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WASHINGTON - There have been a flurry of news reports this week that AT&T paid $600,000 to President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, with the payments stopping in January, 2018 right after Trump’s FCC chairman moved to repeal net neutrality, something AT&T had lobbied fiercely for. Today, it was announced that one of AT&T’s top lobbyists is stepping down amid the scandal. Fight for the Future, a nonpartisan digital rights group behind the largest online protests around net neutrality, issued the following statement, which can be attributed to Deputy Director Evan Greer (pronouns: she/her): “These payments are sketchy as hell. AT&T paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a sitting president’s personal attorney, while that president’s FCC chairman was actively handing AT&T everything they could ever want. Every member of Congress, regardless of political party, should be concerned about this and demanding answers. And every lawmaker now has an even greater responsibility to vote for the CRA resolution to ensure that net neutrality protections don’t lapse while there’s a thorough investigation into this corruption. Given AT&T’s long history of funding astroturf groups, making hefty campaign contributions to curry political influence, and paying for misleading ads to confuse the public, these payments to Michael Cohen should be seen as status quo, not an exception. A changing of the guard in their lobbying operation won’t make a difference. This is a company that prefers to milk its political influence rather than innovate and provide better service to its customers. The FCC’s announcement this week that net neutrality rules will officially end on June 11th shows that AT&T got what they paid for. The overwhelming majority of people in this country want their lawmakers to vote to save net neutrality. Will our elected officials listen to us, their constituents? Or will they money that AT&T paid them in campaign contributions speak louder? The Senate CRA vote is a test of our democracy.” The Internet remains on Red Alert as the Senate heads toward a crucial vote to overrule the FCC’s overwhelmingly unpopular repeal of net neutrality. Many of the most popular web services, as well as a broad coalition of small businesses and public interest groups, are participating in mass online protests rallying Internet users to contact their lawmakers. See the latest list of participants here: https://www.battleforthenet.com/redalert See a gallery of screenshots of how sites and apps are participating here: https://imgur.com/a/UGn3gyP (will be updated throughout the week) Across the web, sites and apps like Tumblr, Tinder, Etsy, Foursquare, Ask.com, Wikimedia, Pornhub, Ok Cupid, Investopedia, Reddit, Chess.com, GitHub, Dictionary.com, BoingBoing, Imgur, Private Internet Access, Bittorrent, Fark, The Nation, Consumer Reports, Foursquare, Postmates, and Gandi.net have run widgets, banners, and alerts to drive phone calls, emails, and tweets to Congress. Companies like Airbnb, Twitter, Netflix, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yelp, Amazon, Twilio, Salesforce, and Sonos also affirmed their support for net neutrality ahead of the vote. Thousands of other large and small websites are expected to join. Behind the push are Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, and Free Press Action Fund, the groups that run BattleForTheNet.com and have been responsible for the largest online protests in history. They’ve helped drive millions of phone calls, emails, and tweets to lawmakers in recent years. The Senate is expected to vote on Wednesday.

In retaliation for mass blocking that targeted Telegram but caused widespread collateral damage, hackers have hit the website of Russia's Federal Agency for International Cooperation. The attackers, who signed off as 'Anonymous' , left a not-safe-for-work rant criticizing local telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor. Meanwhile, Telegram filed an appeal challanging a Supreme Court ruling concerning the surrender of encryption keys. Last month, Russian authorities demonstrated that when an entity breaks local Internet rules, no stone will be left unturned to make them pay, whatever the cost. The disaster waiting to happen began when encrypted messaging service Telegram refused to hand over its encryption keys to the state. In response, the Federal Security Service filed a lawsuit, which it won, compelling it Telegram do so. With no response, Roscomnadzor obtained a court order to have Telegram blocked. In a massive response, Russian ISPs – at Roscomnadzor’s behest – began mass-blocking IP addresses on a massive scale. Millions of IP addresses belong to Amazon, Google and other innocent parties were rendered inaccessible in Russia, causing chaos online. Even VPN providers were targeted for facilitating access to Telegram but while the service strained under the pressure, it never went down and continues to function today. In the wake of the operation there has been some attempt at a cleanup job, with Roscomnadzor announcing this week that it had unblocked millions of IP addresses belonging to Google. “As part of a package of the measures to enforce the court’s decision on Telegram, Roskomnadzor has removed six Google subnets (more than 3.7 million IP-addresses) from the blocklist,” the telecoms watchdog said in a statement. “In this case, the IP addresses of Telegram, which are part of these subnets, are fully installed and blocked. Subnets are unblocked in order to ensure the correct operation of third-party Internet resources.” But while Roscomnadzor attempts to calm the seas, those angered by Russia’s carpet-bombing of the Internet were determined to make their voices heard. Hackers attacked the website of the Federal Agency for International Cooperation this week, defacing it with scathing criticism combined with NSFW suggestions and imagery. “Greetings, Roskomnadzor,” the message began. “Your recent destructive actions towards the Russian internet sector have led us to believe that you are nothing but a bunch of incompetent mindless worms. You shall not be able to continue this pointless vandalism any further.” Signing off with advice to consider the defacement as a “final warning”, the hackers disappeared into the night after leaving a simple signature. “Yours, Anonymous,” they wrote. But the hackers weren’t done yet. In a NSFW cartoon strip that probably explains itself, ‘Anonymous’ suggested that Roscomnadzor should perhaps consider blocking itself, with the implement depicted in the final frame. “Anus, block yourself Roscomnadzor” https://torrentfreak.com/images/rkn-e1525980249402.png But while Russia’s attack on Telegram raises eyebrows worldwide, the actions of those in authority continue to baffle. Last week, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s press secretary, Natalia Timakova, publicly advised a colleague to circumvent the Telegram blockade using a VPN, effectively undermining the massive efforts of the authorities. This week the head of Roscomnadzor only added to the confusion. Effectively quashing rumors that he’d resigned due to the Telegram fiasco, Alexander Zharov had a conversation with the editor-in-chief of radio station ‘Says Moscow’. During the liason, which took place during the Victory Parade in Red Square, Zharov was asked how he could be contacted. When Telegram was presented as a potential method, Zharov confirmed that he could be reached via the platform. Finally, in a move that’s hoped could bring an end to the attack on the platform and others like it, Telegram filed an appeal this week challenging a decision by the Supreme Court of Russia which allows the Federal Security Service to demand access to encryption keys.

OUR VERDICT The Asus ROG G703GI is one of the most powerful gaming laptops we’ve ever tried, which also makes it one of the most expensive. If you can get past the high price tag and short battery life, you get an amazing portable gaming machine that can handle the latest games with ease. FOR Fantastic gaming performance Large screen High-end components Great keyboard AGAINST Very expensive Short battery life Divisive looks The Asus ROG G703GI is the second generation of the Asus ROG G703, a monstrous gaming laptop that impressed us with its brilliant performance and solid build quality, yet suffered from a bulky design, high price tag and poor battery life. With the ROG G703GI, Asus has boosted the hardware further, making it an even more formidable gaming machine. However, while these boosted specs enable it play the latest games better than ever before, it could also exacerbate the issues the previous generation of the G703 suffered from, especially in the price and battery life department. Price and availability The Asus ROG G703GI is available in a number of configurations, with the options differing slightly depending on which country you buy it in. In the US there's the G703GI-XS74, which comes with an Intel Core i7-8750H Processor, 17.3-inch 1080p G-Sync display, overclocked Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, two 256GB PCIe SSDs and a 1TB hard drive. This costs $3,499. Then there’s the G703GI-XS98K, which comes with the same spec, but with an Intel Core i9-8950HK processor and a 2TB hard drive for $3,699. At the top of the range is the G703GI-XS99K, which has the same spec as the XS98K but with 64GB of RAM and three 512GB PCIe NVMe SSDs. This version costs $4,999, and it’s the model we have in for review. In the UK the range starts with the G703GI-E5005R, which comes with a 1080p screen, Intel Core i7-8750H Processor, 32GB DDR4 RAM, two NVME M.2 SSDs, 1TB hard drive and an Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card, and costs £3,199.99. There's also the G703GI-E5088R, which comes with a six-core Intel Core i9-8950HK processor, with the rest of the spec the same as above, and a price tag of £3,499.99. These are incredibly pricey machines, then, putting them in a similar price bracket as the Asus ROG Zephyrus GX501 and the Razer Blade Pro. The sting is taken out of the price a little by the inclusion of a gaming backpack, headset and mouse, but this is still an eye-wateringly high price tag, and one the Asus ROG G703GI will have to work hard to justify. Asus has also told us that the original version of the G703 is sold out in the UK and there are no plans to bring more out, so the Asus ROG G703GI is essentially replacing the older model, and we imagine it's a similar story worldwide. In the US the Asus ROG G703GI comes with slightly better specs than the top-end model in the UK. We're waiting on configuration and pricing details for Australia. Design The design of the Asus ROG G703GI is pretty much identical to the ROG G70, so expect a striking ‘metal armor’ design that’s big and bulky; this is no slimline MaxQ laptop like the Asus ROG Zephyrus GX501. Measuring 425 x 319 x 51mm and weighing 4.7kg, the Asus ROG G703GI is a laptop that definitely falls into the ‘desktop replacement’ category, which means it’s not that much more portable than a desktop PC, although it is slightly thinner and lighter than the G703. The large 17.3-inch screen helps to make this a big, heavy beast of a laptop, but it’s a price many may be willing to pay for immersive large-screen gaming experiences. The brushed aluminum casing feels solid, and gives the Asus ROG G703GI a premium look that tells you its owner takes gaming very seriously. As with the G703 there's an ROG logo on the back that glows when the laptop is in use, along with a backlit keyboard that can be set to display a range of lighting configurations. The keyboard itself is excellent, with responsive-feeling keys that have plenty of travel (2.5mm to be exact) and which respond with a satisfying ‘click’ when pressed, similar to a mechanical keyboard. The keyboard on the G703 was one of the best we'd used on a gaming laptop, so we’re pleased to see it included in its successor. The touchpad is slightly offset to the left of the ROG G703GI’s body, but it feels natural to use there, and again it's quick and responsive. Of course, for gaming you’ll want to use a separate gaming mouse. At the top of the keyboard are a set of unique function keys which adjust the volume and mute or unmute the microphone. There's also an ‘Aura’ button, which brings up the ROG Aura software for customizing the RBG lighting. Next to this is a button sporting the Xbox logo, which opens up the Game Bar feature in Windows 10, enabling you to easily configure your game and set up streaming. There's also a button with a camera logo, which launches the popular XSplit Gamecaster software for streaming gameplay, and a button with the ROG logo, which brings up Asus’ Gaming Center software for system maintenance and overclocking. If you use any of these services or features regularly, these buttons will be a great addition, but if you don’t then they're going to be pretty useless. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to set the buttons to launch other tasks or software, which is a shame, but at least they don’t take up too much space if you’re not going to use them. Build quality is excellent, so if you do lug the Asus ROG G703GI around you shouldn’t have to worry too much about it getting damaged, which is just as well considering the price. The bulky size also allows for a large range of ports, including a USB-C Thunderbolt 3 port, three USB 3.1 ports, a mini DisplayPort, HDMI, SD card reader and Ethernet port. That's a huge amount of connectivity for a laptop, with the Ethernet port an essential component for network play (of course, if you want to go wireless there’s a robust 802.11ac Wi-Fi connection as well). There are also two power ports to plug in the two (large) power supplies, and these end up often being quite inconvenient. You need to plug both into the Asus ROG G703GI for it to charge, so it means lugging them around with you and looking for two free plug sockets wherever you use the laptop. It’s necessary considering the power-hungry innards of the laptop, but it is annoying. Considering the price and specifications of the Asus ROG G703GI we were hoping for excellent results in terms of performance, and in both our benchmark testing and day-to-day use we were very impressed with how the laptop performed. This is thanks to the recent Intel Core i9-8950HK processor, which is combined with the ageing, yet still very competent, Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card. The G703GI recorded some of the best results we’ve seen from a gaming laptop, managing 101 frames per second in Middle Earth: Shadow of War with the graphics settings at ‘Ultra’. This is a very graphically-intensive game, so for the laptop to be able to achieve such high frame rates is testament to the high-end components Asus has packed into it. It also handily beats the MSI GS65 Stealth, and improves on the previous generation’s Asus ROG G703 in the performance stakes as well. If you want to play games at full visual fidelity, and even at 4K resolution if you plug it into a TV, then the Asus ROG G703GI is definitely worth looking at. Even if you stick to the built-in 17.3-inch 1080p screen, games look fantastic, especially when you whack all the graphics bells and whistles to the max. The display supports a 144Hz refresh rate and G-Sync, which makes gameplay feel smooth and responsive, with no stuttering or screen tearing. When we used the Asus ROG G703GI for tasks other than gaming we found that the performance was good, although not as impressive. The large amount of super-fast NVMe PCIE SSD storage space enables Windows 10 to load quickly, but it sometimes felt a little laggy in use. We’d put this down to the large amount of extra software that comes installed with the PC, which makes it feel a little bloated at first. However, once you let the laptop ‘bed in’, and remove the software you don’t want to use, performance is much better. Of course, it’s also worth noting that this is a laptop you’re going to be mainly gaming on, and in that area it excels. There are prices to pay for this level of performance, however, and whether or not you think they're worth paying will determine if the Asus ROG G703GI is for you. There’s the monetary price of course, and, as well as being large and chunky the Asus ROG G703GI can also get quite loud when gaming, and even occasionally during less intensive tasks, as its fan whirrs in order to keep the powerful components inside cool. Battery life Gaming laptops aren’t known for their long battery life – although some of the newer, slimmer, laptops are trying to buck that trend – and with a gaming laptop as big and beastly as the Asus ROG G703GI it’s no surprise that the battery life is pretty slight. Having said that, it may surprise you to learn just how quickly the battery life depletes. In our own battery life test, playing a 1080p video file on repeat until the battery dies, the Asus ROG G703GI only lasted one hour and 53 minutes, which is less than the running time of many movies. So don’t expect this to be a laptop you can happily match movies on without it being plugged in. When it comes to the more strenuous task of playing games the battery depletes even more quickly, and in the PCMark 8 battery life benchmark test, which replicates medium-to-heavy use such as making video calls, browsing the internet and word processing, the battery again drained quickly, lasting just an hour and a half. In short, this is a laptop that needs to be plugged in almost constantly, and as we mentioned earlier it needs two power supplies to properly charge the battery. The good news is that the battery does at least charge quickly. We liked The Asus ROG G703GI is one of the most powerful gaming laptops we’ve ever used. The addition of a new Intel Core i9-8950HK processor gives it a noticeable performance boost over its predecessor, and the ability to play the latest games at the very highest graphical settings is mightily impressive. Build quality is also very good, and there’s an excellent array of connectivity ports. We disliked There are two major issues we have with the Asus ROG G703GI, and they're both pretty much unavoidable. First of all, the high price makes this one of the most expensive gaming laptops you can buy. This will instantly rule it out for the majority of people. It also means that, even with graphics card prices remaining high thanks to cryptocurrency mining, it's still more affordable to build your own desktop gaming PC which equals, or even surpasses, the power of the ROG G703GI. Of course, you don’t get the portability of a laptop with a desktop PC, but that brings us to our other issue: the battery life of the Asus ROG G703GI is incredibly short, which means you’ll pretty much always need to be tethered to a power supply (or two). Final verdict The Asus ROG G703GI is easily one of the most powerful gaming laptops we’ve reviewed. Gaming performance, even playing some of the latest games at maximum graphical settings, is superb, and you shouldn’t have to worry about upgrading for a very long time. It will also handle virtual reality easily. It is very expensive, however, which will put many people off. There are a number of configurations that vary in price, so you may find a version of the ROG G703GI that suits your budget, but it'll still cost you quite a bit. It also needs to be plugged in almost constantly which, along with the size, means it’s not that portable. However, if you need a laptop that can handle the very latest games without breaking much of a sweat, and which can be transported more easily than a desktop PC (for example to gaming events and competitions), then the Asus ROG G703GI could prove well worth the hefty investment. Specs CPU: 2.9GHz Asus ROG G703GI (hex-core, 12MB cache, up to 4.8GHz) Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5X) RAM: 64GB DDR4 (2,666MHz) Screen: 17.3-inch FHD (1,920 x 1,080), (144Hz, 3ms response, 72% NTSC color gamut, 16:9) Storage: 3 x 512GB SSD (M.2, RAID 0), 2TB HDD Ports: USB 3.1 Gen2 x 3, Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C), miniDisplayPort, HDMI-out, RJ-45 Ethernet, Connectivity: 802.11ac Wi-Fi (2x2 MIMO); Bluetooth 5.0 Weight: 10.4 pounds (4.7kg) Size: 16.73 x 12.55 x 2.01 inches (425 x 319 x 51mm; W x H x D)

It is probably safe to say that Spotify did not get the reaction it expected on Thursday when the company announced a new policy against “hate content” and “hateful conduct” regarding the artists it chooses to promote — and then announced, via a simultaneously published interview, that the first artist to be targeted by this policy will be R. Kelly (and, hours later, rapper XXXTentacion). The streaming giant may have expected to be hailed for its woke-ness and its solidarity with #MeToo, which called Spotify out — along with RCA Records, Ticketmaster, Apple Music and a North Carolina venue, all of which promote or host the artist’s work — last week when it joined the #MuteRKelly movement. After all, who could argue with a policy that prohibits “hate content” — defined as content that “expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics, including, race, religion, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability” (which would seemingly rule out several presidential campaign speeches) — or declining to promote artists who engage in “hateful conduct” — “something that is especially harmful or hateful (for example, violence against children and sexual violence)”? What more suitable artists to target with such a move? Over the past two decades, Kelly has been accused multiple times of sexual misconduct against young and underaged women; he reportedly married protégé Aaliyah when she was 15 (later annulled); he was acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008 despite a video that the prosecution claims shows him having sex with and urinating on an underaged woman; and he was recently accused of running an “abusive sex cult” in which young women are essentially held prisoner and not allowed to eat or go to the bathroom for long periods of time. XXXTentacion stands accused of multiple felonies, including assaulting a pregnant woman and witness tampering. And what more effective statement of disapproval for Spotify than its playlists, which in recent years have become a coveted avenue of promotion for all artists, the most popular of which — Rap Caviar, from which XXXTentacion’s music was removed yesterday — is regularly cited as one of the most effective ways to break a hip-hop song? The move represents a way for the company to flex its moral power by effectively shunning an artist without taking the bolder and far more problematic move of censoring them, as Spotify did last summer with white-supremacist music that was posted on its platform. As anyone who’s been paying attention knows, the announcement hasn’t quite worked out the way that Spotify may have hoped. Through a combination of apparent naivete and hubris and, to put it mildly, clumsy messaging, the company has managed to do the near-impossible: Get people to defend R. Kelly. “This [policy statement] feels much too undefined, it raises more questions than it answers,” says Charis Kubrin, a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine, who has written extensively on whether rappers’ lyrics can be used against them in a court of law. “It was obviously led by R. Kelly, but it seems as if they started with him rather than putting the policy in place first and then deciding who would [be penalized]. He’s the poster child for this, and he hasn’t been convicted of anything.” “I thought it was very vague — how do you define that as a policy?,” says Lecia Brooks, outreach director of the Southern Poverty Law, one of the groups with which Spotify is working to define hateful content. “It is unfortunate that that the announcement speaks to [just] hate, when there are many other concerns to be raised. They’re trying to hold artists accountable, but who would ascertain what constitutes a credible accusation [of hateful behavior]? It’s dangerous and it has real implications.” The outcry was swift and furious, with multiple artists, executives and fans lambasting the company for its vaguely defined policy. Spokespeople for the two artists were quick to reply as well: Kelly’s rep provided an arguably technically accurate if debatable statement noting that the singer “has never has been accused of hate, and the lyrics he writes express love and desire. … Mr. Kelly for 30 years has sung songs about his love and passion for women … Spotify has the right to promote whatever music it chooses, and in this case its actions are without merit”; XXXTentacion’s rep responded with a list of other prominent artists accused — but not all convicted — of serious offenses. The vague nature of its criteria makes the enforcement of this policy — which the company has stated is the first step in an evolving process — subjective at best. The statement of policy is less than 400 words long and relies on generalities like “we want our editorial decisions – what we choose to program – to reflect our values.” It also states no system of policing content or behavior beyond content monitoring, “expert partners” and “Your Help,” the latter via an online form. The company also says it has created a monitoring tool called Spotify AudioWatch to help it screen for and flag hate content. Jonathan Prince, Spotify’s vp/head of content and marketplace policy, told Billboard: “When we look at promotion, we look at issues around hateful conduct, where you have an artist or another creator who has done something off-platform that is so particularly out of line with our values, egregious, in a way that it becomes something that we don’t want to associate ourselves with. So we’ve decided that in some circumstances, we may choose to not work with that artist or their content in the same way — to not program it, to not playlist it, to not do artist marketing campaigns with that artist.” “Transparency is good, but I’m not sure this is transparency,” Kubrin says. “They’re not systematizing the process: It seems all based on their own judgment, but who’s making those calls? What role are they playing? You have to roll something like this out so carefully, and they haven’t done that.” A spokeperson for Spotify said that an internal committee makes those decisions, in consultation with the organizations listed in the policy announcement as helping it to define hateful content (including The Southern Poverty Law Center, The Anti-Defamation League, Color of Change, Showing Up for Racial Justice, GLAAD, Muslim Advocates and the International Network Against Cyber Hate). The rep added that in some cases the inquiry is escalated, but declined to provide further details or grant requests for interviews on the matter with company executives. “Spotify is taking on a difficult task in attempting to remove speech that promotes ‘hate,’” says Nora Pelizzari of the National Coalition Against Censorship. “People do not agree on the definition of the term: some will believe Spotify has gone too far, others will pressure it to go farther. The inclusion of ‘hateful conduct’ in the policy just adds another layer of subjectivity that undermines the policy’s enforceability in any sort of equitable way. Who is the judge and should we insist on morally pure artists? How pure is pure enough? These are complicated questions that this policy doesn’t seem to quite answer.” To keep the matter in perspective, the conversation is not really about censorship: The two artists’ music remains available on the platform; the music and artists Spotify and any other streaming platform promotes are its own choice, subject to its own criteria; there is no First Amendment component directly associated with this matter. (The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) declined to comment.) But the company’s failure to anticipate the optics of its move — the first two artists penalized by the new policy are black men who stand accused but not convicted of serious crimes — has sent a shockingly bad message at a time when the largest music-streaming company in the world, which went public on the New York Stock Exchange just weeks ago, needs it least. “Intentionally or not, it’s really just rap and R&B that are being singled out,” says Kubrin. “What stereotypes are they relying on? How does race and gender come into it? We’ve done studies where we’ll take the same set of violent lyrics and tell randomly selected people they’re from different music genres, including country, folk, rap. When people think the lyrics are coming from rap, they’re considered much more threatening. It’s concerning whenever people try to police art.” “It’s a laudable goal,”Brooks concludes, “it just needs to be more systematic.” Even at a glance, the inconsistencies in the policy are quickly apparent on a platform that includes music by at least one convicted murderer (Phil Spector), another who married not just a 13-year-old girl but one who was also his first cousin (Jerry Lee Lewis), another who is synonymous with spousal abuse (the late Ike Turner) and a song with upwards of 70 million plays (Derek & the Dominos’ 1970 hit “Layla”) that was co-written by a man who has been in a mental institution for 35 years after murdering his mother (Jim Gordon). Shunning is nothing new in the age of #MeToo, and while visions of “A Tale of Two Cities” occasionally pop up during these lightning-quick rushes to judgement, much of it is long overdue. And if it has inspired two disparate but related incidents that happened in the past two days — singer Jessie Reyez publicly accusing producer Detail of sexual abuse, and Rep. Maxine Waters shouting down condescending, mansplaining men on the floor of Congress — then it’s a move for the better. But any attempt to systematize morality — particularly one as vaguely defined as Spotify’s — is a slippery slope. “I’m guessing there are artists on [Spotify’s platform] who have committed very serious crimes, the probability that R. Kelly is even in the top five of that list seems slim,” says Kubrin. “This certainly is not censorship, but it’s a move in that direction.”

Super Mega Baseball was a brilliant arcade baseball sim that was let down by its lack of online play. The follow-up keeps the accessible hitting and pitching mechanics, smooths over some rough edges, and adds everything that was missing, including multiple online modes, a detailed team editor, and custom leagues. Basically, it does everything a sequel should do, and the result is the best on-field baseball sim on PC. Online, you can play a one-off game or a custom tournament with friends, but the flagship mode is Pennant Race. You’re placed in a league with 14 opponents of a similar skill level, and you’ve got roughly a week to win as many games as you can before you’re shuffled into a different league that reflects your new rating. I like the structure: the mini leagues make each match feel important. Once you’ve played one game it’s hard to tear yourself away, especially if you’re about to leapfrog the person above you in the standings. I was worried that not enough people would be playing, but crossplay with both PS4 and Xbox One means that finding your next game is always fast. (In the interest of fairness to players, Pennant Race currently requires using a controller). Pennant Race’s five-inning matches are the perfect showcase of the series’ cat-and-mouse pitching and hitting system. As a pitcher, you select a pitch type, mark where you want to pitch, and then guide a second circle onto that mark during your wind up. Where that circle finishes is where you’ll pitch, and the closer it is to your original mark, the faster it’ll be. As a batter, you can either try a regular hit or a power hit, which you charge up before you swing. The latter is more difficult to time, but you’re more likely to pierce the infield. The pitch location only reveals itself while the ball is thundering towards you, so you need to watch it early and figure out whether you should leave it alone or reposition the hitting marker and swing away. There's just the right amount of complexity on both sides. Throwing a single good pitch is easy but stringing together a series of them is tricky. As well as trying to make sure they’ve got some whip behind them, you’re trying to out-think the batter, switching between balls—pitches thrown away from the strike zone—and strikes, as well as mixing in curveballs and sliders to keep your opponent on their toes. It creates a deep system in which no two players will pitch or bat the same way. I’ve had games where I’ve been able to read pitches no problem, leaving balls thrown away from the plate and clobbering anything down the middle. But I’ve also had matches where the pitcher has got me to swing at bad ball after bad ball. I love the mind games and double bluffs it creates between pitcher and batter, each trying to predict what the other will do next. Fielding is more of a mixed bag. Throwing is better than the original thanks to the addition of fielding errors, which you’ll make if you charge up a throw for too long, and I’ve lost games because of overthrown balls. That’s frustrating, but I like the fact that you have to concentrate on fielding now, and the threat of a mistake makes it all the more satisfying when you nail a double play with two hard throws. Sadly, controlling fielders before they throw is awkward. You can both jump and dive for balls, but it’s hard to know when to try it and when to just run towards the ball. It means you end up diving past the ball often, or jumping comically when you don’t need to. While the mechanics remain largely the same as the first game, the visuals are very different, and I like the change of style. It’s still arcade-y, but gone are the giant heads and bulbous eyes, replaced with players that look more life-like. Animations are less over-the-top, and it loses a sliver of its charm because of that: you’ll no longer see pitchers bawling on the mound when they get whacked over the fence. But it looks far more polished. I went back to the original, and the players now look blocky and alien. Super Mega Baseball 2 is great offline, too. I haven’t yet found a way to exploit the AI, and the mistakes the CPU makes feel very human, like swinging at a curve ball that’s angling away from the plate. The difficulty system—which I think every sports game should adopt—makes it easy to find the right level of challenge: You set an ‘Ego’ rating of between 1 and 100 separately for pitching, batting, fielding and base-running, and you can adjust it in the middle of matches. I was playing lots of low-scoring games during my season, so I cranked up the pitching Ego and dialed down the batting, meaning both I and the CPU connected with more pitches. Seasons now have 16 teams rather than 12, which is a nice boost, and you can add up to 32 in a custom league using the game’s creation tools (for more on them, Chris pitted a team of PC gaming heroes against a bunch of villains). You’re not getting official leagues or anything happening in the back office like player trades, which is a shame, but I’ve still grown attached to my team, and the ‘mojo’ system that boosts or dampens a player’s stats based on their performance provides continuity during a tournament. The only problem I have with Super Mega Baseball 2, other than floaty fielding, is an occasional dip in online performance. Most games run smoothly, but some stutter. It’s never unplayable—from what I can tell, if the connection is bad then it will let the pitcher choose their pitch, wait for the batter’s connection to catch up, and then make the pitch, so the batter always gets a fair swing. But that leads to some jarring jumps forward in play, which is annoying. I’m hopeful that Metalhead can sort those issues out, but even if they can’t then it’s not enough to ruin online play. I’ll be dipping in and out of Pennant Race for months to come, and I’m planning to set aside a chunk of time to create a marathon custom league with 30 teams. It’s got its hooks into me: it’s a better game than the original in every way, and it nails the battle between pitcher and batter that’s at the heart of baseball. If you’re a fan of the sport, it’s a must-own. THE VERDICT 88% SUPER MEGA BASEBALL 2 The improvements over the original make Super Mega Baseball 2 the best on-field baseball sim on PC.

We've been playing the first backer build of Julian Gollop's X-Com spiritual successor. Tom and Sam have been playing the recently released first backer build of Julian Gollop's crowdsourced X-Com spiritual successor Phoenix Point. This is available to $40 tier backers of the game's Fig campaign, or anyone who pre-orders the game's 'Luxury Digital Edition' now at a steeper $50. Tom beat the Phoenix Point demo at the PC Gamer Weekender, but this build has been described to us by Snapshot Games as a fair bit trickier. This build also comes with a random map generator across two plot layouts, where the objective again is to take out every enemy with four soldiers. It basically functions as an early overview of the turn-based combat in the game. The setup of the mission is pretty simple: your squad of troops is doomed, infected by the virus that plagues all living things in the game. With that in mind, you have to kill all the enemies that occupy a location called Fort Freiheit, making the best of the grim fact you're all going to be dead soon anyway. After a few turns, the giant mutant queen arrives in the level, and races towards your troops. Here's how we got on. Samuel Roberts, UK editor-in-chief: I enjoyed this demo of Phoenix Point, Tom, even if it took a lot of trial-and-error to learn the best way to handle the game's enemies. What stands out is how the game incorporates flanking versus XCOM—how moving a soldier just a square or two over can open up an angle that'll do some serious damage to an alien enemy that had ended its turn pointing its fleshy shield—a portable cover point—in my soldier's direction. The idea of targeting different body parts has lots of potential to set this apart from XCOM, and the queen in this demo shows how that might offer interesting strategic choices. Taking out its pincers to impair its ability to do damage, for example, or destroying its legs to stop it running towards you. Damaging the queen's thorax enough to make it bleed—making it lose a certain amount of health per turn—almost helped me beat the thing. The potential for this system is less obvious with the standard enemies in this demo, but I like the idea that damaging different body parts affects them in different ways: affecting how many willpower points they have, or making them bleed, or how much overall damage it'll do to an enemy, or destroying their grenade arm. You can take a very granular approach to combat in each turn. Equally, your soldiers' body parts will be damaged in different ways—their guns can even be destroyed, which in this demo can make a huge difference to your chances of survival. How do you feel about the way flanking works in Phoenix Point? Tom Senior, UK online editor: It’s a significant change from XCOM’s decisive approach to flanking. You have to move out of the enemy’s forward arc to get your (massive) attack bonuses. Phoenix Point cares about the precise angle your gun has on the foe, so you can be in front and to the side of an enemy and make quite strong attacks. This rather undermines the poor shield crabs. They can move their shields to try and block shots, but it’s easy enough to make a short lateral move and get the shot you need. You’d think a crab would be particularly able to deal with enemies walking sideways, but there you go. This small detail illustrates the way that Phoenix Point is aiming to be a more detailed sandbox take on the X-Com formula. Firaxis’ XCOM is very boardgame-like. You move your soldiers like tokens and they get one big dice roll to hit an enemy. In Phoenix Point individual bullets have varying chances to hit or scatter, and the game rarely shows you percentage chances. Instead the enemy’s health bar flashes to indicate the potential damage you’re doing to a given bodypart. There are some new elements to the latest build of this demo that even move the game closer to something like Men of War. Your soldiers have backpacks and inventories, and you can pick up battlefield objects and discard your own kit. When one of my soldiers ran out of ammo I ran over to a box looking for more. I found just a grenade inside, which basically doomed that soldier to run at the enemy screaming and throwing bombs. The ammo restrictions are very punishing in this demo, which is nowhere near final balance, but the inventory system potentially means soldiers will be able to swap clips or scavenge new gear from the battlefield that you can use immediately. Samuel: I like the potential damage indicators in this, and it's a bit of a relief to not get hung up on percentages nearly as much as I would with Firaxis's XCOM. This seems like something that has the potential to change before release—earlier screenshots do show more percentages. But here, it feels like you've got all the information you need to make a decision, with predictive red squares that represent blocks of health as likely damage and potential damage. It's worth discussing the difficulty in this first backer build. It admittedly kicked my arse a bit, but isn't representative of the final game by any means. I asked Snapshot about how they're handling difficulty settings—they tell me they'll have a full range, and that the backer build hasn't been balanced. "You're also currently playing as a non-player faction and very limited skills [are] available," a spokesperson tells me. "There's so much still to be added in that the difficulty (amongst other things) should certainly not be taken as a representation of what to expect in the release build." It's worth taking it for what it is, then: an early slice of the game to give backers an idea of how the combat works. Ironman mode-loving XCOM fans might get a kick from the challenge as it stands. There's a huge appetite for XCOM alternatives right now, and I think the dynamic damage and individual limb targeting is enough to separate them even at this stage, despite the game looking superficially similar. Tom: The taskbar and the movement UI does make it look identical to XCOM in screenshots, but it already feels quite different. So much of the final experience isn’t represented here as well. The soldiers fit into familiar roles—assault, heavy, sniper—and I'd hope to see some variety here to put some distance between Phoenix Point and XCOM. Not that being like XCOM is a bad thing, I love those games, but the more PP can do to change things up, the more excited I will be. There’s the whole strategic layer yet to be revealed. I look forward to seeing more. Phoenix Point has a tentative release date of Q4 of 2018.

Sony confirms that the heavily rumored PlayStation 5 won't be revealed at E3 2018. Sony's annual pre-E3 press briefing will take place on Monday, June 11, 2018, where they will showcase their biggest upcoming titles as well as make some new announcements that should capture gamers' attention. Sony's current plan for their E3 2018 press conference is to focus on in-depth looks on four major PlayStation 4 games: Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding, Sucker Punch's Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man by Insomniac Games, and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part II. Gamers will get to learn about the development of each upcoming exclusive and see brand new footage. Considering Spider-Man is releasing later this year, consumers should expect to see near-finished gameplay from Peter Parker's highly-anticipated, open-world action title. Of course, in addition to announcing new games, some fans have been hoping for Sony to announce the PlayStation 5 as well, but that seem like it's going to happen. Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios chairman Shawn Layden recently clarified on the PlayStation Blogcast that "there will be no new hardware announcements" at this year's pre-E3 briefing, thus meaning no PlayStation 5. Instead, Sony will be focusing on a variety of first-party published software during their showcase. As is tradition, Sony's E3 2018 showcase will also feature some surprise announcements. While nothing else is officially announced to be appearing, Sony did confirm that third-party publishers will be showing titles, and there will be unique indie games that will have their time in the spotlight. Considering that Sony has recently announced surprising titles such as the Final Fantasy VII Remake and Shenmue III, it's entirely possible that they have something big up their sleeve. The news that Sony isn't announcing the PlayStation 5 yet isn't particularly surprising, though. The PlayStation 4 is starting to really hit its peak momentum thanks to marquee releases such as God of War receiving commercial and critical acclaim. And since most analysts don't expect to see a new console from Sony until 2020 at the earliest, it would do them no favors to announce new hardware now, especially since consumers already have the PS4 Pro to hold them over for another few years. Revealing new hardware would also harm the current PlayStation 4 sales, and from the announced line-up, it's clear that Sony is trying to boost PS4 sales worldwide. That's why they're going all in on four of the most anticipated exclusives, including Spider-Man. Sony's E3 2018 will be all about building to late 2018 and fleshing out 2019's release schedule, not about new hardware.

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Asus could be about to launch a smartphone under its Republic of Gamers brand. In recent times a certain gaming smartphone trend has been developing in the mobile industry, with brands such as Razer, Xiaomi, and ZTE all producing their own unique devices. Now, according to a new rumor, it appears Asus may be about to challenge the trio with its own smartphone offering. As stated by the information, Asus’ device will be launched under the popular Republic of Gamers brand, or ROG for short. In terms of what the smartphone will offer, a Snapdragon 845 is said to be inside, with this being coupled with 8GB of RAM. Interestingly, however, no information in regards to the internal storage count was given, although either 64GB or 128GB options seem the most likely. No details were given about the design either, but a display that boasts a refresh rate of 120Hz is expected, putting it on par with the Razer Phone. Furthermore, in a bid to save battery life, it is understood that the display will operate at a refresh rate of 60Hz when not gaming. Also, on a software note, Android 8.1 Oreo should be included straight out of the box. Given that the Republic of Gamers brand has been around since 2006 and has built up a reputation within the gaming community, it appears Asus may be one of the few companies able to compete with Razer’s strong brand recognition. After all, both Xiaomi and ZTE’s recent launches utilize names with no reputation or history, putting them at a significant disadvantage. In any case, Asus’ gaming device is just a rumor for now, so it’ll remain to be seen if anything comes from it. Nevertheless, the information does claim that the unveiling will take place at the Computex 2018 event in Taiwan (June 5-9), so it shouldn’t be too long before the rumor’s accuracy is clarified.

As high-elevation ice patches melt due to climate change, artifacts and stories long held in ice are being revealed. This fragile heritage needs to be acknowledged and protected. When Ötzi the Iceman, the most complete Neolithic mummy ever found, melted out of the Tyrolean Alps in 1991, the field of “ice patch archaeology” was born. In little more than a decade, archaeological sites were identified in alpine settings around the world, from the United States to Norway to Switzerland. While fluctuations in climate are normal, the intensity and pace of the current changes we’re seeing—increasing global atmospheric and ocean temperatures, along with extreme glacial retreats and worldwide sea-level rise—are historically unprecedented. Albeit only a thin silver lining to climate change, some melting ice patches offer us an extraordinary chance to “see” into the past. Ancient organic artifacts that otherwise would have decayed away are emerging from the ice: baskets, leather and hair cordage, and millennia-old wooden shafts once used for hunting. Ice patches are also releasing stone tools, plants, and the remains of animals. These alpine ice patches formed and persisted over millennia in environments that had just the right conditions—a certain elevation, enough new snow each year to refresh the patches, and just enough radiation from the sun to constrain their size. Unlike glaciers, ice patches don’t move or flow. This keeps ancient materials locked inside the ice from being torn apart or otherwise destroyed. The well-preserved materials that are emerging—and the historical and environmental contexts we find them in—hold clues about past and present climate change. And in the U.S. and Canada, they also speak to how Native Americans and First Nations interacted with high-elevation landscapes. Areas that are often characterized as “empty” wilderness were once home to groups of Native people throughout millennia. Much of the Greater Yellowstone Area in the western U.S., for example, is currently managed as a landscape devoid of humans (except for tourists), but historically it was a peopled area; we know this based on clear evidence of sustained human interaction and involvement throughout the region. As humanity’s ballooning population and hunger for development continue to put pressure on these environments, the onus is on all of us to respectfully seek advice from Native Americans and First Nations whose ancestors have long participated in these ecosystems. In addition, what guidance might we discern from ancestral Native people’s interactions with these areas over time that could inform our interactions with these spaces in the future? In this film, we look at the rare opportunities offered by the finite and fragile ice patch record. What we decide to do with it—and whether we choose to learn from it—will affect all future generations.

The inner solar system asteroid was likely ejected to the Kuiper Belt during our gas giants’ outward migration. It’s believed that our solar system’s gas giants caused quite a ruckus in their infancies. As they exited their tight orbits and began their outward migrations, their forceful journeys caused small, rocky bodies in the inner solar system to be ejected from their homes, with some making their way all the way out to the Kuiper Belt — an thick and extended ring of comets, asteroids, and other small objects that surrounds the outer solar system. However, due to the billions of miles that lie between Earth and the Kuiper Belt, identifying an inner solar system asteroid in our icy outskirts was far from easy. But now, an international team of astronomers has discovered Kuiper Belt Object 2004 EW95 — a carbon-rich asteroid that supports our gas giants’ destructive tendencies. The outward migration of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune is a critical element to our current solar system formation theory. Multiple models suggest that after these gas giants formed, they began rampaging away from the Sun until they hit their current orbital locations, causing carbon-rich rocky pieces in the inner solar system to scatter about. Most of these asteroids were ejected toward the Sun, where other carbon-rich objects reside, but some were sent in the opposite direction, toward the outer edge of our solar system. Since objects high in carbon aren’t common out in the Kuiper Belt — an icy region past Neptune — verifying their distant existence could further support the current formation theory. Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomer and research team member Wesley Fraser first spotted Kuiper Belt Object 2004 EW95 while conducting routine observations of the Kuiper Belt. The strong spectral lines radiating from this unusual asteroid caused it to stand out from its peers, which have relatively dim spectra. "The reflectance spectrum of 2004 EW95 was clearly distinct from the other observed outer Solar System objects," said lead researcher, Tom Seccull of Queen’s University Belfast, in a news release. "It looked enough of a weirdo for us to take a closer look." Since Kuiper Belt Object 2004 EW95 has a strong spectrum, its light can be broken down into different wavelengths, enabling researchers to determine its chemical composition. To identify the chemical composition of such a distant object, the team used the X-Shooter and FORS2 spectrographs on the European Space Agency (ESO)’s Very Large Telescope. But these powerful instruments didn’t change the fact that the asteroid, which stretches 186 miles (300 kilometers) across, is 2.5 billion miles (4 billion kilometers) away from Earth. On top of that, its carbon molecules cause it to appear dark in color. "It's like observing a giant mountain of coal against the pitch-black canvas of the night sky," said Thomas Puzia, an astronomer at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and co-author of the research paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letter. But the research team was able to overcome the obstacles and identify clear signatures of carbon, iron oxides, and phyllosilicates (sheets of silicate minerals), all of which are elements commonly found in the inner solar system that had never been identified in a Kuiper Belt object. From the chemical breakdown, the researchers were able to conclude that Kuiper Belt Object 2004 EW95 was likely born in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and made the long journey outward alongside our gas giants. "While there have been previous reports of other 'atypical' Kuiper Belt Object spectra, none were confirmed to this level of quality," said ESO astronomer Olivier Hainaut. "The discovery of a carbonaceous asteroid in the Kuiper Belt is a key verification of one of the fundamental predictions of dynamical models of the early Solar System." Despite ever-advancing technology, many details of our solar system’s early years are still shrouded in mystery. But by continuously uncovering clues that shed light on our chaotic history, our formation and evolution might shed their mysterious personas.

Corsair has unleashed its largest PC case ever. The dual-system Obsidian 1000D chassis is coming to market, but we’re not sure if it will have a broad appeal. The company accidentally revealed the massive 1000D on its website (along with Amazon) a few months ago, but now it seems like the launch is finally official. The Obsidian 1000D is constructed from steel and aluminum and features tempered glass on the front and side panels. It measures 27.3 x 12.1 x 27.4 inches and weighs around 65 lbs. without any components inside. It may weigh as much as a small adult human once it’s loaded with two motherboards (up to an E-ATX and a mini-ITX) and all the attached hardware, especially if you intend on filling the gigantic case as much as possible. (It almost seems as if Corsair is daring you to do it). Both systems have their own front-panel I/O, which consists of their own Power, Reset, and Power LED leads, in addition to one USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C front panel connectors for each PC. The chassis doesn’t come with any fans installed, but it has space for up to thirteen 120/140mm fans (eight front, three top, two rear). The front panel alone can support up to two 480mm radiators, the top panel supports up to one 360mm radiator, and the back panel can sport up to a 280mm cooler. Both the top and front radiator trays (fans mounts) are surprisingly accessible; they're attached to rails and glide out of the case for easy installation. The 1000D’s storage capacity is also impressive, with space for five 3.5” HDDs and six 2.5” SSD/HDDs, each with their own dedicated chamber. The HDDs are in a cage next to the PSU shroud, and the SSDs are on hinged doors behind the tempered glass. There’s also a built-in Commander Pro lighting controller that can connect with Corsair-branded RGB LED fans and light strips (you can chain enough of the fan controllers for all 13 fan slots) that you can adjust using Corsair’s iCUE software. The chassis accommodates two power supplies; a full-sized ATX (for the full-sized motherboard) and a SFX (for the mini-ITX system). The Corsair Obsidian 1000D is massive and meant to pack as much hardware as possible into its monstrous-yet-elegant chassis. A modest budget-oriented build would belittle the 1000D’s intent, which is to be the biggest and baddest (in a good way) PC case you’ve ever seen. At $500, it’s clearly not priced for the masses. However, for a well-off DIY PC enthusiast that wants to make a mid-life crisis gaming rig with a few massive radiators, gratuitous fan and storage capacity, and a sleek tempered glass design, the Corsair Obsidian 1000D dual-system PC case could be a viable (albeit not practical) option. The Corsair Obsidian 1000D super-tower dual-system PC case is priced at $500 on Amazon, but it’s currently out of stock.

NBC has canceled drama “Taken.” The series is being shopped elsewhere as producers produced by EuropaCorp TV USA and Universal Television seek a new U.S. platform for the series, whose title has strong international brand recognition. The series serves as a prequel to the hit action film franchise of the same name that starred Liam Neeson, with “Vikings” star Clive Standen taking over the role of former Green Beret Bryan Mills. After a personal tragedy leaves him badly shaken, Mills is recruited by the CIA, with each mission helping him build up the “very particular set of skills” that enthralled fans of the film series.

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Apple is supposed to thoroughly revamp its basic iPhone, introducing one with 6.1" LCD display in the fall, at the $650 tag reserved for its bread-and-butter handsets that sell the most. That's quite the jump from the current 4.7" iPhone 8, but the new aspect ratio brought along with a TrueDepth camera notch, should keep the size nice and compact still. How will Apple do its giant notch on an LCD screen? Well, the iPhone 9, or whatever it's called, is heavily tipped to use JDI's Full Active display technology. While not an OLED screen, it is flexible enough for slight bending, plus the panel bezels and connection circuitry at the bottom are reduced to a minimum, making Full Active screens one of the most compact around. The iPhone 9 will allegedly have one more ace up its display sleeve, though, reports Korean media, and it is technology currently found on LG's newest flagship. Called MLCD+ on the G7, it adds an extra white pixel to the regular red, green and blue dots, so the backlight goes straight through to show white, instead of filtering three colors in an utter waste of resources. This allows MLCD+ panels to be much brighter (up to 1000 nits in the case of the G7), and also consume less energy when displaying white, compared to regular RGB matrices. The iPhone 9 is shaping up to be a pretty interesting gear, and analysts are expecting a windfall for Apple from its sales this year, so we will keep our ears to the ground for any further info on its design and specs.

The team behind secure messaging app Briar - which uses the Tor anonymity network or local networks to send and receive messages - has announced that the app is out of beta, as a stable version is now available to download from Google Play. Img The company says some new features are in the pipeline for the app. These include the ability to add contacts remotely prior to verifying identities in person, image attachments for messages, and improved battery life. Team Briar also says they'll start working on developing a desktop client for the service as well. As for an iOS client, here's what they have to say: "Bringing the P2P messenger to the iPhone is challenging, because Apple does not allow long-lived network connections in the background which are needed for P2P messaging."

Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note 9 will probably not be announced before August, but the company is - unsurprisingly - already testing the phone. Just a couple of days ago, a Snapdragon-based Note 9 was benchmarked on Geekbench, so we now have a new pseudo-proof that the handset exists (most likely, no one was doubting that anyway). The new Galaxy Note phone that's been benchmarked has the model number SM-N960U. This is almost certainly a US-bound Note 9, as it succeeds the SM-N950U - one of the official US variants of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (pictured above). The phone is listed as featuring Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 processor and 6 GB of RAM. We have to mention that it's the second time when we're seeing the SM-N960U on Geekbench, the first time being back in March. Both now, and in March, the smartphone was listed with the same CPU and RAM amount, as well as with Android 8.1 Oreo on board. While a singular listing may be inaccurate, when we have two of them showing similar specs, it's highly likely that they are accurate. Img The new benchmark test reveals single-core and multi-core scores similar to those of the Snapdragon 845-based Galaxy S9. However, since this has to be a pre-production Galaxy Note 9, we shouldn't read too much into these scores. Earlier this month, an Exynos-based Galaxy Note 9 was reportedly tested on Geekbench. While that may have been a fake test, we're pretty sure that a Note 9 featuring a Samsung-made Exynos processor is also in the making, although not for the US market. Interestingly, the Exynos variant could come with 8 GB o RAM, instead of 6 GB.

If you followed Google's I/O conference, you are likely be aware of Gmail's new Smart Compose feature the company announced at the event. It uses AI to predict and suggest what you may write next, effectively making the sentence writing process quicker. Img Well, the functionality is live, although only as an experimental feature for now. It's in pre-release phase, and as with any feature in this stage, you can test it and share your feedback with Google. To turn the feature on, first make sure you're using the new Gmail, and then follow the series of steps mentioned in the Gmail Help support page (link below). You need to hit the Tab key to accept a suggestion. Also, Smart Compose is currently only available in English.

Three new Nokia smartphones have been spotted in a certification listing. Carrying model numbers TA-1075, TA-1105, and TA-1116, the devices have received regulatory approval in Russia. Img Sadly, nothing else is currently known about these devices. However, given that they have started collecting certifications, we expect to hear more on them soon. Meanwhile, the Nokia X6 moniker has been confirmed. The name has been spotted in a Bluetooth listing, laying to rest rumors that the device - which is set to arrive on May 16 - will be called Nokia X. Img

During Google I/O, head of Android Security, David Kleidermacher, spoke about the changes that are coming to security in Android P. Of course, the talk started by mentioning the ways that Google has made it easier for OEMs to make updates for their Android devices thanks to things like Project Treble. "As reported by XDA-Developers Google is taking it a step further by modifying its OEM agreements to include revisions that require regular security patches as part of this agreement. We’ve also worked on building security patching into our OEM agreements. Now this will really lead to a massive increase in the number of devices and users receiving regular security patches.” There aren’t many more details about these new security patch requirements like: How often will updates be required? When will OEMs need to comply with regular updates? How will Google verify that an OEM is providing regular updates? Android has made much progress on solving the issue that it’s been facing since the OS’ conception: fragmentation. But with Project Treble and now Google’s efforts to get OEMs to push out regular security updates, Google is certainly concerned to get updates to consumers quicker, and to make sure that everyone using Android is on the latest security patch for the safety of their data. Android is in charge of its operating system, so it will certainly benefit consumers when these rules are put into place. Google appears to be more invested and committed to Android than ever before. With an improved focus on wearables since the rebranding of Android Wear to Wear OS.

The Bluetooth SIG has certified the upcoming Samsung Galaxy A Star. This comes with Bluetooth 5.0 on board, and it has the model number SM-G885. Previously, rumors said the handset would be called Galaxy A8 Star when it launches, but as per the Bluetooth SIG's documents it will be known simply as the A Star. This certification doesn't reveal anything else about the device. According to past leaks and outings it should boast a 6.28-inch FHD+ Infinity Display, dual rear cameras (with 16 MP + 24 MP resolution), the Exynos 7885 or Snapdragon 660 SoC at the helm, 4 or 6GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a 3,700 mAh battery. It's probably going to become official soon, now that it's already going through certification processes left and right. It was assumed at one point that this would be a model confined to the Chinese market, but the Bluetooth SIG's listing contains an international variant as well.

NVIDIA is planning to offer a new variant of the GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card which may not look different at all but hold a surprise underneath the hood. The latest rumors coming straight from China indicate that NVIDIA is planning to use a high-performance GPU on the GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card which has been used on their high-end products such as the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. NVIDIA’s GP104 GPU Rumored To Be Cut and Featured Inside the GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB Graphics Card The GPU that is to be allegedly used inside the GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB graphics card would be the NVIDIA GP104. The NVIDIA GP104 GPU has many variants and it is being shipped with three SKUs that are specific to the GeForce market. These include the GTX 1080, GTX 1070 Ti and the GTX 1070 that have been available since 2016 (with the exception of the GTX 1070 Ti). The source points out that the NVIDIA GP104-300 chip which is used on the GTX 1070, will be cut down specifically for the GeForce GTX 1060 graphics cards. This won’t be the first time we are hearing such reports as far back as December 2016, when reports emerged that NVIDIA will be equipping the 3 GB GeForce GTX 1060 models with cut down GP104 GPUs. The cut down GPUs will match the specifications of the GP106 GPU and feature no additional gains which many will expect from a high-end GP104 GPU. NVIDIA will also be giving a new name to this SKU which will be known as the GP104-150 GPU. The 3 GB model was going to use the GP104-140 GPU. This would also make it the sixth variant in the GeForce GTX 1060 family. We know of the 3 GB, 5 GB, 6 GB (8 Gbps / 9 Gbps) models and now we know that a GP104 variant exists while a new one is going to launch pretty soon if this rumor is accurate. As for the core specifications, nothing changes from what we already get on the GTX 1060 6 GB model. The GP104 GPU may slightly affect the thermals and power consumption but it will not be noticeable at all. We can also expect the card to improve core and boost frequencies offering more stable clocks. So now the question, why is NVIDIA bringing this variant so late to the market. First of all, the card wouldn’t affect any 6 GB GTX 1060 owners at all. It’s literally the same thing and no one would even notice the change. However, it shows that NVIDIA is clearing stock of their Pascal GPUs to ready for the next generation. The GeForce GTX 1060 is a good seller among gamers and it’s possible that NVIDIA wants to ship as many cards as they can before the new cards launch. It’s also worth noting that NVIDIA will be offering the GP104 equipped GTX 1060 cards in the Chinese region only.

A report by security company Radware suggests that Google Chrome users were exposed to yet another wave of malicious extensions offered to them on the official Chrome Web Store. The extensions were used to perform "credential theft, cryptoming, click fraud, and more" according to Radware. The company detected the family of new malware for Google Chrome with the help of machine-learning algorithms which it ran on a customer's computer network. Security firm ICEBRG identified another set of malicious Chrome extensions earlier this year, and 2018 was also the year that extensions with Session Replay functionality appeared in the Store. Another wave of malicious Chrome extensions detected According to Radware's analysis, the malware has been active since at least March 2018. It infected more than 100,000 user devices in over 100 countries, and pushed at least seven different Chrome extensions with malicious content using the following attack vector: The attackers use Facebook advertisement to reach potential victims. Users are redirected to fake YouTube pages. A prompt is displayed asking them to install a Chrome extension to play the video. The click on "add extension" installs the extension and makes the user part of the botnet. The malicious JavaScript is executed on installation which downloads additional code from a command center. The extensions that the attackers used were copies of popular Chrome extensions with malicious, obfuscated code, added to them. Radware identified the following extensions: Nigelify PwnerLike Alt-j Fix-case Divinity 2 Original Sin: Wiki Skill Popup keeprivate iHabno You can check the company blog for extension IDs and other information. Google removed all of them in the meantime. The malware has multiple purposes: Steal Facebook account data by sending Facebook login cookies or Instagram cookies to the command center. Create a Facebook API token if signed in to Facebook and steal it as well. Spread the malware through Facebook using the user's friends network. This happens either as messages in Facebook Messenger or new Facebook posts that uses contact name tags. Mine cryptocurrency using the user's browser. The malware could mine three different coins (Monero, Bytecoin, and Electroneum). The attackers created several protective measures to prevent users from interfering with the operation. It monitored Chrome's extensions management page and closed it whenever the user tried to open it. Prevents access to cleanup tools on Facebook and in Chrome, and it tried to prevent users from editing or deleting posts, or making comments. Use the browser to watch or like YouTube videos, or write comments. Closing Words The identification of the malware happened by accident. Radware's machine-learning algorithm detected the malware and that led to the identification of the network and the removal from the Google Chrome Store. Considering that the attackers operated the extensions as early as March 2018, it is clear -- again -- that Google's protective system does not work properly. Chrome users need to verify any extension before they hit the install button. A rule of thumb is that you should never install extensions that prompt you to do so outside of the Chrome Web Store but since malicious extensions are always hosted in the Store, it is not a 100% safeguard against these. The main issue here is that the majority of users can't verify if a Chrome extension is legitimate or not as it requires analyzing its code. This leaves running Chrome without extensions as the only option to stay safe.

Do you remember AMD's TrueAudio Next technology? If not, you'd be forgiven; it's not gained as much traction as it could (should?) have, considering its open nature. As a quick reminder, this is AMD's GPU-accelerated audio pipeline, which adds "audio raytracing" capabilities to audio by delivering true spatial positioning and object interactions in a given scene - at much higher performance than the usual CPU-based solutions. The 1.2 version is being hailed as a "coming of age" for True Audio Next, which includes "a number of notable performance and feature improvements, and it reflects the enhancements built into the version of TAN supported in Steam Audio." Efficiency has also been improved, with minimized "memory, buffer transfer and synchronization overhead". The remainder of the blog post by AMD's Fellow Design Engineer Carl Wakeland follows. "The TAN GPU utilities library now supports AMD Resource Reservation, in which a configurable part of the GPU may be reserved for audio processing apart from the normal GPU compute resources. As explained in earlier blogs, Resource Reservation protects audio and graphics queues and compute resources from blocking each other, allowing them to coexist on the GPU as never before possible. Developers can now call a function to query a system's TAN support and available resources, as well. Finally, a number of new samples are added to exemplify and streamline the process of building audio applications using TAN: Accelerated mixing. Mixing on the GPU with TAN can minimize buffer transfer overhead. 10-band EQ. IIR (Infinite Impulse Response) filter. Time domain convolution and doppler sample. We continue to work on exciting new optimizations for future releases. Meanwhile, we welcome contributions from others - please feel free to make a pull request to submit your own examples and optimizations for TAN."