OM Digital Solutions has unveiled the Micro Four Thirds OM-1, its first mirrorless camera since purchasing Olympus. It packs a new sensor and technology that gives it a big leap in performance over the last flagship Olympus models and could be the last Olympus-branded model you'll see. 

Marking the 50th anniversary of the original OM film SLR, the OM-1 offers some big improvements over the E-M1 Mark III. That starts with the stacked, backside illuminate 20.4-megapixel Live MOS sensor with a "quad pixel" AF arrangement using four photodiodes per pixel. With the higher-speed readout and updated TruePic X processor, it can shoot RAW photos at speeds of up to 50 fps in electronic shutter mode with phase-detect autofocus enabled (with supported PRO series lenses), or 120 fps with AF locked. 

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With the stacked design, you'll also see far less rolling shutter when shooting in electronic mode. That's a good thing, as speeds go down considerably to 10 fps with the mechanical shutter. Unfortunately, you can only capture up to 139 RAW images at a time with the mechanical shutter, or just 96 RAW images at 50 fps — less than 2 seconds of shooting. Those speeds are no doubt limited by OM's choice to use dual SD UHS-II card slots, rather than something faster like CFexpress. 

Though the OM-1 is mainly aimed at wildlife photographers, it can handle more detailed images as well thanks to the High Res Shot mode. That allows you to capture 50-megapixel images handheld in just five seconds, or 80-megapixel images on a tripod. Other modes include live ND to simulate long exposures, HDR, and focus stacking, which delivers an image where everything is in focus.

OLYMPUS CORP.

The AF is considerably improved in terms of AI smarts, as well. OM says that its latest face and eye-detect algorithms are much more responsive, and it now detects cars, airplane and trains on top of people, birds and animals. It also has a new subject tracking feature that's completely separate from face and eye detection. 

The OM-1 has big improvements in terms of video, as well. You can now shoot 4K (UHD or DCI) at up to 60 fps, in either 8-bit H.264 or 10-bit H.265 modes. The latter works either in OM-Log mode for improved dynamic range, or HLG mode for HDR work. Better still, the OM-1 can output 12-bit Apple ProRes RAW video at up to 60 fps to an Atomos Ninja V or Ninja V+ external recorder, supposedly without any subsampling (pixel binning). 

OM Digital Systems

Other feature include 8 stops of in-body image stabilization with supported lenses (7 stops without), high-end build quality with an outstanding IP53 camera rating against dust, water, and freezing conditions, a redesigned menu system, 5.76 million dot 120 HZ electronic viewfinder and battery that delivers 520 shots on a charge (CIPA rated) and 90 minutes of video recording. It has a fully articulating 1.62 million dot rear display that should make this camera ideal for vlogging.  

The OM-1 looks to be a strong rival to Panasonic's GH5-II Micro Four Thirds camera, offering faster shooting speeds and superior phase-detect autofocus, while matching up well in terms of video. It remains to be seen how it will stack up against the upcoming Panasonic GH6, however, which is set to be launched on February 21st at 8PM ET. 

The OM Digital's OM-1 is now available on pre-order for $2,200, with delivery set for early March. Olympus also unveiled a pair of new lenses, the M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro II ($1,000) and the M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/4 PRO ($900). 

Uber users will eventually be able to pay for rides using cryptocurrency, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told Bloomberg. However, the company is essentially taking the same tack as Tesla by waiting for changes that will lower transaction fees and make it more environmentally friendly. 

"Is Uber going to accept crypto in the future? Absolutely, at some point," Khosrowshahi said. "As the exchange mechanism becomes less expensive, becomes more environmentally friendly, I think you will see us lean into crypto a little bit more." 

If Uber does jump onto the crypto train, it would be joining a number of firms that already accept Bitcoin, most notably Microsoft, AT&T and Wikipedia. Other major companies have been more reluctant, however, as cryptocurrencies along with related products like NFTs have been under fire for using massive amounts of energy generated in part by burning fossil fuels. 

Tesla was the highest-profile company to accept Bitcoin as payment for its EVs, but it suspended the practice, saying it would only use it again "as mining transitions to more sustainable energy." However, the company recently started accepting Dogecoin payments for some of its merch like the Cyberquad for Kids, with CEO Elon Musk tweeting that it's "better suited for transactions." 

If you've been looking for wireless chargers, cables or high-speed chargers with surge protection, now is a good time to stock up. You can pick up various Anker products at Amazon with discounts up to 39 percent, including its magnetic 623 MagGo 2-in-1 Wireless Charging Station bundle, USB-C to Lightning cables and a USB-C surge protector strip with three 30-watt USB ports. 

Anker's 632 MagGo 2-in-1 Wireless Charging Station delivers 20 watts of charging power for iPhone 13/13 Pro and iPhone 12/12 Pro models, while also letting you charge up your AirPods Pro wireless earbuds. Your phone attaches to the charging base magnetically, and it can even flip up 60 degrees so you can easily see the screen. Included is a 20-watt USB-C charger and USB-C to USB-C charging cable, all for $56 or 30 percent off, in powder blue only. 

If you're tired of losing iPhone charging cables and just want to get a bunch of them, Anker's USB-C to Lightning cable is available in a five-pack for $40, or 39 percent off the regular $66 price. For that, you get three 3-foot cables and two 6-footers, each compatible with USB-C chargers up to 87 watts. They also allow you to connect your iPhone to a Mac for seamless sync and charging. 

Finally, take a look at Anker's USB-C surge protector power strip on sale for $30, or 36 percent off. It comes with six AC outlets and three USB charging ports, including a dedicated USB-C Power Delivery (PD) port with up to 30 watts of power. It offers 1,280 joules of overload protection, ensuring that random power surges won't bork your gear. You'll also find other Anker deals here for PD and wireless chargers, battery banks and more, while the sale lasts. 

Dell's Alienware monitor that uses Samsung's quantum dot OLED (QD-OLED) tech will arrive this spring for a surprisingly reasonable $1,299, the company announced via a tweet. Dell first unveiled the curved, 34-inch gaming display at CES promising the ultra-high contrast of OLED displays with improved brightness, color range and uniformity. 

That price might not seem cheap, but other OLED monitors can cost far more. LG's 32-inch UltraFine OLED model costs $3,999, and even its 27-inch UltraFine model is $2,999. 

The Alienware model has specs more designed for gamers than content creators, though, with 3,440 x 1,440 of resolution, a 175 Hz refresh rate, 99.3 percent DCI-P3 color gamut, 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and 250 nits of brightness with 1,000 nits peak. It also offers HDR, conforming to the minimum DisplayHDR True Black 400 standard for OLED displays. 

Samsung's QD-OLED technology uses blue organic light-emitting diodes passed through quantum dots to generate red and green. That compares to standard OLED, which uses blue and yellow OLED compounds. Blue has the strongest light energy, so QD-OLED in theory offers more brightness and efficiency. Other advantages include a longer lifespan, more extreme viewing angles and less potential burn-in. 

How it performs is yet to be seen, however, as the technology is brand new. We'll learn more once the Alienware monitor comes to market this spring, and you can expect to see 55- and 65-inch QD-OLED Bravia TVs from Sony in the near future, as well. 

Amazon used Super Bowl LVI to show off the first trailer for its ambitious The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series. The 60 second teaser gives us our first look at some of the main characters, potential action and visual effects. "Haven't you ever wondered... what else is out there?" a voice intones to kick it off. 

As we learned earlier, the series is set in the Second Age of Middle Earth, thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. It will be drawing material from J.R.R.Tolkien's The Silmarilion, which details key events like Sauron's story and the forging of the rings of power.  

The new teaser briefly shows several principal characters including Elrond (Robert Aramayo), Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) and Galadriel (Morfydd Clark). Other stars include Benjamin Walker, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Owain Arthur, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Joseph Mawle, Sara Zwangobani and Megan Richards.

Amazon spent $250 on the rights to the material and reportedly spent $465 million on the first season alone, according The Hollywood Reporter. It's hard to tell from the trailer whether all that money made it to the screen, but we'll find out for sure when it arrives on Amazon Prime Video on September 2nd, 2022. The series has already been renewed for a second season. 

Google+ shuffled off this mortal coil to the great app graveyard back in 2019 — right? Well, not quite. As a reminder, its corpse was reanimated as Google Currents, designed strictly for paying G Suite customers. Now, Google Workspaces announced that it has killed that app off too, marking the final end of Google's social network or whatever G+ was, Ars Technica reported. 

Google said that the introduction of the Spaces group chat app last year negated the need for Currents, so it plans to wind it down starting in 2023. Before it does that, however, it will add new capabilities to Spaces to accommodate some of Currents' social features. "These include support for larger communities and leadership communication, investments in advanced search, tools for content moderation, and more," Google said. 

As was the case with Google+, the usage and purpose of Currents was likely unclear to many users. That issue extends to Spaces, as well, unfortunately. As Google described it last year, Spaces is an evolution of Rooms but is a part of Google Chat that's designed for group messaging, much like Slack. Got it?

What's also kind of funny is that Google recycled both the Spaces and Currents names: Currents was a news-style app that existed until 2013, and Google Spaces was a messaging app we saw for a short time in 2016. So one might say that Google+ was effectively killed twice, and Currents was also buried two times. Now, let's hope we never hear those names again. 

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has accepted Google's latest plan to replace third-party cookies from the Chrome Browser. The regulator said that Google made legally binding commitments to address its concerns that the "Privacy Sandbox" would weaken competition and harm consumers. 

Early in 2021, the CMA announced that it would investigate Google's plan to replace third party cookies with "trust tokens." It said that Google's plan "could undermine the ability of publishers to generate revenue and undermine competition in digital advertising, entrenching Google’s market power." It added that it received complaints from publishers and tech companies which alleged that Google may be "abusing its dominant position." 

While this is an important step, we are under no illusions that our work is done. We now move into a new phase where we will keep a close eye on Google as it continues to develop these proposals.

The CMA said that Google has promised to use a "more transparent process than initially proposed." It will now engage with third parties and publish test results, and must address any issues raised by the CMA or third parties. It will also not remove third-party cookies "until the CMA is satisfied that its competition concerns have been addressed." 

In its own blog post on the matter, Google said it would "design, develop and implement Privacy Sandbox with regulatory oversight and input from the CMA and the ICO." It promised to apply the commitments globally, not just in the UK, as "we believe that they provide a roadmap for how to address both privacy and competition concerns in this evolving sector," Google wrote.

Last year, Google delayed the rollout of third-party cookies until mid-2023, rather than the 2022 timeline it originally set. It admitted at the time that it "needs more time across the ecosystem to get this right." Google had originally proposed a cookie alternative called "FLoC" (Federated Learning of Cohorts) but announced last month that it was testing a replacement called Topics API. 

Best Buy restricted sales of several NVIDIA RTX 3000-series GPUs, including the RTX 3080 and 3090 models, to members of its $199 per year subscription program, PC Mag has reported. It made the graphics cards available for an "Exclusive Access Event," but anyone attempting to buy one was greeted with a popup saying that access was limited to Totaltech members. 

The retailer launched Totaltech into beta last April with the promise of perks like free shipping, unlimited Geek Squad tech support, two-year warranty protection and free installation on most products. Another listed perk was "exclusive member sale pricing" on products, but yesterday's restock was reportedly the first time it was needed to purchase GPUs, stock checker @CameranRitz told PC Mag. 

As usual, Best Buy had a limited number of cards, so even being a member was no guarantee of getting one. However, the sale reportedly last several hours before they were gone, which is longer than usual when NVIDIA cards get restocked.

Best Buy isn't the first retailer to put high-demand items behind a paywall, with Walmart and others also requiring memberships to buy certain items. However, Best Buy forces you to pay the $200 annual membership in one shot, where Walmart Plus is $15 per month and can be cancelled at any time. 

Best Buy is also the exclusive retailer of NVIDIA Founder's Edition cards in the US, which it does usually sell at MSRP. So even with the Totaltech membership, purchasing one may still be cheaper compared to the outrageous markups from scalpers or other retailers. At the same time, the membership also blocks any bots. Still, the situation upset some potential buyers. "Disappointed but not surprised," said Twitter user @Michael_gg_Inc. 

The Biden administration has announced a $5 billion plan to help states build half a million EV charging stations by 2030 — five times the current number. The goal is to allow EV owners to find a charging port anywhere within 50 miles of their location across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. "It’s going to help ensure that America leads the world on electric vehicles," Biden said. 

The idea is to build on the "Alternative Fuel Corridor" created by 40 states along interstate highways across the country. To oversee the effort, the White House recently unveiled a new agency called the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. The $5 billion will come from the new National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, which will also distribute an additional $2.5 billion in discretionary grants later on. 

A total of $615 million will be distributed this year alone, with states having until August 1 to apply. The money can only be used for battery-electric vehicles only, not hydrogen or other alternative energy vehicles. States can team up with private enterprises to build and maintain the stations. 

Americans need to know that they can purchase an electric vehicle and find convenient charging stations when they are using Interstates and other major highways.

The aim with the charging network is to reassure potential EV buyers that they'll be able to charge their cars while travelling. "Americans need to know that they can purchase an electric vehicle and find convenient charging stations when they are using Interstates and other major highways," said Deputy Federal Highway Administrator Stephanie Pollack in a statement. 

The White House is also pushing for the charging stations to be built domestically. To that end, it touted a company called Tritium that plans to produce up to 30,000 DC fast chargers per year in Tennessee, creating 500 local jobs. The government will also direct 40 percent of funding to underserved and rural areas. The agency released a state-by-state disbursement plan that shows the largest funding levels going to Texas, California and Florida — the three most populous states.

It's all part of a larger plan to reduce US carbon emissions, as the transportation sector is responsible for a third of greenhouse gas pollution. To that end, the Biden administration wants half the vehicles sold in the US to be EVs or plug-in hybrids by 2030. 

The Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor near Oxford in the UK has produced the highest level of sustained energy ever from atom fusion, Nature has reported. On December 21st, 2021, the "tokamak" reactor produced 59 megajoules of energy during a five second fusion pulse, more than double what it managed way back in 1997. 

"These landmark results have taken us a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all," said Ian Chapman, lead of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE). 

The JET reactor is the flagship experimental device of the European Fusion Program (EUROfusion) funded by the EU. It's mainly designed to help scientists prove that their modeling is correct, with an eye toward future experiments with the much larger ITER reactor being built in France, set to start fusion testing in 2025. "JET really achieved what was predicted. The same modelling now says ITER will work," fusion physicist Josefine Proll (who is not involved with JET) told Nature. 

The experiment pushed the reactor to its "absolute maximum," said CCFE plasma scientist Fernanda Rimini. JET used a mixture of deuterium (aka heavy water) and tritium, the same fuel mix that will power ITER. Tritium is a radioactive hydrogen isotope that generates more neutrons when fused with deuterium than deuterium fused with itself, increasing energy output. The researchers also replaced the tokamak's inner wall to reduce tritium waste. 

JET hit a Q value of 0.33, meaning it produced about a third the energy put in. The highest Q value achieved so far is 0.7 by the US Department of Energy's National Ignition Facility, but it only hit that figure for 4 billionths of a second. The goal with ITER is to reach a goal of Q factor of 10 or greater, while creating 500 MW of power for long 400 to 600 second pulses. ITER will not produce net energy in the form of electricity, but will pave the way for future machines that can. 

Before that happens, however, researchers must solve several challenges. Principally, they have to deal with the heat created in the exhaust region of ITER, as it will be much greater proportionally than with the JET reactor. Still, the experiment's success allowed the team to glean a wealth of information that can be analyzed over the next few years. "If we can maintain fusion for five seconds, we can do it for five minutes and then five hours as we scale up our operations in future machines," said EUROfusion program manager Tony Donne.