The EPA is about to enact rules that would essentially hobble the agency's own ability to protect the environment. Rules were first proposed on April 30th, 2018, under now-resigned and disgraced Trump-appointed EPA head Scott Pruitt. The public comment portion of this situation is over tomorrow.
It may have been overshadowed by the Duplex AI media frenzy, but one of Google’s strongest topics in this year’s I/O developers conference was on Digital Wellbeing. A concern echoed this month at Apple’s own WWDC, tech companies are now raising awareness on how their own products could inevitably lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. Ahead of its upcoming app and updates, Google is pushing a pair of features to Google Calendar focused around the times when you shouldn’t be at work in the first place.
Given the fiasco the Amazon Echo is involved right now, it seems almost ill-timed to launch a new smart speaker. Amazon's problems, however, doesn't really mean that the idea of an AI-empowered speaker is fundamentally flawed. It just needs to be better executed. There are cases, however, when a limited application of AI can do wonders to make human lives easier. That's the idea that eMeet is trying sell with its new OfficeCore M2, what it bills to be the first AI-powered conference speaker in the market.
Augmented Reality may be on the roadmap for Apple, Google, and others in the next few years, but Toshiba is pulling the trigger early with its dynaEdge AR Smart Glasses. Targeting not consumers, but businesses, its wearable PC neatly sidesteps some of the more pressing issues facing other AR wearable projects, like battery life, processing power, and general style and heft.
Samsung has outed its latest SSD, the PM1643, with a whopping 30.72 terabytes (TB) of solid-state storage. The record-breaking drive is the industry's largest SAS SSD; indeed, even its 40 GB of DRAM alone is more flash than some smartphones and tablets are shipping with in storage today.
Olympus has launched a pair of smart glasses that look like Google Glass on steroids. Called the EyeTrek Insight EI-10, these smart glasses aren't made for the average consumer, but instead are intended for use in industries where having on-demand access to visual data can make tasks easier, safer and more efficient. The glasses will be available to buy starting this month.
There might be a never-ending debate on whether Samsung's phones are the greatest or the worst Android phones ever, but there is probably one thing both sides will agree on. Samsung is quite slow in rolling out updates, even after it pledged speedy security updates in the aftermath of Stagefright. Such a system will not work in businesses and enterprises, so when Samsung launched its new Galaxy Note 8 Enterprise Edition, it made a promise that should have been the case from the very start: monthly security updates.
When it comes to Google hardware, all eyes may be on the Pixel 2 and Pixelbook, but the search giant still wants to make inroads in businesses. That explains the new Hangouts Meet hardware, an awkwardly named meeting management system that builds on the Hangouts Meet service recently announced for enterprise. It's another attempt to make video conferencing more straightforward.
When Microsoft announced Windows 10 S, it was clearly seen as an attempt to regain lost ground from Chrome OS. Especially with its focus on the education sector and Chromebook-like laptops. But just as Chrome OS and Chromebooks aren't just used in schools, Microsoft is also aiming its guns at another, and potentially more lucrative, audience: the enterprise. At its Ignite conference, Redmond announced four new Windows 10 S devices but, this time, it's specifically targeting what it calls "Firstline Workers".
Google introduced Chrome Enterprise today to allow businesses more control over their Chromebooks. With Chrome Enterprise, businesses will have access to a collection of features not available on the standard version of Chrome OS. With this subscription service, Google aims to bring businesses a more secure and consistent user experience for all computer-using workers.
AMD is clearly out for blood. Intel's blood, of course. In the almost distant past, AMD nearly overthrew Intel from its throne with its aggressive pricing and marketing. Now it seems to have gotten that aggression back and is hitting every market where Intel has a foothold, using its new Zen platform as its weapon. From high-end gaming rigs to entry-level desktops to datacenters, AMD is now taking the battle to the enterprise, where it is taking on the Intel vPro with its similarly named Ryzen PRO.
AMD has introduced its new AMD Epic 7000 series of datacenter processors, saying they come with up to 32 high-performance Zen cores alongside a bunch of other notable features and bragging points, not the least of which is setting multiple new performance records. The new lineup features AMD Epyc processors ranging from the 8-core / 16-thread 7251 to the 32-core / 64-thread 7601.