Yesterday, AMD and Nvidia took to the CES virtual stage to announce their respective updates. AMD headlined with a new series of CPUs, the 7nm Ryzen 5000 series, that is going to be a really compelling gaming laptop option. Nvidia headlined with new graphics for laptops, bringing some performance that was previously exclusive to desktop machines.
With all the parts from AMD, Nvidia, and Intel out, the laptops made up of those parts were free to be announced. And so we had a very, very large pile of gaming laptops to sift through from Asus, Razer, Acer, Lenovo, Gigabyte, Dell, and Origin.
They’re all linked below and taken in sum I am optimistic that it is going to be a very good year for gaming laptops. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you won’t still notice some graphical compromises — of course desktops will be better — but the ones that sting the most could be smoothed over. Getting legitimately high frame rates at 1440p with respectable graphics settings is more than I honestly expected out of 2021. (Assuming, of course, that any of these computers live up to those claims in actual use.)
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Those laptops and the components that power them were the biggest real news yesterday, but CES is just as much about concepts. Specifically concept gadgets that are almost guaranteed to never land on store shelves.
I will admit, when I first saw that Razer had a concept mask with gamer-themed color lights I was not happy. My fear for this entire CES has been that a major company would try to take advantage of the pandemic to gather attention to itself with a gadget that isn’t scientifically sound. CES is always awash in dubious health tech, but the risk of people believing in bad health tech seems even higher this year.
But then, well, it seems like Razer has thoughtfully considered a lot of the very real problems masks cause and tried to account for them. It looks like one of those actually-unsafe vented masks, but those vents have filters the company wants to make N95-grade. It’s clear, so people can read your lips. It will have some sort of audio system (with help from THX) that will solve for the muffled voices masks can cause. It should seal tightly against your nose to help with fogging glasses.
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All that sounds neat — neater than RGB lights anyway. But neat does not equal real, and this is very much like a concept car to my mind. In the press release, Razer’s language not only skirts the issue of a price and release date, it also skirts the issue of releasing a mask with this exact design at all:
The smart mask concept will continue to be optimized through rigorous testing and user feedback to ensure safety compliance and maximum comfort and usability. Design improvements will also be ongoing to support the evolving user needs and to deliver value without compromising functionality and performance. Project Hazel will be foundational to Razer’s ongoing support and commitment to public health and safety within the community.
The company told The Verge that it is “working with a team of medical experts and scientists,” but if Razer decides to actually produce and sell this mask, I expect — and you should demand — that it seek the “necessary approvals and certifications from the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or Occupational Safety and Health Administration.”
As a rule, I am more generous than most when I see a CES concept because I know what they really are: fantasies with a purpose. Some of that purpose is absolutely marketing, but some of it is to show us ideas for products that are more imaginative or better than what’s available today.
Motives — especially when it comes to corporate beneficence— don’t need to be and rarely are pure. Just because Razer grabbed our attention with RGB lights doesn’t undo the good of converting a production line to making masks and then donating a million of them to healthcare workers.
Of course, no amount of engineering can solve the biggest mask problem in the US: too many people are refusing to wear them. Please: wear a mask.
AMD
┏ AMD’s 7nm Ryzen 5000 mobile processors promise 2021’s best gaming notebooks. AMD is building on the gains it made last year and appears to be pushing to establish itself as a CPU fixture in the laptop market instead of a somewhat rare alternative. Though as my colleague Monica Chin points out to me, that rarity was due in part to the fact that models with AMD chips seemed to be in short supply.
I think the company has a very good chance of doing just that. I will leave a full-on “AMD vs. Intel” analysis for somebody else (or at least wait for real-world results once laptops start shipping), but it doesn’t take a genius to see that AMD is not to be dismissed.
In other words: 2021 could be the year we stop thinking about Ryzen as an alternative to Intel, but instead just a straight up competitor again. Intel could be at risk of no longer being the “default” to a lot of potential customers. That’s not to dismiss Intel entirely, as Chin notes we still need to see what laptops with Tiger Lake H chips are like.
AMD has announced its new Ryzen 5000 mobile CPUs. Most (but not all) of them are based on the company’s 7nm “Zen 3” architecture. AMD CEO Lisa Su called the series “the most powerful PC processors ever built.” … The big question will be how these processors compare to Intel’s new Tiger Lake H systems — the company announced those chips yesterday at its CES 2021 keynote. All three of those chips (including two Core i7s and one Core i5) max out at 35W and have just four cores and eight threads — half the count of Ryzen’s top offerings. However, Intel says there’s an eight-core processor with speeds up to 5GHz coming “later this quarter.” That’s likely what AMD has to watch out for.
RDNA 2 is AMD’s new graphics chip architecture and the foundation of the custom chipsets in Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series S / X, and now it’s coming to laptops. … The Radeon RX 6000 series of GPUs were the first to feature AMD’s new RDNA 2 architecture when they were unveiled in October of last year, but those were top-of-the-line desktop graphics cards designed to go head-to-head with Nvidia’s 3000 series line. … Today at CES, AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company is “on track to launch the first notebooks with RDNA 2 in the first half of the year with our partners,”
┏ Nvidia is bringing its RTX 3080 to laptops on January 26th. Nvidia showed a demo of a Razer Blade 15 running a full three-screen rig with Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is a very good sign that many of the planned 70+ laptops with these GPUs will have the goods.
Less than six months after introducing its RTX 3000 series GPUs for desktop PCs, Nvidia is bringing the RTX 3060, RTX 3070, and RTX 3080 to gaming laptops. Nvidia is promising big energy efficiency gains here, thanks to its new Ampere architecture, alongside the obvious performance improvements over the previous RTX 2000 series laptops.
Until recently, 1080p and 4K were the only options for displays on gaming laptops, despite 1440p being an increasingly popular choice among PC gamers looking for a new standalone monitor. … The higher-end Blade laptops will be equipped with Nvidia’s new RTX 3000-series graphics chips, and so should have an easy time running most games on a 1440p high refresh rate display. The Blade 15 Advanced (Razer’s name for the more powerful variant) with the RTX 3070 and a QHD screen with G-Sync will cost $2,499.
Acer is ditching the garish, colorful lights and logos on the Predator Triton 300 for a more restrained — dare I say, professional — all-metal design that wouldn’t be out of place in an office or a classroom, while still offering top-notch gaming hardware on the inside.
The ThinkBook Plus debuted at last year’s CES, standing out as a laptop with an E Ink display built into the lid that allowed users to take notes, read ebooks, and display things like calendar information. … The new model improves on that, though, with a 12-inch, 2560 x 1600 E Ink panel that supports multitouch and works with the pop-out stylus, creating what should be a more enjoyable E Ink experience.
┏ Asus ROG’s 2021 lineup includes its first convertible gaming laptop (ish). This is a weird one. Gaming laptops are usually neither convertible not 13 inches. Then there’s the GPU situation, which also involves some …let’s call them choices. However, if you want a gaming laptop that can do double or triple duty for other laptop things, it may be worth understanding those choices.
The refreshed Bolt will feature a sportier look, new seats, adaptive cruise control, and a few other minor changes. GM bumped up the range in this past year’s version of the Bolt, from 238 miles to 259 miles, but no further increase is expected in the refresh. … The new Bolts can’t come quick enough, given the controversy surrounding the current versions of the EV. GM was recently slapped with a class action lawsuit alleging that the Chevy Bolt’s battery is “prone to burst into flames.” The lawsuit comes on the heels of GM announcing that it was recalling 68,000 Bolts over a malfunctioning battery.
The automaker showed off a luxury egg-shaped autonomous vehicle and a single-seater electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft during its keynote address on Tuesday. Both vehicles are part of Cadillac’s Halo Portfolio and probably won’t be going into production anytime soon — or at all. … Still, the concepts are meant to show off Cadillac’s (and, by extension, GM’s) design intentions for future products, as well as serving as an extravagant symbol of the brand’s manufacturing skills.
LONDON (AP) — Most people have accumulated a pile of data — selfies, emails, videos and more — on their social media and digital accounts over their lifetimes. What happens to it when we die?
It’s wise to draft a will spelling out who inherits your physical assets after you’re gone, but don’t forget to take care of your digital estate too. Friends and family might treasure files and posts you’ve left behind, but they could get lost in digital purgatory after you pass away unless you take some simple steps.
Here’s how you can prepare your digital life for your survivors:
Apple
The iPhone maker lets you nominate a “ legacy contact ” who can access your Apple account’s data after you die. The company says it’s a secure way to give trusted people access to photos, files and messages. To set it up you’ll need an Apple device with a fairly recent operating system — iPhones and iPads need iOS or iPadOS 15.2 and MacBooks needs macOS Monterey 12.1.
For iPhones, go to settings, tap Sign-in & Security and then Legacy Contact. You can name one or more people, and they don’t need an Apple ID or device.
You’ll have to share an access key with your contact. It can be a digital version sent electronically, or you can print a copy or save it as a screenshot or PDF.
Take note that there are some types of files you won’t be able to pass on — including digital rights-protected music, movies and passwords stored in Apple’s password manager. Legacy contacts can only access a deceased user’s account for three years before Apple deletes the account.
Google
Google takes a different approach with its Inactive Account Manager, which allows you to share your data with someone if it notices that you’ve stopped using your account.
When setting it up, you need to decide how long Google should wait — from three to 18 months — before considering your account inactive. Once that time is up, Google can notify up to 10 people.
You can write a message informing them you’ve stopped using the account, and, optionally, include a link to download your data. You can choose what types of data they can access — including emails, photos, calendar entries and YouTube videos.
There’s also an option to automatically delete your account after three months of inactivity, so your contacts will have to download any data before that deadline.
Facebook and Instagram
Some social media platforms can preserve accounts for people who have died so that friends and family can honor their memories.
When users of Facebook or Instagram die, parent company Meta says it can memorialize the account if it gets a “valid request” from a friend or family member. Requests can be submitted through an online form.
The social media company strongly recommends Facebook users add a legacy contact to look after their memorial accounts. Legacy contacts can do things like respond to new friend requests and update pinned posts, but they can’t read private messages or remove or alter previous posts. You can only choose one person, who also has to have a Facebook account.
You can also ask Facebook or Instagram to delete a deceased user’s account if you’re a close family member or an executor. You’ll need to send in documents like a death certificate.
TikTok
The video-sharing platform says that if a user has died, people can submit a request to memorialize the account through the settings menu. Go to the Report a Problem section, then Account and profile, then Manage account, where you can report a deceased user.
Once an account has been memorialized, it will be labeled “Remembering.” No one will be able to log into the account, which prevents anyone from editing the profile or using the account to post new content or send messages.
X
It’s not possible to nominate a legacy contact on Elon Musk’s social media site. But family members or an authorized person can submit a request to deactivate a deceased user’s account.
Passwords
Besides the major online services, you’ll probably have dozens if not hundreds of other digital accounts that your survivors might need to access. You could just write all your login credentials down in a notebook and put it somewhere safe. But making a physical copy presents its own vulnerabilities. What if you lose track of it? What if someone finds it?
Instead, consider a password manager that has an emergency access feature. Password managers are digital vaults that you can use to store all your credentials. Some, like Keeper,Bitwarden and NordPass, allow users to nominate one or more trusted contacts who can access their keys in case of an emergency such as a death.
But there are a few catches: Those contacts also need to use the same password manager and you might have to pay for the service.
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LONDON (AP) — Britain’s competition watchdog said Thursday it’s opening a formal investigation into Google’s partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it has “sufficient information” to launch an initial probe after it sought input earlier this year on whether the deal would stifle competition.
The CMA has until Dec. 19 to decide whether to approve the deal or escalate its investigation.
“Google is committed to building the most open and innovative AI ecosystem in the world,” the company said. “Anthropic is free to use multiple cloud providers and does, and we don’t demand exclusive tech rights.”
San Francisco-based Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who previously worked at ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The company has focused on increasing the safety and reliability of AI models. Google reportedly agreed last year to make a multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic, which has a popular chatbot named Claude.
Anthropic said it’s cooperating with the regulator and will provide “the complete picture about Google’s investment and our commercial collaboration.”
“We are an independent company and none of our strategic partnerships or investor relationships diminish the independence of our corporate governance or our freedom to partner with others,” it said in a statement.
The U.K. regulator has been scrutinizing a raft of AI deals as investment money floods into the industry to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom. Last month it cleared Anthropic’s $4 billion deal with Amazon and it has also signed off on Microsoft’s deals with two other AI startups, Inflection and Mistral.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The tiny Mideast nation of Kuwait has banned the release of the video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6,” which features the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and is set in part in the 1990s Gulf War.
The video game, a first-person shooter, follows CIA operators fighting at times in the United States and also in the Middle East. Game-play trailers for the game show burning oilfields, a painful reminder for Kuwaitis who saw Iraqis set fire to the fields, causing vast ecological and economic damage. Iraqi troops damaged or set fire to over 700 wells.
There also are images of Saddam and Iraq’s old three-star flag in the footage released by developers ahead of the game’s launch. The game’s multiplayer section, a popular feature of the series, includes what appears to be a desert shootout in Kuwait called Scud after the Soviet missiles Saddam fired in the war. Another is called Babylon, after the ancient city in Iraq.
Activision acknowledged in a statement that the game “has not been approved for release in Kuwait,” but did not elaborate.
“All pre-orders in Kuwait will be cancelled and refunded to the original point of purchase,” the company said. “We remain hopeful that local authorities will reconsider, and allow players in Kuwait to enjoy this all-new experience in the Black Ops series.”
Kuwait’s Media Ministry did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press over the decision.
“Call of Duty,” which first began in 2003 as a first-person shooter set in World War II, has expanded into an empire worth billions of dollars now owned by Microsoft. But it also has been controversial as its gameplay entered the realm of geopolitics. China and Russia both banned chapters in the franchise. In 2009, an entry in the gaming franchise allowed players to take part in a militant attack at a Russian airport, killing civilians.
But there have been other games recently that won praise for their handling of the Mideast. Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed: Mirage” published last year won praise for its portrayal of Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age in the 9th century.
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