Computer chips

Back in the day, computers made noises. We don’t mean played music or sound effects, but made actual commotion from within. It was mostly the heads on the hard drives moving around, or the squealing of a modem, but it was comforting because you knew something was happening. Today, you’re lucky if you hear a fan whirring.  But a paper in the journal Nature Electronics (opens in new tab) (summarized by Interesting Engineering (opens in new tab) ) describes the use of acoustic waves to carry out the same kind of tasks as electrons in computer processors. Could PCs be about to sing again? The paper is the work of Linbo Shao, Di Zhu and a team at Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. It's titled Electrical Control of Surface Acoustic Waves and describes a sound-wave chip that operates rather like a photonic processor. These exotic circuits swap the high and low voltages used by transistors to create binary instructions for modulated photons, … [Read more...] about Move Over, Electrons: Harvard Engineers Invent Sound-Wave Processing

Despite their high cost, 5K monitors are fairly popular among content creators, including photographers, videographers, movie makers, and even graphic designers. Apart from delivering incredibly crisp and detailed images, these monitors are usually quite large in size and feature high-end factory-calibrated panels to best present accurate colors. A true 5K resolution is 5,120 x 2,880 pixels, but most companies only focus on the horizontal pixels. Notably, very few monitors offer that resolution; hence, we have picked some of the best monitors that offer a 5K2K (5,120 x 2,160 pixels) resolution, too. Here are the best 5K monitors you can buy in 2022. Contents Dell UltraSharp U4021QW Apple Pro Display XDR LG UltraWide 40WP95C-W MSI Prestige PS341WU Apple Studio Display LG Ultrafine 27MD5KL-B Show 1 more item Dell UltraSharp U4021QW Best 5K monitor with built-in USB hub Jump to details Apple Pro Display XDR Best … [Read more...] about The best 5K monitors of 2022 | Digital Trends

If you go to Amazon looking for a new charger or a pair of headphones today, your options will be limited. People have started noticing that chargers, cables, webcams, keyboards, mice, speakers, and headphones — likely among other categories — from popular companies are either unavailable for shipping or gone from the platform entirely. Aukey and Mpow, extremely well-known companies with popular products, have all but disappeared from Amazon. And we have a good idea of the reason: Fake reviews. Online safety advocate SafetyDetective uncovered a massive trove of data pointing to wide-reaching pay-for-play review systems purportedly focused on China-based phone and computer accessory companies that primarily sell on Amazon. The leak exposed a system of companies paying to generate real-looking — but completely falsified — reviews for new products. The goal is simple: Shoot up the Amazon rankings for having a high number of reviews and an average rating, which starts the … [Read more...] about Amazon Removes Popular Tech Brands Amid Fake Review Leak | Digital Trends

In a move that has been anticipated for years, Apple finally — if somewhat awkwardly — confirmed that it will no longer make the iPod Touch , the last remaining iPod version. The reasons, according to Apple are clear: Given our ability to access music through all of our other digital devices (phones, laptops, tablets, and smart speakers), we’ve all moved beyond needing a dedicated device for listening to music on-the-go, especially one that can’t connect to streaming services like Apple Music through mobile data. Contents A&K Kann Max, $1,299, available in June 2022 A&K HC2 USB-C Dual DAC Cable, $249, available in June 2022 AK Pathfinder IEMs, $1,899, available in July 2022 That may be true, but Apple’s devices have in any case never fully satisfied audiophiles — a group of music lovers who expect convenience to go hand-in-hand with quality, not one at the expense of the other. Astell&Kern’s (A&K) lineup of hi-res digital audio players … [Read more...] about Miss the iPod? Astell&Kern has the cure — for a price | Digital Trends

According to the newly release HDMI 2.1a Amendment 1 specification, longer HDMI cable runs will soon be possible, even without the help of an additional power source. Amendment 1 introduces “ Cable Power ,” a feature that lets an HDMI source device, like an A/V receiver , game console, or streaming media device , provide the additional power needed to keep a signal strong enough to survive a journey that extends further than a few meters. If you’re raising an eyebrow right now because you’re already using a really long HDMI cable with no problems, it might be because you’re only sending lower-bandwidth content, like 4K video at 30Hz, possibly with HDR10. That kind of content only needs a Premium High Speed-rated HDMI cable, and these cables can indeed run to lengths of up to 25 feet without the need of an active cable (a cable that gets a signal boost from an external power source). However, any content that requires the full 48Gbps of an Ultra High Speed-rated cable … [Read more...] about Addition of Cable Power to HDMI simplifies longer cable runs | Digital Trends