QNAP has recently launched a new 10GbE network expansion card, the QXG-10G2SF-X710, which is equipped with the Intel Ethernet Controller X710-BM2. This expansion card is an effective solution for teams needing concurrent data access, photographers and videographers requiring swift data transmission, and latency-sensitive virtualization applications. The card is not only energy-efficient but also budget-friendly, offering […]
I love a beautifully-designed lighting design because I truly believe a really great one has the ability to illuminate a space – both literally, and metaphorically. Besides the physical light that it quite obviously emits, a well-designed lighting design can add manifolds of personality and charisma to a room or space. They can function as sculptural pieces, that are an extension of your personal taste and preference, truly exhibiting the richness and niche-ness of your curation capabilities, or if they’re the portable kind you can carry them along with you to illuminate anything anytime anywhere. And, an excellent lighting design for your desk is the Madco Table Lamp.
Created by Italian designer Elisa Ossino for the Japanese brand Ambientec, the Madco Table Lamp is designed to be a subtle and minimalistic recreation of festive Japanese lanterns. The introduction of the Madco light signifies the first time that the brand has integrated some form of color into its design. The lamp is available in an option of five colors, which intend to add a touch of playful elegance to any room.
The Madco Table Lamp is equipped with a sphere-shaped diffuser that is carefully enclosed in a plastic shell, and then suspended on a sleek metal frame. As you look at the table lamp, you are instantly tempted to touch and turn the light source, which quite interestingly can rotate at 360 degrees. The lamp is designed to be portable, and it can be recharged using a UBC-C. Ossino says that you should take the lamp outside, as it is waterproof, and will create a pretty and intriguing interplay with plants. It can be hung from its handle as well!
“It is a very flexible design,” said Ossino. “I really love Japanese culture, and with Madco I wanted to evoke a simple and modern atmosphere that refers to the past and the iconography of Japanese lanterns.” The Madco Table Lamp is designed in five stunning shades that are intended to be “warm and refined”: olive, terracotta, pesca, mostarda, and ciliega. You can pick the shade that perfectly complements your living space and you.
Meta has confirmed it will start offering Facebook and Instagram users in Europe an ad-free subscription option in November. Those in the European Union, European Economic Area and Switzerland will be able to use both platforms without ads for a monthly fee of €10 ($10.61) if they sign up on the web or €13 ($13.79) if they take out a subscription through iOS and Android apps. The difference is to account for the cut of in-app payments that Apple and Google take.
Meta says that subscribers’ data will not be used for advertising purposes. For the time being, the subscription will cover all linked accounts in a user's Accounts Center. Starting on March 1 next year, users will need to pay an extra €6 on the web and €8 more on iOS and Android for each linked account on which they want to have an ad-free experience.
Users will still have the choice to use Facebook and Instagram for free but with ads in their feeds. Meta says it will "continue to offer people free access to our personalized products and services regardless of income."
The company claims it’s starting to offer the ad-free plan to comply with “evolving European regulations” such as the Digital Markets Act and stricter interpretations of the General Data Protection Regulation. Privacy regulators in the EU have pressured Meta to seek explicit consent from users before showing them targeted ads based on their activity. The company offered to oblige with that request but reportedly suggested to regulators that it should be able to charge users who opt out, likely in an attempt to make up for any shortfall in revenue. It says the Court of Justice of the European Union stipulated in a ruling "that a subscription model, like the one we are announcing, is a valid form of consent for an ads funded service."
Reports over the last couple of months have suggested Meta would start offering ad-free plans in Europe as part of an effort to sate EU regulators, who haven't shied away from penalizing the company. In May, the bloc fined Meta $1.3 billion for moving EU citizens' data to servers in the US. It was previously reported that the ad-free plans could cost as much as $17 per month, but that isn't quite the case.
Meanwhile, as part of its shifting ad strategy in Europe, Meta will temporarily stop showing any ads to users aged under 18 in areas where the ad-free subscription is available, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. This will come into effect on November 6. Earlier this year, Meta placed stricter limits on the data that advertisers can use to show teens targeted ads.
This is the first time that Meta has offered an ad-free subscription option. Confirmation of the plans follows X (formerly Twitter) starting to offer two additional Premium (formerly Twitter Blue) tiers last week. The more expensive one of these allows users to get rid of ads for $16 per month.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/facebook-and-instagram-will-start-offering-ad-free-plans-in-europe-in-november-141650104.html?src=rss
In today’s tech world, JavaScript is everywhere and is mainly used to make websites more interactive. Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has moved beyond just being a topic in science fiction. It’s now a big deal in many different fields. You’ll be pleased to know that combining JavaScript and AI can be a great way to […]
Despite an infatuation with most things e-ink, I’ve resisted the world of e-ink notebooks. I’m one of the few who once owned a Kindle DX, that huge e-reader that existed for only a few years before being retired.
In the last few years, we’ve seen Amazon get into e-ink scribes, while startups like ReMarkable have carved out their own niche with capable hardware for a reasonable price. Lenovo, having dabbled with e-ink on devices like the Yoga Book, has decided to join the fray with the Smart Paper.
While the product hasn’t yet launched in the US (and is now curiously absent from Lenovo’s retail site), the Smart Paper is now available in other countries, including the UK.
At around $400 (or £500 in the UK) it's expensive. That's more than the Kindle Scribe – and much more than the ReMarkable 2. I tried using the Smart Paper instead of a typical paper notepad, especially intrigued to see if the offline handwriting recognition would create a seamless way of sharing notes across to my laptop or phone. There are enough reasons that Lenovo’s digital notepad stands out – but not all of them are good.
Hardware
Photo by Mat Smith / Engadget
The Smart Paper has a relatively simple design, with an indent for the stylus, along the left side of the device, the only detail on the front of the device, besides the 10.3-inch E Ink touchscreen. You can interact with the screen through both the stylus and typical touch input, although you can’t scribble with your finger. The Smart Paper’s matte screen is crisp enough, at 227 pixels per inch (ppi), but noticeably a little jaggier than the Kindle Scribe’s 300-ppi screen, which is closer to a high-definition tablet display.
The hardware is solid too, and Lenovo bundles in both the stylus and a folio case for protecting the screen – which also keeps the stylus safe inside. Like the Kindle Stylus, the Lenovo pen can also be magnetically attached.
It’s more than sufficient for pencil sketches, doodles and note-taking. The Smart Paper’s matte finish makes it a delight to write on, and unlike the ReMarkable 2, it has a built-in light to use it regardless of ambient light levels. I only ever used it at its lowest brightness. (Who writes in the dark, anyway?) There’s also a built-in mic to record voice notes, but no speakers.
The Smart Paper’s stylus feels almost like a pencil, with a single flat side aiding grip. The writing experience is smooth and responsive – it’s not at iPad levels, but the 25 ms latency is smooth enough to ensure it doesn’t interrupt your writing flow. The nibs are replaceable, and it feels, well, as good as most other e-ink styluses I’ve used so far. Compared to the Kindle Scribe’s pen, I prefer Lenovo’s streamlined design: no buttons, no eraser ends, just an input device. Tech-wise, the stylus has tilt and pressure sensitivity (4,096 levels of pressure), to better show off nine different input styles, including some decent calligraphy nibs, highlighter and more straightforward pen options.
Software
Photo by Mat Smith / Engadget
Lenovo’s Smart Paper runs Android 11, but with an open-source twist, which should make for more powerful software that I'd hoped would go beyond Amazon’s Kindle Scribe. Sadly, unless you’re willing to dive into sideloading and software tinkering, it’s not remotely the Android experience I was hoping for. Instead, it’s a way for Lenovo to offer a responsive but simple touch interface.
The Smart Paper’s notepad templates run the gamut from simple lined paper to multi-column affairs for spreadsheets on the go. Lenovo claims there are 74 templates, but the majority of them are incredibly similar.
Beyond tapping with the stylus, you can use swipes and taps to navigate between notepad pages, but it’s so temperamental. A tappable icon to nudge you between pages – arrows would have been fine – would have saved me a lot of fruitless swipes.
Instead, I’d have to wrestle with sliding from the center of the display outwards. Do it wrong, and you’ll bounce out to your notepad library or go back a page instead of forward.
There are also the most basic of basic apps, including a clock, calendar and email client. The reader supports EPUB, PDF and Office files, alongside your digital notepads made on the Smart Paper itself. You can also record voice notes and even dictate notes, if you’re feeling lucky. There’s an eBooks.com app, which will be your principal place for book shopping.
The eBooks.com portal is… fine? Amazon, predictably, dominates ebooks, but at least there’s something here compatible with an established platform. Having said that, even books bought through eBooks.com don’t look great. There are no borders, so the text goes from edge to edge. Instead of jumping to the next page, the body text itself slides across the screen, which is a little jarring on a low-refresh-rate e-ink display. Barring the whole sideloading can of worms, the only way to get your Kindle books on here is to load them up on the Firefox browser, which requires a data connection.
You can pretty easily transfer compatible files if you already have a PDF of a book, or an EPUB file. There is one app that could make it easier to move files: Google Drive. But it isn’t on the homepage, it’s tabbed away. You also can’t use Drive to move your digital notebooks, though. Unfortunately, for that you need a special subscription.
This is where Lenovo’s Smart Paper app comes in. It offers cloud-synced notebook files, if you’re willing to pay for a subscription. It’s prohibitively expensive, though. Here in the UK, the shortest option is £9 per month for three months, with an upload limit of 5GB. It scales up from there for longer periods and even more storage. By comparison, Google Drive gives you 200 GB of storage for a mere £2.49 a month. (And it works on everything.)
Photo by Mat Smith / Engadget
Even more bafflingly, to subscribe to the service, you’ll need access to a Windows or Android device and subscribe from those apps. For some reason, Lenovo doesn’t offer subscription purchases on iOS, despite offering the app on the App Store. It’s yet another headache for an incredibly overpriced, underwhelming service. Unfortunately, there’s no easy workaround, even with those Google Drive shortcuts,
I initially thought the Smart Paper’s offline handwriting recognition would be the standout feature, but without easier ways to sync your files (or copy and paste text), it’s more of a handy skill that occasionally comes in useful. Once I’d converted my chicken scratch to digital text, I was still beholden to a data connection – and either Lenovo’s cloud sync or G Drive – to utilize those digital notes. I have a horrible feeling that, with pages upon pages of handwriting to convert, it would just be easier for me to type out my written notes, which defeats the purpose of the thing.
Wrap-up
Photo by Mat Smith / Engadget
The hardware is expensive, but solid. Despite those Android roots, though, it lacks the flexibility of upstarts like ReMarkable’s e-ink devices. While the Google Drive integration is useful, your digital scribblings are trapped in Lenovo’s pricey companion cloud service. Just a few more simple (relevant!) apps would also have made for a more compelling device. If there’s Google Drive hooks, why not try to get a basic interface for Google Docs? Even if it didn’t support handwriting recognition, the device lacks a way to transpose your text notes to a text editor easily.
Ignoring the poorly thought-out cloud subscription pricing, the Smart Paper is also almost £200 more than the ReMarkable 2. For that amount, the Smart Paper would have to be the perfect e-ink notepad, but it’s not.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/lenovo-smart-paper-review-a-solid-e-ink-tablet-spoiled-by-the-cost-133056534.html?src=rss
A reliable and efficient power source is crucial to keep our devices running on a daily basis. One such solution comes in the form of PowerGo, a lightweight, portable wireless charging power bank. This device stands out due to its unique combination of features, which include wireless charging capabilities, a high power output, and the […]
The world of artificial intelligence has witnessed another remarkable milestone with the release of the new Zephyr-7B AI model on Hugging Face. This innovative model is a fine-tuned successor to the original Mistral 7B, and it has managed to outperform larger 70 billion parameter models, even while being uncensored. The company has also unveiled a […]
Microsoft is putting its foot down when it comes to unauthorized controller use. The company has begun banning any third-party Xbox controllers and accessories that aren't part of the "designed for Xbox" hardware partner program. A gamer posted the news to Restera after plugging in an Xbox-compatible controller and receiving a notification about the ban.
The error code is explained in detail on Microsoft's support blog: "From the moment you connect an unauthorized accessory and receive error code 0x82d60002, you'll have two weeks to use the accessory, after which time it will then be blocked from use with the console." Microsoft's advice? Get in touch with the company you bought the controller from and return it — a bit savage, but very clear.
Microsoft's motivation for the crackdown could stem, in part, from a desire to block cheat devices like Cronus Zen. Fellow gaming companies have been working hard to ban their use during gameplay. Of course, Microsoft's decision could also stem from a probable increase in sales of their own controllers and accessories.
Brook Gaming, one of the companies with impacted products, released a statement assuring customers that it would "spare no effort in identifying potential solutions" to this new policy. In the meantime, there's likely to be a drop in sales for its and other third-party manufacturers' Xbox products.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-bans-unauthorized-third-party-xbox-controllers-and-accessories-124703807.html?src=rss
The modern world is filled with devices and appliances that often require minor repairs or adjustments. For the DIY enthusiast or the professional handyman, a versatile and efficient tool is a necessity. Enter the high-efficiency electric screwdriver set by Glede – a compact, powerful, and versatile tool that is designed to cater to a wide […]
If you are a game developer or simply enjoy creating animated images. You will be pleased to know that it is now possible to create simple animations using DallE 3 and ChatGPT. The simple animations can then be used within games or other graphics for social media networks and for. The animation creation process is […]
