Apple’s latest iPad mini is $40 off at Amazon

Apple’s latest iPad mini is $40 off at Amazon

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Apple’s updated iPad mini may be a niche device because of its size, but it’s got enough power to suit most people’s needs. We gave the small tablet a score of 89 when it came out last year, and now you can pick it up at a discounted price. Amazon has the pink, purple and space gray 64GB models for $459, which is $40 off and a record low.

Buy iPad mini at Amazon – $459

You probably already know if the iPad mini will fill a hole in your life. The e-reader-sized tablet will be best for those who will use it precisely for things like reading and taking notes, as well as anyone who just wants a more compact tablet to take with them on the go. With the 2021 version, Apple finally gave the iPad mini the facelift many had been hoping for, changing its design to look more like a smaller iPad Air with a nearly edge-to-edge, 8.3-inch 2,266 x 1,488 resolution Liquid Retina screen, flat sides and a TouchID-capable power button. It also works with the second-generation Apple Pencil, and that accessory magnetically attaches to the side of the tablet when you’re not using it.

The A15 Bionic chip inside the iPad mini helped it handle everything we threw at it, including light gaming, web browsing, note-taking and more. Plus, FaceTime calls are even better on this tablet since the front-facing camera supports Center Stage, which will keep you in frame while you’re chatting with friends and family. We also appreciate that the iPad mini lasted about 12 hours in our testing before it needed to be recharged, so it can be your main tablet all day long if you’d like it to be.

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Engadget Podcast: Samsung’s Galaxy A53 5G and the Mac Studio

Engadget Podcast: Samsung’s Galaxy A53 5G and the Mac Studio

Would you believe Samsung has more new phones? This week, Devindra and Senior Writer Sam Rutherford discuss the new Galaxy A53 5G and A33, the company’s new feature-packed mid-range phones. The A53 has a 120Hz screen, four cameras and 5G support for $450! The iPhone SE doesn’t stand a chance against it. Also, Devindra dives into his review of the Mac Studio–finally, Apple has a great desktop for creative professionals.

Listen above, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

Subscribe!

Topics

  • Samsung announces Galaxy A53 5G and A33 – 1:28

  • Mac Studio review – 14:46

  • Disney+ teasers for Ms. Marvel and Obi Wan – 28:20 

  • Working on – 41:18

  • Picks – 45:21

Video livestream

Credits
Hosts: Sam Rutherford and Devindra Hardawar
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos and Luke Brooks
Graphic artists: Luke Brooks and Brian Oh

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Latest Search for Planet Nine Falls Short

Latest Search for Planet Nine Falls Short

Astronomers have reason to believe that a massive object is waiting to be discovered in the outer reaches of the solar system—the so-called Planet Nine. A recent search for this proposed planet produced a null result, but the case is far from closed.

Planet Nine, if it’s out there, is doing a stellar job of staying invisible. A team of researchers led by Sigurd Naess, a researcher at the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Oslo in Norway, was the latest to attempt to spot it, using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile. “No significant detections [were] found,” they write in their new paper, published in The Astrophysical Journal.

That a ninth planet exists in our solar system is a distinct possibility, as scientists Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown cogently argued in 2016. Astronomers have an inkling to its presence owing to the peculiar movements of objects in the distant Kuiper Belt. To date, over 30 of these objects have been identified, each exhibiting exaggerated and inclined orbits as well as clustering behavior.

To explain this, scientists have invoked the presence of a rather large object—the proposed Planet Nine. But for this to work, the planet must be reasonably big and heavy. Astronomers figure that the planet is between five and 10 times the size of Earth and located as far as 200 au to 800 au (18.6 billion to 74.5 billion miles) from the Sun. Large, or at least large-ish, objects do exist in the region beyond Neptune—objects like Pluto, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake—so the idea isn’t totally bananas.

It might seem like we should’ve spotted something so big a long time ago, but our failure to detect the object is not altogether surprising, given the distances involved and the likely dim nature of the planet. If it’s out there, Planet Nine is reflecting very little sunlight and emitting scant amounts of radiation. In previous surveys, astronomers failed to detect it with the Wide-field Infrared Explorer, leading to rival theories that attempt to explain the Kuiper Belt anomalies, such as a bowling-ball-sized black hole in the Oort Cloud or a massive ring of debris in the outer solar system.

For the latest search, the team used the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, which scans space at millimeter wavelengths. ACT is primarily used for studying cosmic microwave background radiation produced by the Big Bang, but the telescope’s sensitivity lends itself to this kind of needle-in-a-haystack search. Arthur Kosowsky, an astronomer at the University of Pittsburgh and a co-author of the study, said ACT was up for the task owing to two unique characteristics.

“We have sufficient sensitivity to microwave-wavelength radiation to possibly detect Planet Nine’s thermal emission, and we have observed a wide swath of the sky where Planet Nine might be located,” he explained in an email. “ACT is the only current experiment which meets these two criteria.”

The team took observations at 98 GHz, 150 GHz, and 229 GHz as they searched for an object at distances between 300 and 2,000 au (1 au is the average distance from Earth to the Sun). For an object five times bigger than Earth, the scientists expected to see something between 325 and 625 au, and for objects 10 times bigger than Earth, they expected to see something between 425 and 775 au.

The astronomers scanned 87% of the sky accessible from the southern hemisphere, gathering data from 2013 to 2019. Various techniques were used to process the data, including a computational “binning and stacking,” a method that “might uncover faint sources but at the expense of losing positional information,” according to a press release from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

No one knows where Planet Nine sits in the sky, if it’s really there, but it must reside within certain ranges to explain its gravitational influence. At the same time, the hypothetical planet is moving, and in specific possible directions.

“Since we don’t know which position or direction of motion, we performed a computational search over all 100 million possibilities,” said Kosowsky. “For each one of these possibilities, we averaged together all of the data we collected along one specific path to see if we can pick out a faint source moving along that path.”

Naess and his colleagues found a few promising paths, but this came with a catch. By doing this 100 million times, “you are bound to find some paths which look like an object is there, but really that is just due to random noise in the data,” Kosowsky explained.

As the astronomers write, their scan produced around 38,000 “raw candidates,” of which roughly 3,500 could be categorized as something approximating Planet Nine. Perhaps discouragingly, “none” of these candidate signals “could be confirmed,” and “there were no statistically significant detections,” the Center for Astrophysics release said. The team is 95% confident that the new survey excludes a solar system object inside the surveyed area with the stated search properties.

Still, the team listed the 10 strongest candidate signals for possible follow-ups. But even then, “our 10 brightest average signals looked just like we would expect from random noise,” said Kosowsky.

This latest survey can hardly be described as exhaustive, as the research eliminates about 17% of the total possible orbits in which Planet Nine might be moving if it’s a 5-Earth mass object, and 9% of the possible orbits for a planet with 10 Earth masses. “There are still a lot of places Planet Nine can be lurking,” Kosowsky added.

With new telescopes poised to come online in the near future, including the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, astronomers may finally have the tools required to detect something so faint and distant. The truth about Planet Nine can only hide for so long.

“I’m confident that if Planet Nine is out there, astronomers with new telescopes will nab it over the next five years,” said Kosowsky.

More: Is the Elusive ‘Planet Nine’ Actually a Massive Ring of Debris in the Outer Solar System?

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Twitter may soon let you add pronouns to your profile

Twitter may soon let you add pronouns to your profile

When Twitter reopened its form for verification requests last year, it also teased upcoming changes to its website. Those changes include a space for pronouns in the profile section, along with your other information. It’s been almost a year since we first heard about the project, but now reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi has found proof that the company is indeed developing the feature and may have started testing it. Paluzzi has discovered a yet-to-be rolled out section when you edit your profile that lets you add whatever pronoun you want to use.

It’s high time for Twitter to give its users the ability to do so. The social network is late to the party, after all: Facebook users have been able to choose their pronouns for years, though their options are limited to three. Instagram started allowing people to display up to four pronouns next to their name in their profile last year. LinkedIn also introduced a dedicated space for pronouns in profiles in 2021. And, after work-from-home arrangements took off due to the pandemic, Zoom and Slack followed suit. The video conferencing apps gives users the option to show their pronouns next to their names in meetings, while the business messaging platform made the space for pronouns a default feature last year. Previously, companies have had to add the option as a customized field for their workers.

That said, Twitter has yet to announce a launch date for the pronoun field.

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

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Samsung reveals new Onyx color for Galaxy Buds 2 and Buds Live

Samsung reveals new Onyx color for Galaxy Buds 2 and Buds Live

Samsung launched a trio of new Galaxy A smartphones yesterday. The company unveiled Galaxy A73, Galaxy A53, and Galaxy A33, and mentioned the new Onyx color for the Galaxy Buds 2 and Galaxy Buds Live earphones.

The paint job wasn’t pictured at the launch, but the company issued press images later, confirming the looks of the new earbuds. The new color will be available only at the Samsung Online Store, starting next month to complement the market launch of the Galaxy A series.

Samsung reveals new Onyx color for Galaxy Buds 2 and Buds Live

The Samsung Galaxy Buds2 arrived in the summer of 2021, during the Unpacked event which saw the unveiling of the Galaxy Z Fold3 and Galaxy Z Flip3. One of the most prominent features is a dedicated VPU that filters external noises during calls and lets in only the voice of the speaker.

The Galaxy Buds Live are even older – they were launched during the 2020 Unpacked summer event, next to the Galaxy Note20 phones.

Both the Galaxy Buds2 and the Galaxy Buds Live are sold cheaper than they were launched, and we believe the Onyx color will not change the price tag of around €129 and €100, respectively.

Source

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Wildfires Are Fueling a Dangerous Feedback Loop of Arctic Warming

Wildfires Are Fueling a Dangerous Feedback Loop of Arctic Warming

Wildfires across the globe are contributing to conditions that make future fires more likely, new research finds. The study estimates that brown carbon emissions from sources like wildfires are a greater contributor to warming in the Arctic atmosphere than previously thought. And because this warming then contributes to the weather conditions that give rise to wildfires in the first place, today’s fires are likely helping fuel increasingly stronger ones in the future, the researchers say.

Brown carbon aerosol particles are known by their ability to absorb sunlight. This then traps solar radiation within Earth, as opposed to other aerosol particles that reflect it back out to space. Alongside black carbon—caused by the incomplete burning of fossil fuels that can be seen from sources like diesel engines—brown carbon is thought to play an important role in climate change, but there’s still much we don’t know about its relative contributions to it.

This new research, published in the journal One Earth, was five years in the making. In 2017, scientists took the Chinese icebreaker ship Xue Long on a two-month expedition to the Arctic. Once there, they took direct measurements of the atmosphere, focusing particularly on brown carbon emissions that had ended up there.

The Arctic has been warming even faster than the rest of the world, and the team’s modeling, based on the direct observations made from their trip, indicate that brown carbon has been one major reason why.

“The warming effect of brown carbon in the Arctic was generally ignored in previous climate models,” study author Pingqing Fu, a professor of atmospheric chemistry and biogeochemistry at Tianjin University, told Gizmodo in an email. “By the addition of it, we find that brown carbon can be a strong warming agent in the Arctic, which highlights the importance to manage the wildfires in its surrounding regions in the future.”

Fu and his team now figure that brown carbon’s warming effect in the Arctic is about 30% of that of black carbon’s. About 60% of these emissions come from sources of biofuel burning, including wildfires in the middle and high latitude areas of the world, which release both black and brown carbon into the air. And as the Arctic warms, so do other regions of Earth, setting the stage for an ever-increasing ramp-up of climate disaster.

“The increase in brown carbon aerosols will lead to global or regional warming, which increases the probability and frequency of wildfires. Increased wildfire events will emit more brown carbon aerosols, further heating the earth, thus making wildfires more frequent,” Fu said.

So far, wildfires are holding up their end of the bargain. Last year, fires broke regional records in carbon emissions, including in parts of Siberia close to the Arctic. Last month, a UN report estimated that the number of wildfires is likely to increase around 30% percent by 2050 and 50% by 2100. Much as the current study’s authors found, these fires are likely to have a “mutually exacerbating” effect on climate change, the UN authors concluded—one that countries aren’t prepared for.

Indeed, while the news gets more dire every day, global cooperation on fighting climate change continues to be muddled as even meager attempts to dial down emissions in general are being fiercely resisted by some governments and fossil fuel interests.

The authors, for their part, say that “the careful management of vegetation fires, especially in the mid- to high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, will prove important in mitigating the warming in the Arctic region.” And Fu notes that every effort to tamp down emissions across the board still matters.

“People can do something to hamper the positive feedback loop among the link of brown carbon, arctic melting, and wildfires. For example, the continuous reduction of the anthropogenic activities such as fossil fuel combustion efficiently decreases the emissions of both black carbon and brown carbon,” he said.

The team next plans to investigate how wildfires may affect the aerosol chemistry of the marine atmosphere over the western Pacific, as well as its potential climate effects there.

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Porsche says 80 percent of its cars will be electric by 2030

Porsche says 80 percent of its cars will be electric by 2030

Porsche is today updating the world on its financial results and, by extension, its plans to remain relevant in a world that’s clearly not going to survive climate change. The German luxury brand said that it had seen sales leap by €4.4 billion (around $4.8 billion) and plenty of interest in its models. For the third year running, Porsche’s pure-EV Taycan line managed to outsell the iconic 911, with 41,296 units of the electric ride out the door, while the flagship managed 38,464 units. To Mother Nature’s chagrin, however, both were outsold by the Macan and Cayenne SUVs, which sold around 171,433 units between them.

The company has said that it wants 80 percent of its sales to be “all-electric” by 2030, with an additional plan to be carbon-neutral at the same time. Part of that push will be led by a new version of the mid-engine 718, which will be released “exclusively in an all-electric form” at some point around 2025. Of course, it won’t be until we get an entirely electric 911 and Cayenne that we’ll see the real extent of Porsche’s commitment. But hopefully the baby steps so far will translate into much faster action the closer we get to the end of this decade.

Porsche has also announced that it will invest in “premium charging stations” and “its own charging infrastructure.” The company has experience in this area, after launching a high-profile charging station in Leipzig, but this is likely to be a neat euphemism for taking a leaf out of Tesla’s book, launching or franchising a wide network of own-brand EV stops explicitly designed to cater for its own customers. It’s something that (stablemate) Audi has also spoken about doing, and showed off a concept for an Audi-only, premium charging hub last year. The company added that it is looking to get new, high-performance battery cells from Cellforce which are due to begin shipping in 2024.

All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

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Disney Disapproved of Gay Kiss in Scrapped Nimona Movie

Disney Disapproved of Gay Kiss in Scrapped Nimona Movie

According to Insider, former staffers at the Disney-acquired—and then shutteredstudio Blue Sky were pressured into censoring a same-sex kiss in their animated adaptation of Nimona. The staffers took kiss out of future presentations with Disney executives, although they state that they hoped to include it in the final film. According to an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the movie was almost “75%” complete when Disney decided to scrap the entire project.

Nimona was originally published as a webcomic by ND Stevenson, a queer, transgender writer. He began writing it in 2012, while still a student at MICA, and it was submitted as his final thesis. The fantasy comic’s titular character, Nimona, is a shape-shifter who follows around a knight and attempts to bring down a corrupt institution. The comic was acquired by Harper Teen and published as a graphic novel, and proceeded to win an Eisner award in 2016. Nimona features a queer and gender non-conforming cast, and has roots in Stevenson’s own experiences. Nimona herself is considered gender non-conforming.

Blue Sky studios, a division of Fox, was well-known for the Ice Age films. When Disney inherited the studio in 2019, however, there were reportedly clashes between leadership at the studio and Disney. According to Insider, Disney executives pushed back against the queer characters and themes present in the movie in 2020. Disney ultimately shut down the studio in February of 2021, and Nimona, despite already having a 2022 release date and being near completion, was canceled.

While Disney has started taking steps towards more racially representative stories and films, its track record for queer representation is basically non-existent. Considering the controversy it now finds itself surrounded by through virtue of proximity to Florida’s near-universally deridedDon’t Say Gay” Bill, this news comes as no surprise. What’s particularly sad about this revelation is that in Nimona, there was a chance for a queer creator to have openly queer characters on screen, and make a huge impact in the cultural consciousness. Instead we have an unfinished film languishing in production hell, and have unearthed more violence against queer existence in media at the hands of one of the biggest movie studios on the planet. Safe to say that Disney probably isn’t the happiest place on earth anymore.


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The Realme GT Neo3 will have a dedicated chip that boosts frame rate in games

The Realme GT Neo3 will have a dedicated chip that boosts frame rate in games

The Realme GT Neo3 will be one of the first phones to be powered by the Dimensity 8100, however, company VP Xu Qi Chase reveals that there will be another chip of note. This chip will assist the Dimensity’s Mali-G610 MC6 GPU to achieve a stable frame rate and in some cases lower power consumption.

The way it works is similar to MEMC – motion estimation, motion compensation, a feature that takes in low frame footage and outputs a high frame rate version, something you may have seen on phones and TVs.


Realme GT Neo3: Dimensity 8100
Realme GT Neo3: Additional graphics chip
Realme GT Neo3: Large vapor chamber

Realme GT Neo3: Dimensity 8100 • Additional graphics chip • Large vapor chamber

This chip can do motion interpolation up to 120 fps to make the best use out of the phone’s high refresh rate display. It will help smooth out heavier games too. Below is a video showing the Realme GT Neo3 and the graphics chip doing its thing.

Genshin Impact is a notoriously demanding game and you can see how it runs unassisted on the Dimensity 8100 in the upper part of the frame. The lower part shows the game with interpolation enabled running at 90 fps. Note that the video is recorded in slow motion to show the difference more clearly.

This trick is similar to what iQOO did with the iQOO 9, however, that phone is powered by a Snapdragon 888+. Realme is the first to do this with a Dimensity chip.

By the way, the Realme GT Neo3 will be the official phone used in the Honor of Kings national competition. This makes it an even more direct competitor of iQOO, which is the official sponsor of HoK KPL league.


The Realme GT Neo3 will be the official phone for the Honor of Kings national competition

The Realme GT Neo3 will be the official phone for the Honor of Kings national competition

Anyway, the Dimensity 8100 will be equipped with fast LPDDR5 and UFS 3.1, so the phone will be fast in general, not just for gaming. We have already seen plenty of teasers about the phone, its 150W charging and more, the full reveal will be next week on March 22.

Source 1 | Source 2 | Source 3 (in Chinese) | Via

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Apple iPhone SE (2022) goes on sale in first wave countries

Apple iPhone SE (2022) goes on sale in first wave countries

The iPhone SE (2022) is the most affordable entry into Apple’s smartphone ecosystem and it’s now on open sale in the first wave of markets. These include major markets such as the US, UK, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India and Japan among others. Users get to choose between three storage trims – 64GB, 128GB and 256GB as well as three colors options – Midnight Black, Starlight White and (Product) Red.


iPhone SE (2022)

iPhone SE (2022)

Apple US has an estimated delivery time of one business day for phones so pre-orders today will get their phone by Monday. You should always check with the local Apple Store to confirm availability and shipping costs. The new iPhone SE brings the same basic design as its predecessor but with an A15 chipset at the helm and 5G connectivity.


































































Country 64GB 128GB 256GB
US $429 $479 $579
Canada CAD 579 CAD 649 CAD 789
Australia AUD 719 AUD 799 AUD 969
Germany EUR519 EUR569 EUR689
France EUR529 EUR579 EUR699
Italy EUR529 EUR579 EUR699
UK PS419 PS469 PS569
UAE AED 1,849 AED 2,059 AED 2,479
Hong Kong HKD 3,699 HKD 4,149 HKD 4,999
China CNY 3,499 CNY 3,899 CNY 4,699
India INR 43,900 INR 48,900 INR 58,900
Japan JPY 57,800 JPY 63,800 JPY 76,800
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