Cue also downplayed claims that Apple was shying away from mature content. He pointed out that the Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon project, The Morning Show, had issues, language and other aspects that were “definitely not appropriate” to watch with a child.
The statements suggest that Apple isn’t micromanaging shows once they’re underway, although that’s not necessarily the concern — for some, the issue is the choice of the shows themselves. The company reportedly dropped plans for a Dr. Dre series over sexual and violent content, among other would-be edgy productions. You might get truly mature shows on Apple TV+, but there’s a worry you might also miss out on the boundary-pushing material that you see at Amazon and Netflix.
The strategy is much like the one Facebook uses to curb clickbait. The social network looks for common phrases in these bogus health posts and uses those to predict the likelihood that a post is leading people astray. If there’s a close fit, that post is less likely to show up in your News Feed.
Although Facebook is only discussing the update now, there’s a certain amount of urgency to it. People in private Facebook groups have been circulating a myth that bleach would ‘cure’ autism in children — it was not only a falsehood, but genuinely dangerous. A crackdown like this could prevent serious harm and keep Facebook out of (further) trouble.
As it stands, the phones are closer in appearance to Huawei’s P-series than anything from Cupertino, right down to the vertical lettering, in-screen fingerprint reader and teardrop camera notch on the front. They’re mostly upper-mid-range devices, though. The regular CC9 has a Snapdragon 710 chip, a 6.4-inch “full HD+” AMOLED screen, a triple-camera rear setup (48MP main, an 8MP wide-angle and 2MP depth-of-field) and a 32-megapixel front camera to help create those Mimoji. The lower-cost CC9e makes do with a smaller 6.1-inch display, a Snapdragon 665 and less RAM (4GB versus 6GB) in its base configuration, while a Meitu Edition of the full CC9 includes 8GB of RAM and custom-tuned cameras.
Xiaomi’s phones go on sale in China starting July 5th for the regular CC9 (July 9th for the CC9e). We wouldn’t count on the company getting in hot water for its Memoji-alikes due to China’s softer stance on intellectual property, but it’s also safe to say you won’t see an official debut in the US. Something tells us Apple wouldn’t take kindly to this.
Spotify Stations breaks Spotify’s radio feature out into a separate app. It surfaces music based on your own playlists and listening habits, and lets you add or subtract artists and like or dislike songs. Since you can listen to tunes without thinking too much or digging in to your collection, it’s especially convenient on CarPlay.
As on the mobile app, selecting Stations in CarPlay allows you to flip between your favorite stations and skip from song to song using your vehicle’s built-in controls. The app is only available in the US and Australia (I can’t get it here in France), but you should be able to install it on your CarPlay system now if you’re in one of those two countries.
The first meaning of “Super” is “similar to card already on sale, but better.” That’s a lot like the Ti moniker NVIDIA often uses, and it accurately describes the most changed of the new cards, the RTX 2060 Super. The new card comes in at $399 — $50 more than the regular edition — and it’s actually based on a variant of the original 2070’s chip.
In terms of new stuff, you get an extra 256 CUDA cores (giving 2,176 total) and 16 extra texture units (for 136 total). There’s also an improved base clock of 1,470MHz (versus 1,365MHz prior), but on the negative side, there’s a slightly reduced boost clock of 1,650MHz (down from 1,680MHz).
The most significant change, however, is memory: The 2060 Super has 8GB, as opposed to the regular card’s 6GB. When combined with an improved 256-bit memory interface, this increases bandwidth by 33-percent to 448 GB/sec. That’s a huge change for the better and should boost performance a lot.
Although the raw TFLOPs improvement doesn’t look that impressive — 7.2 at FP32 vs 6.5 — all told, these tweaks should eke out an extra 15 percent of performance over the base model. NVIDIA says this puts the RTX 2060 Super almost on par with the original RTX 2070 and ahead of last generation’s GTX 1080. Not bad for $399. The second price you pay is one of power draw: NVIDIA says the Super card will pull a peak of 175 watts from your PSU, up slightly from the previous 160W power envelope.
A side-note: NVIDIA packages CUDA cores and texture units inside a streaming multiprocessor (SM). In NVIDIA’s current architecture, these SMs also house Tensor cores for AI and RT cores for ray-tracing. Although the spec sheet notes an increase of four SMs, which makes sense given the boost to CUDA cores, it doesn’t mention a change to Tensor or RT core counts. Instead, it says the maximum Tensor FLOPS raises from 51.6 to 57.4, which is inline with the improvements elsewhere, suggesting there are additional active Tensor cores.
On the ray-tracing side, NVIDIA notes an increase from 5 Giga Rays to 6 Giga Rays. We’re not entirely sure how the company calculates this, but a 20-percent increase is surprising given what we know about the rest of the hardware. Perhaps this figure factors in memory bandwidth, or perhaps it’s just a side effect of rounding to the nearest billion, and the increase is actually more like the 10- to 15-percent improvement the Super card shows elsewhere.
RTX 2070 Super
Enter the second meaning of “Super”: “A card that replaces the older, non-Super one.” The RTX 2070 Super comes in at the same $499 as the original 2070, which has not been given a price reduction and, instead, looks set to be phased out.
The changes start with a mild bump to active hardware. This is a pared-back version of the original 2080’s chip, with a lot of things deactivated. You again get an extra four SMs, with 256 CUDA cores (up to 2,560 total) and 16 more texture units (up to 160).
[NVIDIA’s official press materials for the 2070 Super have a conflicting chart that suggests the 2070 Super has 184 texture units. Anything’s possible, but it seems unlikely to be more than an error. We’ve reached out for clarification on which is correct, and will update this story when we hear back.]
Memory was always identical between the 2070 and 2080, so it should come as no surprise there aren’t any changes there. It’s still 8GB at 14Gbps on a 256-bit interface — although there is a slight bump to L1 cache. Where the 2070 Super is getting a lot of its increased power from is clock speeds. While the outgoing 2070 has a base clock of 1,410MHz and a boost clock of 1,620MHz, the Super replacement has a base of 1,605MHz and a boost of 1,770MHz.
NVIDIA claims the RTX 2070 Super is 16-percent faster than the regular 2070 on average, putting it above the GTX 1080 Ti, and mighty close to the original RTX 2080. It also says ray tracing improves by a similar margin, claiming the Super edition can handle “7 Giga Rays” versus the original’s six.
Even though prices are the same, you have to pay for that extra power somewhere: The new card’s expected peak draw is 215W, up 40W from the previous 175W. That seems like a huge increase, but when you consider this $499 card is going up against AMD’s $449, 225-watt RX 5700 XT, it makes sense for NVIDIA to increase the power draw to ensure it stays ahead.
RTX 2080 Super
Rounding out the new GPUs is the RTX 2080 Super. Like the 2070, this will replace the old card in the lineup and costs the same $699 as the card it supplants. There’s a less-significant change to the actual hardware here, as you’re only getting two extra SMs over the original. That means an addition of 128 CUDA cores, 16 Tensor cores, eight texture units and two RT cores. There are significant boosts to clock speeds, though, making the side-by-side look like this:
Feature
RTX 2080
RTX 2080 Super
SMs
46
48
CUDA cores
2,944
3,072
Base clock (MHz)
1,515
1,650
Boost clock (MHz)
1,710
1,815
Tensor cores
368
384
RT cores
46
48
Texture units
184
192
If you’ve been following the leaks, you’ll know there’s an important detail absent from the above table: memory bandwidth. As rumored, the 2080 Super’s memory data rate has risen from 14Gbps to 15.5Gbps, increasing total memory bandwidth to 496.1 GB/s. That’s an 11-percent improvement over the original card’s 448 GB/s.
Additional cores and higher clocks boost the new 2080’s raw number-crunching capability to 11.1 TFLOPs, up from 10 TFLOPs. That’s, again, an 11-percent improvement over the original card. (Note, though, that it’s not such a huge leap over the Founders Edition or after-market cards with high boost clocks.) Power draw also goes up, creeping from 215W on the original model all the way up to 250W.
Then come the claims: NVIDIA says the new card is “faster than the Titan Xp.” On paper, that might seem spurious. In terms of quoted power, (12.1TFLOPS for the Xp versus 11.1TFLOPS for the 2080 Super) it isn’t, and despite the memory improvements, there’s a 50GB/s decrease in bandwidth as well. However, the Titan Xp is built on NVIDIA’s last generation architecture, Pascal, and it’s likely the claim comes from in-game performance in modern titles.
Here’s one last curio for you: Despite the changes to the hardware, NVIDIA is quoting the same “8 Giga Rays per second” figure for both the original and new 2080. Fair play to NVIDIA for being consistent on using overly broad rounding when it comes to ray tracing, even when it’s to its detriment. On paper, we’d expect to see an RTX performance uplift somewhere between five and 10 percent, so that’s something to keep an eye on when reviews of the 2080 Super start rolling in. And you won’t have to wait long for that, as these cards are coming in hot.
The full line-up
The RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super will both be available from June 9th, with the RTX 2080 Super following on June 23rd. Here’s what the RTX line-up will look like then, according to NVIDIA:
GPU
Starting price
Availability
GeForce RTX 2060
$349
Now
GeForce RTX 2060 Super
$399
7/9
GeForce RTX 2070 Super
$499
7/9
GeForce RTX 2080 Super
$699
7/23
GeForce RTX 2080 Ti*
$999
Now
*The 2080 Ti Founders Edition is still officially $1,199.
The old-school RTX 2060 is ominous in its lack of… Super-ness, right? If we had to guess, we’d say NVIDIA was considering retiring it along with the 2070 and 2080, but decided otherwise. The RTX 2060 is, by all accounts, a great seller, and NVIDIA probably felt it needed to keep a card with its flagship branding at that price point, given AMD’s new RX 5700 is launching at $379.
Will we see a 2080 Ti Super edition? Well, that depends on how hard AMD can push its new “Navi” GPUs. The initial cards based on the new architecture are mostly priced to compete with the 2060 and 2070, which is where NVIDIA has really focused on with this update. The 2080 Super was simply a necessity, given how similar the new 2070 is to the original 2080.
If AMD can produce a new flagship card that gets anywhere close to the performance of the 2080 Ti, you can bet NVIDIA will respond. It wouldn’t even be a difficult task: The 2080 Ti leaves around 10 to 15 percent of raw performance on the table when compared to a fully configured workstation RTX card.
Away from fantasy land, NVIDIA’s tweaks here generally make a lot of sense. They address a common complaint about its line-up: Unless you’re into ray tracing, the 2070 and 2080 just aren’t a big upgrade over the last generation in terms of price versus performance. The 10- to 15-percent gain in performance with the Super editions changes that. And of course, these new cards combat AMD’s aggressive pricing on its RX cards quite nicely, too. The 2080 Super might need come down in price a bit if AMD enters that range, though.
The first batch of Navi RX cards are due June 7th, and the 2070 Super and 2080 Super arrive two days later. Spec sheets can only tell you so much, and we have a busy time ahead of us putting all these cards through their paces, so stay tuned for our analysis on real-world performance in the coming weeks.
Microsoft is up to something. Yesterday the Windows team dropped a sizzler video on Twitter, announcing the “all-new” Windows 1.0. It posted the same video over on its Instagram account, but only after it had wiped every single other post from its page. The video winds backwards through the catalog of Windows logos, before eventually settling on the Windows 1.0 design, which is now being used across all of its social channels.
LG says the G8S ThinQ was created for users “seeking a more bespoke smartphone experience,” although in practice that seems to mostly mean that the phone has improved camera software for snapping more elegant selfies.
It’s designed to be operated one-handed, key for capturing the aforementioned shots, and the front-facing camera offers simulated studio lighting to enhance portrait images and give them more depth. The phone’s stand-out feature is the rear triple-lens camera setup with a wide angle lens. It has the widest field of view of any phone camera to date, at 137 degrees, and offers continuous zoom. There’s also a bokeh effect and stabilization enhancement which can be added to videos.
The biometric sensors make unlocking smoother, including Hand ID which scans users’ circulatory pattern using infrared light, so the phone can be unlocked more easily when it’s dark. There’s improved Face Unlock too, and the intriguing but not very practical Air Motion feature, which allows users to perform actions without touching the screen.
In terms of specs, the G8S is largely similar to the G8 but with a lower resolution screen. The G8S has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chip, 6G RAM, 128GB storage and 3.5mm headphone jack as the G8, but its 6.2-inch OLED display has a resolution of 2248 x 1080 (compared to the 3120 x 1440 resolution on the G8). It comes in three shiny colors: black, teal and white.
LG says that while G8’s pricing and availability aren’t available yet, they will be announced locally shortly.
The trio will go on a fraught journey through the Chinese countryside on a quest to return Gizmo to his family and find a treasure. They’ll find and fight monsters and spirits from Chinese folklore, while fending off a greedy industrialist and, naturally, a whole bunch of bloodthirsty gremlins.
Steven Spielberg was the executive producer of the both the original film and the 1990 sequel, and his company Amblin Television will produce the WarnerMedia animated prequel, according to Deadline. A Gremlins 3 film sequel from Warner and Amblin has been rumored for years, but until it makes a splash and emerges in the sunlight, the streaming animated series will have to do.
We hope you liked the features added in the Windows 10 May 2019 update, because it may be a while before other noticeable upgrades happen. Microsoft committed to a biannual major release schedule for Windows 10 back in 2017, and now it confirmed that the “19H2” update set to roll out later this year “will be a scoped set of features for select performance improvements, enterprise features and quality enhancements.”
The good news, though, is that installing it will be handled more like the monthly patches Microsoft already delivers, so it shouldn’t be disruptive to your schedule. It’s also not a big surprise, since more noticeable feature changes — like its new Linux kernel — have been in testing since February with a build number indicating a release in spring 2020.
Windows 10 Insider beta testers in the slow ring will get the first rollout of 19H2 starting now, but with no visible feature changes at all while Microsoft tests the update process. Assuming all goes well, it should be available for everyone in September. We’ll see if this staggered feature release brings a future of “seamless OS updates” sooner rather than later.
When it does, the abort motor will start up and pull the module away from the booster, while the attitude control monitor will be in charge of steering it into position so it can be jettisoned back to Earth. The whole process will only take three minutes, but NASA is bound to spend a lot more time than that crunching the data it collects from the capsule’s 900 sensors, including microphones and temperature and pressure instruments.
Mark Kirasich, Orion’s program manager, explained:
“This test is extremely important. Our Launch Abort System is a key safety feature of the spacecraft — it will protect the crew members who fly onboard Orion during the most challenging part of the mission, which is the ascent phase.”
The test’s launch window will begin at 7AM ET and will last for four hours until 11AM. NASA will begin its live coverage of the event at 6:40AM ET, and you can watch it all go down on the agency’s website or through the video embedded below.
