2016's $400 GPU vs. 2019's $400 GPUs

Something we've been hearing a lot this year is that there's a lack of development and progress on the PC gaming/hardware front. In an effort to determine if that's true, we'll test 2016's prime $400 GPU, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 against 2019's $400 GPU players, the RTX 2060 S … | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

AMD is dominating Intel in Amazon's best-selling CPUs list

In Amazon’s US chart of its most popular processors, AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700X takes the top position. The 8-core/16-thread processor is down to just $159 for Black Friday, which works out at just under $20 per core. It’s followed by… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Samsung is reportedly making 14nm CPUs for Intel

Intel may have taken its title back from Samsung as the world's largest chip maker this year, but that doesn't make things any easier for the company, especially now that AMD is on steroids and has managed to deliver 7nm… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

HPE says its SSDs will fail at 32,768 hours unless patched

Hewlett Packard Enterprise said that certain SAS solid state drives (full list here) would fail once they hit their 32,768th hour of operation—that's 3 years, 270 days, and 8 hours—unless their firmware is upgraded to version HPD8. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Farmers fit cows with VR headsets to improve their mood, boost milk production

The virtual reality industry has grown considerably since the first full-sized headsets hit the market several years ago, but not just in the realm of gaming. VR is being used in the medical field, in the real estate industry, and… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

A man who claims to have created the first pop-up ad wants to apologize

If you have ever wondered who to blame for why pop-up ads ever existed, it was apparently a programmer called Ethan Zuckerman. And now he wants to say "sorry. Our intentions were good."  | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Russia passes law that bans the sale of devices without Russian-made software

Russia's lower house of parliament has passed new legislation that will supposedly promote local technology innovations and has critics worried that big tech companies will shut down their business in the country as a result. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Facebook Is Moving to Microsoft's Visual Studio Code for Internal Development

Facebook has a long history of partnering with Microsoft on different projects, such as a recent one focused on deepfake detection algorithms that could help big social platforms prepare for a world where everyone with a computer and internet access… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

OpenAI publishes text-generation tool that can write believable fake news

Back in February, OpenAI revealed an artificial intelligence dubbed GPT-2 that's capable of writing convincing fake news using snippets as a starting point. The organization saw the high potential for misuse, so it decided to do a staged release that… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Microsoft successfully archives 'Superman' movie on a piece of glass

A piece of silica glass measuring 7.5 cm x 7.5 cm x 2 mm was able to hold the entire Superman (1978) movie in the shape of three-dimensional nanoscale gratings and deformations as part of Project Silica led by Microsoft… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

World's largest storage battery will replace gas peaker plants in New York

A proposal (pdf) recently approved by the state's Public Service Commission (PSC) at Ravenswood's generating station in Long Island will see the construction of the world's largest battery storage facility that will help to "offset dirtier resources and enhance New… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

China establishes $29B fund to wean itself off of US semiconductors

China has established a new state-backed semiconductor fund, with the intent of advancing its domestic semiconductor initiatives and reducing its reliance on US technology. The fund currently sits at 204 billion yuan ($28.9 billion) and is the second of its… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

AMD Ryzen CPUs reportedly getting new microcode in November

According to MSI Marketing Director Eric van Beurden, AMD will be releasing a new microcode next month that will have more than 100 improvements for Ryzen CPUs. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

These are the most dangerous celebrities to search for online

McAfee’s annual list, which is now in its thirteenth year, ranks the celebrities who generate the results that could potentially expose fans to malicious websites and viruses. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Micron's first 3D XPoint drive breaks 9 GB/s read and write speeds

“Micron’s innovative X100 product brings the disruptive potential of 3D XPoint technology to the data center, driving breakthrough performance improvements for applications and enabling entirely new use cases,” said Micron Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer Sumit … | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

A year later, Intel's CPU shortage is expected to last another quarter or two

Last April, Intel warned that its CPU shortage -- which kicked off in August 2018 -- would persist until Q3, with subsequent reports signaling that the 14nm CPU drought could ease up by June. Fast forward to Q4, over a… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Hobbyists can plant hidden spy chips on motherboards for $200

Citing six senior national security officials and several higher-ups within Apple and Amazon, Bloomberg claimed that the manufacturing facilities constructing Supermicro motherboards had been infiltrated by a branch of China’s People’s Liberation Army. The PLA was reportedly addi … | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Chrome now uses AI to describe images for users with vision impairment

Google is looking to improve the web-browsing experience for those with vision conditions by introducing a feature into its Chrome browser that uses machine learning to recognize and describe images. The image description will be generated automatically using the same… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Google continues to make donations to anti-science groups

A new report from The Guardian outlines Google's "substantial contributions to some of the most notorious climate deniers in Washington despite its insistence that it supports political action on the climate crisis." The full list of groups that receive substantial… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Blind man sues Domino's Pizza over website accessibility

Although Domino's likes to embrace technology for better customer experiences, the pizza chain's website recently became the subject of a lawsuit when it was found to be inaccessible for the disabled. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Astronauts successfully grow meat in space for the first time

Aleph Farms announced this week that it has taken "one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind" as it successfully grew meat for the first time on the International Space Station, in collaboration with multiple international companies. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

FreShip wins IBM Hackathon on food wastage, and it's a good one

FreShip aims to cut food waste by rerouting food from one source to another, based on how fresh the food is, as determined by a computer vision algorithm. It's based on the idea that different buyers will have different requirements… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Intel Lakefield CPU using 3D Foveros possibly spotted in 3DMark database

Reputed hardware leaker APISAK discovered an interesting entry in the 3DMark database over the weekend, one that points to Intel's Lakefield processors boasting the chipmaker's 3D Foveros chip stacking technology. APISAK secured a screenshot of the entry, in addition to… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Intel's 10th-gen 18-core beats Core i9-9980XE by 11%, Ryzen remains faster

Before we tread further into the forest of CPU stats and figures, let me remind you that public Geekbench entries are very limited indicators. Geekbench results overestimate Ryzen CPUs for gaming but underestimates them slightly for video exporting, for example.… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Intel Core i9-9900K and Core i7-9700K Review

Today we can finally show you how Intel's new octa-core 9th-gen processors perform. On hand for testing we have the Core i9-9900K, an 8 core/16 thread processor that operates at 3.6 GHz, boost as high as 4.7 GHz on all cores with a max single core frequency of 5 GHz. We also have … | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Ryzen 9 3900X shortages see chips appear on eBay with inflated prices

We praised the 12-core, 24-thread Ryzen 9 3900X in our review, giving the $499 CPU a score of 90. But its popularity has led to shortages from virtually every retailer— Amazon, Best Buy, Fry’s Electronics, and Newegg are all sold… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Pixxl Cube is a six-sided display powered by Raspberry Pi

The Pixxl Cube was actually designed to be a multifunctional demo display. Each 32x32 pixel surface is capable of creating anything from words to scenes. So it could be set in a shop window to advertise the latest products, or… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

More than 25M Android devices infected with 'Agent Smith' malware

According to a press release from security firm Check Point, once Agent Smith is active on the device, the malware looks for common apps and replaces them with malicious versions. The altered apps show fraudulent ads for financial gain. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Godlua, the first known malware that leverages DNS over HTTPS

DNS over HTTPS has been gaining momentum. Last October, the Internet Engineering Task Force formally adopted DoH, published as RCF 8484, and while the concept itself isn't new, the concept of malware strains exploiting it is. In their report, Netlab… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

The complete list of alternatives to all Google products

With growing concerns over online privacy and securing personal data, more people than ever are considering alternatives to Google products. After all, Google’s business model essentially revolves around data collection and advertisements, both of which infringe on your privacy. … | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Netflix will count pennies for its future big-budget productions

A recent account by The Information tells of Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos's meeting with several senior and middle-ranking film and TV executives in which they were told to be more careful in spending money for future productions, reports Engadget. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Microsoft data analysis correlates overcrowded meetings with unhappy employees

An article in the New York Times’ Upshot section examines what happened. It explains that Microsoft uses surveys to monitor employees’ attitudes, and while those working on Xbox and Surface products scored above average in most areas, they reported being… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Flaws in LTE can allow hackers to easily spoof presidential alerts – TechSpot

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have recently published a paper which details the flaws in 4G LTE networks that can allow sending of spoofed alerts via the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system, reports TechCrunch. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Intel will cut desktop CPU prices by 10-15% as Ryzen 3000 draws near

The report comes from DigiTimes, citing sources from motherboard makers. It claims Intel has already notified its downstream PC and motherboard partners about the processor price drops, which could see anything from $25 to $75 knocked off the CPUs. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Microsoft warns that Windows 10 update will break some Bluetooth devices

First reported by WindowsLatest, Microsoft said its new security update (CVE-2019-2102) addresses a vulnerability by intentionally preventing connections between the OS and “unsecure” Bluetooth devices. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

UC Berkeley is teaching robots to ride Hovershoes

If you thought the capabilities of bipedal robots from companies like Boston Dynamics were terrifying, just wait until you get a load of what the Hybrid Robotics lab at UC Berkeley is up to. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Microsoft and Oracle link their cloud services together

Microsoft and Oracle on Wednesday announced a partnership in which the two will directly link their cloud services together, allowing customers to tap into the best features of Azure and Oracle Cloud. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

World's largest offshore wind farm goes online in the UK

The largest offshore wind farm in the world is now online and generating power. The Hornsea One wind farm, located roughly 75 miles off the east coast of Grimsby in the North Sea, isn’t yet running at full capacity as… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

How Limited Is Intel Without Hyper-Threading?

Today we're exploring the impact disabling Hyper-Threading has on Intel processors. We've done this in the past and it's an interesting test, however there are new incentives to check this out due to the newly discovered side-channel vulnerabilities affecting Intel processors and … | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Guide to HEVC/H.265 Encoding and Playback

HEVC's main advantage over H.264 is that it offers roughly double the compression ratio for the same quality. This means that a video file encoded with HEVC can occupy half the space of its H.264 equivalent with no noticeable change in quality, or the same amount of space with im … | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 4 years ago

Nvidia will stop producing non-A die variants of Turing for RTX 2080 and 2070

Igor Wallossek with Tom's Hardware Germany has divulged that Nvidia will stop binning the Turing A-dies and also cease production on non-A dies that are used on RTX 2080 and 2070 cards. What this means is that going forward, Nvidia… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 5 years ago

It looks like rounded corners are coming back to Windows – TechSpot

Zac Bowden, senior editor at Windows Central, tweeted out a screenshot showing an early version of the redesigned UI, complete with curvy corners, being tested in the Windows 10 20H1 preview build. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 5 years ago

Intel is planning an $8B new manufacturing facility in Ireland

Intel has unveiled new plans to expand a previously planned 90,000m2 manufacturing plant in Co Kildare, Ireland by another 110,000m2 with a budget of $8 billion. It’ll take four years and 3,000 construction workers to build and will employ 1,600 staff. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 5 years ago

Google accused of sabotaging Firefox, again

Jonathan Nightingale, former General Manager and Vice President of the Firefox group at Mozilla, revealed all on Twitter over the weekend. He writes that Google was the company’s biggest partner during his eight years at Mozilla. “Our revenue share deal… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 5 years ago

DEA demanded a user's login details from LastPass

A recent report by Forbes highlights a case in which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) demanded that LogMeIn, owner of LastPass, hand over logins, physical IP addresses, and communications of customer Stephan Caamano, who is charged with trafficking a counterfeit… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 5 years ago

World's largest plane completes a successful first flight

The Stratolaunch is 385 ft (117m) wide, 238 ft (73m) long and 50 ft (15m) tall. It weighs 500,000 pounds (250 tons) empty, but full of fuel and with a rocket payload, it can weigh as much as 1,300,000 pounds… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 5 years ago

Blizzard is reportedly gathering anonymized employee pregnancy tracking data

As reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday, Activision Blizzard has been working with family planning and wellness app maker Ovia to give their female employees access to the company's pregnancy tracking services. | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 5 years ago

PayPal's new refund policy has sellers up in arms – TechSpot

PayPal has been the go-to payment platform for many small vendors since it was popularized on eBay and other online marketplaces. Currently, when someone sells goods or services, they are charged a flat transaction fee, plus a percentage-based commission on… | Continue reading


@techspot.com | 5 years ago