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SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL—Strapped for cash after 3 years of austerity budgets, Brazilian scientists are bracing for an even harsher year ahead. The federal government is planning to slash science funding by nearly 40% in 2018, jeopardizing major projects including Brazil’s participation in world-class telescope facilities, ScienceInsider has learned. Brazilian scientists were already reeling before the latest dispiriting news. This year, the science ministry absorbed a 44% budget decrease. Perennial cuts are “choking” institutes “to the point of endangering their existence,” says a manifesto released last week by 19 institutes managed by the federal science ministry based in Brasília. The money woes, they claim, are causing “irreversible damage” to institutions that are crucial to the nation’s economic recovery. “This is a very serious situation,” said Bruno Castilho, director of the National Astrophysics Laboratory in Itajubá, Brazil. His budget also was halved this year. Current reserves don’t even cover water and electricity bills, he says, let alone Brazil’s participation in the Gemini Observatory—twin optical and infrared telescopes in Chile and Hawaii—and the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope in Chile. If Castilho can’t find at least another 4 million reais ($1.25 million) by the end of the year, he says, Brazilian astronomers will lose access to those facilities. The prognosis is grim, he says: “We don’t have anywhere else to cut.” Also imperiled is next year’s planned launch of the Amazonia 1 satellite—an Earth observation satellite that will monitor deforestation and other land use changes—and daily operations of the Tupã supercomputer, which is crucial to weather forecast and climate research, says Ricardo Galvão, director of the National Institute for Space Research in São José dos Campos, Brazil. The federal government has authorized the institute to spend less than half of its planned 220 million reai budget this year, withholding the rest as “contingency funds.” “We are running a detailed study of all the projects that might have to be frozen or discontinued to secure our operational expenses,” Galvão says. Brazil’s ability to predict extreme weather events may also be compromised. The National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters in Cachoeira Paulista is running out of funds to maintain its nationwide network of sensors and monitoring stations. “If the 2018 budget is the same as this year’s, I don’t know how we are going to survive,” says Director Osvaldo de Moraes. Many fear things will get worse before they get any better. A constitutional amendment approved last year prohibits the federal government to increase spending above inflation for the next 20 years The situation is “dramatic,” says the science ministry’s executive secretary, Elton Zacarias. The ministry, he says, is negotiating with federal planning officials to try to win an increase in the funding cap. “We have to solve this now,” says Luiz Davidovich, president of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences in Rio de Janeiro. “People are leaving the country, laboratories are shutting down.” It’s understandable that sacrifices are necessary in times of economic hardship, he says, but he insists that the cuts to science are shortsighted. “When you cut across the board, you don’t have priorities.” He decries the cuts as an “atomic bomb” that will leave a legacy of destruction for future generations.

Access, the division of Alphabet that runs Google Fiber, had announced last year they'd dramatically cut back on its plans to expand its fiber rollout. The company lost its CEO and was leaderless until March when broadband veteran Greg McCray was brought in to steer the ISP in a new direction. After just five months in the job, McCray has stepped down from his post and the future of the company that was meant to disrupt the broadband business looks uncertain. The reasons for McCray’s sudden departure are still unclear, however according to Bloomberg, the CEO didn’t exactly have a smooth start at the company. He upset staff and caused a number of HR complaints over sexist comments during his first address to Access employees. Alphabet CEO Larry Page said in a statement that the company is "committed to the success of Google Fiber" and was looking for a new leader to manage the business. "We are committed to the success of Google Fiber. The team is bringing gigabit connections to more and more happy customers. Fiber has a great team and I'm confident we will find an amazing person to lead this important business." Google had big ambitions for Fiber, promising speeds 10 to 20 times faster than competing services and more affordable prices. It rolled out in several markets, of which Kansas City was the first in 2012, but deploying fiber is slow and expensive. Eventually the company switched gears to focus on wireless as a replacement for the "last mile" of wiring. Although at the time the company said it would still deploy its service in markets it had already committed to, back in March it cancelled hundreds of new installations in Kansas City. "Other Bets," the division of Alphabet that Google Fiber is in, had an operating loss of $3.6 billion last year. In an attempt to become profitable again, Alphabet stopped their drone delivery project, spun off its self-driving car technology to Waymo, and scaled back on Google Fiber.

With its Ryzen processors, AMD is finally challenging Intel in the CPU space. But those rushing to buy the chips from Amazon could be in for a nasty surprise. At least two users who recently purchased Ryzen 1700s from the site received fakes. In both instances, the chips were Intel Celeron processors disguised to look like AMD’s products. Just over a week ago, Reddit user sh00ter999 posted pictures of what was supposed to be his new Ryzen 1700. Only it wasn’t. It was an LGA-based Intel processor with the markings scrubbed off and replaced with Ryzen markings that were part of a transparent sticker. Not only did this CPU come with the wrong (damaged) heatsink, its packaging looked as if it had been sealed with a lighter. There was also a lack of pins on the base, which, combined with the pinless AM4 socket, should mean the risk of motherboard damage is minimal unless someone uses excessive force. On July 15, a user called Yae_Ko became the victim of a similar scam. While the CPU SKU in this instance was different, the same unofficial Ryzen branding was used, suggesting the same people were responsible for both fakes. So, how did this happen when the CPUs came from a legitimate site like Amazon? It’s strongly suspected that the perpetrators are using RMA fraud: ordering the Ryzen 1700s for themselves, swapping the chips with doctored Celeron CPUs, resealing the packages, then returning them to the retailer. The similar size and weight, along with the stickers, appear to be fooling Amazon’s workers into thinking they’re the real products. Once the fake chips are back in circulation, anyone buying a Ryzen 1700 (or whatever other models are affected) risks receiving a dud. It seems that Amazon has been quick to send out replacements via overnight express delivery, and even included a gift card for the users' troubles. The company will presumably do the same for anyone else who falls victim to this fraud. But exactly how many of these fakes are floating around Amazon’s inventory is a mystery.

If you’ve been contemplating putting together a new PC or simply upgrading the RAM in your current machine, now may be the ideal time to do so. According to a recent report from electronics supply and manufacturing blog Evertiq, production at Micron’s Fab-2 fabrication plant in Taiwan’s Taoyuan City was suspended on July 1 due to the malfunctioning of a nitrogen gas dispensing system that led to the contamination of wafers and equipment within the facility. DRAMeXchange estimates that Micron Technology Taiwan, also known as Inotera, has suffered a production capacity loss of around 60,000 wafer starts per month as a result of the malfunction. Labeled as a conservative estimate, this equates to around a 5.5 percent cut in the global DRAM production capacity for the month of July. So, what does the shutdown mean for consumers? With supply down, pricing in the memory market is only going to increase (remember what happened to the hard drive market after the devastating flooding in Thailand several years back?). Inotera is also a major manufacturer of Micron’s LPDDR4 products used to build iPhones which means that the shutdown could impact shipments of Apple’s upcoming iPhone 8. The goal is to obviously get the fab back up and running ASAP but the clean-up and restoration process is a time-consuming challenge, the site said.

(VIDEO): The insides of stars are a boiling mess. The turbulent motion of superhot plasma causes the magnetic field coursing within to cycle between periods of low and high intensity—resulting in sunspots and solar flares. But scientists never knew what controlled the length of these cycles, which last about 11 years in our own sun. So one team of astronomers used data from the Gaia space observatory to simulate the interiors of solar-type stars, which are similar in mass and age to our own sun. In particular, they wanted to answer a burning question: Why do other solar-type stars have such wildly varying solar cycles? For example, one such star—known as Kappa Ceti, in the Cetus constellation—has cycles that last 5.6 (Earth) years. After looking at more than 25 magnetic cycles, researchers found that the length of each star’s cycle is related to its rotation rate and brightness, they report today in Science. Faster spinning, but fainter, stars have longer cycles. The results may help scientists better understand solar magnetic fields, and they should lay to rest one long-standing uncertainty—that our sun was not a solar-type star!

(VIDEO): Google has announced Blocks, a free VR app for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive that allows users to create colorful 3D models. The goal of Blocks is to be simple enough for newcomers to easily start creating 3D objects while also allowing advanced users to make more visually complex creations. Google reasons that our brains aren't specifically wired to create 3D objects on a 2D plane, therefore virtual reality can help with fully realizing 3D content. Once you're done creating your masterpiece, you can export the design as an OBJ and import it into other VR/AR applications. For example, you could create an all-white 3D model in Blocks then import that OBJ into Google's own Tilt Brush 3D painting app and paint your Blocks creation. The sample models that Google shows are pretty impressive with designs ranging from a horse, piano, teddy bear, and a fighter jet mech Transformer looking thing. Blocks is simple enough for anyone to use, even those without any prior modeling experience. It’s designed to feel more like playing with children’s blocks than working with traditional 3D modeling software. Starting with a simple set of shapes, a color palette, and an intuitive set of tools, you’re able to naturally and quickly create almost anything you can imagine, from a piece of watermelon to a whole forest scene. What's interesting is that Google isn't releasing this for its own Daydream VR platform... at least not yet. Blocks remains exclusive to high-end VR headsets, likely due to the precise movements needed with the hand controllers and ability to walk around the creations. However, with Google also working with Lenovo and HTC to make standalone Daydream headsets, it probably won't be long until we see Blocks on Google's own VR platform.

This week we received news on AMD's upcoming Threadripper and the highlights include the clock speeds and the prices. The Ryzen Threadripper 1950X, yeah that’s a bit of a mouthful, is set to come in at $1000, the same price as the 10-core Core i9-7900X. Why is that a big deal? Whereas Intel is offering a 10-core/20-thread CPU at that price point, AMD is serving up a 16-core/32-thread monster. That’s 60% more cores for the same price. AMD also announced the Ryzen Threadripper 1920X, a slightly more affordable 12-core/24-thread CPU for $800. Both CPUs are said to operate at a max boost frequency of 4GHz which is great. The 1950X sports a base frequency of 3.4 GHz, while the 1920X will run no slower than 3.5 GHz. We don’t yet know what the all-core turbo frequencies are, or how many cores will operate at the maximum 4 GHz turbo frequency. Those specifications complement what we already knew about Threadripper. To quickly recap: Threadripper CPUs pack two Zeppelin dies, the EPYC server-grade chips use four of these dies. Each Zeppelin die provides 32 Gen 3.0 PCIe lanes for a total of 64 lanes, so you can connect up as many graphics cards and high-speed NVMe storage devices you want without running into any bandwidth limitations. Within a Zeppelin die are two CCX modules, so technically Threadripper is two Ryzen 7 CPUs stitched together, or glued as Intel would so elegantly put it. Actually why glued Intel, they use fabric to connect the modules, stitching seems like it would be the prefered method. Anyway, in total there are four CCX units, each offering 4-cores/8-threads, so you can double everything Ryzen 7 has and this means you end up with a massive 32 MB L3 cache and support for quad-channel memory. As you might imagine, sticking two Ryzen 7s together is going to make for a massive CPU and that is exactly what Threadripper is, absolutely massive. AMD has designed a new platform to accommodate the behemoths, supported by the cunningly named X399 chipset. The new Socket TR4 uses the ‘Land Grid Array’ surface-mount packaging, commonly referred to as LGA. Unlike Ryzen 5 and 7, there are no pins on the CPU itself. These have been moved over to the motherboard, this is the same method Intel has been using for years. But whereas Intel’s latest high-end desktop CPUs utilize 2066 pins, Threadripper demands an incredible 4094 pins. This kind of extreme platform demands a new name, so superseding Intel’s high-end desktop or HEDT we now have the SHED, which is short for ‘Super High-End Desktop’. AMD also announced that the Threadripper CPUs will become available in early August, no mention of a 10-core part at this stage. So you’ll be able to buy one of AMDs super high-end desktop processors for a reasonable price soon, but should you? Potential buyers have the option to pull the trigger on the Core i9-7900X right now or go with the Threadripper 1950X in a few weeks' time. AMD showed a quick Cinebench R15 demo featuring both Threadripper models and compared the results to the Core i9-7900X. The Core i9-7900X scored 2167 pts which is consistent with our own findings, we reported a score of 2201 pts in our review. The 12-core 1920X spat out an impressive score of 2431 pts and to beat that the 7900X needs to be overclocked to 4.7 GHz, where it consumes enough power to embarrass your wall heater. Then the big guy, the 1950X turned in an incredible score of 3062 pts. While breathtaking, this wasn’t entirely surprising given the 1800X manages around 1600 pts. What this means is that for workloads that can utilize all of the 1950X’s many cores, it should deliver almost 40% more performance than the Core i9-7900X. That is a massive performance difference for a CPU of the same price. So should you wait a few weeks for Threadripper before making your ultimate choice? Hell yeah. As I see it, AMD really has Intel in a serious spot of bother with these high-core count CPUs. When it comes to gaming, there is no question the quad-core Core i7-7700K still rules them all, for now anyway. This goes beyond gaming, anyone seeking a CPU with 8 or more cores probably isn’t gaming, or at least they're not just playing games. When we talk about 10-core CPUs commanding such price premiums as the 7900X, gaming really isn’t a consideration and this is of course true for the 12 and 16-core Threadripper CPUs as well. So if you're not gaming, and you do require a high core count CPU for things such as encoding or rendering, then you really do want as many cores as you can afford. As we just saw with Cinebench, AMD’s higher core count 1950X takes the 7900X to the cleaners. Of course, we've yet to test Threadripper ourselves, but given what we know about Ryzen 7 and Intel’s Core-X lineup, I just don’t see how Intel can compete here given their current pricing strategy. As a side note, things we'd like to know but are still pending confirmation... We don't know if the 12-core model also features the same 32MB L3 cache as the 16-core model, AMD also haven't confirmed the CCX configuration, we'd assume we're looking at 3 cores per CCX for the 12-core model. We also don’t know about the official DDR4 memory support, we'd assume DDR4-2666 and possibly an insane 1TB of memory will be supported. Finally, if the CPUs come bundled with a cooler, and if not, can existing coolers be adapted to the new socket. On the opposite end of the spectrum, AMD also announced the Ryzen 3 1300X and 1200. The 1300X will operate at a base frequency of 3.5 GHz with a turbo of 3.7GHz, while the 1200 will run at 3.1 GHz with a turbo of 3.4 GHz. No pricing info yet, but AMD says these CPUs will be available next week on the 27th. Before that happens, we'll have a simulated Ryzen 3 benchmark feature in the next few days as we know Ryzen 3 chips are simply Ryzen 5 1400s with SMT disabled. The results are very interesting and we'll be able to give you guys a heads up in advance if Ryzen 3 will be worth the expected asking prices.

Hello, i will try to help you with this problem, This is the simplest solution. Copy this text below and write it in Counter-Strike / cstrike / config, save. // This file is overwritten whenever you change your user settings in the game. // Add custom configurations to the file "userconfig.cfg". unbindall bind "TAB" "+showscores" bind "ENTER" "+attack" bind "ESCAPE" "cancelselect" bind "SPACE" "+jump" bind "'" "+moveup" bind "+" "sizeup" bind "," "buyammo1" bind "-" "sizedown" bind "." "buyammo2" bind "/" "+movedown" bind "0" "slot10" bind "1" "slot1" bind "2" "slot2" bind "3" "slot3" bind "4" "slot4" bind "5" "slot5" bind "6" "slot6" bind "7" "slot7" bind "8" "slot8" bind "9" "slot9" bind ";" "+mlook" bind "=" "sizeup" bind "[" "invprev" bind "]" "invnext" bind "`" "toggleconsole" bind "a" "+moveleft" bind "b" "buy" bind "c" "radio3" bind "d" "+moveright" bind "e" "+use" bind "f" "impulse 100" bind "g" "drop" bind "h" "+commandmenu" bind "i" "showbriefing" bind "j" "cheer" bind "k" "+voicerecord" bind "m" "chooseteam" bind "n" "nightvision" bind "o" "buyequip" bind "p" "+use" bind "q" "lastinv" bind "r" "+reload" bind "s" "+back" bind "t" "impulse 201" bind "u" "messagemode2" bind "w" "+forward" bind "x" "radio2" bind "y" "messagemode" bind "z" "radio1" bind "~" "toggleconsole" bind "UPARROW" "+forward" bind "DOWNARROW" "+back" bind "LEFTARROW" "+left" bind "RIGHTARROW" "+right" bind "ALT" "+strafe" bind "CTRL" "+duck" bind "SHIFT" "+speed" bind "F1" "autobuy" bind "F2" "rebuy" bind "F5" "snapshot" bind "F6" "save quick" bind "F7" "load quick" bind "F10" "quit prompt" bind "INS" "+klook" bind "PGDN" "+lookdown" bind "PGUP" "+lookup" bind "END" "centerview" bind "MWHEELDOWN" "invnext" bind "MWHEELUP" "invprev" bind "MOUSE1" "+attack" bind "MOUSE2" "+attack2" bind "MOUSE3" "say /surfshop" bind "PAUSE" "pause" _cl_autowepswitch "1" _snd_mixahead "0.1" ati_npatch "1.0" ati_subdiv "2.0" bgmvolume "1.000000" bottomcolor "6" brightness "1.000000" cl_allowdownload "1" cl_allowupload "1" cl_backspeed "400" cl_cmdbackup "2" cl_cmdrate "30" cl_corpsestay "600" cl_crosshair_color "50 250 50" cl_crosshair_size "small" cl_crosshair_translucent "1" cl_dlmax "80" cl_download_ingame "1" cl_dynamiccrosshair "0" cl_forwardspeed "400" cl_himodels "0" cl_idealpitchscale "0.8" cl_lc "1" cl_logocolor "#Valve_Orange" cl_logofile "lambda" cl_lw "1" cl_minmodels "0" cl_radartype "0" cl_righthand "1" cl_shadows "1" cl_timeout "300" cl_updaterate "20" cl_vsmoothing "0.05" cl_weather "1" con_color "255 180 30" console "1.000000" crosshair "1.000000" fastsprites "0" fps_max "101" fps_modem "101" gamma "2.500000" gl_dither "1" gl_flipmatrix "0" gl_fog "1" gl_monolights "0" gl_overbright "0" gl_polyoffset "0.1" hisound "1" hpk_maxsize "4" hud_capturemouse "1" hud_centerid "0" hud_draw "1" hud_fastswitch "1" hud_saytext_internal "1" hud_takesshots "0" joystick "0" lookspring "0.000000" lookstrafe "0.000000" m_filter "0" m_forward "1" m_pitch "0.022" m_side "0.8" m_yaw "0.022" model "arctic" MP3FadeTime "2.0" MP3Volume "0.360000" mp_decals "300" name "Player" net_graph "3" net_graphpos "1" net_scale "5" r_bmodelhighfrac "5.0" s_a3d "0.0" s_automax_distance "30.0" s_automin_distance "2.0" s_bloat "2.0" s_distance "60" s_doppler "0.0" s_eax "0.0" s_leafnum "0" s_max_distance "1000.0" s_min_distance "8.0" s_numpolys "200" s_polykeep "1000000000" s_polysize "10000000" s_refdelay "4" s_refgain "0.4" s_rolloff "1.0" s_verbwet "0.25" sensitivity "10" skin "" spec_autodirector_internal "1" spec_drawcone_internal "1" spec_drawnames_internal "1" spec_drawstatus_internal "1" spec_mode_internal "4" spec_pip "0" suitvolume "0.250000" sv_aim "1" sv_voiceenable "1" team "" topcolor "30" viewsize "110" voice_enable "1" voice_forcemicrecord "1" voice_modenable "1" voice_scale "0.750000" volume "0.240000" setinfo "_laleagane" setinfo "_pw" +mlook +jlook exec userconfig.cfg P.S. With this I play and I have no problems and I hope that this decision will help you.

A giant asteroid crashing into our planet would instantly kill off millions of animals. But the aftermath of such an impact would be even more disastrous: Tsunamis, earthquakes, and vast clouds of dust blocking out the sun would lead to crop failure and mass extinction. Sixty-five million years ago, just such an event killed off 75% of species on Earth. But to really wipe life off the planet, it would take an astrophysical event so powerful that Earth’s oceans would literally boil away, according to a new study. The heat and cosmic radiation would make Earth inhospitable even to tardigrades, among the hardiest organisms ever discovered. “They’ve taken a grand question—how resilient is life?—and turned [it] into a well-posed calculation, by focusing on the energy required to boil Earth’s oceans,” says Joshua Winn, an exoplanets expert at Princeton University, who was not involved in the study. “It’s an awful lot of energy.” Researchers first calculated the amount of energy it would take to bring all Earth’s water above 100°C: 6 x 1022 joules, about a hundred times more than total annual energy consumption by humans, or a trillion times the energy needed for the space shuttle to lift off. Translated into cataclysms, it would take the energy given off by the impact of an asteroid the size of Vesta or Pallas, among the solar system’s biggest, they report today in Scientific Reports. Other options: exploding stars known as supernovae or gamma ray bursts, highly energetic explosions in outer space. But none of these is very likely. Asteroids of the right size exist, but “they’re not heading in our direction,” says study author and astrophysicist Avi Loeb of Harvard University. And although the heat given off by a supernova could make all the water on Earth evaporate, such an explosion would have to be “just next door,” cosmically speaking. That’s 0.13 light-years away, or about 30 times nearer to our solar system than the closest supernova candidate. Finally, there’s almost zero chance that gamma ray bursts would happen at a distance capable of stripping Earth of its seas. “It really is pretty hard to sterilize a planet,” says Gregory Laughlin, an astronomer at Yale University who was not involved in the study. The researchers turned to tardigrades—microscopic, water-dwelling creatures that can endure temperatures as cold as -272°C and as hot as 150°C—as the Earth animals most likely to survive when all others are dead. Tardigrades, also known as water bears, can live for days in the vacuum of outer space. They can also withstand pressure up to six times that at the bottom of the ocean and levels of radiation thousands of times the lethal human dose, thanks to a yet-unknown mechanism that allows them to repair their DNA. But they wouldn’t be able to survive prolonged exposure to severe heat and cosmic radiation without water—or endless time in space. The findings have implications for more than just earthlings. They could inform our search for creatures on alien worlds, says study author David Sloan, a cosmologist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. “This really broadens the range of places where we should be looking for life.” That’s because the sturdiest organisms on Earth—not only tardigrades, but also microorganisms that thrive in extreme conditions—may resist a wide range of catastrophes, including humanmade ones such as global warming or nuclear wars. “I have an optimistic view about life,” Loeb says. “It may be able to survive all the mistakes we’ll make in politics in the future.”

Earlier this week Facebook announced it’s temporarily dropping the price of its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and Touch motion controllers bundle. Normally priced at $599, the entire package is just $399 for the next six weeks as part of the company’s Summer of Rift event. When the sale is over, however, the bundle will be receiving a permanent cut to $499. The package will include the Rift headset, two sensors, a pair of Touch controllers, all the necessary cables, and six games: Lucky's Tale, Medium, Toybox, Quill, Dead and Buried and Robo Recall. It doesn’t include the Xbox One gamepad included in the original Rift. Aside from temporary sales, this is the second time the Rift has received a price cut this year, after dropping the headset from $599 to $499 and Touch controllers from $199 to $99 at GDC in March. Oculus hasn't disclosed sales for the Rift but research firm IDC estimates the device has sold about 520,000 units world-wide to date, compared with 770,000 of HTC's Vive headsets. Now at a full $300 less than the $799 HTC Vive it remains to be seen if Oculus can finally outpace its rival. Both Oculus and Vive are planning wireless VR headsets down the line. Just yesterday, reports emerged that Oculus was working on a $200 all-in-one device that would operate similarly to Samsung’s Gear VR headset but would not rely on a smartphone to power it.

AMD had some news to share yesterday regarding its enthusiast-grade Threadripper CPUs as well as the budget-focused Ryzen 3 at the other end of the spectrum. While we now know specs and pricing for their range topping CPUs, the company left out pricing details for Ryzen 3. If a recent leak is to be believed, however, the lineup is set to start at just $109 for the Ryzen 3 1200 and $129 for the 1300X. That’s incredibly good value considering that — at least on paper — the chips are in Core i5 territory in terms of compute performance. As a refresher, the lower end Ryzen 3 1200 features base and boost frequencies of 3.1GHz and 3.4GHz, while the 1300X features base and boost frequencies of 3.5GHz and 3.7GHz. They both pack four cores and four threads (no SMT support) and will fit into current AM4 motherboards. Moreover, unlike Intel’s counterparts, AMD’s entire lineup is overclockable, opening up the potential for even better value for budget builders — it remains to be seen how well they overclock, though. The leak came from a poster on reddit — first spotted by Wccftech and reported by Forbes — who claims to have obtained the information from a distributor in his country. We won’t have to wait much longer to see if the information check out as Ryzen 3 is slated to arrive on July 27. In the meantime look out for our Ryzen 3 preview next week. We'll tweak current Ryzen chips to match the specifications of the upcoming budget processors and simulate their performance so you can know what to expect ahead of release.

AMD in May unveiled the first Radeon graphics card based on its highly anticipated Vega architecture. As it turns out, the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition did little to quench gamers’ thirst as the card targeted the professional market. Hopes were high that AMD would showcase its consumer cards at Computex last month but alas, CEO Lisa Su revealed that said unveiling wouldn’t take place until the SIGGRAPH trade show at the end of July. Fortunately, the rumor mill is doing its job to hold us over until then. 3DCenter (via VideoCardz) is reporting that AMD will offer Vega in three different SKUs. At the top of the food chain is the AMD Radeon RX Vega XTX, a card that’ll reportedly feature 64 shader clusters (4,096 stream processors), 8GB of HBM2 memory and an ASIC power draw of 300W (375W of board power). Similar to the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, this card will also come equipped with an AIO liquid cooler. Bumping down a step is the AMD Radeon RX Vega XT. This tier is also said to offer 64 shader clusters (4,096 stream processors) and 8GB of HBM2 memory albeit at just 220W of ASIC power (285W of board power). As such, it’ll be cooled by a traditional air-based solution. At the low end is the AMD Radeon RX Vega XL with 56 shader clusters (3,584 stream processors) and an unknown amount of memory. This card will check in at the same 220W of ASIC power and 285W of board power as the XT, we’re told. SIGGRAPH runs from July 30 through August 3 at the LA Convention Center in Los Angeles, California.

Life on Earth is a paradox—to function, all organisms need energy. But to harness that energy, living creatures rely on enzymes that have evolved over billions of years to make possible everything from respiration to photosynthesis to DNA repair. So what came first, the enzyme or the organism? A new study suggests that the iron-and-sulfur clusters at the heart of many life-critical enzymes could have been floating around Earth’s primordial seas some 4 billion years ago, produced by nothing more than primitive biomolecules, iron salts, and a previously unknown ingredient—ultraviolet (UV) light. “It’s intriguing,” says Robert Hazen, a geophysicist who studies interactions between the mineral and living worlds at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, D.C. “[The development of iron-sulfide clusters] was likely an important step in life’s origins.” Most research into life’s origins has focused on how organic building blocks, like amino acids and nucleic acids, arose and assembled themselves into proteins and RNA. Less studied is the genesis of iron-sulfur clusters, the active core in enzymes that drive almost every aspect of cellular chemistry. Genetic analysis suggests they’ve been around at least since the time of our last common ancestor. “I’ve never seen an organism that doesn’t depend on them,” says Sheref Mansy, a biochemist at the University of Trento in Italy who led the new work. But modern metabolic reactions are carefully calibrated inside living cells, in the presence of oxygen. Neither condition would have existed on Earth without life. To find out whether iron-sulfur clusters were a core ingredient for life from the start—or whether the first organisms got along fine without them—Mansy and his team recreated the conditions of early Earth in their lab. University of Trento biochemist Claudia Bonfio removed oxygen and mixed together a brew of iron and glutathione, a sulfur-containing peptide likely present in the prebiotic chemical soup. When the iron was in an oxidation state that predominated on early Earth, iron (II), nothing happened. But when Bonfio flicked on the lights, a transformation took place. “After a few minutes you could start to see the formation of iron-sulfur clusters,” she says. In the presence of UV light, the solution went from violet to red, indicating that the iron and sulfur were reacting. “And if you waited longer,” she says, “more complex clusters formed that gave the solution a brown color.” The light was simultaneously freeing sulfur atoms from the peptides and oxidizing the iron—turning it into a form, iron (III), that could readily interact with the sulfur, the team reports this week in Nature Chemistry. The team then tested more than 30 other potential compounds under different conditions, and found that the reactions also worked with simpler sulfur-containing molecules. Some of them even worked inside fatty acid vesicles, a laboratory stand-in for protocells. In most cases, the process was “strikingly similar” to the way iron-sulfur clusters synthesize in modern living cells, the authors write. It makes sense, says Mansy, that sunlight would play a role in early iron-sulfur synthesis. That’s because Earth lacked an ozone layer to protect it from UV light—which was far more intense 4 billion years ago than it is now. What’s more, lakes all over young Earth would have hosted mineral-rich stews similar to those in the experiment. That’s particularly true for those inside volcanic craters and impact areas, where water moving through fractured rocks could bring iron to the surface, says Jack Szostak, a Harvard University molecular biologist who also took part in the work. Indeed, a paper by co-author John Sutherland—a chemist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge, U.K.—suggests that all the basic chemicals for life can be cooked up in a water-filled impact crater. But Mansy himself is cautious about the new work’s significance. Showing that something can happen in the lab is different from saying that it did happen, he emphasizes. “This reaction only becomes truly important if we can show that there is some kind of selective advantage to the network of chemicals involved.” If that’s the case, it could begin to explain how nonliving chemistry generated reactions that eventually evolved into living systems. But discovering the exact sequence of events that gave life its spark may be forever lost behind time’s horizon, Hazen warns. “Like so many chemical experiments pitched as ‘origins of life’ contributions, [this] is more suggestive than definitive.”

There are a lot of choices for monitors out there at the moment, which makes picking one variant as “the best for gaming” a tricky task. 4K, 5K and even 8K displays sit at the top of the resolution charts, but everyday PC gamers would struggle to hit 60 FPS at these resolutions. Ultrawide panels are a personal favorite of mine – I love gaming on my 3440 x 1440 Acer Predator X34 – but the increased resolution over 1440p, the high price of these monitors, and the additional width doesn’t necessarily make it the right choice for everyone. There is one type of monitor, though, that ticks nearly every box for high quality PC gaming. One that provides a good mix of resolution and high refresh rate, while still being realistically usable on today’s most po[CENSORED]r gaming hardware. I’m talking about the latest 27-inch 1440p IPS monitors that hit a whopping 165 Hz with support for adaptive sync. These monitors hit the mark in many respects, and today we’re going to explore what sort of gaming experience you can expect with such a feature-laden display. But first, let’s quickly talk about display hardware. There are a number of 27-inch 1440p 165 Hz monitors on the market, but most use the same AU Optronics AHVA panel, with AHVA being the company’s proprietary IPS technology. The panel has a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 4ms response times, 350 nits peak brightness, and from my experience, fantastic viewing angles and color performance that can be calibrated to meet sRGB standards. With me for testing is the ViewSonic XG2703-GS, which is one of the more affordable options to use this panel. Now, when I say affordable, I mean this will still set you back $700, so it sits towards the top of monitor pricing. But before you jump to comment in protest, it’s worth noting that a top-end 34-inch IPS ultrawide will set you back at least $1,200, while a 4K IPS panel with G-Sync is no less than $880. And those new HDR displays coming in the near future? Expect them to be even more expensive. Plus, most people buying a new monitor probably won’t think of upgrading again for many years. So you’re probably wondering why we’d recommend a 1440p high-refresh monitor over something lower resolution or cheaper. It stems from two aspects: current PC hardware, and the longevity of monitors. When you look at the most po[CENSORED]r graphics cards in systems being built today, the GeForce GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 are right at the top of the charts. The GTX 1060 is a great card for 1080p gaming, but those interested in going above that resolution are looking at the GTX 1070 as a baseline. Plus, I figure that most people looking to drop a fair bit of cash on a monitor are probably going to have at least a GTX 1070 in their gaming rig anyway, or at least that’s what I’d recommend. With the GTX 1070 chosen as our baseline GPU platform, let’s take a look at how it performs at 1440p. Of course, you can go back and look at our previous coverage of GPUs at 1440p, but here’s a summary of what to expect. Note that for the following tests we actually used a GeForce GTX 980 Ti, along with a Ryzen 7 1700X processor. Our GTX 1070s were busy being used for another project, so we swapped in a GTX 980 Ti for these tests, as the performance is roughly equivalent to a GTX 1070 anyway. Game Settings Typical FPS Range Battlefield 1 Multiplayer Ultra Preset 75-90 FPS Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Ultra PresetHigh Preset 45-60 FPS55-70 FPS Fallout 4 Ultra but Medium Shadows 85-100 FPS Mass Effect Andromeda Ultra Preset 60-80 FPS Prey Max Settings 75-105 FPS Rise of the Tomb Raider Max Settings with SMAAHigh Preset 55-70 FPS65-80 FPS The Witcher 3 Ultra with HBAO+ and HairworksHigh Preset without Hairworks 55-65 FPS80-90 FPS Watch Dogs 2 Ultra PresetHigh Preset 40-50 FPS55-65 FPS In the above table, you can see some of our results playing eight po[CENSORED]r titles, several of which are very intensive at ultra detail settings. The most intensive games ran at around the 45-50 FPS mark on average, but all can be pushed above 60 FPS through slight reductions in settings that have a minimal effect on image quality. Some less intensive titles, like Battlefield 1, Fallout 4 and Prey, all run at high frame rates to begin with. If you’re more of an esports fan, games like CS:GO, Rocket League, Overwatch, and so forth can easily hit 150 to 200 FPS or more with this sort of hardware, provided your CPU is up to scratch. In general, what you will have seen throughout our testing is the GTX 1070 (or GTX 980 Ti) is well suited to gaming at 1440p. At ultra detail settings, the GPU sits at around 60 FPS in most modern AAA titles, but if you’re willing to sacrifice a few settings, your frame rate can push well into the 80 to 100 FPS zone. More powerful graphics cards like the GTX 1080 or GTX 1080 Ti will hit these higher frame rates more often and at higher detail levels. At resolutions higher than 1440p, such as 4K or 3440 x 1440 ultrawide, it’s unlikely you’ll be consistently hitting 60 FPS at ultra detail settings, particularly at 4K. As a gamer that prefers performance over resolution, this is why 1440p is such an attractive option. You’ll still get a high-quality gaming experience with increased detail over 1080p, but unlike with even higher resolutions it’s actually possible to hit high frame rates on po[CENSORED]r graphics cards like the GTX 1070. With this in mind, it makes sense to get the most out of gaming at 1440p, and that starts with a high refresh monitor. If you use a GTX 1070 or better, a standard 60 Hz 1440p display is likely not making the most of your hardware. If a game runs at well above 60 FPS, like Prey at ultra quality settings, your experience on a 60 Hz monitor won’t be nearly as smooth or fluid as on a monitor that pushes above 60 Hz. The difference even going to 100 Hz is massive and clearly noticeable while gaming; it’s something you really have to try yourself to fully understand, but once you experience it, you’ll definitely be craving higher refresh rates over higher resolutions. At 1440p, there are several options for higher-than-60 Hz monitors. The most common use an older 144 Hz TN panel, while newer options use the 165 Hz AHVA IPS panel we discussed earlier. The superior quality IPS display and 21 Hz higher refresh rate introduce around a $150 price premium. If you want the best quality display in terms of contrast, viewing angles and colors, there’s no doubting you’ll get it with an IPS panel rather than TN, and the additional refresh rate is a nice bonus to have. It’s for this reason that 1440p monitors at 165 Hz are the ultimate option for gamers right now. They’re an especially good choice if you plan on keeping this type of monitor for several years, because as higher performance graphics cards become more affordable, you’ll be able to upgrade your GPU for a reasonable price and come closer to hitting the 165 Hz limit on these displays. And in the meantime, you’ll still get the benefit of high refresh rates where your current hardware and in-game graphics preferences allow.

We've been saying it for years, if you're building a new computer or upgrading an old one, an SSD should be at the top of your list. For budget builds or older systems that means something like Crucial’s MX300, a SATA drive that offers extreme snappiness for a reasonable price. Those building more extreme desktop systems will no doubt be aiming for an NVMe SSD. The PCI Express bus provides much more bandwidth for unleashing these high-speed storage devices. However, not all NVMe drives are created the same, and we saw that last year when checking out Intel’s hopeless SSD 600p. That drive was plagued by poorly sustained write performance, which would see it drop even below hard drive-like performance. Corsair's latest entry into the high performance SSD arena... At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the Samsung SSD 960 which has set the bar in terms of price and performance. To date nothing can compete with the 960 Pro series and the 2TB version has been my weapon of choice for months now. The more affordable 960 Evo series is also really good, though I feel like if you are going to spend this much money on a high-speed SSD, you might as well ensure that it uses MLC NAND and not the slightly less reliable TLC stuff. One of the few companies that have tried (and got close) to dethroning Samsung at the peak of their game is Corsair. Back in January we checked out their Force Series MP500 480GB. In short, the MP500 was a great-all rounder boasting decent performance and a high endurance rating. The downside was pricing. At $325 it matched the 512GB 960 Pro but it was slower, and thus a tough sell. Six months later, pricing has improved and the MP500 is far more competitive. The top 480GB model costs $0.53 per gigabyte ($255) whereas the 960 Pro 512GB comes in at a slightly higher $0.58 and can be had for $300. The Corsair MP500 took advantage of Phison’s PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD controller dubbed PS5007-E7, along with Toshiba's 15nm MLC NAND. Other brands released their own drives using this controller, among them the Patriot Hellfire M2 and PNY CS2030. More recently, in mid-March Zotac came out with the Sonix which also sports the Phison controller and Toshiba MLC memory. However they opted for the half-height half-length PCI Express 3.0 x4 form-factor rather than the more compact M.2. It was expected that other brands such as Corsair, Patriot, Mushkin, PNY and Kingston would soon offer similar products. So it comes as little surprise that Corsair has just released a HHHL (half-height half-length), PCI Express 3.0 x4 SSD, once again using the Phison PS5007-E7 controller and 15nm Toshiba MLC memory. Which begs the question. Is this just the MP500 on a PCIe adapter card? Well, it’s a little more than that. This isn't an M.2 drive mounted on an adapter card, rather the components are directly mounted to the PCB and this comes with a few advantages that I will touch on shortly. For now let’s talk specs, the Neutron Series NX500 comes in either 400GB or 800GB capacities, both using the HHHL form factor. Meanwhile, the MP500 series offers 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities using the M.2-2280 form factor. Both use the same PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, Phison controller and 15nm MLC NAND flash memory. The DRAM cache capacity has been upgraded, previously the 480GB MP500 sported a 512MB cache, the NX500 400GB has been upgraded with a 1GB cache while the 800GB model gets a 2GB cache, both make use of DDR3 memory here. As you might expect the sequential read and write speeds are the same, 3GB/s read coupled with 2.4GB/s write. The random read and write IOPS performance has been improved by 20 - 30%, the NX500 series offers up to 300,000 IOPS when reading and 270,000 when writing. Power consumption and endurance is the same, except for the larger 800GB model which comes with an impressive endurance rating of 1396 TBW. Finally, the warranty period has been upgraded from 3 years to a more competitive 5 years, so that’s great to see. So you may be wondering what’s new here? Frankly in terms of specifications, not much except for the form factor, but that’s kind of a big deal. Although the M.2 form factor is all the rage now and support is as strong as it’s ever been, those new X299 boards take advantage of multiple drives and the upcoming X399 boards are set to do the same. However this small, compact form factor while very impressive is brutal on the components. Heat is the main issue here and getting rid of it is the problem. With no room for adequate cooling, keeping controllers cool is a real challenge and it’s something most M.2 drives fail to do, making them unsuitable for sustained throughput. The Samsung SSD 960 Evo which I have on hand for this example goes from an idle temperature of ~30 degrees to over 60 degrees within a minute of sustained data transfer, and at this point write performance is throttled back heavily. That said, the throttling doesn't help put temperatures in check and in our 100GB transfer test temps peak at 90 degrees. So while it’s possible to write around 20GB of data at over 1.5GB/s, going beyond that reduced throughput to around a third of the original performance. Moving to the Neutron NX500, we started the 100GB transfer test with a drive temp of 34 degrees, pretty much what we saw from the Evo. However by the end of the test, both the write and read tests, the drive temp never exceeded 49 degrees and we never saw any kind of throttling. So, for sustained writes over 20 GB the NX500 was actually more than twice as fast as the 960 Evo, and the same will be true for the SSD 960 Pro. Granted, it’s unlikely most of you will often move more than about 20 GB worth of data in one hit, but when you do the NX500 will perform better. The simple explanation for this is passive cooling. The Neutron NX500 has a huge chunk of aluminum strapped onto the front of the PCB and is connected to the surface of the Phison controller using a thermal pad. So while you will have to sacrifice a PCI Express expansion slot, you do so in favor of getting maximum performance under all conditions. Let’s jump into the benchmarks for a few more quick tests... First up I checked out the sequential read and write performance in AS SSD Benchmark and here the NX500 provided very similar results to the MP500, as expected. Corsair claims the same sequential performance for both the 400GB MX500 and 480GB MP500. The 4K-64 thread performance was also very similar, the NX400 was slightly down on the MP500 here, though these results are pretty close to margin of error stuff. Access time performance is a little off. The write results are much the same for both the NX400 and MP500, while the newer NX400 lacks a little when it comes to read access time, that said the results aren't bad. Moving to our on-disk copy test results the NX500 again demonstrates MP500-like performance. It edged ahead in the game copy test, though only by a 5% margin. I should note that neither of these tests move more than 3GB worth of data, so throttling won’t be a problem here. The idea here isn’t to move around large volumes of data but instead hit the drives with a mixture of small and large, compressed and non-compressed files. Finally, we have the 7-Zip file extraction test which does work with a large 38 GB archive. As you can see where the Samsung 960 Evo was previously good for well over 1GB/s, it now drops down to 660 MB/s for the average transfer speed. However, the NX500 was still quite a bit slower and despite avoiding any throttling issues, it is unable to make a step forward from the MP500, an SSD which clearly doesn't suffer from throttling issues. Windows 10 Boot Loading Windows the Corsair NX500 took 5.4 seconds, which is longer than the 4.4 seconds the MP500 too,k but better than the 6.3 seconds the 960 Evo takes. Call of Duty Level Load Time The Call of Duty Infinite Warfare level load time took just 8.1 seconds. The 960 Evo took 8.4 seconds and the MP500 11 seconds, so a good improvement over the MP500 here. Wrapping Up the Corsair Neutron NX500 I’m coming away with similar feelings to my MP500 review and I guess that makes sense as they are very similar products. The Corsair drives suffer from no real weaknesses, they're blistering fast, but given the nearly matching price, Samsung drives are still a tad faster. Even power users won’t notice the difference between the MP500 and 960 Pro for the vast majority of workloads. The same is true when looking at the NX500, it’s another solid all-rounder and under prolonged torture it won’t buckle, though neither did the MP500. Once again the issue here is the asking price. The NX500 400GB that we just reviewed will be sold for $320 and while that’s better than the Zotac Sonix, it’s significantly more than the current asking price of the MP500 480GB and Samsung 960 Evo 500GB, in fact, it’s more expensive than the 960 Pro 512GB as well. Pros: The Corsair NX500 is a great SSD that offers solid performance, runs cool, has excellent endurance and comes with a competitive 5 year warranty. Cons: It needs to be at least 20% cheaper to recommend it over Corsair's own MP500 or Samsung drives.

The fossils of a tiny bird found on Native American land in New Mexico are giving scientists big new ideas about what happened after most dinosaurs went extinct. The 62-million-year-old mousebird suggests that, after the great dino die-off, birds rebounded and diversified rapidly, setting the stage for today’s dizzying variety of feathery forms. “This find may well be the best example of how an unremarkable fossil of an unremarkable species can have enormously remarkable implications,” says Larry Witmer, a paleontologist at Ohio University in Athens who was not involved in the research. The newly discovered fossils, described online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are a scrappy collection of bits and pieces rather than a complete skeleton. But certain tell-tale characteristics—such as its fourth toe, which it could turn around forward or backward to help it climb or grasp—convinced the team that it was an ancient mousebird. Researchers unearthed the fossils in New Mexico on ancestral Navajo lands, in rocks dating to between 62.2 million and 62.5 million years old. They named the creature Tsidiiyazhi abini—Navajo for “little morning bird.” Its mousebird descendants—about the size of a sparrow and marked by their soft, grayish or brownish hairlike feathers—still dwell in trees in sub-Saharan Africa today. But it’s the age of the fossil that is particularly interesting. It’s just a few million years after an asteroid struck Earth and brought the age of dinosaurs to an abrupt end 66 million years ago. Groups such as mammals and frogs are known to have rebounded rapidly after that event, diversifying into multiple new forms as they occupied newly available niches—a process evolutionary biologists called adaptive radiation. But there has been scant fossil evidence for what happened to birds—the only dinosaurs to survive the extinction—in its aftermath. Paleontologists have suspected birds made a quick rebound. But bird fossils from the early Paleogene period immediately after the extinction—particularly those of small, tree-dwelling animals—are rare. So researchers have used genetic studies to suggest that “a few lineages survived extinction and had a really fast radiation right afterwards,” says Daniel Ksepka, a paleo-ornithologist at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the lead author on the paper. This new find clinches that notion with fossil evidence, and helps flesh out the fate of birds during this crucial time period. The team combined the new fossil evidence with previously collected genetic data from living birds to update the phylogenetic tree of bird evolution. Previous trees used these data to differentiate the birds into different groups, but weren’t able to determine when they had diverged. Now, with the new fossils so precisely dated, the team could determine when exactly different bird lineages split off from one another. As a result, Ksepka and colleagues estimate that the ancestors of some nine major land bird lineages—from mousebirds to owls to raptors like hawks and eagles—must have emerged in quick succession, all practically in the shadow of the extinction event. “There’s just basically 3.5 million years for all of these groups to start splitting off,” Ksepka says. He adds that other recent finds suggest that water birds such as penguins did the same thing: Earlier this year, researchers reported finding a 61-million-year-old fossil of a 1.5-meter-tall penguin in what is today New Zealand. T. abini “is a significant find” that shifts the fossil record of tree-dwelling birds significantly back in time, says paleontologist Gerald Mayr of the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, who led the team that reported on the penguin fossils. The new fossil has “tremendous value,” agrees paleobiologist Helen James, the curator of the division of birds at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who was also not involved in the study. “Firmly resolving the relationships of birds continues to be a headache, whether using genetic or morphological data, or both,” she says. “The paper fortifies the evidence for an early, explosive radiation of modern birds.” The study also gives paleontologists new reason to scrutinize early Paleocene rocks, not to mention existing museum collections, for signs of other representatives of modern bird groups, Witmer says. “This little fossil mousebird signals that those groups must have been there—we just need to find them.”

Many of today’s mechanical “gaming” keyboards are innocuous devices that are just at home in an office as they are a game room. Corsair’s K95 RGB Platinum is not one of those. It’s a brushed aluminium boat of a keyboard with dedicated macro keys, a silver volume wheel and extra RGB lighting, just in case. With my personal keyboards getting smaller and smaller each day, I was unprepared for Corsair’s K95 Platinum. Even my full-sized, 104-key boards are dwarfed by it, with its wide bezel to accommodate media and programming tools and the extra macro keys on the side. Weighing nearly three pounds, this is a keyboard that arrives on your desk with a heavy “thunk,” announcing its intentions to stay and play video games for a while. Want RGB lighting? The K95 Platinum allows users to program lighting for each individual key or multiple zones, with special effects layered on top. Not only do the keys light up, it’s got strip of programmable LED lighting along the top edge. This board is lousy with colored light. It’s not just the lighting that’s programmable, either. The six dedicated macro keys can be set to do just about anything a keyboard and mouse buttons can do, from launching a program to intricate strings of commands complete with timed delays. The K95 RGB Platinum comes in two colors, black and gunmetal. It also features a choice of two Cherry MX switch types—tactile brown or silver “speed” switches. If you plan on typing, go for browns. If your main plan is gaming and you want hair-trigger control, go for the silver. The version I am reviewing here is the black unit with the silver switches, because someone at Corsair obviously wanted to see me make all the typos. (VIDEO): Corsair Gaming K95 Platinum Specs: Warranty: Two years Weight: 2.92 pounds Key Switches: Cherry MX RGB Speed or Browns Keyboard Backlighting: RGB Ports: USB pass-through for mouse or USB headset Dimensions: 18.3” x 6.7" x 1.4" Macro Keys: 6 dedicated G-keys Report Rate: Up to 1ms Matrix: 100% anti-ghosting with full key rollover on USB Keyboard Size: Extended On-board Memory: Yes Media Keys: Six dedicated multimedia keys, incl. volume up/down roller Wrist Rest: Full length, detachable, dual-sided with soft touch finish Cable Type: Braided Fiber WIN Lock: Yes Price: $199.99 What’s Cool About It Heavy Duty: The K95 Platinum is a strong and study beast with an aircraft-grade aluminum frame that’s broad and wide while still delivering a sleek, racy profile from the side. It’s got a dangerous look to it that says, “You wanted a gaming keyboard? Here’s your damn gaming keyboard.” Like A G6, Like A G6: There are plenty of keyboards out there with macro creation capability, but the additional sloped and textured macro keys on the K95 make the act of executing a complicated series of actions with a single button press feel more profound. Over to the right? Those keys are for typing. The six on the right? They’re the killing keys. The previous version of the K95 from Corsair featured three rows of six macro keys, which made the board absolutely massive. Six is nice. I like six. Get Lit: If you’re going to go RGB, you might as well go all the way. It’s not just shining through every key on the K95. It’s also shining through the logo and the strip along the top edge. And that strip is made up of 19 different LED segments, so it’ll play nicely with all the special effects. The software for this thing is really great. I don’t think I’ve had more fun playing with keyboard lights. Right On CUE: The Corsair Utility Engine is a user-friendly application that handles programming the K95's lighting and macros. It’s easy-to-grasp and features a nice bit of depth if you really want to get your $200 worth of custom commands and pretty lights. Keep Rolling: It’s a small, stupid little addition, but I love that damn volume roller in the top right corner of the board. When I unboxed the K95 I was certain I would never use the shiny silver cylinder. Now I lean forward and gently raise of lower my speaker volume with the authority of a pretend record producer. What’s Not So Cool Reversible Rubber Dust Magnet: The K95 comes with a detachable wrist rest with a reversible magnetic rubber cover. One side is textured, the other is smooth. Both sides collect every speck of dust in your computer room and cling to them as if they needed dust to survive. The rubber also grips the skin slightly, which isn’t a great feeling. The Caps Aren’t Great: Between the odd wide font and the thin ABS plastic, the keycaps that come on the K95 RGB Platinum aren’t great. I love the textured space bar of macro keys, and the board does include a packet of similar replacement keys for the WASD and QWER keys, which is nice, but this board is screaming for thicker, sturdier double shot keycaps. Thick And Meaty Cable: As with most boards with a USB pass-through port, the K95's braided USB cable is as wide as a fountain pen and ends in a pair of USB plugs—one for the keyboard, one for whatever is plugged into the spare USB port on back. I know it can’t be helped. I still hate it. Customization Swapping out keycaps on the K95 Platinum can be a little tricky, thanks to Corsair’s non-standard bottom row. An off-the-shelf set won’t have the oversized left control key, the smaller Windows and function keys or the 6.5 key-width space bar. For a full matched set, you’ll have to go for something pricier. Or go for a cheaper set, and buy the extra keys ala carte from a store like Max Keyboard. What about the six extra keys on the left side? That’s where the artisan keycaps go. Artisan keycaps are hand-made in small batches from various artists and sold for much more than anyone in their right mind would pay for a small piece of plastic, glass or metal. In my experience, people who get heavy into collecting artisans are frightening. Maybe just keep the G-keys. Final Thoughts The K95 RGB Platinum is a keyboard that knows its audience. It’s not trying to double as a workaday keyboard. It’s not trimming the edges off in order to create a profile more appealing to the mechanical keyboard community at large. The K95 RGB Platinum is proud of its gaming pedigree, even if its features, limited switch selection and relatively high $200 price tag might make all but the most gaming-focused mechanical keyboard hunter look elsewhere. I can respect that.

Valve has published the results of its most recent Steam Hardware & Software Survey, providing some interesting insight into the gear used to play games on the po[CENSORED]r digital distribution platform. Diving right in, we see that AMD’s recently released Ryzen line of CPUs hasn’t had much of an impact among Windows gamers. In fact, AMD processor usage has fallen from 21.89 percent in February to just 19.01 percent as of June while Intel’s share has shot up from 78.07 percent to 80.92 percent over the same period of time. In related results, the survey shows that usage of dual-core CPUs running Windows dropped 3.22 percent – from 44.80 percent to 41.58 percent – from May to June. During that same time, adoption of quad-core chips increased 3.38 percent, from 49.21 percent in May to 52.59 percent in June. Nvidia continues to rule the roost as it relates to discrete graphics card usage. The survey reveals that 63.61 percent of GPUs are from Nvidia versus just 20.5 percent from AMD. Intel graphics, meanwhile, are used by 15.54 percent of Steam users – more than I would have guessed. Digging a bit deeper, we find that as of June, the GTX 1060 was the most po[CENSORED]r DirectX 12 card among Steam users at 6.29 percent market share followed by the GTX 750 Ti at 5.88 percent and the GTX 960 at 5.75 percent. Gamers are also po[CENSORED]ting their rigs with more RAM these days. According to the survey, 38.90 percent of systems utilize 8GB of memory which is up 2.77 percent. All other lower capacities have declined in usage, the data shows. Systems with 12GB or more have also increased in share, up 0.96 percent to 23.06 percent overall. Other quick-hit facts: 1,920 x 1,080 is the most po[CENSORED]r primary desktop resolution at 48.77 percent share, 61.82 percent of systems have a microphone attached and 1TB or larger hard drives are most common at 35.90 percent. Usage of HTC’s Vive VR headset also outweighs that of the Oculus Rift with HTC enjoying 60.82 percent of the market share. On the software side, it’s no surprise to see that 96.24 percent of users utilize some flavor of Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Apple’s OSX is found on 2.95 percent of machines while Linux’s market share resides at just 0.72 percent. What is noteworthy, however, is that adoption of Windows 10 64-bit has climbed 1.28 percent, now accounting for 50.33 percent of all Windows installs connecting to Steam. Windows 7 64-bit is the second most po[CENSORED]r version at 32.05 percent followed by a massive drop-off down to Windows 8.1 64-bit at just 6.86 percent usage.

Modern concrete—used in everything from roads to buildings to bridges—can break down in as few as 50 years. But thousands of years after the Roman Empire crumbled to dust, its concrete structures are still standing. Now, scientists have finally figured out why: a special ingredient that makes the cement grow stronger—not weaker—over time. Scientists began their search with an ancient recipe for mortar, laid down by Roman engineer Marcus Vitruvius in 30 B.C.E. It called for a concoction of volcanic ash, lime, and seawater, mixed together with volcanic rocks and spread into wooden molds that were then immersed in more sea water. History contains many references to the durability of Roman concrete, including this cryptic note written in 79 B.C.E., describing concrete exposed to seawater as: “a single stone mass, impregnable to the waves and everyday stronger.” What did it mean? To find out, the researchers studied drilled cores of a Roman harbor from Pozzuoli Bay near Naples, Italy. When they analyzed it, they found that the seawater had dissolved components of the volcanic ash, allowing new binding minerals to grow. Within a decade, a very rare hydrothermal mineral called aluminum tobermorite (Al-tobermorite) had formed in the concrete. Al-tobermorite, long known to give Roman concrete its strength, can be made in the lab, but it’s very difficult to incorporate it in concrete. But the researchers found that when seawater percolates through a cement matrix, it reacts with volcanic ash and crystals to form Al-tobermorite and a porous mineral called phillipsite, they write today in American Mineralogist. So will you be seeing stronger piers and breakwaters anytime soon? Because both minerals take centuries to strengthen concrete, modern scientists are still working on recreating a modern version of Roman cement.

Back in March we got confirmation from Blizzard that an HD remaster of StarCraft, the po[CENSORED]r real-time strategy game released nearly two decades ago, was in the works. Now we have a release date and price: StarCraft: Remastered complete with the StarCraft: Brood War expansion will be available for Windows and Mac on August 14 priced at $15. The remaster will offer a full graphical overhaul of the original StarCraft with widescreen UHD support for up to 4K resolution (screenshot samples 1, and 2). There will also be new illustrations to enhance storytelling in campaign missions, advanced matchmaking, full connectivity to Blizzard’s gaming network, cloud saving, custom maps, replays, support for eight new languages, and more. Gameplay is said to maintain the balance of the original, along with all of the quirks and limitations such as the low unit selection limit and certain units’ poor pathfinding AI. Despite recreating the art from scratch, everything from the silhouettes to the colors and animations has been meticulously reproduced as a faithful homage to the original. Blizzard included a “make game look old” toggle which will switch the game's graphics from new to old and back when pressing F5, as well as another toggle for some updated lighting and environmental effects. VIDEO:

It’s usually Qualcomm’s high-end chipsets like the Snapdragon 835 that get all the attention, but the company continues to make huge strides when it comes to mid-range SoCs. At Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, the firm announced a big upgrade to its 400-series platform that sees the move to a 14nm process with the new Snapdragon 450. The new SoC is said to be optimized for mid-range smartphones and offers several improvements over the current generation of Snapdragon 400 chips, which use a 28nm process. The 450 features the same eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores found in the Snapdragon 435, though the maximum clock speed has been increased from 1.4GHz to 1.8GHz. The 450 also features an Adreno 506 GPU that Qualcomm says offers a 25 percent improvement when it comes to GPU performance compared to the Snapdragon 435, which uses the Adreno 505 GPU. There’s also battery and efficiency upgrades, with the 450 able to last four hours longer than its predecessor while offering a 30 percent reduction in power consumption. When it comes to the camera, the Snapdragon can support a single snapper up to 21MP, just like the 435, but it’s also able to support a dual 13MP camera setup and Bokeh effects, which lets users blur the background of a photo in real time. It also enables video capture at up to 1080p/60fps, beating the 435’s 1080p/30fps limit, boosts the USB controller from USB 2.0 to 3.0, and supports display resolutions up to 1920x1200. The Snapdragon 450 keeps some of its predecessor’s features, including QuickCharge 3.0 support, the "X9 LTE" Cat. 7 modem, and an enhanced version of the Hexagon DSP, which enables multimedia, camera and sensor processing at greater performance and lower power. With the Snapdragon 450, it seems Qualcomm is closing the feature gap between mid-range and high-end devices. It's expected to begin commercial sampling to customers in Q3 2017 and should be available in consumer devices by the end of 2017. VIDEO:

AMD put on its corporate attire on Thursday to announce its Ryzen Pro line of processors for enterprise users. The chips, designed to compete with Intel’s vPro-compatible processors, offer a number of administrative, management and security capabilities versus mainstream Ryzen parts. The Ryzen Pro family will initially consist of six configurations. As highlighted in the chart above, the Pro lineup more or less mirrors the mainstream Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 chips already on the market. The exception, of course, is the inclusion of the Ryzen 3 Pro 1200 and Ryzen 3 Pro 1300 chips as AMD hasn’t yet announced Core i3-competing Ryzen 3 mainstream parts. It’s worth noting that Intel’s enterprise features don’t extend to its Core i3 series and are instead only offered on more powerful (and expensive) Core i5 and i7 parts. If a Core i3-class processor is all you need in terms of power but you still want enterprise features, AMD’s Ryzen 3 Pro may certainly be worth a look. AMD says Ryzen Pro chips will feature 18 months of image stability and 24 months of processor availability along with longer 36-month warranties, giving businesses a bit of reassurance with their purchase and upgrade paths. One key differentiator between AMD and Intel’s enterprise offerings is the fact that Ryzen Pro chips will need to be mated to discrete graphics cards. This isn’t a concern if they’re going into a workstation that’ll be tackling graphics-intensive tasks but for entry-level machines, it’ll be an added expense for sure. AMD says we can expect to see Ryzen Pro-based PCs ship in the second half of 2017 (which technically begins in just a few days). Ryzen Pro mobile solutions, on the other hand, won’t arrive until the first half of 2018, we’re told.

The highly anticipated Necromancer class for Diablo 3 is here. The Necromancer was a fan favorite in Diablo 2, able to raise and command armies of undead creatures to do his fighting. Adding his Bone magic, which ignored most enemies resistances and his ability to sling status effects with his curses made him a fun and powerful character to play. Blizzard announced that they were woking on the Rise of the Necromancer pack for Diablo 3 at BlizzCon 2016. At the time, players were expecting an announcement that the developers were working on Diablo 4. Unfortunately, D4 remained unannounced, but the news that the new class was in the works helped to somewhat mend the broken hopes of disappointed fans. The Necromancer is not a free addition to the game. You’ll have to shell out $15 if you want to play as the Lord of the Dead, but that price tag also includes a non-combat pet, cosmetic wings, Necro-themed banner, sigil, and accent, portrait frame, pennant, and two additional character slots. The PC version also receives two more stash tabs. The price might turn some players off, especially considering Diablo 3 is now a five-year-old title. The DLC does not add any new story elements to the game, except for the character narration between acts that is different for each class. You basically get to play the old story you’ve played a million times by now with a new set of skills. I can see this point, but personally, I can’t wait to hand over my money to start playing again. For me, Diablo 3 is one of those rare titles that never gets old. Even though I’ve put hundreds of hours into the game, I can always go back and still have fun with it. Plus, the Necromancer was hands down my favorite class in D2, which by the way, was just patched last year to ensure compatibility with newer hardware. So $15 is not a big deal for the promise of once again playing a character that I previously enjoyed. The new Necromancer will not be quite the same as the one in Diablo 2. Sure he will raise the dead. Bone magic and curses also are still elements, but the scope of these powers have been expanded. The class has access to many more spells than were available in D2. There are completely new skill sets as well, including Blood magic, an interesting addition that requires that the sacrifice of health instead of “Essence” to cast the spell. Overall, the new Dark Warrior is much more elaborate and nuanced with a broad range of powers that allow for a diversity of ways to play the character. Blizzard details all of the skills in its blog. The Necromancer is available now as an in-game purchase on all platforms as long as you have Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition or the Reaper of Souls expansion.