Keepman.

There is no shortage of Jeep Grand Cherokee flavors to choose from -- except for one with woody siding -- and the Trailhawk is the one aimed at off-roadability. And also luxury. As with other Trailhawk models, with the Renegade being the latest addition, this model is visually distinguished by the matte black hood stripes, unique fascias and red-accented tow hooks. That's the easiest way to spot the Trailhawk model (well, aside from the badge that says Trailhawk), though the upgraded suspension is the important part. The Trailhawk offers Jeep’s Quadra-Lift air suspension with greater ride height for a total of 10.8 inches of ground clearance, as well as an electronic limited-slip differential. Bumpier Goodyear off-road tires and skid plates round out the list of upgrades. Having just spent a week in a diesel version of the Grand Cherokee Summit, which I liked not despite of, but because of its diesel growl, I was pretty anxious to compare it to the Trailhawk. On the inside, just about all the luxury features of the Summit are carried over, including piano black appliques, red accent stitches for the black leather interior and piano black interior panels. When it comes to luxury features like the presence of suede materials, this model offers a big chunk of what the Summit offers, as both are in about the same price range. The difference in on-road feel, in regard to ride quality, isn't as great as one might expect. The off-road Goodyear tires have a lot to do with that, soaking up the everyday bumps and potholes, and this translates into a suspension feel that is easy to live with on the school run but also able to leave the road entirely when the situation requires it, such as when there are herds of zombies blocking the road or a dusting of snow comes along. The Trailhawk's upgraded suspension is easy to live with on the interstate, too, with an extra bit of road and tire noise being the only downsides. As a result, it is not as quiet a highway cruiser as the Summit version, even in diesel flavor, but it is by no means as spartan an experience as the Wrangler. In all, it's pretty close in feel to the Trailhawk version of the slightly smaller Cherokee, which I see as one of the main rivals of the Grand Cherokee Trailhawk when it comes to price. Off-road, the Grand Cherokee Trailhawk offers a surefooted ride and "all the comforts of home." I took the Trailhawk on a few steep, unpaved trails covered with snow without pushing it too far, and it performed well along a few miles of wooded trails. A genuinely solid interior is one of the most memorable aspects of the Grand Cherokee -- over the years, this has morphed into Fiat Chrysler's flagship, even displacing the Chrysler 300 and its various versions. The Summit may offer a bit more suede trim, but the Trailhawk is just about there when it comes to all the features and infotainment one would want, including an 8.4-inch Uconnect touchscreen. With a sticker price of $53,515, I (and just about everyone) see the Grand Cherokee Trailhawk as the more luxurious version of the Cherokee Trailhawk, which starts about $10,000 less. If I had a commute that included several miles of unpaved roads, streams, rocks the size of basketballs and other terrain seen in vintage posters of the Grand Wagoneer, I'd go for the smaller Cherokee Trailhawk. For what it delivers, I feel that the Grand Cherokee Trailhawk is certainly worth it, though buyers on a budget can get its off-roadability in an even less expensive form.

The best free screen recorder Fancy showing other people how to play big name games on YouTube? Would you like to make demos to show off your apps, or to teach others how to use specific software? Then you need a screen recorder. The simplest screen recorders simply capture what's on your screen and save it in AVI format, but the more advanced free tools also offer editing, additional audio, picture-in-picture and on-screen drawing. These are the very best. Many free screen recorders are very limited in what they do, because they're intended as adverts for paid-for products. Not CamStudio. This open source software is free to download and use for whatever purpose you see fit. CamStudio is designed to record in AVI format, which you can also convert to Flash video. You can adjust the video quality and capture the entire screen or just part of it. The app also offers picture-in-picture video and anti-aliased captions. This flexibility and absence of watermarks or time restrictions makes CamStudio the best free screen recorder around. Designed specifically for recording games, FRAPS is free to use if you don't need your clips to be longer than 30 seconds. That's not enough for a Minecraft tutorial, of course, but it's fine for shorter clips - and with a maximum possible resolution of 7,680 x 4,800 it's capable of recording even cutting-edge graphics. It's the most po[CENSORED]r screen recorders for Let's Play videos, but its developers recommend using a separate video editor to convert your clips into a web-friendly format, which is an extra step we'd rather avoid. Another screen recorder aimed primarily at gamers, Bandicam boasts an interface reminiscent of 2001 A Space Odyssey's HAL and is packed with features including hardware acceleration and an overlay showing frames per second. It's a shame that the free version can only record 10 minutes of footage at a time and the resulting recordings are watermarked. Bandicam is otherwise superb and you'd be hard pressed to find a superior capture tool for games. A worthy rival to FRAPS. The marketing for this free screen recorder is a bit excitable - it compares ezvid's video editing tools to expensive paid-for packages without mentioning that free apps like Avidemux boast the same options - but if you're looking for a straightforward screen recorder then ezvid is very easy to use. It enables you to edit your recordings, add slides, change the speed and upload directly to YouTube, and you can draw on screen or turn typed text into spoken audio. This screen recorder is particularly po[CENSORED]r with Minecraft players.

Synaptics today announced an industry-first family of Natural ID biometric authentication solutions that leverage high-performance, highly secure optical-based fingerprint sensors for smartphones and tablets. The new Synaptics FS9100 optical fingerprint sensor family is capable of high-resolution scanning through 1mm of full cover glass and enables clean, button-free industrial designs. Natural ID FS9100 optical fingerprint sensors are designed for placement under the cover glass, including 2.5D glass, located in the front, bottom bezel of devices. Under cover glass biometrics eliminates button cut-outs and glass thinning processes required by capacitive under-glass sensors, leading to glass yield improvements. The highly reliable FS9100 optical solution excels with wet finger performance, and being protected by glass, is durable, scratchproof, waterproof, and eliminates ESD concerns Unlike optical fingerprint sensors used for access control and public biometric identity verification, the advanced FS9100 sensor leverages unique Synaptics optical technology developed for mobile devices and breaks through key technical barriers with an extremely thin form factor and minimal power consumption. FS9100 optical fingerprint sensors feature Synaptics' SentryPoint technology, offering OEMs a wide-range of unique and highly secure authentication features including Quantum Matcher with PurePrint anti-spoof technology. PurePrint examines fingerprint images using unique artificial intelligence technology to distinguish between fake and actual fingers. Les Santiago, Research Director for IDC, says, "Optical sensing technology, which is very high performance and widely proven in other markets, has many advantages such as durability, scratch resistance, and resistance to ESD, but optical has not been widely adopted in smartphones and tablets due to form factor and power consumption limitations. By bringing optical sensing technology with the right form factor and power consumption envelope to smartphones and tablets, Synaptics is enabling the elimination of the home button which is a critical next step to full top-to-bottom, edge-to-edge smartphone and tablet displays. Synaptics is already a global leader in capacitive sensing technology, and is well positioned to continue to lead in fingerprint biometric technologies with its existing capacitive sensor technology portfolio and newly announced optical fingerprint sensor offerings for both flagship and mainstream smartphones and tablets." Anthony Gioeli, vice president of marketing, Biometrics Product Division, Synaptics, says, "Synaptics' FS9100 family of fingerprint sensors represent a new breed of optical fingerprint sensor technology that is designed to meet the needs of mobile devices, including the ability to image through thick 2.5D glass. In addition to opening the door to new industrial design options, it enables OEMs to provide highly durable, button-free cover glass and more easily provide water resistant products while eliminating low yield glass processing."

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It’s been 30 years since software engineer Thomas Knoll, with the help of his movie-industry brother, started creating the technology that would become Photoshop. Knoll, now an Adobe Fellow, answered a few questions this week about the origins of his photo editing software and its more recent evolution. Speaking at a preview of a new exhibition at the Computer History Museum, intended to raise the profile of software engineers and their contributions to society, Knoll had this to say: On creating Photoshop and the power of procrastination: “It started out as a hobby project. I was working on a PhD, but I hated the process of actually writing research papers. Creating all that text didn’t seem interesting compared to writing computer software that actually did something, that wasn’t just dead words on a page. So I was procrastinating by working on this fun project to move pixels around. I showed this software to my brother, he came up with suggestions of things to add to it. That went on for several months. Then my brother had idea; maybe we could sell this. I discouraged him, it’s a huge task to ship a software application, I was just one programmer working on it, but he said he could show it around. Eventually, he found Adobe, and they agreed to publish it. I never had the plan of creating what it became.” On Photoshop today: “I wrote every line of Photoshop 1.0. But now it is 100 times the size of version one, and there are huge sections that I don’t even know how to use. Now, however, the Photoshop versions coming out that run on tablets and phones are interesting, because a lot of the programming techniques I had to use in version one [because of hardware limitations] have had to be reintroduced to get Photoshop on these smaller devices.” On Fake News: “Any tool can be used for good in the world and for not so good in the world. It falls back to the users of the tool and consumers of information— a lot of stuff you can do with Photoshop was possible before.” On the transition of the software update model, from packaged new releases to subscriptions: It’s a better incentive to have engineers making a product more valuable to its users than to make eye candy for a demo” —Thomas Knoll, Adobe “Engineers [working on Photoshop] were very much in favor of the transition. Previously, they had to come up with new features every two years, and these features had to demo well, because you had to convince someone to buy a new version based on those features. Then some percentage of user base would upgrade, some wouldn’t, so we had to support multiple versions with bug fixes and adding new camera support. The new model encourages users to stay current with the newest versions of software, and engineers like that because when they create a feature it gets to users right away. “It also changes incentive for engineers. Previously, the incentive was to create features that demo’d well. Now the incentive is to create features people actually use and don’t want to do without. I think it’s a better incentive to have engineers making a product more valuable to its users than to make eye candy for a demo.” On the celebrity—or lack of celebrity—of software engineers: “It’s amazing to walk into any bookstore in the country and see the Photoshop bookshelf—that I’ve created a big enough impact to justify that much shelf space. But at the same time, it’s nice to go through life fairly anonymously, and not be a celebrity; to walk into a local restaurant and not be mobbed. I don’t want to become a movie star. I’m happy with the status quo.”

We may use photons to carry our data, but we rely on the electron to put it to use. One day that division of labor might not be so stark. A team at Hewlett Packard Labs, in Palo Alto, Calif., has built a demonstration chip that could help push some particularly thorny computations into the realm of light, potentially boosting speed and saving energy in the process. Silicon integrated circuits containing parts that can mani[CENSORED]te light are not new. But this chip, which integrates 1,052 optical components, is the biggest and most complex in which all the photonic components work together to perform a computation, says team member Dave Kielpinski, a senior research scientist at Hewlett Packard Labs (now a part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE). “We believe that it is by a wide margin,” he says. The chip, which was developed through the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Mesodynamic Architectures­ program and was still undergoing testing as IEEE Spectrum went to press, is an implementation of an Ising machine—an approach to computation that could potentially solve some problems, such as the infamous “traveling salesman problem,” faster than conventional computers can. The Ising approach is based on a century-­old model for how the magnetic fields of atoms interact to give rise to magnetism. The model envisions every atom as having a property called “spin” that prefers to point either up or down. In a ferromagnetic material, above a certain temperature, these spins are oriented randomly and are flipped repeatedly by heat. But when the temperature falls below a certain threshold, the interactions between the atoms dominate, and most of the spins settle down to point in the same direction. Computers inspired by this model—so-called Ising machines—use such settling actions to arrive at answers to optimization problems. The problem to be solved is entered into the machine by tuning the interactions between its computational elements. These elements, the spins, are designed to be in one of two states and interact with one another until they settle into an optimal configuration that corresponds to a low-energy state. Stanford University’s Yoshihisa Yamamoto­ pioneered an approach to building such a machine with light. The spins in his system are two phases of light that are 180 degrees out of phase of each other. In 2014, Yamamoto and his colleagues reported the construction of a four-spin machine based on this idea in the laboratory, built with mirrors, lasers, and other optical components. But scaling up the machine was complicated by a macroscopic effect—ordinary acoustic noise, says Peter McMahon, a member of Yamamoto’s group at Stanford. Even the vibrations created by someone emptying a nearby waste bin could cause a subtle expansion or contraction of a delay line, a part of the system that is used to impart delays so that spins can interact properly when they meet. This kind of expansion or contraction could alter the phase of the light enough to disrupt computation. While such perturbations can be corrected, McMahon says, scaling up the system was looking as though it was going to be an impractical and expensive prospect. So in the end, the team altered their approach, introducing electronic feedback into the mix. In October 2016, McMahon and his colleagues reported in the journal Science that they had used this hybrid optical-electronic system to create an Ising machine with 100 spins. Research reported in the same issue by a number of the same scientists extended the technique to create a more specialized, 2,000-spin computer. The HPE chip is designed to be a compact approach that doesn’t need such electronic feedback. Four areas on the chip, called nodes, support four spins made of infrared light. After the light exits each node, it is split up and combined with light from each of the other nodes inside an interferometer. Electric heaters built into the interferometer are used to alter the index of refraction and physical size of nearby components. This adjusts the optical path length of each light beam—and thus its phase relative to the other beams. The heater temperatures encode the problem to be solved, as they determine how strongly the state of one spin is weighed against another when two beams are combined. The outputs of all these interactions are then condensed and fed back into the nodes, where structures called microring resonators clean up the light in each node so it once again has one of two phases. The light cycles over and over through the interferometer and the nodes, flipping spins between phases of 0 degrees and 180 degrees until the system equilibrates to a single answer. McMahon says this system could eliminate the vibrational problem faced by the 2014 Ising machine. “If you integrate everything on a small chip,” he says, the paths that light takes are etched in silicon. “Those are almost by definition very fixed things,” he explains, such that any vibration or temperature swing will tend to affect all the paths that light can take equally. But McMahon notes it’s still early days for this approach to computing; the basic physics by which these optical systems arrive at equilibrium still needs to be explored, he says, as does their potential competitiveness with conventional machines. A key aim of HPE’s chip project, Dave Kielpinski says, was to push the limits of photonic chip design. “One of the things we’re proudest of is our computer-aided layout tools,” he says. He presented the chip in October in San Diego at the inaugural IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing, which gathered researchers investigating a number of alternatives that could help keep improving computers as Moore’s Law peters out. In the future, Ising chips such as these might be able to act as accelerators, speedy specialists much like the graphics processing units used in many of today’s machines. Kielpinski says the team is investigating designs that could be used to scale up to a larger number of spins. This article appears in the January 2017 print issue as “The Ising on the Computer Chip.”

The best free PC backup software Regular backups are an essential part of PC housekeeping, but one that's easy to ignore or forget. Windows includes its own backup tools, but they're not all in one convenient place, their scheduling options are limited, and they don't offer encryption or optimization. For hassle-free backups, it's worth installing a third-party program. Before we begin, it's worth understanding the different types of backups. An image is an exact copy of an entire drive or partition, including all installed programs and system files. If you need to reinstall Windows, you can boot from the image file and avoid having to reinstall all your programs and reconfigure your Windows settings. Note that you can't use an image to restore your system on a different PC. Images are very large and take a long time to create, so you won't want to make one every day. For everyday backups, you'll only want to copy the most important data on your PC – your documents, photos and music, for example. There are several types of regular backup: Full backup: a copy of all selected data. Differential backup: a copy of the data that has changed or been added since the last full backup. Incremental backup: a copy of the data that has changed since the last backup, whether that was full backup or incremental. Each differential backup will be larger than the last, but to restore your system you'll only need the full backup and the latest differential one. Incremental backup files are smaller, but to restore your system you'll need your full backup as well as all subsequent incremental ones, which takes longer. With that in mind, here's our pick of the best free backup software available to download today.

Flagship phones give manufacturers the opportunity to showcase their latest technology, and because they attract attention and generate buzz, they help raise brand awareness. For Huawei, currently the world’s third largest smartphone producer by market share, its Mate series of phones is the pinnacle of what the company has to offer. And while the Mate 9, the successor to the Mate 8 that we looked at in-depth last year, packs some high-end hardware, Huawei recognizes it takes more than an impressive spec sheet to win the premium smartphone battle; it needs to provide an overall experience and image that matches the phone’s premium price. Performance and responsiveness are important for any phone, but essential for a flagship like the Mate 9. Making its debut inside the Mate 9’s aluminum chassis is HiSilicon’s new Kirin 960 SoC. The four ARM Cortex-A72 CPUs in the Mate 8’s Kirin 950 have been replaced by four of ARM’s latest Cortex-A73 CPUs. The plus-one change in model number is deceptive, however, because there are some significant differences between the two cores. The A73 actually belongs to a different processor family, with its roots going back to the A17 rather than branching out from the A15/A57/A72 family tree. One of the obvious differences between the two different microarchitectures is a reduction in decoder width: The A72 has a 3-wide decoder while the A73 is 2-wide. Despite what appears to be a reduction in capability on paper, ARM claims the A73 still offers better performance and efficiency relative to A72 on the same process and frequency. Four Cortex-A53 cores complete the big.LITTLE CPU configuration. The Mate 9’s CPU cores reach higher peak frequencies than those in the Mate 8 too, but the differences are small. The A53 cores get a negligible increase from 1.80GHz to 1.84GHz, while the A73 cores reach up to 2.36GHz versus the 2.3GHz for the Kirin 950’s A72 cores. It’s interesting that Kirin 960’s A73 cores are clocked lower than the Kirin 955’s 2.5GHz A72 cores, especially considering that ARM targets a peak frequency of 2.8GHz on 16nm (the Kirin 960 uses TSMC’s 16FFC FinFET process). With the Kirin 960, HiSilicon is more focused on reducing power consumption (and freeing up thermal headroom for the GPU) instead of chasing maximum CPU performance. Still, based on the A73’s other advantages, particularly the improvements to the memory subsystem, the Kirin 960 should still show a small performance gain relative to Kirin 950/955. Perhaps the biggest criticism of past Kirin SoCs were their seemingly underpowered GPUs. While Qualcomm pushed the performance and power envelope with its Adreno GPUs, and Samsung added eight- or twelve-core configurations of ARM’s latest Mali GPUs to its Exynos SoCs, HiSilicon’s Kirin SoCs made due with more modest four-core Mali configurations. Peak performance significantly trailed its peers, but Kirin’s lower power consumption limited the effects of thermal throttling (a significant problem for the faster GPUs). Ultimately, performance was “good enough” for the majority of cases. The Mate 9’s Kirin 960 SoC marks a radical shift in HiSilicon’s GPU philosophy. Not only does it utilize ARM’s latest Mali-G71 GPU based on the all-new Bifrost architecture, but it steps up to an eight-core configuration running at an impressive 900MHz—the same peak frequency used by the Kirin 950/955’s much smaller GPU. The combination of additional cores and architectural improvements give the Mate 9 a significant peak performance advantage over the Mate 8’s Mali-T880MP4 GPU, paving the way for new capabilities such as VR.

We drove the manual-equipped M2 a few months ago and everyone but Rory loved it. We called it the best Bimmer in the stable right now, and after driving this DCT M2, I’ll stick with our assessment. The steering has about the perfect weight to it. It’s easy when standing still, but as soon as you get going it stiffens up nicely. This is made for carving corners and, like I said last time, I’d love to get it on a racetrack. Thank god Bimmer went to Michelin Pilot Super Sports as opposed to those sucky runflats. Acceleration, braking and cornering grip are all outstanding. Power takes a few beats to come on, but once it does, hold on tight. In sport-plus mode it’ll chirp into second gear and chirp into third using the paddles. I love that feeling -- and that sound. I didn’t turn the traction control all the way off, but it feels like it would perform like the M3, just getting loose over a little gravel at 60 mph. I love when it starts to get sideways around a corner and you can just grab the next gear to get grip back. Don’t try that in something like the Challenger SRT, by the way; it may just get looser. Brakes are good, the pedal went in a little far for me, but they could just be a little worn in. Again, like the manual car, the suspension is just about perfect in stiffness and comfort. It gets a little bouncy at speed on the expressway, but it makes the experience even better. Mrs. Road Test Editor said it was making her a little nauseous, but I think she was exaggerating. I love this dual-clutch. In normal mode, gear changes are nearly imperceptible, at least to butt dyno when not at full throttle. You can hear it change, but it’s super-smooth. In sport plus, at full throttle, you’ll hear it and feel the shove in the back. It’s just fun all around. The paddles feel solid too, with little nubs at the bottom for your index fingers. There are times deep in corner, or when taking off, that you’ll need to think for a sec on which paddle to grab, mostly when the wheel is turned more than 90 degrees. I did throw the car seat base in the back to take Road Test Editor Jr. for a cruise on Woodward. It fit, was easy to install with the little flaps for the LATCH system hooks. It left just enough room for the wife in front. I wouldn’t -- ahem, she wouldn’t --recommend it for longer than an hour, but she said it felt about the same as the Shelby GT350. In this class, with the Audi S3 and CLA AMG, I’d take this M2, mostly because of its rear-wheel-drive chassis. If that’s not No. 1 on your priority list, all three are great. The S3 is almost 10 grand cheaper though, so keep that in mind, as well. Lastly, I’m sick of this aquamarine-but-more-bluish color, let me see one in red, or black, or that crazy yellow-green. --Jake Lingeman, road test editor Read more: http://autoweek.com/article/car-reviews/2016-bmw-m2-dct-review-just-fun-paddles#ixzz4NvXgbaUh OTHER VOICES: The BMW M2 is said to be the spiritual successor of the legendary M3s of yore – the E36, E46 and maybe even the E90. A spiritual successor in the sense of a small, I6 powered rear-tire roaster: A true German muscle car. Of course, the Germans prefer to flex their muscles on the Nurburgring, and that’s obvious in the M2. The steering is perfectly sports-car heavy, with the front tires giving you noticeable feedback through the steering wheel. Like the steering, the brakes are supreme. The perforated rotors may dissipate heat well on the track, but they’ll mostly just look cool while your Bimmer is parked on the curb. The turbocharged 3.0-liter I6 produces good power down low, but starts to howl as the engine hits the rev-limiter. The result: an impressively quick and cool sounding sports coupe. The BMW M2’s only downside is its not-so-luxe guts. The interior seems cheap, considering the sticker price is hovering around $60k. The single USB port is tucked under the center console cover, and can get tangled in the parking brake. The seats are decently soft, but put your hip high in the car – making you feel more like you’re sitting on the interior rather than in it. If you had an E46 M3 and you sold it before the subframe liberated itself from the car, like this guy, and you’re thinking about getting another sporty Bimmer – this one might be for you. Read more: http://autoweek.com/article/car-reviews/2016-bmw-m2-dct-review-just-fun-paddles#ixzz4NvXljHEX The M235i is a really delightful car -- one of the few new BMWs that I, a guy with no kids and non six-figure income, could see myself owning if I weren’t into stupid old land yachts. It’s balanced, responsive, natural; I don’t have a lot of experience with BMWs of the late 1980s/early 1990s, but the M235i gets closest to what I suspect brought yuppies to the marque in droves. The M2 could have easily screwed all that up for the sake of hypothetical lap times, and for that reason I’ve been a little hesitant to test it out despite (or because of) all the hype. But it didn’t. This has to be the all-around best M-car I’ve ever driven. Compare it to the M3, which is quicker, faster, more powerful, and so on. The M3 is undoubtedly a quicker car around the Nurburgring, which, as I understand it, is really, really important to all those guys squeaking their carbon ceramic brakes in Los Angeles traffic. It takes a while to adjust to the M3, and even after you’ve dialed up all your preferred suspension/throttle/shift point settings, etc, you have to push it really hard before everything begins to work in concert. South of that, it can be a clunky car. On the other hand, and except for the dopey gear selector (enough about that has already been said elsewhere), the M2 makes sense from the moment you hop in. The balance I so enjoyed in the M235i is still there, only there’s more power. Yet, importantly, not grotesque amounts of power. BMW could have cranked it up to something north of 365 hp, but I’m glad they didn’t. I’m kicking myself for missing out on the manual version when we had the keys earlier this year. The DCT is responsive, and only seems to get more responsive the more you get into the throttle, but I can’t help but wonder if halfway competent manual shifting would overcome that split-second lag when accelerating from a standstill. There are a few boy-racer concessions that I could do without (what’s with the goofy overwrought stack of vents on the lower half of the front fascia, for example?) but by and large it wraps its hardcore focus in fairly modest, handsome bodywork. I like fender flares, especially when they’re there to accommodate those wide rear tires. Everything is here for a reason. We talk a lot about the joys of driving slow cars fast, and how fast cars can be less-than-pleasant to drive slow (again, consider the M3). But this is an undeniably fast car that’s not a drag to drive at less than 9/10ths. It’s good on the streets, great on quiet higher-speed roads, and it can only get better than all that on the track. Now, if it didn’t feel like such a high-priced anomaly in the BMW Read more: http://autoweek.com/article/car-reviews/2016-bmw-m2-dct-review-just-fun-paddles#ixzz4NvXvtYle

Blappy is a smartphone application that enables fluid communication between people with visual and/or auditory disabilities. Voice messages can be changed into text and vice versa; in addition, high-contrast images can be included, and the screen has a zoom feature. It is also compatible with the TalkBack accessibility service. To use the service, it is only necessary to install the app in two terminals that are less than 30 meters apart and in a closed Bluetooth environment. Once the user is registered, there are two ways to send messages: either using voice recognition or a keyboard. In Spain alone there are nearly 1 million visually handicapped people and nearly 1 million more with auditory impairment, according to CESyA. The application is available in four languages (Spanish, French, English and Portuguese), but its technology translates conversations into all of the languages that the Google Translator service recognizes. Blappy is currently available for mobile phones that have the Android operating system; it is available via the Play Store. Users enable Bluetooth to connect with another smartphone that also has the app installed. Its developers are also working on a version for Apple's iOS platform. Belén Ruiz Mezcua, associate professor of UC3M's Computer Science department and the general director of CESyA, says this initiative represents a commitment to accessibility and "is an example of technology transfer in the service of society's needs." In the same way, "it achieves the paradigm of design that is accessible for everyone," says Adrián Baeza, CESyA researcher and one of the professionals involved in the project's launch. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-10-blappy-bluetooth-chat-app-people.html#jCp

Acer has unleashed a new gaming-focused Predator monitor that packs an impressive spec sheet. The Predator XB241YU features not just a 2560 x 1440 resolution, but also a refresh rate that can be "overclocked" up to 165 Hz. To achieve such a high refresh rate, the XB241YU uses a 23.8-inch TN panel, so don't expect IPS display quality. However, Acer still claims that this monitor has 100% sRGB gamut coverage, 16.7-million color support, and a 1000:1 contrast ratio. Brightness is rated up to 350 nits. Most Predator monitors come with some sort of variable refresh technology, and the XB241YU is no exception. This display supports Nvidia G-Sync all the way up to 165 Hz, and the panel comes with both a DisplayPort and a HDMI port. The XB241YU's stand supports tilt, swivel and height adjustments, and can be rotated into a portrait display if you so choose. There's also a four-port USB 3.0 hub, two 2W speakers, and Acer's thin ZeroFrame bezel design. Anyone interested in this monitor can purchase it right now for $500, which seems pretty reasonable for a monitor with G-Sync and these

Apple has taken some heat over the last few months for the relative age of some of its hardware, and the company may finally be preparing to respond. The new machines reportedly feature some significant new technologies, but at least one product — the 11-inch MacBook Air — is reportedly going away, its niche filled by the 12-inch, single-port MacBook. The rumors from Japanese site Mac Otakara suggest a pair of new MacBook Pros at 13-inch and 15-inch, and a new, 13-inch MacBook Air. All of these machines will reportedly be based on USB-C and offer Thunderbolt 3 connectivity — if the rumors are accurate, Apple may be dumping conventional USB altogether, in favor of USB-C for everything. Apple has always had a reputation for getting rid of ports more quickly than other companies, but if the company is ditching standard USB ports across all of its products, it’s going to be extremely annoying for Mac users stuck shuffling dongles (and never mind the fact that if the USB-C ports aren’t themselves spaced properly, some dongles and converters may not fit next to each other). Hanging one dongle off the MacBook Air is annoying; the idea of shuffling multiple dongles on both sides of a laptop sounds even worse. A cynical person might wonder if Apple has made some of these changes purely to boost the revenue it earns off selling accessories. Apple’s various plugs, dongles, and converters have a reputation for being well-made, but the company still makes a killing on the peripherals it sells. Shipping a few thousand more dongles and components isn’t going to make up for falling iPhone sales in and of itself, no, but it’s not a bad side business. Other speculation about this new hardware includes a likely CPU generation bump to Skylake (Kaby Lake is possible, but Apple would be fairly early to that market), OLED screens for the function keys and the ability for applications to map new functions to the key row, and a rumored upgrade to Polaris for at least one of the models. Apple doesn’t historically make much effort to push discrete GPUs into its hardware, but a Polaris-based GPU would be a substantial upgrade for the high-end MacBook Pro. Currently, the MBP is using a GPU based on AMD’s GCN 1.0, and while that solution was reasonably powerful when it debuted it’s gotten awfully long in the tooth (not to mention the power consumption department). If Apple does intend to launch in October, it doesn’t have much time left to do it — and there’s still no word of a Mac Pro refresh, though I’ve argued before that this is scarcely needed, given the relative lack of advancement in Intel processors. That’s not to say there’d be no benefit from newer Macs, but most of the improvement would come from faster GPUs, larger storage pools, or better overall pricing — not raw horsepower. We don’t know yet if Apple is ditching the earplug jack on its upcoming hardware or not — presumably not, since this hasn’t been mentioned. But it wouldn’t surprise us if the company opened up a full court press on removing that particular component. After all, now it has a pair of $160 wireless earrings to sell you.

Geely Reveals Link & Co 01, a Volvo-Based Super-Connected SUV Volvo parent company Geely has revealed the first car from its new Lynk & Co brand. It’s called the 01, but don’t let the boring name put you off. If Lynk lives up to all its promises, this compact hybrid SUV could play a huge role in redefining much of the automotive industry. Mechanically speaking, there’s nothing particularly interesting about the Lynk & Co 01. The sport-ute is based off the same Compact Modular Architecture platform Volvo will use for its upcoming small vehicles. Power comes from a combination of a turbocharged 1.5 liter three-cylinder gas engine and an electric motor or a 2.0-liter four-cylinder, with a choice of manual transmission or seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox reportedly on offer. We’re guessing most of the 01s will come equipped with the latter, however—not just because most people in the U.S. prefer automatics, but because a shift-for-itself gearbox is better suited for car-sharing. And that’s where Lynk & Co starts to deviate from the norm. See, the Lynk & Co 01 is designed for car-sharing. When you aren’t using your vehicle, you can share the car with other people with the touch of a button, using the car’s virtual locking system. If someone else wants to use it, they can contact you through an app; when you approve it, the app grants them the ability to unlock your car and drive it for a fee. In effect, if you own one Lynk, you own them all. “THINK AIRBNB. FOR CARS,” the company’s website exclaims. Which brings up another novel part of this SUV: It’s been designed for the super-connected smartphone-using millennial of today. The instrument panel is digital, there’s a 10-inch touchscreen serving as the control for the infotainment system, and the car comes with a wireless phone charging setup. There’s also a concierge service designed to help busy urbanites for those instances where they can’t get Siri to work using the integrated Apple CarPlay. Every Lynk & Co vehicle is also wired into a shared data network, The Verge reports, allowing them to tell each other about everything from traffic conditions to available parking spots at 4G speeds. The 01 comes with plenty of conventional automotive features, too. A power tailgate, some sort of automatic parking system, and a big ol’ sunroof all come standard, according to the company’s website. The climate control can even detect pollution and close the vents if the air is too noxious.

MADISON, Wis. — Ethan Soderberg, a senior at University of Wisconsin-Madison, only plans to vote for Hillary Clinton if the election is close. The Green Party’s Jill Stein is his preferred candidate. “I don’t think she’s as progressive as she portrays herself to be,” Soderberg said of Clinton. “She tries to go off and say she’s always been that way.” In contrast, he said Stein is “more about change.” Soderberg isn’t alone. Over a third of Wisconsin voters age 18 to 29 said they would vote for a third-party candidate like Stein or Libertarian Gary Johnson, according to the most recent Marquette University Law School poll of the swing state. This is despite the fact that Republican Donald Trump is deeply unpo[CENSORED]r with such voters. Clinton’s campaign is hoping to win over skeptical millennial voters in part by deploying key surrogates like Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to campuses in order to boost support for the Democratic nominee and down-ballot candidates. Indeed, Sanders has been on a whirlwind tour of universities in the final weeks before Election Day. “Secretary Clinton and I reached an agreement on a proposal which says that public colleges and universities will be tuition-free for every family in America earning less than $125,000 a year. That’s 83 percent of our po[CENSORED]tion!” Sanders said to cheers here at UW-Madison. “I want our young people to be leaving school with excitement, going out getting the jobs they want, not just the jobs they need in order to pay off their student debt,” he continued. “I want to see young people be able to go out and start the businesses that their hearts are directing them to — not have to struggle decade after decade with horrible levels of student debt.” Sen. Bernie Sanders greets supporters at the University of Colorado-Boulder on Oct. 17. (Photo: Brennan Linsley/AP) More College students and young professionals helped cement victory for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Over 60 percent of young voters supported Obama in his reelection campaign, and a similar number of those are supporting Clinton: In a recent USA Today/Rock the Vote poll, 62 percent of likely millennial voters said they would back Clinton. But voters aged 18 to 24 are not supporting Clinton with the same kind of zeal they showed in 2012. Almost half of those surveyed in the USA Today poll said they didn’t feel as though their vote mattered. Two-thirds of those who said they would not vote cited their dislike of the available candidates on the ballot. Voter enthusiasm in that poll was highest in March, when Sanders, a septuagenarian but a favorite among young voters, was making a push for the Democratic nomination and easily won states like Wisconsin against Clinton. A Gallup poll from May showed that 82 percent of millennial voters had a favorable view of Sanders. Over half preferred him to Clinton or Trump. Colin Seeberger, a campaign adviser with Young Invincibles, told Yahoo News that Sanders won over young people by addressing the issues they felt are the most pressing in their lives. His organization researches and advocates on issues relevant to millennial voters. “What is very obvious is Sen. Sanders talked about issues important to our generation,” Seeberger said. “College affordability, health care, jobs that set people up for financial security. That really resonates with young voters. Young people are looking for candidates that understand the unique challenges they face.” One of those young people is Zach Hillary Clinton attends an outdoor watch party with Mexican singer Vicente Fernández after the debate in Las Vegas. (Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images) More Druckrey, a senior at UW-Madison and one of the founders of Badgers for Bernie, a group dedicated to promoting Sanders’ candidacy on the campus. The group organized for Sanders en route to his dominating victory in Wisconsin’s April primary, in which the Vermont senator won all but one county statewide and beat Clinton by 25 points in the Madison-anchored Dane County. Druckrey said his group also traveled to Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota to register voters and generate excitement about Sanders’ candidacy. It was the first time he had delved into political organizing. “Bernie didn’t say he had all the answers. He explicitly said it is as much about us as it was for him,” Druckrey said. “It was great. … It’s really powerful to hear that.” While Druckrey was disappointed that Sanders came up short in the primary, he said he would support Clinton, pointing to the risk of a Trump presidency. “The alternative is unthinkable,” he said. “It’s not worth voting [for a third party] because it could lead to a Trump presidency.” But there is a clear level of uneasiness with Clinton. In a recent study conducted by the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, almost a quarter of the 1,200 young voters surveyed even said they would prefer a meteor strike to a Trump or Clinton presidency, though some respondents undoubtedly gave that answer tongue-in-cheek. Joshua Dyck, co-director of UMass’ Lowell Center for Public Opinion, said the results show a unique level of dissatisfaction that was not present in 2012. “We do not take our respondents at their word that they are earnestly interested in seeing the world end, but we do take their willingness to rank … a giant meteor ahead of these two candidates with startling frequency as a sign of displeasure and disaffection with the candidates and the 2016 election,” Dyck said in an analysis of the poll results. Jaime Hoggan puts on her “She Wins We Win” button while waiting to hear Bernie Sanders at a rally for Hillary Clinton at the University of Arizona on Oct. 18. (Photo: Kelly Presnell/Arizona Daily Star via AP) More Sanders has been making the rounds on college campuses to assuage those concerns with Clinton and rail against Trump. “If you still have any doubts about who the best candidate is,” Sanders told students in Madison, compare Clinton’s and Trump’s positions on climate change. “Donald Trump believes climate change is a ‘hoax’ created by ‘the Chinese.’ Why ‘the Chinese,’ I’m not quite sure. I would have thought [he’d blame] ‘the Mexicans’ or ‘the Muslims,’” he added to laughter. Some of his most frequent stops have been college towns, including Duluth, Minn., Tucson, Ariz., and Ann Arbor, Mich. Sanders and Warren, another progressive icon, made their first joint appearance Sunday at the University of Colorado-Denver. “We’re going to beat Trump and we’re going to beat him badly, and we’re going to elect Hillary Clinton,” Sanders told students in Denver. At a Wednesday stop at the University of Nevada-Reno, Sanders echoed some of the key pieces of his primary campaign: income inequality, universal health care and college affordability. But the undercurrent of his latest speech is now centered on how Clinton and a Democratic Senate could make those progressive goals a reality. “We are going to elect the best people we can, and we are going to hold those people accountable, and we are going to implement the most progressive platform in the history of the United States,” Sanders told the crowd of over 500 people in Reno, Nev. Druckrey, the Badgers for Bernie founder, said there is a persisting trust among many of his student peers for Sanders, which makes him an effective surrogate. “The idea is that none of the things he said doesn’t matter anymore but that now … he says we have to vote for Hillary to keep away the unthinkable,” he said. “Which I totally understand. There aren’t a lot of people mad at Bernie. Most of us believe him that this is what we need to do. People have grown to trust the guy and what’s he done in the last year.” And despite some tempered enthusiasm, Seeberger believes that young people have been highly engaged in the 2016 election cycle, either on social media or by organizing for the candidates and issues they support. “The ability of this generation to flex its political muscle has never been greater,” he said. “There is the opportunity for young people to make a mark.”

Date: October 21, 2016 Source: Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien Summary: The genome is not a fixed code but flexible. It allows changes in the genes. Transposons, however, so-called jumping genes, interpret this flexibility in a much freer way than “normal” genes. They reproduce in the genome and chose their position themselves. Transposons can also jump into a gene and render it inoperative. Thus, they are an important distinguishing mark for the development of different organisms, report scientists. The genome is not a fixed code but flexible. It allows changes in the genes. Transposons, however, so-called jumping genes, interpret this flexibility in a much freer way than "normal" genes. They reproduce in the genome and chose their position themselves. Transposons can also jump into a gene and render it inoperative. Thus, they are an important distinguishing mark for the development of different organisms. Unclear what triggers transposon activity However, it is still unclear how jumping genes developed and what influences their activity. "In order to find out how, for instance, climate zones influence activity, we must be able to compare the frequency of transposons in different po[CENSORED]tions -- in different groups of individuals," explained bioinformatician Robert Kofler from the Institute of Po[CENSORED]tion Genetics at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna. But this frequency has not yet been determined precisely. New software for a low-priced method Transposons are detected by DNA sequencing. But this detection cannot be carried out for every single member of a po[CENSORED]tion. "At the moment, this would go beyond the available resources regarding finance and amount of work. The only -- and much cheaper -- option is to analyse an entire po[CENSORED]tion in one reaction," explained last author Christian Schlötterer. This method, which he has established using the example of fruit flies, is called Pool-Seq. It is also routinely applied to detect transposons. Existing analysis programmes, however, could not provide a precise result in this case. So far, each analysis has been biased by different factors such as the sequencing depth and the distance between paired reads. For this purpose, Kofler developed the new software PoPoolationTE2. "If we sequence entire po[CENSORED]tions, each reaction provides a different result. The number of mixed individuals is always the same, but the single individuals differ," explained Kofler. Furthermore, technical differences in the sample processing, among others, have influenced the analysis so far. PoPoolationTE2 is not affected by these factors. Thus, questions about the activity of transposons can be answered precisely for Pool-Seq reactions. Interesting for cancer research "The unbiased detection of transposon abundance enables a low-price comparison of po[CENSORED]tions from, for instance, different climate zones. In a next step, we can find out if a transposon is very active in a particular climate zone," said Kofler. In principle, the bioinformatician has developed this new software for Pool-Seq. But as this method is also applied in medical research and diagnosis, the programme is also interesting for cancer research or the detection of neurological changes since transposons also occur in the brain. Lab experiments confirm influencing factors Lab experiments can indicate the factors influencing transposons. Last author Schlötterer explained these factors referring to an experiment with fruit flies: "We breed a hundred generations per po[CENSORED]tion and expose them to different stimuli. We sequence at every tenth generation and determine if a stimulus has influenced the activity of the transposons. Thus, we can describe the activity of transposons in fast motion, so to say." If the abundance is low, the scientists assume that the transposons are only starting to become more frequent. If a transposon reproduces very quickly in a particular po[CENSORED]tion, this is called an invasion. If a jumping gene is detected in an entire po[CENSORED]tion and not in another one, it could have been positively selected.

Razer announced a new thin and light gaming laptop with specs you wouldn't expect to find in a thin and light device--most notably, an Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics module. The Razer Blade Pro is a 17.3-inch mobile monster of a machine with an Intel Core i7-6700HQ, 32GB of memory, and RAID 0 PCIe M.2 SSD storage up to 2TB. It features a 4K (3840 x 2160) IGZO display with Nvidia G-Sync, in addition to Killer Doubleshot Pro networking (E2400 Gigabit LAN and Wireless AC 1535). Somehow, all of this is crammed into a chassis that's less than an inch thick (0.88") and weighs only 7.8 lbs. The Graphics, The Cooling Razer isn't a stranger to the thin and light market, with the Razer Blade Stealth and Razer Blade laptops offering a similar hook: go thin and light with some ample horsepower under the hood. However, the new Blade Pro takes that concept to a whole new level, almost redefining what a thin and light device could be with the inclusion of the incredibly powerful GTX 1080. The Razer Blade Pro is not the first laptop from the company to sport a mobile Pascal-based GPU. Indeed, although the Razer Blade now has the GTX 1060 as an option, the GTX 1080 is a cut above. Of further note, the Razer Blade Pro has a USB Type-C Thunderbolt 3 port, which indicates that it's ready for pairing with the Razer Core external GPU dock. (However, the onboard GTX 1080 would seem to obviate the need for the mega peripheral.) The powerful GPU does, however, necessitate a robust cooling system. One does not simply cram a GTX 1080 into a slim chassis, to borrow the meme. To that end, Razer boasted of its vapor chamber cooling, stating that it's paired with a custom fan design and dynamic heat exchanger. Mechanical Switches On A Laptop, And What's Up With That Touchpad? In a move that is as expected as it is welcome, Razer tricked out the Razer Blade Pro with ultra low-profile mechanical keyboard switches. We assumed we'd see these switches land on the company's laptops when it announced them this summer--there was no way they would remain as an option for something as un-Razer-like as an iPad accessory. (Time is ticking on when we'll see low-profile Kailh switches emerge on competing notebooks.) Another striking design choice (brave or stupid, depending on your point of view) is the placement of the touchpad on the Blade Pro. Instead of positioning it under the keyboard, as it is on virtually every laptop in the world, Razer stuck it off to the left. In a way, this puts the touchpad where a mouse would more naturally be if you were typing on a desktop. Razer also cleverly placed a volume roller just above the touchpad. Thin and light devices usually have a hefty premium attached, and the Blade Pro is no different. Starting at $3,699, the Razer Blade Pro is expected to ship in November.

Norman Craig Breedlove, the professional driver who in the 1960s broke world records for land speeds, has sued the Museum of Science and Industry for alleged mistreatment of “Spirit of America,” the car he drove to break those records. The suit, filed June 3 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, lists gross negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract and breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Breedlove, 79, lives in California. He was the first person to reach speeds of 500 mph and 600 mph, all in vehicles named Spirit of America, according to his Wikipedia page. Breedlove broke the 500 mph record with the iteration of Spirit of America that was on view at the Museum of Science and Industry from about 1965 to 2015. He loaned the vehicle after it was damaged in a crash in 1964. The body was repaired, but it was no longer able to run. According to the suit, the loan agreement requested that Spirit of America not be shown anywhere commercially except the Museum of Science and Industry, and that the car would be returned to Breedlove upon his request. The suit claims that the museum had a duty to protect the vehicle against damage and theft. In July 2015, according to the suit, the museum told Breedlove it was going to return the car. He asked that it be returned to him in Rio Vista, Calif. The museum arranged transport. The suit says the car was returned with cosmetic damage—the aluminum skin was gone, revealing the frame, and graffiti was etched into its exterior. The suit also claims the frame had been cut and re-welded. The damage renders the car “in a sense irreparable because the vehicle will no longer be in its original condition,” the suit says. Breedlove seeks at least $395,000 for general, compensatory, consequential and incidental damages; punitive and exemplary damages; plus attorneys fees and costs. A spokeswoman for the museum said it cannot comment on active litigation. However, “we can assure our community that the museum goes to great lengths to take expert care of all of the artifacts in our collections and we are confident that this situation can and will be resolved satisfactorily,” she wrote in an emailed statement. An assistant at the office of Breedlove's attorney, Eric Rein of Horwood Marcus & Berk, said he is out of the office this week.

Pokémon Go is in rapid decline. Since launching in July and soaring in po[CENSORED]rity, it had lost at least a third of its daily users by the middle of August. By mid-September, daily revenues had fallen from US$16m per day to US$2m (excluding the 30% app store fee) and daily downloads had declined from a peak of 27 million to 700,000. Of course, many mobile games – especially ones that trigger a worldwide craze – suffer declines in usage over time. Pokémon Go still generates significant revenues. But its precipitous decline has seen it labelled a fad and nicknamed "Pokémon Gone." This raises the question of why usage has dropped so steeply, and what other game companies might do differently to retain users. In my opinion, Pokémon Go's creators Niantic have made several significant missteps. Here are the lessons that other companies can learn. Have a clear avenue to capitalise quickly Pokémon Go launched with relatively little actual "game," and by the end of July was still arguably missing a lot of features. The launch version enabled players to collect Pokémon characters while out roaming in the real world. But it featured shallower gameplay than its siblings on Nintendo's gaming platforms. For example, the mechanisms for battling Pokémon were relatively simplistic, with arbitrary-seeming controls. Furthermore, there was no way for people to interact in real time in the game. This is not a problem if the aim is to get as many players to sign up as possible, but it is an issue when trying to keep them interested. The developers did not introduce new elements quickly enough to stop players getting bored. So far there has been little in the way of new gameplay aspects, with the most significant addition being in the form of hardware: a Pokémon Go wearable device released last month. The developers have added a new feature that allows players to choose a "buddy Pokémon" to accompany them in-game, which has had a relatively minor impact on in-game mechanics. But by waiting so long after the game's launch, the developers have missed an opportunity to capitalise on their existing player base. The obvious lesson for developers is to have a roadmap to enhance the game and keep players interested, especially when the core game itself is not very deep. Do not remove po[CENSORED]r features Besides failing to introduce new features, Pokémon Go also removed po[CENSORED]r ones. This is likely to alienate players, especially if done with little explanation – some commentators have branded the game "broken." In Pokémon Go's case, the feature in question was "Pokémon tracking." A core aspect of the game is that it creates a virtual representation of the player's real-world location, which is then po[CENSORED]ted with Pokémon characters for players to collect by walking around. But to catch Pokémon, players need to know where they are – and without Pokémon tracking, players are left wandering aimlessly and relying on luck to find them. Pokémon tracking was relatively rudimentary in the game itself, and arguably did not work at all. This led several third parties to create their own Pokémon tracking apps that became crucial to dedicated players. In other words, players accepted the original broken feature because third-party apps let them circumvent it. However, the developer, Niantic, subsequently disabled these apps by cutting off their data access and sending them "cease and desist" orders. This effectively removed a feature that many players regarded as essential. The developers have arguably repeated this gaffe by disabling the game for players with "rooted" android devices – a relatively common hack that lets phone users change their administrative settings or bypass restrictions imposed by telecommunications providers. Pokémon Go has banned rooted devices so as to prevent "geo-spoofing," whereby players cheat the game by using software to fake their location. But while the goal is valid, the implementation clearly has ramifications for many legitimate users. The clear lesson is that a company should not remove features without first considering how essential they are to the user experience, and without offering an adequate replacement. This lesson applies not just to gaming but to the wider consumer industry; companies should always know what their customers regard as essential, and should never undermine it without putting in place a clear workaround (or ideally, improvement). Talk to your customers Pokémon Go's decline has been characterised by a consistent lack of communication. The catalyst was arguably the removal of Pokémon tracking. While far from ideal, this could have been managed with better communication, but instead some players were left so disillusioned that they requested refunds. The developers did not forewarn of major (potentially negative) changes, and did not communicate afterwards, leading to the claim that "silence is killing Pokemon Go." This has not been an isolated incident; the developers communicated only intermittently about server outages, offering very little information about why they had happened, how long the disruption was expected to last, or whether it was the work of hackers. The final lesson is here is that communicating with your customers is paramount, particularly when things go wrong. Otherwise, you risk losing their confidence that you care about them and know how to fix the problem. If you have to make unpo[CENSORED]r decisions, at least communicate the reason for those decisions and present a plan to assuage consumers' concerns. Where to from here for Pokémon Go? This all begs the question: how might Pokémon Go attempt to bounce back? This might be challenging, as Pokémon Go would both need to implement new features and make lapsed (and new) users aware of them. One potential option is to increase social events, perhaps involving rare Pokémon placed in a given area. This might also generate more positive word of mouth, increase user engagement, and drive interest. Pokémon Go could also expand into other markets, potentially rectifying the aforementioned issues when doing so. This includes a possible expansion into China and India. This would be most effective if additional in-game features, such as in game battling, were implemented. In this case, the game could start from a fresh base in new markets, while improving the game in existing markets.

Update, 10/17/16, 8:13am PT: The RAT series of gaming mice is now available. For the second half of 2016, Mad Catz will turn its attention to its RAT mice lineup. Specifically, the company will upgrade six of its mice (the RAT 1, RAT 4, RAT 6, RAT 8, RAT Pro S+ and RAT Pro X+) with adjustable parts, RGB lighting and new software. The main goal for the company is to ensure that you can use palm, claw or fingertip grips with its mice. To that end, each mouse comes with at least one adjustable part. With the basic RAT 1 mouse, you can conform the palm rest to fit your personal grip, but the top-tier RAT Pro X+ has multiple adjustable parts including the palm, pinkie and thumb rests, scroll wheel, and glide feet. Most of the mice also have a max DPI setting that ranges between 5,000-12,000. However, the Pro X+ also features swappable sensor modules so that you can have a max DPI of 5,000, 8,200 or 12,000. Most of the new peripherals also include Mad Catz’s new RGB lighting "Kameleon" software. Obviously, you can choose from the full color spectrum so that your mouse stands out from the rest of your gaming setup. Then again, with almost every peripheral company heavily invested in the RGB lighting craze, your new RAT mouse will probably just add to your gaming PC light show. A new RGB lighting system means that you’ll need to tweak the colors from a software app. Mad Catz is also coming out with a new app called the FLUX Software Interface, from which you'll be able to change the lighting colors, DPI settings and macro button assignments. The company didn’t provide a specific date for release, but it expects the lineup to be available before the holiday season. Pricing for the mice is not available yet, but you can expect it to come out shortly before release.

Top-quality protection from the latest viruses and malware doesn't have to cost a penny You need antivirus – that's not in question – but you don't have to pay, as this list of our top ten free antivirus packages shows. Bear in mind (and this should come as no surprise) free antivirus packages aren't just given to you out of kindness. The vast majority exist as adverts for their bigger siblings, as companies do their best to sell you upgraded versions with more features and 'enhanced' protection. However, the free packages should provide all the virus protection you actually need. The paid editions give you firewalls, additional integrations and other gimmicks, but each of the packages we've listed here will help you detect and eradicate any potential virus threats. We've used the findings of expert virus lab AV-TEST to evaluate the true effectiveness of their virus protection, but that's only half the story. These things need to be running all the time, and if they're annoying or hit your system resources too hard you'll have them uninstalled in a flash. So, on with the evaluation. 1. Avira Free Antivirus Fast, effective and free - the best antivirus software money can't buy. took the top spot on our previous free antivirus roundup, and here it is again. Yes, AV-TEST's results show it to have a micron less protection than the likes of AVG, but it's the slickest, cleanest and least system intensive antivirus package going. It's almost as if the programmers sat down to determine exactly what users would want out of an antivirus package and somehow stumbled on the correct answer: something that isn't in your face every two seconds and doesn't slow your PC to a halt just by existing. So hooray for Avira. It doesn't even install a host of other packages (including a secure browser, VPN and safesearch plugin) by default, although they're there if you want them. It's not the glossiest package, and the install process is a bit pre-emptive, with Windows 10 repeatedly shouting at us to update Avira before it had even finished making its way onto our test machine, but we're inclined to blame Microsoft for the latter glitch. Overall, brilliant. 2. AVG AntiVirus Free Superb virus protection packaged in a super-clear interface Even though AVG Antivirus Free's virus protection is wrapped in AVG Zen – essentially a large advert designed to encourage you to install all of AVG's products on all the PCs in your home – we won't hesitate to recommend it. AV-TEST gave AVG AntiVirus a 100% rating for its protection against zero-day attacks during its May-June 2016 testing, for a start. It's reasonably quick to scan after the first initial pass, and the interface – ignoring the Zen bit of it – is super-clear and easy to use. Combine it with the mobile app and you can set it to scan and disinfect a machine without having to be close to it, which is a feature you won't know you need until it's too late. There are a few downsides. We're not super-fond, for example, of the level of permissions that AVG's Web TuneUp extension asks for – everything from 'read and change all your data on the websites you visit' to forcing your start page to AVG's own Yahoo-powered search engine – but that's an optional component. 3. Panda Free Antivirus 2016 Cloud-based protection for your PC with automatic USB vaccination Although Panda claims to be the world's lightest antivirus – offloading much of the processing work that would normally be done by your PC to the cloud – we found it to be slightly slower than Avira in our tests, and AV-TEST agreed. It's also right on the industry average in terms of virus detection, sitting at around the 98% mark for zero-day attacks and a hair under 100% for established threats. Those are good numbers, and Panda is good software – providing you remember to deny it permission to hijack your browser's home page and search facility upon installing. Its process monitor is very useful, it scans quite quickly, and it's simple enough in its presentation for even the most technophobic user to find their way around. Switch on its automatic USB vaccination to ensure you won't get a nasty infection when you insert something you shouldn't into one of your ports. 4. Comodo Free Antivirus Serious security software for Windows, Comodo pulls no punches This is among the hardest-nosed antivirus packages out there, built as it is from Comodo's serious systems administration background. Comodo Free Antivirus features a 'default deny' mode, which essentially blocks every single program that's not on its whitelist – if you let something through and your machine becomes infected, it's going to be your fault. There's cloud scanning, so it theoretically keeps up with the latest found threats and automatically updates all users based on the newest discoveries, and indeed Comodo scored a perfect 100% against AV-TEST's barrage of zero-day threats, but its historical protection lags behind somewhat at just over 97%. While Comodo has a sharp design all its own, we'd also say it was something of a mess, unleashing window upon window on your machine and not really shutting up. You certainly know when you have it installed. At least it includes a game mode, automatically dialling back on its actions when you need maximum performance from your machine. 5. Avast Free Antivirus A solid security suite, but one with a slightly tarnished record Avast is in the process of buying AVG. We're not entirely sure at this point which of the two will survive – it's possible that both will continue operation, of course – so be careful putting your eggs in either basket at this point. Avast Free Antivirus, in particular, worries us a little. Earlier in 2016 the Chromium-based browser it includes by default (Avast SafeZone) was found to have a serious security vulnerability not present in Chromium, so the supposed 'World's Most Secure Browser®' turned out to not be so hot. Avast patched the vulnerability immediately following its discovery, but that's poor form. Its actual antivirus portion isn't awful. It's cleanly presented and performed reasonably well under the stress of AV-TEST's heavy punishment, and even includes a built-in LastPass-esque password manager, which is a great extra feature. While it's heavier on the system than some, it didn't make our test machine noticeably more sluggish. Even that browser, if you trust it, is absolutely fine. But do you? 6. ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall Effective security protection from the grandfather of firewalls Back in the dark past, when computers were beige and the internet was young, ZoneAlarm was the leading free firewall. It's therefore no surprise that ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus includes a firewall by default – a rare feature among its ilk. It's a big plus, at least if you're not competent in using Windows' own firewall; it's easy to configure and offers interesting insights into the traffic coming to and from your PC. You might even find the things it deflects quite worrying. Unfortunately AV-TEST hasn't performed an evaluation of ZoneAlarm's antivirus portion – seamlessly integrated with that firewall – for over a year, meaning we can't offer any great confidence in it, though the June 2015 assessment did at least paint it in a flattering light. The antivirus signatures are being maintained and the software still updated, though, so don't discount it – if you feel the need for a tried and tested firewall alongside your virus protection, this is a competent choice. 7. Immunet AntiVirus A cloud-based supplement to your main security software Here's something of an odd one; Immunet is a tiny cloud-based AV solution that's designed to run either independently or alongside your existing antivirus software. The former option isn't, perhaps, the best one; AV-TEST offers no indication as to its effectiveness, and Immunet's reputation – while strengthening in recent years – isn't that of an AV marvel. That said, as an accompaniment to a known strong solution, we can see no reason not to at least give Immunet a shot. It's all based on collective immunity, meaning the more people use it and report back with threats, the stronger its protection becomes. Like a vaccine for your PC. There was no noticeable slowdown on our test machine when running it alongside Avira, although in real terms it's going to hammer your CPU a little when scanning. It's also, if such a thing matters to you, almost comically ugly. 8. Qihoo 360 Total Security Essentials More virus-scanning engines than its rivals, but not necessarily merrier Rolling in on a huge wave of bombast – over 52 billion threats thwarted in 2014! – comes Qihoo's 360 Total Security Essentials, which we presume is mainly getting its figures from the third-party engines it uses to scan your PC. Both Bitdefender (the default) and Avira (which should be the default) are on board, and 360 provides a couple of its own engines on top. Predictably this results in a package which eats more system resources than the rest here, which scans quite slowly, but which passes AV-TEST's 0-day and widespread virus tests with flying colours. Nevertheless, we'd opt for the simplicity of Avira every time – Qihoo has, in the past, been accused of cheating AV testing to appear more powerful than it truly is, which puts a big trust-shaped cat amongst the virus pigeons. 9. Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition Still updated regularly, but no longer at the cutting edge While it comes with a strong brand behind it, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition strikes us as something of an afterthought these days – you have to look hard to find it, and the company's own site still crows about its compatibility with the brand-new Windows 8. Indeed, the core software hasn't been updated since 2013, though its virus definitions are at least kept up to speed. To its credit, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition is at least unobtrusive, tucking itself away in the system tray by default and bringing up minimal popups. It's not the fastest, however, and we don't have total faith in its ability to spot every single virus or modern threat. It's also worth looking at Bitdefender 60-Second Virus Scanner, a tiny app that's worth keeping on a USB stick. If you're foolish enough to run a machine without AV, it'll at least warn you quickly if there's something untoward on board. 10. Windows Defender Not as effective as most third-party tools, but quiet and unobtrusive Every new Windows installation includes Defender by default – if yours doesn't have it, grab Microsoft Security Essentials – so why bother installing third-party protection? A glance at AV-TEST's results regarding Windows Defender's efficacy at defending against the newest zero-day threats tells the story: the May test on its Windows 8 incarnation showed that it caught just 92.1% of nasties. That's just not high enough considering its claims of cloud-based protection, however strong it may be against widespread threats. To its credit, Defender gets on with the job and stays out of the way, protecting new installations handily. And when it comes time to install something serious, Defender ducks out gracefully – you don't need to uninstall or disable it, it just… goes. It's simple, with the clearest interface of any package here, but it's also simplistic. So while we appreciate Microsoft's efforts to secure its operating system directly, there's a reason there's still a third-party antivirus market.

Samsung developed several new technologies for its 960 Pro NVMe SSD, and the end result is a massive 2TB M.2 product that tips the price scale at $1,300. Over the past two years, the Pro series has shifted from a product for enthusiasts and power users to more of a workstation-focused product. The shift stems from declining SSD prices fueled by entry-level pricing from Samsung’s competitors. The company’s own general-use EVO series, which has the highest market share of any SSD on the market, also plays a role in the declining costs. I'm writing this review on Sunday for publication at the NDA lift on the following Tuesday, so our time with the sample is short. Samsung sent the leading-edge review samples without its new custom NVME driver (the company dubbed it Driver 2.0) or the new Magician management software. Even if the driver arrives on Monday, we won't have time to retest the 960 Pro 2TB before Samsung lifts the NDA because our full test suite requires roughly 74 hours to complete. We will update the performance data when we receive the 960 Pro in other capacities. Our review uses the Samsung 950 Pro NVMe driver, which provides better performance than the Microsoft driver. The 950 Pro driver enables some of the custom NVMe hooks, but it most likely does not provide support for all of the 960’s new advanced features. There is also limited sample availability; we only have the 2TB model, which really doesn’t compete with anything on the market. Unfortunately, this combination of factors means we can't give you the full 960 story on our terms, or at least in one comprehensive article. Samsung had to utilize advanced packaging technology developed for single-package OEM products to pack a massive 2TB of 3D MLC NAND onto the single-sided 22 x 80mm M.2 PCB. Maintaining the single-sided design will cut down on returns that might stem from compatibility issues, and it also broadens the company's target selection in the OEM market. Some new M.2-powered notebooks require all of the components to be on one side of the SSD because the connector is a few millimeters closer to the motherboard. Double-sided M.2 SSDs aren’t an issue for desktop systems, or any of the PCIe adapters we've tested, but we do have a notebook that makes double-sided upgrades impossible. Samsung made space to fit four dual-plane 3D NAND packages on the PCB with its advanced PoP (Package on Package) technology, which fuses the LPDDR3 DRAM onto the same package as the 8-channel Polaris controller. The dual-plane NAND allows the company to use all eight of the controller’s channels to provide increased performance. Samsung used a PoP design on some of the 750 EVO SSDs and later in the PM971, which actually pairs the controller, DRAM, and NAND together in a single chip. Samsung also uses PoP technology in some smartphone designs. To reach 2TB with just four packages, Samsung pulled a trick play we've seen before that always results in a touchdown. Samsung stacked sixteen 256Gb dies in each package to reach the hefty 2TB capacity point. Stacking NAND is common, but it’s expensive and complicated to build up to 16 layers, and it can also reduce performance. The company employs a custom F-chip to improve impedance with high die stacks, thus circumventing the performance challenges. Samsung’s advanced stacking first appeared in the 850 EVO 1TB mSATA SSD, but it is still amazing nonetheless.

October 13, 2016 by Vidyasagar Potdar, The Conversation Cyber security experts have raised concerns about Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull and senior government ministers sending private and confidential information via the messaging service WhatsApp. WhatsApp and similar messaging apps are great for normal day-to-day communication between friends, but using it to discuss matters of national security is certainly a choice that will raise eyebrows. As with any technology, particularly those that allow for speedy communication, the benefits have to be weighed carefully against the associated security risks. Not on the list One of the main points of criticism over the decision to use WhatsApp is that it doesn't feature on the Evaluated Products List – the list of accepted tools for ministerial communications compiled by the Australian Signals Directorate. This list features products that are tested and certified for specific purposes against internationally recognised standards. Vendors can apply for this certification for their products and once evaluated it can be used for the specific purpose. Many different types of products are on this list, including biometrics, data protection, smart cards, mobile products, network devices, operating systems, and so on. Within the mobile products space, the list features Apple's iOS and Blackberry's operating system, both of which are platforms from which text messages can be sent – but messaging apps such as WhatsApp are not featured. What's wrong with WhatsApp? Besides text-based messages, WhatsApp also allows files to be shared and transferred between users. This has implications for government, especially if used by ministers or staff with access to classified information. If such information were disseminated via WhatsApp, this would constitute a serious security breach. Although WhatsApp now offers end-to-end encryption, meaning in theory that no one can intercept the communication, the sharing of sensitive documents through this service would still be grounds for serious concern. What would happen in a situation in which a device was lost or stolen? Anyone with access to that device can access the shared files, including any media (images, documents, videos) shared via WhatsApp, which are automatically transferred to and stored in a WhatsApp folder on both devices. Furthermore, it is possible to hack into the WhatsApp folder via tools such as WiFi File Transfer, which is used to copy files from a mobile to a desktop computer. Sharing web links via WhatsApp also potentially leaves users vulnerable to phishing or other attacks via malware or ransomware. As WhatsApp now also works via the web, it is prone to all of the web's security threats. Besides malware posing as genuine WhatsApp links, it is also reportedly possible to crash the app by sending large (over 7 megabytes) messages, or messages containing special characters – a particular fear given that these messages can be typed and sent very quickly by someone who gains access to a device for a short period. Privacy concerns are also raised by the existence of apps such as WhatSpy, which allows others to monitor a user's messages and photos or even alter their security and privacy settings. Another app called mSpy monitors and reports on a mobile user's activities, such as text messages, WhatsApp messages and phone calls. This app can be installed very quickly and once installed it can report to a designated number or email. Perhaps worst of all is WhatsApp's vulnerability to MAC spoofing attacks, which involve changing the media access control (MAC) address that acts as a unique identifier for every phone. By changing it, the messages can be routed to an unauthorised device. Freedom vs responsibility The truth is that as soon as any sensitive information is placed on the WhatsApp network, it can potentially be shared or forwarded to anyone, meaning that both the sender and the receiver of the information is at greater security risk. Once confidential information is out in the open network, it is effectively beyond the government's control. Another concern relates to Freedom of Information. As an encrypted third-party network, it is not clear whether it will be possible to retrieve this information if requested. Recently, US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has faced severe criticism, media scrutiny and investigation by the FBI for using private email services rather than official communication channels. WhatsApp or Instant Messaging via mobile devices represents a new wave of communication adopted by the community at large. But the question of whether high-ranking members of the government should be using secured messaging apps is one that requires further investigation. WhatsApp and other messaging services are promising, useful, and great fun. But they should not be used in a government setting without prior certification.

While AMD’s enthusiast-class “Vega” Radeon graphics cards are still a far-away dream destined to launch next year, Nvidia’s putting the finishing touches on its killer GTX 10-series lineup with the release of a pair of new graphics cards: The GeForce GTX 1050 and GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. These graphics cards are aimed toward giving prebuilt “big box” PCs enough oomph to game, with a mere 75-watt power draw that negates the need for extra power connectors. As such, they’re suitably budget-friendly. The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti will cost $139 when it launches on October 25, and the GTX 1050 a mere $109 at its November 8 release. Meet the GeForce GTX 1050 That puts the similarly priced Radeon RX 460 dead in the GTX 1050’s sights, but the rivals took two very different approaches to their affordable cards. While the $110 and $140 versions of the Radeon cards differ only in memory capacity—the former offers 2GB, while the latter packs 4GB—the two GTX 1050s offer different performance levels as well. The 2GB GTX 1050 packs 640 CUDA cores clocked at 1,354MHz, and can boost up to 1,455MHz to increase performance. The 4GB GTX 1050 Ti, on the other hand, contains 768 CUDA cores clocked at 1,290MHz to 1,392MHz. (For comparison, the $200 3GB GTX 1060 holds 1,152 CUDA cores at up to 1,708MHz.) Both are built around a new “GP107” graphics processor that offers all the same features as Nvidia’s other “Pascal”-based GTX 10-series cards. That means goodies like Ansel super screenshots, Fast Sync, simultaneous multi-projection, performance-boosting multi-resolution shading, and more, all of which we covered in detail in PCWorld’s GeForce GTX 1080 review. But enough with the numbers! What sort of gaming performance can we expect to see out of the GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti? Nvidia claims you’ll see a sizeable jump compared to its legendary GTX 750 Ti, another upgrade-centric card limited to 75W. Note that Nvidia’s graph doesn’t mention the GTX 950, which actually wasn’t considered a GTX 750 Ti replacement. That said, some back-of-the-envelope math suggests that if Nvidia’s performance claims hold true, the GTX 1050 should outperform the GTX 950 as well. Because the GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti both consume under 75W, they can draw all needed power straight from a PC’s motherboard, making the cards a hassle-free upgrade for people with prebuilt “big box” computers. Going from integrated graphics to a discrete GPU offers a hell of a performance jump, as you’d expect. Scads of GTX 750 Ti graphics cards were sold for just this purpose—heck, I coaxed a couple of people into buying them myself—and the GTX 1050 appears ready to seize the mantle from its predecessor. Here’s the GTX 1050’s 1080p performance in actual video games. Be wary of Nvidia’s numbers here: In a briefing, a representative said GTA V was run on Medium graphics settings, for example, while Dota 2 was cranked to High. That said, balancing between fidelity and frame rate’s a necessary evil in graphics cards in this price range, and it’s nice to see the GTX 1050 hitting 60-plus frames per second in major—though certainly not strenuous—games. It’s worth noting that Nvidia’s GeForce Experience 3.0 software can optimize your games with a single click, though you’ll likely to need to tinker further for best results (it often sets bizarre screen resolutions) and you need to register to use GFE now. "Out of the box the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti are both blazing fast, with the GTX 1050 Ti on average 40 percent faster and more than 128 percent more power efficient than the closest competitive product at stock speeds," Nvidia's GTX 1050 announcement post brags, explicitly naming that "closest competitive product" as the Radeon RX 460 in the footnotes. As for VR, it’s uncertain whether the GTX 1050 series will be compatible with the Oculus Rift’s newly lenient PC requirements. GeForce product manager Justin Walker says he’d expect the GTX 1050 Ti to meet the grade, but Nvidia is still working with Oculus to test the new graphics cards. If you’re looking to get into VR we’d still suggest in investing in a $250 6GB GTX 1060 or better, anyway. Nvidia won’t be offering Founders Edition versions of the GTX 1050 or GTX 1050 Ti. Instead, you’ll see a slew of custom models from Nvidia partners like EVGA, Asus, and Zotac when the cards launch on October 25. As with the deluge of Radeon RX 460s, some of the custom GTX 1050 cards will include an extra 6-pin power connector to push overclocking limits further. Interestingly, Walker says the frugal power needs of the GTX 1050 could make the card a potential fit for passive, fanless cooler designs—though there’s nothing like that planned right now. Something for the future, maybe?

Thank you! - Eid mubarak to all muslmims around the world.