Sony may have stopped making floppy disks over a decade ago, but that hadn’t stopped the Tokyo government from relying on the obsolete tech. At least, not until now. Kind of. As part of modernization efforts, the local authorities are starting to phase out floppies in favor of digital systems, according to Nikkei Asia.
It’s been a heavy week for those of us who want to preserve life on earth. Somehow, the latest, greatest hope for a livable future is in the hands of one man—a senator, not even a king! Given how few Americans voted for him, it’s absurd that Joe Manchin has so much national influence. But when you factor in the scale…
“What felt comfortable for our family was him always being around,” the “Cravings” cookbook author said.
Moderna said Monday that a low dose of its COVID-19 vaccine is safe and appears to work in 6- to 11-year-olds.
As promised, today Microsoft and 343 Studios gave us a look at Halo Infinite‘s campaign. In this new campaign overview, we get to see many of the locations we’ll visit throughout the story. Get ready to use Halo Infinite‘s new grapple mechanic, because it’s on display a lot throughout the overview. Before today’s overview dives into the story of Halo … Continue reading
Amazon has announced two new programs for Alexa centered around healthcare and retirement homes. Through Alexa Smart Properties, hospitals and senior living communities can run their own custom version of the voice assistant.
Retirement homes might tap into Alexa to help residents keep in contact with family and friends, stay in touch with staff, take part in activities and remain engaged with other members of the community. Staff members can use Alexa to broadcast announcements and, of course, the voice assistant can still be used for things like controlling connected devices and smart TVs.
Amazon’s aim with the healthcare program is to, among other things, let staff members check in with patients without having to enter their rooms. In turn, patients can ask nurses questions, and they’ll be able to respond to brief queries without having to leave their station. In addition, they can ask Alexa to play music or a podcast. As with the senior living program, care providers could use Alexa for announcements. This program builds on a 2019 pilot project at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
A version of Alexa for healthcare providers is something that Amazon has had in the works for some time. A report in 2017 suggested the company was developing hardware and software for healthcare projects, and those rumors intensified the following year. In 2019, Amazon rolled out the first HIPAA-compliant Alexa skills, which let providers help people manage prescriptions and provide blood glucose readings and tips to people with diabetes. It also has pushed into the telehealth sphere over the last couple of years.
Amazon isn’t the only major tech company with an interest in the healthcare field. Microsoft invested $40 million into an AI for Health program and it announced plans earlier this year to buy speech tech company Nuance for $19.7 billion to boost its AI, cloud and healthcare ambitions.
Google, meanwhile, has worked closely with some healthcare providers. It announced plans to open an office in Rochester, Minnesota this year. The Mayo Clinic is headquartered there and the two sides plan to collaborate further.
Apple’s latest pro-level notebooks are barely one week old and they’ve already received a discount on Amazon. Both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros with M1 Pro CPUs are $50 off right now — that means you can grab the 512GB 14-inch model for $1,950 or the 512GB 16-inch version for $2,450. Is it a huge discount? No, but it’s notable for Apple’s newest laptops for which price might be a big barrier to entry for some. Both laptops will ship starting tomorrow.
Pre-order 14-inch MacBook Pro at Amazon – $1,950Pre-order 16-inch MacBook Pro at Amazon – $2,450
Despite being announced just last week, we managed to check out the latest MacBook Pros and gave them a score of 92. Apple addressed a lot of complaints people had with its high-end laptops here, namely their lack of ports. Both machines have three Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI connector, a MagSafe power port, a headphone jack and an SD card reader. The only thing missing is a USB-A port, but that’s a small sacrifice to make when you have so many connectivity options that you didn’t have on previous MacBook Pros.
To house these bevy of ports, the new MacBook Pros are thicker and slightly heavier than previous editions, but they remain portable (the 14-inch a bit more so than the 16-inch). They also have lovely Liquid Retina XDR displays capable of reaching 1,600 nits of brightness thanks to their Mini-LED backlighting. They also support 120Hz refresh rates with ProMotion, which will help prevent your eyes from getting fatigued after hours of scrolling through documents and web pages. The webcam notch is a noticeable difference as well, albeit one that might frustrate some, but at least the 1080p webcam is a big upgrade from the 720p camera in previous models.
Unsurprisingly, the new MacBook Pros have stellar performance. While the M1 chipset in last year’s laptops fell a bit short when it came to heavy duty creative work, the M1 Pro processors remedy that and we found the SSDs in these Pros to be speedy as well. While those who need serious power for 3D renderings and similar tasks may still want to consider machines with dedicated GPUs, others will find the power provided in the new MacBook Pros to be more than sufficient. And they last long, too — the 14-inch model survived over 12.5 hours in our testing, while the 16-inch machine lasted over 16.5 hours. If you knew during Apple’s event last week that the latest MacBook Pro was the laptop for you, now’s a good time to grab one while you can save a few dollars in the process.
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The West Coast wet season kicked off with a bang over the weekend. After a series of successively more powerful storms fueled by an atmospheric river hit the region late last week, the big one arrived with a force on Sunday.
When Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (real name: Cassandra Peterson) released her memoir in late September, the headline was: “OMG ELVIRA CAME OUT!” People were excited—rightfully so!—and the chapter about how the bodacious horror host fell in love with her partner of over 19 years is one of the book’s sweetest high…
“The experience of giving birth to a baby with no heartbeat in a maternity ward is jarring.”
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