If the Mac Mini with Apple's M1 chip has been on your radar as your next desktop machine, it's worth checking out the latest deal on the system. The base model with 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM is once again available for $600 on Amazon. That's $100 off the regular price. The discount includes a $49 coupon that's automatically applied at checkout.
The Mac Mini is perhaps the most cost-effective way to get your hands on an M1-powered system at the minute. The M1 is a powerful chip designed by Apple that can handle most day-to-day tasks with ease and speed. The chip boasts an eight-core CPU (with four performance and four efficiency cores) and an eight-core GPU. There's also an 16-core Neural Engine to handle machine learning tasks.
The system runs on macOS Big Sur and you'll be able to upgrade to the latest version of the operating system, Monterey. On the connectivity front, there are two Thunderbolt ports and a pair of USB-A ports, along with HDMI 2.0, WiFi 6 and gigabit Ethernet support. There's a 3.5mm headphone jack too.
Unlike with an M1 MacBook or iMac, you'll need to connect your own display, keyboard and mouse, which might not leave a lot of space among those ports for other peripherals. You won't be able to upgrade the storage or RAM either. However, the base Mac Mini should still be capable enough for many users.
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Xiaomi has today announced the CyberDog, an open-source quadruped robot intended for developers to “build upon” and create applications for. The machine, which resembles a beefier version of Boston Dynamics’ Spot, is a showcase for Xiaomi’s engineering know-how, including its proprietary servo motors.
Xiaomi
Running the show is a version of NVIDIA’s Jetson Xavier NX, which has been dubbed the world’s smallest AI supercomputer. In terms of being able to experience the world, CyberDog has 11 sensors over its body, including touch and ultrasonic sensors, cameras and GPS to help it “interact with its environment.”
Xiaomi says that this technology is good enough to enable CyberDog to follow its owner and navigate around obstacles. It is also capable of identifying posture and tracking human faces, enabling it to pick out and track individuals in a group.
XIaomi
Rather than selling this as a general-sale product, the company is for now going to release 1,000 of these things to “Xiaomi fans, engineers and robotics enthusiasts to jointly explore the immense possibility of CyberDog.” This will be facilitated by an open-source community, hosted by Xiaomi, which may be followed by the construction of a robotics laboratory to lay a pathway for “future innovations.”
Of course, this thing isn’t cheap, and those folks willing to get involved will need to shell out 9,999 yuan or around $1,540 to get one of these for themselves.
Most credit cards these days offer some kind of reward to users, whether it's a percentage of your spending in cash back, airline miles or some other perk. Venmo launched its own credit card last fall, and while it offers up to three percent cash back, the company is now letting users do something relatively unique with that refund. As of today, Venmo credit card users can automatically get that cash back in cryptocurrency.
Once you opt in, you can choose one of four cryptocurrencies to purchase with your cash back: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. There are no transaction fees for the purchase, and the transfer happens automatically. From there, you can turn that crypto back into cash at any time, or change what currency you get each month from your cash back.
This feature builds on the cryptocurrency features that Venmo added to its app earlier this year. Since April, Venmo users have been able to buy those same four cryptocurrencies directly in the app, so a feature to easily turn cash back into crypto might make it easier for more people to dip their toes into the Bitcoin world.
Ever since we first reviewed it last year, Lenovo's Flex 5 Chromebook has been our favorite device in the Chrome OS realm. It may not be the most high-powered Chromebook out there, but it has essential features that most users need at a price well under $500. At launch, the Flex 5 came in at $430, but it often went on sale and could be found for $330 on rare occasions. But Amazon has it for even less right now — only $310 — which is $120 off and the best price we've seen.
When you get to the $300 mark in the Chromebook space, you're often asked to sacrifice when it comes to power. That's not the case with the Flex 5 — it runs on a 10th-gen Core i3 processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Those specs should be more than enough for most people, especially considering a majority of Chromebook work will be done in a browser. We found the Flex 5 was more than capable of running numerous Chrome tabs at once with few hiccups. We also appreciated its ability to do so for at least eight hours before needing to be recharged.
When it comes to design, the Flex 5 doesn't take too many risks and that's ok. It's not the slimmest or the lightest laptop, but at 0.66-inches thick and three pounds, it won't be hard to shuffle from room to room in your home or tote with you to school. It's also a convertible, which gives you more flexibility in how you use it. The 13-inch 1080p touchscreen will serve most people well, be it for work or entertainment purposes, and we especially liked its backlight keyboard.
Overall, it's hard to find a Chromebook that ticks so many boxes at this price point. Sure, Lenovo made some sacrifices when it comes to RAM and storage capacity, but those are to be expected when you're looking at sub-$500 Chromebooks. The Flex 5 combines a solid 2-in-1 design with a good amount of power at a wallet-friendly price point, and that's more than we can say for other Chromebooks coming in at $300.
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Just days after Oppo unveiled its latest under-screen camera solution, Xiaomi is now launching a new flagship phone with a similar, if not the same, feature. The Mi Mix 4 is the Chinese company's slimmest ceramic unibody smartphone yet, featuring a 6.67-inch 2,400 x 1,080 screen that stealthily hides a 20-megapixel selfie camera underneath a near-indistinguishable patch of pixels — it's the same 400ppi density as the rest of the panel, albeit with smaller pixels and transparent circuitry thanks to advancements in AMOLED production.
If the selfie photos on the Mi Mix 4 turn out to be just as good, if not better, than Oppo's samples from last week, then it's no surprise that Xiaomi went with this under-screen camera tech. The Mix series has always been about pushing the boundary of form factor design, with the firsttwo models — both designed by Philippe Starck — offering super slim screen bezels along three sides. They were some of the first ceramic smartphones, too.
With the Mi Mix 3, Xiaomi finally got rid of the chin by moving the selfie camera to a slide-up module. I wasn't a fan of that design, though, as it felt more fragile.
Xiaomi
Now that the under-screen camera is seemingly reaching maturity, it serves as a sensible evolution path to the Mi Mix 4. Still, CEO Lei Jun added that if you really care about your selfies, you should stick to phones with punch-hole cameras; but for him, the under-screen camera is good enough.
The screen itself is otherwise very much the same as what many other recent flagships are offering: 10-bit color, P3 gamut, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, 120Hz refresh rate and 480Hz touch sampling rate. It's protected by a layer of Gorilla Glass Victus. Like many recent Xiaomi phones, the Mi Mix 4 provides stereo sound tuned by Harman/Kardon, which should go well with that vibrant screen.
Xiaomi
The Mi Mix 4 also happens to be the first smartphone sporting Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 888+ 5G processor, taking the clock speed up to 3GHz while being cooled by several layers of graphene and graphite. LPDDR5 RAM options range from 8GB to 12GB, whereas UFS 3.1 storage goes from 128GB to 512GB.
Much like the iPhone 12 series, the Mi Mix 4 also packs UWB (ultra-wide band), but instead of tracking tags, Xiaomi is using this for a feature dubbed "Point to Connect." Simply point your Mi Mix 4 to a compatible Xiaomi smart device like a TV, smart speaker (like the freshly-announced Xiaomi Sound) or air conditioner, and the relevant app will show up.
The company will also offer a small UWB hub for existing TVs, and this will launch via a beta program in China on August 20th. But if you prefer the old-school way, this Android phone also has an infrared remote feature — as is the case with some Chinese smartphones these days.
Xiaomi
The rear cameras are impressive on paper. There's a 108-megapixel main camera (HMX sensor with optical stabilization), an 8-megapixel 5x optical zoom camera (with optical stabilization) and a 13-megapixel 120-degree ultra-wide camera (with free-form lens). Still, Lei admitted on stage that he's saving the better camera components for his main flagship line.
The Mi Mix 4 houses a 4,500mAh which is relatively standard these days, but it supports 120W wired charging, which goes from zero to 100 percent in 21 minutes by default, or in just 15 minutes if you enable "Boost Mode." There's also 50W wireless charging, which normally takes 45 minutes for a full charge, or just 28 minutes in "Boost Mode."
Xiaomi
Xiaomi will be selling the Mi Mix 4 in China starting from August 16th, with colors including white, black and a new gray option. Prices start from 4,999 yuan or around $770 for the 8GB RAM + 128GB storage model, and capping at 6,299 yuan or about $970 for the 12GB RAM + 512GB storage option. We'll have to stay tuned for international availability, but we'd be surprised if the world's second largest phone maker doesn't plan on taking the Mi Mix 4 outside of China.
Twitter's first bounty program for AI bias has wrapped up, and there are already some glaring issues the company wants to address. CNETreports that grad student Bogdan Kulynych has discovered that photo beauty filters skew the Twitter saliency (importance) algorithm's scoring system in favor of slimmer, younger and lighter-skinned (or warmer-toned) people. The findings show that algorithms can "amplify real-world biases" and conventional beauty expectations, Twitter said.
This wasn't the only issue. Halt AI learned that Twitter's saliency algorithm "perpetuated marginalization" by cropping out the elderly and people with disabilities. Researcher Roya Pakzad, meanwhile, found that the saliency algorithm prefers cropping Latin writing over Arabic. Another researcher spotted a bias toward light-skinned emojis, while an anonymous contributor found that almost-invisible pixels could manipulate the algorithm's preferences
Twitter has published the code for winning entries.
The company didn't say how soon it might address algorithmic bias. However, this comes as part of a mounting backlash to beauty filters over their tendency to create or reinforce unrealistic standards. Google, for instance, turned off automatic selfie retouching on Pixel phones and stopped referring to the processes as beauty filters. It wouldn't be surprising if Twitter's algorithm took a more neutral stance on content in the near future.
Commodore’s Amiga 500 was one of the most popular home computers in the era just before the PC swallowed the world. Now, thirty years and change since its heyday, Retro Games is making a “mini” version of the computer and games console. Much like Retro Games’ last machine, a “mini” version of the Commodore 64 that can’t use the Commodore name, this will be branded as THEA500 Mini.
Retro Games has said that the console will include 25 titles from the vast (and excellent) Amiga library including Another World, Worms, Simon the Sorcerer and The Chaos Engine. The full list of titles hasn’t been released, but if Bart vs. The Space Mutants and Dalek Attack aren’t on there, I will cry.
Much like pretty much every other retro console, a glossy software layer will smooth out the rougher edges of this software. Users will be able to save and resume titles part-way through play, and you’ll be able to side-load titles you (ahem) own over the included USB port.
Rather than simply emulating the vanilla Amiga 500, the hardware will also run the Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) layers found in the Amiga 500 Plus, a short-lived revision released in 1991. You’ll also be able to harness the advanced graphics architecture (AGA) of the much-pricier flagship model, the Amiga 1200.
Retro Games / Koch Media
Hardware-wise, it’s likely to be a similar sort of moulded-plastic-around-a-mini-board situation as found in THEC64 Mini. But on the accessories front, it’ll ship with the Amiga’s famous two-button mouse, and a joypad that, to my eyes, seems to be based on the Amiga CD32’s gamepad rather than the 500’s (which, to be fair, was more famously a joystick-led machine).
Retro Games / Koch Media
THEA500 Mini will launch at some point in early 2022, and is expected to cost $140 (£120, €130) when it arrives. The only misgivings I have at this point is that Retro Games’ previous work with the THEC64 Mini made that a hard product to love in several ways. Hopefully, however, many of those issues have been resolved for the new model, which was the object of lust for many people soon be knocking on 40.
Oh, and here's the greatest advert for a computer ever made:
Google has announced changes to YouTube, Search and its other apps designed to make them safer for kids. The latest updates will make YouTube videos created by kids private by default, allow minors or their parents to request the removal of their images from Google Image results, turn SafeSearch on by default and more. The move is part of a recent push by Google to protect kids and give parents more control over what they see.
Many of the updates are dedicated to YouTube and YouTube Kids. The key change is aimed at young creators aged 13 to 17, changing the default upload setting to the most private option available. That means by default, the video can only be seen by select users unless the creator changes it to public. "We want to help younger users... make an intentional choice if they’d like to make their content public," Google wrote.
Google is also expanding its so-called digital well-being tools for YouTube. It'll turn on break and bedtime reminders by default for all kids aged 13 to 17 while turning off autoplay by default. At the same time, it's adding an autoplay option on YouTube Kids while, at the same time, turning it off by default in the app. Parents will also be able to choose a "locked" default autoplay setting.
Knowing the accurate age of our users across multiple products and surfaces, while at the same time respecting their privacy and ensuring that our services remain accessible, is a complex challenge.
Finally, Google said it will be removing "overly commercial content" from YouTube Kids, like a video that "only focuses on product packaging or directly encourages children to spend money." It also updated the disclosures that appear on “made for kids” content when a creator identifies a video as containing paid promotions.
On Search, Google promised to give minors "more control over their digital footprint." To that end, it's introducing a new policy allowing anyone under 18, or their parents or guardians, to request the removal of their images from Google Image search results. That change is designed to "help give young people more control of their image online," Google wrote. It will also turn SafeSearch on for all existing users under 18 and make it the default for teens setting up new accounts. Currently, it's just turned on for teen accounts managed by Family Link.
In other apps, Google will disable location history for all users under 18 without the ability to turn it on. It's launching a safety section in Play that will show parents which apps follow Google's Families policies and disclose how they use the data they collect in greater detail. On the advertising side, it will "block ad targeting based on the age, gender, or interests of people under 18," the company wrote.
Google stressed that it wants to work with "kids and teens, parents, governments, industry leaders, and experts in the fields of privacy, child safety, wellbeing and education to design better, safer products for kids and teens." Taken as a whole, the new changes should help prevent young people from seeing harmful content while blocking exploitive ads. In practice, however, it may take some time to shake out any bugs and ensure that advertisers are following the rules — so as always, it's best to keep a close eye on your kids' digital habits.
HP has announced another batch of Chrome OS devices. Perhaps the most notable addition to the lineup is the latest Chromebook x2. The keyboard is detachable, so you can use the system as a tablet. HP says it's the first detachable Chromebook to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 7c chipset. There aren't too many Snapdragon 7c-powered Chromebooks around in any case. Acer has releaseda few Chrome OS laptops with the chipset, but they're still relatively rare.
The Chromebook x2 11 is Universal Stylus Input-compatible. It'll work with any pen that supports that standard, though the HP Wireless Rechargeable USI Certified Pen is bundled in.
HP
This Chromebook has an 11-inch, 2K-resolution screen, with a 3:2 aspect ratio and 400 nits of brightness. The Adreno 618 GPU supports a maximum resolution of 2560x1440 on an external display with a 60Hz refresh rate. The system has a 5MP front-facing, wide-vision camera and an 8MP real-facing camera, as well as Bang & Olufsen speakers.
On the connectivity front, there's an optional 4G LTE module (which supports AT&T and T-Mobile in the US), as well as WiFi 5 compatibility and two SuperSpeed USB-C ports. HP claims you'll get up to 11 hours of use from a single charge.
The device weighs 2.57 lb. It comes with 8GB of LPDDR4x-2133 MHz RAM and 64GB of eMMC storage. There are microSD and fingerprint readers, as well as a kickstand that allows for 170-degree positioning.
The HP Chromebook x2 11 and USI pen bundle starts at $600. It should be available sometime this month from Best Buy. All going well, HP will start selling it directly through its website in October.
HP
Alongside the Chromebook, HP revealed its Chromebase 21.5 inch All-in-One, a Chrome OS-powered desktop. It has a rotating full HD display that can tilt 20 degrees upwards and switch from horizontal to vertical orientation. The system uses Intel Core processors with up to 256GB of SSD storage and up to 16GB of DRAM memory. It includes dual 5W speakers from B&O and a five-megapixel camera with a privacy switch, which also turns off the microphone.
The Chromebase desktop starts at $600. It should be available this month from HP's website and other retailers.
In addition, HP has added another monitor to its lineup. The M24fd can connect to and power any compatible laptop over USB-C, though it was designed with Chromebooks in mind. The 23.8-inch, full HD display also harnesses HP's Eye Ease with Eyesafe tech, which aims to reduce blue light without impacting color accuracy. The $250 monitor should be available in October.
While the Apple TV 4K tends to get all of the attention, the standard Apple TV remains a solid option if you want a set-top box that plays nicely with the rest of your iPhone, iPad and other devices. It'll normally set you back $150, but Amazon is having a sale right now that knocks $20 off the Apple TV HD, bringing it down to $130. That's the best price we've seen since the streamer came out a few months ago, plus it includes the updated Siri remote — arguably our favorite thing about the Apple TV experience as of late.
Despite recent updates, the Apple TV looks familiar. It's still a little black box capable of streaming 1080p video from a variety of sources including Apple TV+, Netflix, Disney+ and others. It runs on Apple's A8 processor, comes with 32GB of onboard storage and the back edge houses a power port, one USB-C port, one HDMI connector and an Ethernet port. These specs make it a good basic set-top box, but it has some Apple-ecosystem features that set it apart. It supports AirPlay and HomeKit-enabled viewing of camera feeds, plus you'll be able to listen privately using AirPods.
The update earlier this year brought the latest Siri remote to the Apple TV HD. This is a big deal because the previous Siri remote just wasn't that great to use, and Apple finally fixed some of its major problems. The new remote is larger and has a revamped directional pad that makes controlling the set-top box much easier. The pad is also touch-sensitive, making scrolling through carousels of content much smoother. There's even a power button on the remote now that lets you turn on and off your TV.
While a slick new remote probably isn't enough to warrant buying a whole new streaming device, the new Siri remote certainly sweetens this deal on the Apple TV HD. If you can live without 4K HDR streaming and want a cheaper way to get tvOS onto your tube, this sale on the standard Apple TV is one to consider.
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