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Almost a fifth of Earth’s ocean floor has been mapped

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Us humans know more about the surface of the Moon than we do Earth’s oceans, but there’s progress on closing that gap. The Seabed 3030 Project reports (via BBC News) that scientists have mapped 19 percent of ocean floors to contemporary standards, or a huge leap over the six percent from Seabed’s launch in 2017. A significant portion comes from nearly 5.6 million square miles of depth data collected in project partner GEBCO’s grid in 2019. That’s roughly twice the size of Australia, Seabed 2030 said.

The initiative has been helped by 133 contributors, partners and supporters. Some of the data, including GEBCO’s latest, had been publicly available but hadn’t been turned over until recently. Organization leaders are also counting on crowdsourced ship data and even robotic mapping vessels to fill in the gaps.

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Dell XPS 15 review (2020): The ideal 15-inch laptop for creatives

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I’d wager you won’t feel so bad about losing ports when you see just how fast the XPS 15 is. Our review unit featured Intel’s eight-core i7-10875H CPU, NVIDIA’s GTX 1650 Ti, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. You can configure it all the way up to the super-speedy Core i9 with 64GB of RAM. It easily trounced the Surface Book 3 in the PCMark 10 benchmark, especially when it came to multi-core testing (though the Surface’s faster GPU gave it a leg up in 3DMark). And it kept up with the ASUS Zephyrus G14 and the Intel NUC 9 Extreme, some of the fastest PCs we’ve seen this year.

The true test for a machine like this is real-world work, and it didn’t have any trouble there either. The XPS 15 converted a one-minute 4K video clip into 1080p in 43 seconds with its CPU and 33 seconds with the NVIDIA GPU, which is on par with the powerful NUC 9 Extreme. Needless to say, it didn’t have any trouble with my usual workflow, which involves juggling dozens of browser tabs, Slack, Evernote, Spotify and Audacity recordings. And while this isn’t a machine you’d really get to play games, the GTX 1650 Ti is more than enough to play most modern titles like Overwatch in 1080p.

To get that performance, though, You’d have to go beyond the $1,300 base model, which only comes with 8GB of RAM and integrated graphics. We’d recommend jumping up to the $1,850 configuration for twice as much RAM, a six-core i7 processor and that NVIDIA GPU. That’s a huge price jump, I know, but it’ll make the XPS 15 last you a lot longer. Even then, it’s still less than the MacBook Pro 16-inch, which starts at $2,400 but is admittedly more powerful. That XPS 15 configuration is also much cheaper than an upgraded Surface Book 3, which also has a lesser quad-core CPU.

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TikTok users and K-pop fans say they wrecked Trump’s Tulsa rally

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It’s unclear exactly how much of an impact these social media efforts had, since COVID-19 may have kept many at home regardless. However, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale had clearly accepted inflated attendance numbers when he boasted of over 1 million ticket requests on June 15th, and the team had prepared an overflow section (complete with an additional speech) that never got used.

This isn’t the first time the K-pop crowd has used its collective online energy in the political arena. It recently flooded racist Twitter hashtags with fancams (fan footage of celebrities) at the height of Black Lives Matter protests, effectively drowning out hateful messages. This, however, is on another level. If early evidence holds true, some of the social media world’s youngest audience may have skewed Trump’s campaign (or rendered its attendance guidance useless) without leaving home.



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Scientists propose tethering asteroids to prevent Earth impacts

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Many proposed anti-asteroid solutions involve knocking them off-course, which carries its own problems — what if you create a fragment that hits Earth regardless? Researchers might have a safer solution. They’ve proposed a system (spotted by Parabolic Arc) that would tether a threatening asteroid to a smaller rock, throwing off the larger body’s center of mass and steering it away from our homeworld. As the method only involves a giant cable, it wouldn’t risk cracking an object into pieces.

The scientists couldn’t test this in real life, of course, so they used a simulated version of Bennu to see how well their idea would work. It’s viable for protecting the planet in a range of conditions, the team said.

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All Otterbox Star Wars cases are 20 percent off today only

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Otterbox has a good reputation for keeping phones safe from scrapes, scuffs and drops. They provide a good deal of protection without turning your phone into a bulky, tactical beast. The small bumper around the screen may not look like much, but it’ll keep your phone from dropping square on its face. The Star Wars line is fairly subtle, so you can show off your fun side while still looking pretty classy. 

While quite a few models of iPhones (and Samsung’s Galaxy S9/S9+) are included in the sale, there aren’t any cases for some newer devices, like the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro as well as the Galaxy S10 and S20. Most of these cases are part of Otterboxes Symmetry Series, which are some of the company’s slimmest designs ever. The sale lasts all day, so if you forgot to pick up a whimsical grilling apron on your way to dinner, here’s your out: just tell Dad his case is in the mail.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.



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Google will shut down its AI-guided Photos printing service on June 30th

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Google’s automated Photos printing service wasn’t long for this world — at least, not in its first incarnation. Droid Life has learned (via The Verge) that Google is shutting down the AI-guided trial service on June 30th. It didn’t say what prompted the closure in a notice to members, but it said it hoped to “evolve this feature” and make it “more widely available.” This isn’t the end, then, even if the service is likely to change.

The $8 per month trial had AI pick your 10 best pictures (prioritized by faces, landscapes or a mix) and print them on 4×6 cardstock, with edits if you preferred. They were meant to be gifts, or just fond memories if you wanted more than just digital copies. Google didn’t have the best timing, however. The service became public knowledge in February, just a month before much of the world entered pandemic lockdowns — it’s hard to justify spending money on a photo service when you can’t socialize or travel. If there is a follow-up service, it might have to wait.

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Nextdoor pulls ‘Forward to Police’ feature amid concerns over racist abuse

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Nextdoor said in a statement that it had already cut “problematic posts” by 75 percent through changing the flow of safety posts to teach people about bias and prevent knee-jerk posting. Only 0.001 percent of posts were “related to racial profiling,” the company added, and there were efforts to lower that volume further.

There are still ways to get in touch with police through Nextdoor’s app, including direct messages. The company isn’t completely against facilitating those conversations. This is more of an acknowledgment that where and how Nextdoor users contacted the police could feed into biases.

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Google makes it easier to deregister your phone number for RCS messages

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Google has quietly rolled out (via Android Police) a new tool that makes its much simpler to deregister the number you used for its first-party RCS-enabled Messages platform. You can already deregister your number in the Settings page of the Messages app by enabling “chat features off.” But the tool, spotted by a Reddit user, makes it possible to deregister your number even if you don’t have your previous device anymore.

Similar to the web-based utility Apple released for iMessages a few years ago, you only have to enter the phone number you used and then wait for a six-digit verification code. Turning chat features off for your number may be necessary to ensure you don’t miss any messages sent to you if you decide to switch apps or platforms. Not receiving messages when you switch from iMessage to Android Messages or vice versa is a common problem. Switching from Google’s first-party Messages app to the device’s default one, such as Samsung Messages, or the other way around also causes the same issue.

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Adobe will tell you to uninstall Flash by the end of 2020

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It’s no secret that Adobe will end support for Flash when 2020 is over, but now it’s evident just how aggressive that cutoff will be. ZDNet reports that Adobe will prompt you to uninstall Flash “later this year” — if you don’t already know it’s time to leave the plugin behind, you will soon. And while it won’t surprise you to hear that Adobe will stop offering downloads, the company has also warned that it will block Flash content from running in the player starting in 2021.

It’s not completely shocking that Adobe would be so firm. Flash is known to be a security nightmare, and allowing users to keep running it without support would invite attackers to discover and exploit vulnerabilities. Still, it’s rare to see any developer drop support so thoroughly that it won’t let you use the software and actively discourages use months in advance.

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