippy in the hand, barring my hands getting sweaty in triple-digit Texas temperatures. That’s okay, though, because when I know I’m going to be using the phone a lot when I’m active — such as at a festival or while out playing Pokemon Go — I can break out the wrist strap included in the sleeve with the Ringke Fusion.

Sitting down from the Bixby button is a simple two-hole anchor point for a wrist strap, lanyard, or phone charm, and even with the included wrist strap attached, the phone is comfortable to use in the hand. Anchor points like these are something I’ve not seen on most recent cases, and while phone charms have largely fallen by the wayside outside Japan, it’s nice to see the anchor points being included on Ringke’s cases for those who like the security of a wrist strap or lanyard.

Ringke Fusion Case for Samsung Galaxy S9+ What I don’t like

The Fusion Clear is a clear case, and like most clear cases, it’s a case that attracts smudges, smears, and fingerprints. To its credit, the Ringke Fusion handles these smudges better than other clear cases, taking far longer to feel grimy than the Caseology Skyfall, and smudges don’t show up nearly as well without a very close inspection.

The Ringke Fusion’s anchor point for the included wrist strap is a nice touch, especially as they’re showing up on fewer and fewer cases these days, but I wish the included wrist strap was a quick-release version. The anchor point on the Fusion is straightforward enough to use, and you can get the lanyard off without taking off the case, but slipping the thin wires through the anchor point while the case is on the phone is difficult. Thankfully, the Fusion is easy enough to slip off, equip the wrist strap, and then slip back onto the Galaxy S9+.

Ringke Fusion Case for Samsung Galaxy S9+

As clear cases go, Ringke’s Fusion is crystal clear without being a magnifying glass for smudges and dust, and it’s an affordable clear case that comes in at $10.99, the cost of two or three fancy coffees. And this is a case that will certainly catch eyes at the coffee shop, playing in the vintage lights or sunny summer sunshine and allowing the Galaxy S9+’s sophisticated to shine through underneath.

4
out of 5

This case comes in three variants: Clear, Orchid Purple, and Smoke Black. All three have a crystal clear back, but the transparently tinted colors on the Orchid Purple and Smoke Black can add an extra color-coordinated pop to the Fusion. The colored versions will also better hide the discoloration clear TPU bumpers like the Fusion’s tend to accumulate over time.

See at Amazon

Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+

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You don’t need the latest and greatest tech to build a smart home

Even the oldest smart home tech is still pretty new anyway.

Smart homes are en vogue these days, and they come in all sorts of varying degrees. You can start off with just a couple of smart light bulbs, then gradually work your way up to a smart thermostat, locks, door bells, and beyond.

Smart lights are a great gateway into smart home tech, but there’s plenty more to experiment with.

I recently moved into a new house — well, it’s over a century old but it’s new to me — and I’ve outfitted it with a collection of smart home tech from various different brands, ranging from Nest to Ring, August, and LIFX. It’s made my life a bit easier and more secure, but as futuristic as it all feels, about half of my devices were made over a year ago.

I’ve been using a pair of LIFX’s smart LED bulbs (the first-generation A19, specifically) for over a year now, and even when I originally bought them they were a couple of years old. LIXF is arguably Philips Hue’s biggest competition, and I bought them after reading reviews of their superior color range and their independence from a hub. I use them every single day, sometimes in a warm white and other times in a blue or green hue, and they work without a hitch — it’s hard to be terribly demanding of a light bulb, after all.

For the last few years, I had been lusting after Nest’s sleek Learning Thermostats, and I finally bought one — but since I was after form just as much as function, I picked up the Thermostat 3, rather than the newer and more cost-effective Thermostat E. Despite being three years old, the Thermostat still receives fairly regular software updates and works flawlessly in the Nest app, along with integrating into Google Assistant so that I can control the temperature of my house just as easily from my Google Home as from my phone.

See at Amazon

My two favorite smart home purchases have been the Ring Doorbell 2 and the August Smart Lock 3. Both are newer devices, having come out in the last year, but neither gadget is its respective company’s top-end product. Frankly, I didn’t even want the Ring Doorbell at first, preferring the Nest Hello, but my house is old enough that there’s no existing doorbell wiring, which the Hello and other video doorbells use to draw power. The Ring Doorbell 2 was the only video doorbell I could find that can run entirely off of battery power, with the only downside being losing 24/7 streaming — admittedly a big loss, but I’ll take it over having nothing at all.

While I got the August Smart Lock 3 over the Pro more for aesthetic reasons than anything (I don’t care for the Smart Lock Pro’s enormous circular design), I do miss out on a few features for having gone with the lower-end option. Namely, the Smart Lock 3 can’t connect to WiFi for assistant control without also having to buy the August Connect, which comes included with the Pro. Even with the Connect, the Smart Lock 3 can’t connect to Apple’s Siri and HomeKit services like the Pro can — not a huge loss for me, since I don’t carry an iPhone anymore, but it’s something to be aware of for those who do.

See at Amazon

The moral of the story is that while having the shiniest new toys is always nice, you don’t have to shell out for the most premium options to get a great smart home experience. I’ve had next to no complaints about the various devices in my home, and they all work together to make my house feel more like a home of the future than a relic of the past.

Have you integrated any smart home tech into your home? Do you buy the newest and most powerful devices as they come out, or have you been fine using older gadgets? Sound off in the comments below!

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Flagship Android phones top iPhone X in download speed, report claims

While the battle between iOS and Android rages on — and there are some points you could make for either side — there’s one thing that doesn’t often come up in a debate between the two sides. That’s the speed of a phone’s modem. According to new data from Ookla, the company behind the popular Speedtest.net website, however, perhaps that should change.

Ookla compared the Intel XMM 7480 — which is found in flagship phones like the iPhone X — and the Qualcomm X20, found on the Snapdragon 845, which is in turn featured in phones like the Samsung Galaxy S9. The results of that study were pretty interesting — but most notably, Ookla found that Qualcomm outperformed Intel in almost every metric.

For example, on T-Mobile, Ookla found that phones with a Snapdragon 845 typically had 53 percent faster download speeds than phones with Intel XMM 7480 modems. On top of that, Snapdragon 845-equipped phones typically had 32 percent lower latency than the Intel XMM 7480.

On AT&T, results were similar — though not quite the same. Snapdragon 845 phones, for example, typically achieved 40 percent faster typical download speeds, along with 20 percent faster upload speeds. According to Ookla, the “typical” figure refers to the average of the middle 50 percent of observations. In other words, after removing the top 25 percent and bottom 25 percent of observations, the average of the remaining 50 percent is measured — giving what Ookla calls the “typical” amount.

The results have a few implications. While it’s clear that a Snapdragon 845-enabled device is the way to go if you want a phone with a faster internet connection, slower phones affect everyone. Cell towers, after all, only have so much bandwidth, and when slower phones take longer to download files, it means that the faster phones have to wait longer to get access to that full bandwidth. Of course, that’s clearly not an Android-versus-iPhone issue — you should hardly be upset at iPhone users for clogging up a cell tower. The same issues come up with older Android phones, and Intel’s newer modems are still likely faster than some lower-end Snapdragon chips.

Still, the fact remains that Qualcomm’s best mobile modem is clearly faster than Intel’s — meaning a flagship Android phone is likely to download files a whole lot faster than a flagship iPhone. It’s also worth noting the report that Apple is switching away from Intel communications chips — and it will be interesting to see how Apple-built modems compare to Qualcomm’s.

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Homeland security is worried about Gmail’s confidentiality mode

One of the most intriguing features in the 2018 update of Google’s Gmail service was confidentiality mode. While it might improve the security of email contents for some users though, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is concerned that it could lead to more users than ever before being caught out by phishing scams.

Confidentiality mode works by not sending the actual contents of an email, but sending an email with a link to said content and requiring a password to access. The idea is that users can protect the data they’re trying to communicate with someone on the other end. While that sounds fine in theory, in practice it means clicking on links within emails, which any security expert will tell you is fraught with danger and it’s where phishing hackers make the bulk of their attacks.

A couple of months on from Google’s early rollout of confidentiality mode and other new features, the DHS has been in contact with the tech giant to try and work on a solution to the problem. Google’s response, according to ABCNews, has been to say that it believes no additional security risks have been created with the implementation of the new feature.

That may well be the case for Gmail users, who experience a typical email scenario when receiving confidential emails. However, should that email be sent to someone outside of the Google sphere of influence, a placeholder message and link to the original content is provided instead. According to the DHS, that “presents an opportunity for malicious cyber actors to mimic the email message and phish unwary users.”

Google claims that it has a stellar track record in blocking phishing attempts, suggesting that as many as 99.9 percent of all attempts are caught out by its machine learning and image scanning technologies. However, the potential threat with confidentiality mode isn’t in phishing attacks targeting Gmail users, but in going after those outside of Google’s services. By sending links in emails, Google could be setting a precedent that makes people less wary of unsolicited emails containing links that they need to click.

Keeping away from email links is just one of the many top tips for staying safe online.

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Google could release the most powerful Chromebook ever this year

Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Chromebooks aren’t typically the most powerful of computers, but Google turned that paradigm on its head with the launch of the original Pixelbook in 2017, and now it may be set to do it again. Rumors point to the release of a new Pixelbook before the end of 2018 and though we have no hard specifications to quote, it seems likely that a hardware refresh would see it become the most powerful Chromebook ever made.

As it stands, the original Pixelbook is still king of the Chromebooks. It’s not our favorite, but it’s certainly the most capable of the typically entry-level laptops. It debuted with options for seventh-generation Core i5 and Core i7 Intel CPUs, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of solid-state storage. Rumors of the next-generation Pixelbook suggest it will ship with thinner bezels surrounding the monitor. We would expect a hardware update, too.

The latest information comes from serial leaker Evan Bliss, via 9to5Mac, who suggested that alongside the debut of Google’s expected Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL smartphones, a new Pixelbook with thinner bezels would ship before the end of the year. Considering that just about every new laptop launched in 2018 has come with an eighth-generation Intel CPU under the hood, we’d expect the next Pixelbook to do much the same, especially considering that range’s propensity for using high-end hardware.

Add to this fall hardware lineup a second-generation Pixelbook, with smaller bezels, scheduled to ship before the end of the year.

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) July 22, 2018

As for the rest of the system, 16GB of RAM seems likely to be the ceiling as you don’t really need much more than that unless you’re using a high-end workstation. Storage expansion is a possibility, too, though considering there is a focus on the display side of things, we wouldn’t be surprised if Google improved upon the existing Pixelbook’s display resolution of 2,400 x 1,600.

A new Pixelbook could also make the first-generation Pixelbook a more attractive purchase. Typically, last-generation hardware receives a price drop when a new version is available and the Pixelbook has already had its price cut by $250 during select sale periods. There have also been rumors of the Pixelbook being able to boot to Windows 10 too, which would make it an even more attractive purchase.

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