Microsoft and Sony have been fighting in the console wars for nearly 20 years ever after the introduction of the original Xbox.
Xbox was of course competing against PlayStation 2, Xbox 360 against PlayStation 3, and now Xbox One has been duking it out against PlayStation 4. One would think that Microsoft and Sony are at this point archenemies of the highest order.
Well, turns out that the two companies can still agree on something, as they've just signed a cloud gaming and AI deal.
According to the new agreement, the companies join forces in developing cloud gaming systems on top of Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. This means that Sony's current cloud gaming service will use Microsoft Azure, and the development continues there.
Some parts of the Microsoft's upcoming cloud gaming platform, dubbed xCloud, might be used in Sony's services as well.
While the partnership seems out of ordinary for such long-standing competitors, it's clear that perhaps both have been worried about other competitors, whether it'd be Amazon with cloud services or Google with their new gaming service Stadia.
Yesterday Asus, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer mostly known for computers, announced their latest flagship smartphone. The company's new ZenFone 6 is mostly just a regular 2019 notch-less smartphone, but there is one very unique feature that distinguishes it from the rest.
First, let's get the specs out of the way. The phone comes with a 6.4-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD
display, Snapdragon 855, 6 or 8 gigs of RAM, and 64/128/256 GB storage options. Thus far, very familiar, right?
Well the phone also comes with a massive 5,000 mAh battery, which definitely should last a day, like fairly long into the second one as well, and maybe even whole 2 days that is marketed. But even more importantly the new ZenFone 6 features a new type of camera the company calls Flip Camera.
The came acts both as the default one in the back as well as the selfie shooter in the front. To achieve this, the company has built a mechanism that flips the camera over the top of the device.
The dual camera setup features a 48 MP Sony sensor, also used in the recently announced OnePlus 7 Pro, as well as a 13 megapixel and 125 degree wide angle camera. You can use both of them in both default as well as selfie mode.
One of the bigger tech patent disputes in recent years was the one between Apple and semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm. After problems with their modem partner Intel, Apple had to settle the differences, and get a modem deal with them, and pay $4.5 billion.
After this, and previous year Apple and Samsung settling, one of the more significant disputes that remained was between two of the current largest smartphone manufacturers by marketshare, Samsung and Huawei. The companies have been fighting over patents for three year, but now they have settled on a truce, Nikkei Asian Review reports.
Unfortunately there aren't clear details on how this went down, but the reports say that the dispute was settled in Guangdong High People's Court. The report speculates that this might be due to global challenges in the smartphone market, which both companies want to focus on.
It has to be said, though, that the tough markets haven't been a similar struggle to everyone. While Samsung hasn't been nosediving or in free fall, that figure of speech is definitely more appropriate with Apple. Huawei on the other hand has been thriving even in these circumstances.
The specialty glass manufacturer Corning has released a new product. The company is most known for its Gorilla Glass, which is found on most smartphones.
Multiple iterations of Gorilla Glass have found their ways from the original iPhone to almost every single smartphone on the market at the moment. Now after six generations of Gorilla Glass they have announced a new product called Corning Astra Glass.
The product is designed for larger devices, or as the company says "optimized for mid-to-large-size". This includes tablets, notebooks, and even TVs. The company specifically mentions "high-performance tablet" and "8K TVs", which makes the new glass sound expensive.
However, according to the press release, Astra Glass is indeed designed to support the higher pixel density of such devices, providing clarity for higher definition while keeping the properties of durability.
According to the director of business at Corning, Ham Yim, Astra Glass provides "low total pitch variation, low total thickness variation, and low sag" in an oxide display glass that is needed in 8K TVs.
Just a few months ago we wrote about the new microSD cards coming to the stores near you in the summer of 2019. Well, depending on where you live, the summer is here.
Those pinkie fingernail sized memory cards that can store a whopping one terabyte of data are now available. One of the leading flash memory brand, Sandisk, has announced that their new terabyte microSD card is in stores now.
Obviously not everyone is going to need a terabyte of storage in a such a tiny fashion, traditionally in a smartphone.
However, if you live on storage capacity on your mobile device, this will make your live much easier. That is, if you are willing to shell out around $450.
The specs are within the UHS Speed Class 3 (U3), which means it's fast enough for 4K video recording, which it might be the most useful for.
While you might not be up for paying hundreds of dollars for the largest commercial microSD card available, as with everything, the prices will eventually go down. Now it's just a matter of time when you'll have potentially one full day of 4K footage on your fingertips.
As Apple has been struggling to move as many iPhones as it did the previous year for a while now, the company has had to resort to a different avenue of increasing profits.
Apple has been developing more and more of its hardware in-house, this lowers the cost of the phone, increasing the profits of the device, and allows better customization. One of the remaining chips that is yet to turn into an Apple designed semiconductor are modems.
That is what the company has invested in the most recently. Issue, like ones with Intel and Qualcomm, furthermore make it important for Apple to advance in their quest for an in-house modem.
As Intel failed with their 5G deployment, and Qualcomm has already been an expensive partner for Apple, shareholders have hopes on a quick development in the Apple modem camp.
Unfortunately it might be that Apple isn't as far into development as some might have thought. Report by The Information suggests, that they are still ways off from inserting their own modem inside iPhone.
Many of the people that have managed to get their hands on the first proper foldable phones have been convinced that it is indeed the future.
While things like Galaxy Fold aren't even quite ready for mass scale, they bring something completely new to the table that is likely to revitalize the entire smartphone market.
It seems entirely possible that similar thing could happen to laptops too. One of the companies that is leading the strike is Lenovo.
The world's leading laptop manufacturer has produced a prototype that offers a foldable display in a traditional clamshell laptop design.
One could easily argue that is just a folding tablet, especially since it comes with a separate keyboard and supports a Wacom stylus, but the innards are ThinkPad certified PC stuff.
Whatever it is, it's an interesting device. Here's The Verge's hands-on with the Lenovo folding PC.
Processors released after 2011 have been found to have a new vulnerability called ZombieLoad, TechCrunch reports. Just like the previously mentioned vulnerabilities from last year, ZombieLoad abuses a common technology in modern processors called speculative execution.
As the name suggests, the processor speculates on what type of task might need handling next, and does the calculations to be either used or discarded. A few bugs associated with this feature allows ZombieLoad to capture data straight from the processor.
Essentially, ZombieLoad floods the processor with data which makes the CPU turn to its microcode in order to not crash. According to Intel, the exploit uses four different bugs to deliver the attack. One of these bugs allows full access to data processed by the microcode, even though usually it is unavailable to normal applications.
The Chinese company OnePlus is primarily known of course for its flagship killing smartphones, but the company has been also developing headphones, or earbuds to be more exact, for a few years.
After couple iterations of wired buds, the company reveled last year their first wireless offering, the Bullets Wireless. Yesterday they announced that there's an upgraded version.
New Bullets Wireless 2 headphones offer an updated design, improved charging, and better sound quality.
The design still features the neck strap with controls, but the plastic buds have been upgraded to sturdier metal design. They still have the Magnetic Control feature which allows pausing and resuming music by attaching or detaching the buds using magnets.
Bullets Wireless 2 also now have the same Warp Charge technology from freshly announced OnePlus 7 Pro, which allows 10 hour charge with just 10 minutes of charging.
When it comes to sound, OnePlus says that a trio of drivers – two Knowles balanced armature drivers for high frequencies and one dynamic Goerlek driver for lower frequencies &ndahs; provide an improved sound quality.
Here we review Roomba's most affordable robot vacuum cleaner, Roomba 605, which is also sold as Roomba 606 and Roomba 620. The only difference reflected by the various model numbers is the color of the unit; the hardware is exactly the same otherwise.
The model we are reviewing is the Roomba 606, which is black. Roomba 605 comes in white.
Roomba 605 is the cheapest model available (from the current line) from the American firm iRobot, which has made a wide range of robot vacuum cleaners for twenty years.
For our test, we let the Roomba 606 loose in a 70m2 (753.4ft2) apartment as its only floor cleaning tool for a couple of months. This period of time gives us a good indication of how tidy this cleaner can keep a typical apartment long-term.
Additionally, we tested the vacuum cleaner for a few week at another location that provided a myriad of capets and other obstacles for it to manouver around.
Roomba 605 / Roomba 606 - Let's examine the device!
The Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus has today released their newest lineup of smartphones. The company's first series of smartphones includes the regular OnePlus 7, a larger and better OnePlus 7 Pro, and their first 5G smartphone, OnePlus 7 Pro 5G.
All OnePlus 7 models include the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 system-on-a-chip, from six up to 12 gigabytes of RAM, new faster UFS 3.0 storage (128/256GB), Dolby Atmos stereo speakers, in-screen fingerprint sensor, improved camera with UltraShot feature, and improved fast charge with Warp Charge.
The regular OnePlus 7 (pictured above) features a double camera with a 48 MP Sony IMX586 -sensor and a secondary 5 MP camera. The camera is optically and electronically stabilized and features a f/1.7. However, the regular model won't be officially available in the United States.
With the OnePlus 7 Pro (pictured below) you'll instead get a triple camera that got the second best result on DxOMark with a score of 111. In addition to the 48 MP sensor you'll get a 16 MP wide angle camera and a 8 MP telephoto camera with 3x zoom.
The display of Pro is larger, sharper and smoother. The 6.67-inch and QHD resolution AMOLED diplay is the first OnePlus display to feature 90hz refresh rate.
Most of the computer fans know the legendary Commodore 54. Even those of you who are too young to personally experience machine might have heard of the computer. But very few have ever heard about Commodore 65, C=64's planned successor.
Commodore, noticing that during the era of 16-bit computers, their old cashcow, Commodore 64 was quickly losing its sales, set up a team to milk the last pennies out of the decade-old Commodore 64. They built a backwards compatible Commodore 65 that added features similar to Commodore's other computer line, Amiga.
C=65 had a built in 3.5" disk drive, high-resolution graphics and CPU at 3.54MHz (C=64 ran at 1MHz) with 128kB of memory (expandable to 1MB) - and most importantly, a C=64 mode, allowing the computer to run C=64's massive software and game selection. Commodore 65 never made it to the market and only appx. 50 - 200 prototypes were ever built.
After Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, its assets were liquidated and the prototypes were sold all across the world.
Since those days, the Commodore 65 has begun one of the most sought-after collectibles in the computing history and some of those few prototypes tend to appear in various online markets for sale. We reported of one such incident 2 years ago when an "almost complete" Commodore 65 was on sale at eBay.
Google has over a billion users around the world every month, and their reach is increasing with every Android phone sold, every search made, and every Android app launched.
One of the ways Google takes advantage of their massive reach is to follow their users, and what they do, to gain valuable data. Now that they are in the pockets of a billion users, they can also literally follow where people around.
Fortunately there's a fairly easy way to block Google from tracking your movements via your devices and apps. First head to Activity controls.
If the direct link doesn't work, you'll have to head to Google's Privacy Checkup page.
After pressing Start Now, you'll be presented with options to Personalize your Google experience. The second option should be Location History, under which you can find a link to Manage Location History. Press the link.
This will open the map view of your locations over time. Below it you'll find another link to Manage Location History, press the link. Now you should be in the Activity controls page.
Samsung's first ever folding smartphone was unveiled in San Fransico's Unpacked 2019 earlier this years, and the company promised a fairly rapid launch schedule.
They of course wanted to be the first to the market, as Huawei was looming in the background with their own upcoming foldable phone. Samsung got the devices in reviewers hands pre-launch, and everything seemed good – for a day or two.
The issues with the display were quickly uncovered, and while at first Samsung kinda brushed them off, soon they had to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, called back all devices, and delayed the original launch that was planned for April 26.
Samsung has already polled the preorderers whether they would still be interested in the device, and you could cancel the order if that wasn't the case. Samsung also said that the order would be automatically cancelled if they couldn't deliver on it by the end of May.
Well, we aren't quite at the end of May yet, but people have been questioning for a reason whether Samsung will be able to fix the phone in less than a month, or if even they know when this device is slated for a re-launch.
Google has some massive services that reach hundreds of millions or even billions of people. Whether it is the all-encompassing search or Gmail, millions upon millions of people around the world use them.
Where the Mountain View, CA, company hasn't managed to succeed yet? Paid entertainment.
Bloomberg reports that Google's and YouTube's paid music streaming services, Google Play Music and YouTube Music, have only 15 million subscribers, combined.
YouTube, or Google as a whole, hasn't revealed their subscription figures officially, so this might be a little off. However, it doesn't seem that Google is even in the same ballpark with the market leaders.
Microsoft and Sony have been fighting in the console wars for nearly 20 years ever after the introduction of the original Xbox.
Yesterday Asus, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer mostly known for computers, announced their latest flagship smartphone. The company's new ZenFone 6 is mostly just a regular 2019 notch-less smartphone, but there is one very unique feature that distinguishes it from the rest.
One of the bigger tech patent disputes in recent years was the one between Apple and semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm. After problems with their modem partner Intel, Apple 
