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The 2020 Volkswagen Passat is a basic car with basic tech

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While behind the wheel of the 2020 Passat I was reminded that this is Volkswagen’s no-nonsense sedan. It’s not fast, luxurious, or techy. But what it lacks in flash, it makes up for with sensibility.

With a starting price of $22,995, it’s not totally devoid of technology. The MIB II infotainment system is housed in a 6.3-inch display. It’s on the small size for a vehicle in this class and the in-dash computer had a bit more latency than I like. It’s not horrible, but there was a slight stutter a few times while I was navigating the system.

And speaking of: Navigation isn’t standard, it’s an option. And honestly, I’d skip it. It looks like a mapping feature from four years ago. Fortunately, the Passat supports CarPlay and Android Auto. Plugin your phone, fire up Google Maps and you’ll have a better experience.

2020 Volkswagen Passat first drive

The driving experience itself is adequate. Even with more torque, the Passat is never going to quicken the pulse. That’s not its purpose. If you want fun, buy a Golf. If you want to get around town sensibly with four full-grown humans, the Passat is your car.

While commuting with your three co-workers, the vehicle’s optional adaptive cruise control will make short work of gridlock. Cut-ins were, for the most part, handled deftly with a few instances of the Passat excitedly hitting the brakes as cars entered its path while in cruise control lurching those inside forward. Speeding back up to catch traffic does take a bit, but that’s more to do with the engine than the ADAS (Advanced Drivers Assistance System).

The 2.0-liter four-cylinder turbocharged engine produces 174 horsepower and 206 pounds-feet of torque. Enough to accelerate on the on-ramp to meet the flow of traffic and to pass when there is a lot of space but mostly it’s just “good enough.” Cruising on the highway is an uneventful experience which is exactly what this car is built for. A nice chill drive.

The suspension offers up decent ride quality on the straights and surprising amount of cornering prowess. Those Volkswagen engineers just couldn’t help themselves it seems. If you do happen to get this car on the backroads, there’s just enough grip for a smile to appear on your face.

Inside the seats are comfortable and the new strip of wood along the dash does give the car some much-needed flair. Unfortunately, the rest of the materials in the dash feel too cheap for a car in this class. I’d say most people don’t rub their dashboards on a regular basis, but it also looks cheap, especially next to the bit of tree element.

2020 Volkswagen Passat first drive

The 2020 Passat is a series of compromises punctuated with a few surprises. The engine is merely fine, but the cornering is great. The seats are comfortable, but some interior elements feel cheaper than the vehicle’s sticker price. It’s a sedan that’s built for commuting. If you can fill it with coworkers even better. If you need a tool to get from point A to point B, here’s your car. If you want something with a bit more soul, look elsewhere.

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The Sensel Morph creative touchpad is discounted for Black Friday

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If you’re new to the Morph ecosystem, you can pick up bundles for $50 off. The best go-to for newbies is probably the base system plus one overlay, which is $199 instead of $249. All accessories qualify for a buy-one-get-one-half-off deal, so you can stock up on overlays, cases and cables. Plus, all Sensel customers can get two free months of Splice Sounds, which allows music producers to test all sorts of plug-in instruments and effects. You can read more about it in our subscription gift guide.

While no one could blame you for buying some of Sensel’s offerings for yourself, the products make great gifts for creatives, thanks to the Morph’s flexibility. Whether the person on your list is into music, video, coding or gaming, a Morph will likely see plenty of use.

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Cows wearing VR headsets might produce better milk

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It appears to have worked, at least on a basic level. The first test reduced the cows’ anxiety and boosted their overall sentiment. While it’s not certain how well this affects the quality or volume of milk, there are plans for a more “comprehensive” study to answer that question.

The research begs a few questions. Why not just put the cows in fields more often? How do you deal with battery life? And is there a risk of disturbing cows when you take their headsets off and show them dreary reality? In a sense, it’s a solution to a problem humans have created. Those issues aside, this could be an option for farms where summery fields just aren’t available, or where existing techniques (like piping in pleasing music) might not be effective. Just don’t expect a bovine version of Beat Saber any time soon.

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‘Quake II RTX’ update delivers more realistic ray-traced visuals

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The upgrade expands just where you’ll see ray tracing kick in, too. It’s now visible on security monitors, and you can even see hall-of-mirrors recursive reflections on certain surfaces.

Performance might also improve depending on your system. You now have the choice of dynamic resolution scaling that will try to maintain 60 frames per second by lowering the resolution when necessary. You can boost speed by limiting the number of reflection and refraction bounces, or by turning off temporal anti-aliasing.

The 1.2 update will install automatically if you have Quake II installed through Steam, but you can download it separately if you’re using a stand-alone copy. The Quake II RTX three-map demo remains free — you only need to buy something if you want to finish the fight with the Strogg and don’t already have a copy of the game hanging around.

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Alexa can refill your prescription and remind you to take it

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There are multiple privacy layers to be sure others aren’t prying into your medication history. You’ll need to use both your Alexa voice profile and a personal passcode to access data. Also, any interactions with the pharmacy skill are redacted to prevent someone from simply looking at the mobile app.

Right now, the feature is only available to Giant Eagle Pharmacy customers who install the store’s skill. More pharmacies are coming in 2020, however. It’s safe to say this is part of a considerably larger plan. Amazon is involved in the pharmaceutical world thanks to its PillPack acquisition, and there’s little doubt that it wants to integrate PillPack with its other businesses as closely as possible — it might just be a matter of time before Alexa is refilling prescriptions through Amazon’s own shop. Even if you don’t care for the official store, though, this could make the Echo (or any other Alexa-ready device) a go-to option if you regularly take prescription meds and don’t want to rely on mobile apps to keep track.

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Heart Analzyer’s new Apple Watch app puts detailed data on your wrist

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There are improvements for the iPhone as well, including half-month heart reports, support for breaks in your workout data and a screenshot mode for day graphs in case you want to share them with others.

Heart Analyzer is free to download, although there are in-app purchases ($2 each) to unlock extended data, deeper analytics and app customization. It might be worth a glimpse if you’re either closely monitoring your heart health or want to know if you’re making the most of your gym sessions.

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The first dual-SIM 5G phones could arrive in early 2020

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Thankfully, there might be speed to spare. MediaTek claims the “world’s fastest” data throughput, with support for 4.7Gbps downstream and 2.5Gbps upstream on sub-6GHz 5G networks. There’s WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1+ support, too. And yes, there should be some solid computing power to back up the wireless performance. The Dimensity 1000 touts four ARM Cortex-A77 high-performance cores, four low-power Cortex-A55 cores and a new AI unit that’s twice as fast as the prior generation. A five-core image signal processor can handle up to 80-megapixel cameras, although you’re more realistically going to see lower-resolution multi-camera devices.

The first phones using Dimensity 1000 chips should arrive in the first quarter of 2020. There’s no guarantee dual-SIM 5G phones will be among them, but we wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a race to ship one before competitors show up in droves. Even if you have to wait, though, this is good news for 5G’s early adopters. MediaTek’s design promises to lower the cost and improve the power efficiency of 5G, and it’ll support sub-6GHz wireless both in Asia (the company’s home turf) as well as Europe and North America. In other words, there might be a 5G phone you can both afford and find in a store near you.

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Apple offers a deeper look at Octavia Spencer true crime series ‘Truth Be Told’

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But of course the story has a twist: years later, she has to face the perpetrator, now a grown man played by Aaron Paul, after evidence came out that he may have been framed for the crime. The service’s description of the series says it “provides a unique glimpse into America’s obsession with true crime podcasts and challenges its viewers to consider the consequences when the pursuit of justice is placed on a public stage.”

While it sounds like the series tackles what some consider to be a problem with true crime podcasts, it also describes Spencer’s character as someone who just wants to figure out the truth. You can watch the trailer below to know what to expect when the show starts streaming on December 6th.

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AMD’s 64-core Threadripper 3990X arrives in 2020

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The 3990X will likely be AMD’s workstation answer to its server-oriented EPYC 7742. As such, it’ll have eight chiplets with eight cores each, while the 24- and 32-core 3960X and 3970X CPUs we saw earlier have four chiplets with four and six cores, respectively.

AMD Threadripper 3990X 64-core CPU

We still don’t know if the 3990X will have eight-channel memory with 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes like the EPYC or quad-channel memory and 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes like the 3960X/3970X. Also, AMD hasn’t said whether it’ll run on the same “Socket sTRX4” platform as those two chips, or if it will use the EPYC SP3 socket, or even an all-new platform. Based on an earlier MSI leak, the likely scenario is 64 PCIe 4.0 lanes running on the same sTRX4 platform as the 3960X and 3970X.

AMD’s review embargo for the latter chips lifted yesterday, and based on what we’re seeing, the 3990X is likely to be a monster workstation performer. All of the Threadripper chips are designed not for gaming, but video editing, 3D animation and other content creation chores. In that area, AMD is crushing Intel, besting the i9-10980XE and i9-9980XE in most benchmarks while consuming less power.

Intel should be worried, as it’s seeing AMD crashing into key areas like servers and workstations. It still dominates areas like gaming (although AMD’s latest regular Ryzen chips seriously closed the gap there this year), while AMD is still struggling with overclocking, according to the latest reviews. However, Intel will need to overcome yield problems with both 14- and 10-nanometer parts or AMD will start eating its lunch there, too.

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Google offers new Chromebook buyers three months of Disney+ for free

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Google announced the offer on its website, where it details that as a new subscriber you can get three months of Disney+ when you activate a new Chromebook between 25th November 2019 and 31st January 2020.

You’ll need to visit this page from your Chromebook to get the discount, where you can hit the “Redeem offer” button to get a promo code which you can use in the Disney+ app for a $20.97 saving.

Google is clearly aiming its affordable Chromebooks as holiday gifts, with models starting at $199 for the Acer Chromebook. Despite Chromebooks’ reputation as low spec, basic laptops, there are models with more full features as well like the Asus Chromebook Flip which transforms into a tablet or the Google Pixelbook which is a higher-performance option.

If you’re looking for an even cheaper option you can pick up a refurbished Chromebook for as little as $99, though that won’t come with the Disney+ offer included.

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