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The pandemic was the bloodiest year for driving in over a decade

Road deaths jumped 7.2 percent in 2020 from the year before, hitting a 13-year high, even though people weren’t driving as much, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). But while NHTSA’s numbers paint a grim picture, they offer only a glimpse at what’s shaping up to be a historically bloody year of… Read more

Tinder will start letting you block people by their phone number

Tinder is finally letting you avoid all your exes, friends, colleagues, relatives, and anyone else you might not want to run into on a dating app. The company announced today it’ll start allowing people to block their phone contacts. Romance-seekers can access the feature from their settings, under the “Block Contacts” menu, where they can… Read more

Balking AMD’s Claims, Nvidia Says Smartphones Aren’t Ready for Ray Tracing

Home News (Image credit: Nvidia) Nvidia does not have plans to bring its ray tracing-enabled GPU architectures to smartphones or other ultra-mobile devices right now, CEO Jensen Huang told journalists at a Computex meeting this week. The statements come just days after AMD confirmed that upcoming Samsung smartphones using AMD RDNA2 GPU architecture will support… Read more

NVMe 2.0 Brings Support for PCIe-Connected Hard Disk Drives

Home News (Image credit: Shutterstock) The new NVM Express 2.0 (NVMe 2.0) Protocol has been released. While the thrust of the protocol focuses on flash storage and networking, the latest additions include full-blown support for hard disk drives (HDDs). The addition of hard drive support is one of the biggest changes coming to NVMe 2.0… Read more

Mayweather vs Logan Paul live stream: how to watch the boxing from anywhere, full fight

Floyd ‘Money Man’ Mayweather is set for a blockbuster showdown with YouTube ‘personality’ Logan Paul at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, on Sunday 6th June. Mayweather has called the eight-round exhibition bout “legalised bank robbery”. It’s a $50 pay-per-view in the US but only £17 in the UK. Follow our guide on… Read more

Twitch chats are about to get more chaotic with animated emotes

Twitch is announcing some big updates to emotes on Friday, including that animated emotes will soon be available on the live-streaming platform. Emotes are a huge part of the experience of Twitch. They’re everywhere in Twitch chats, and Twitch partners and affiliates can offer custom emotes to subscribers that can be used in chats on… Read more

TikTok updates US privacy policy to collect ‘faceprints and voiceprints’ (but won’t explain what they are)

TikTok has updated its privacy policy in the US to notify users that the app might, in future, collect new types of biometric information including “faceprints and voiceprints.” But when reached by The Verge, TikTok was unable to explain what types of data these terms referred to, or why the app might need to access… Read more

Netflix’s Sweet Tooth makes the end of the world a little cozier

Gus may have antlers like a deer, but he’s a puppy dog at heart. The main character of Netflix’s new series Sweet Tooth, based on the comic by Jeff Lemire, is a young boy struggling to survive in a world ravaged by a pandemic. But while the world around him descends into chaos, Gus, played… Read more

Apple WWDC 2021: iOS 15, new MacBook Pros, and what else to expect

Apple’s annual developer extravaganza, the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), is coming up fast, kicking off with the keynote presentation on June 7th at 1PM ET. Like last year, WWDC will be an entirely digital and online-only event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and for the keynote, that means we can likely expect another tightly produced… Read more

Biden’s proposed budget keeps a block on recreational weed sales in Washington, DC

A rider that has effectively blocked recreational cannabis for years in Washington, DC appears in President Joe Biden’s proposed 2022 budget, which may keep weed on the back burner yet again. Even though residents of DC voted to legalize possession of recreational marijuana in 2014, the measure has been in limbo since then, derailed by… Read more

Apple working on iPad Pro with wireless charging, due 2022

Home News (Image credit: Apple) Apple has only just announced an iPad Pro with a Mini LED screen, but already there is word of a successor. The next iPad Pro will have ‘MagSafe’ magnetic wireless charging – just like the iPhone 12 – according to Bloomberg. It apparently won’t launch until 2022, but a redesigned… Read more

Xgimi Halo

Our Verdict The specs and feature highlights are appealing but the Halo falls short when it comes to subtlety For Excellent black depth Bright for the money Handy portable features Against Blunt contrast control Poor speaker placement If you’ve ever had to pull an all-nighter for work, then you’ll know the taste of the 4am… Read more

Taito announces mini arcade cabinet with rotating screen and trackball controller

Taito is the latest Japanese video game publisher to resurrect old hardware in mini form. The company behind Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, and many more arcade classics has just announced the Egret II Mini, which like Sega’s excellent Astro City Mini is a shrunken-down version of a popular arcade cabinet. The original Egret II was… Read more

Dell Hit With Fraud Case Over Alienware Area-51m Upgrade Claims

Home News (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware) A California man has filed for a class action lawsuit against PC manufacturer Dell, claiming that the company “intentionally misled and deceived” buyers of its Alienware Area 51-m R1 gaming laptop, which was advertised to be more upgradeable than other gaming notebooks. The plaintiff, Robert Felter, who is based… Read more

Google Replaces Millions of Intel’s CPUs With Its Own Homegrown Chips

Home News (Image credit: Intel) Google has designed its own new processors, the Argos video (trans)coding units (VCU), that have one solitary purpose: processing video. The highly efficient new chips have allowed the technology giant to replace tens of millions of Intel CPUs with its own silicon. For many years Intel’s video decoding/encoding engines that come… Read more