There’s no doubt that an Alexa-powered smart speaker is useful. After all, the ability to control your smart home, play games, and choose music with your voice is phenomenal — but did you know there are a lot of abilities that go overlooked? Alexa is jam-packed with features that don’t get as much time in the limelight. Some will keep you entertained, while others can help you give back to the world around you. Alexa can make charity donations If there’s one thing the past year has made abundantly clear, it’s the importance of looking out for one another. Alexa can simplify that by making charity donations for you — just say, “Alexa, I want to make a donation.” The voice assistant will then ask what charity you wish to donate to. While every charity is not available, there are hundreds that are. Say the name of the charity and confirm the action, and Alexa will automatically debit the funds from your account. Just make sure you have Amazon Pay set up first. Don’t know what … [Read more...] about 7 things you didn’t know Alexa could do on an Amazon Echo smart speaker
The club house
AMD’s EPYC Milan Breaks Cinebench Record, Here’s a 10nm Ice Lake Xeon Comparison
AMD's EPYC Milan processors launched last month with 120 new world records to their credit in various applications, like HPC, Cloud, and enterprise workloads. But variants of these chips will eventually come to the market as Threadripper models for high end desktop PCs, and AMD's server records don't tell us too much about what we could expect from the PC chips. However, the company recently broke the Cinbench world record with its Milan chips, giving us at least an idea of what to expect in rendering work. Just for fun, we also ran a few tests on Intel's new flagship 40-core Ice Lake Xeon chips to see how they stack up against not only AMD's new record, but also a single AMD Threadripper processor. The Bring Up , an AMD YouTube video series, the company took two of its $7,980 EPYC Milan 7763 chips for a spin in Cinbench R23, a rendering application that AMD commonly uses for its desktop PC marketing, largely because it responds exceedingly well to AMD's Zen architectures. So … [Read more...] about AMD’s EPYC Milan Breaks Cinebench Record, Here’s a 10nm Ice Lake Xeon Comparison
The best LGBTQ movies on Amazon Prime Video
It may seem like there’s no room for anything in movies but the most traditional portrayals of love, romance, sex, and gender identity. But the reality is that there are wonderful filmmakers making movies focused on the LGBTQ community, and it’s just that there aren’t enough platforms that showcase these stories. Thankfully, Amazon Prime Video is one of those platforms. We’ve gone through their impressive collection of LGBTQ movies to find the best they have to offer. Amazon Prime subscribers can watch many different kinds of LGBTQ flicks, including romances, documentaries, rock ‘n’ roll biopics, and more. When you’re done going through this list, check out the best LGBTQ movies on Netflix as well as the best LGBTQ films to stream right now on multiple services. Kiki (2016) Starting in February, Prime is streaming the acclaimed 2016 documentary Kiki . Following the struggles and joys of real LGBTQ youths, Kiki is named for the kiki community, existing as early as a … [Read more...] about The best LGBTQ movies on Amazon Prime Video
Destiny 2: Beyond Light: Where to find Xur for the weekend of April 16
Seasoned Destiny 2 players know they can count on the elusive merchant Xur to make an appearance with special exotic items every Friday, but what’s not so clear is where you’ll be able to find him. Below, you’ll find a map with a marker that indicates where Xur is, as well as a list of his wares. Who is Xur? If you’re new to Destiny 2 and need a bit more information about how this works, you should know that Xur is a special vendor who sells exotic weapons and armor. Each week, he comes to the solar system with a slate of goods, including an exotic weapon and one piece of exotic armor for each character class. In Beyond Light , he now stocks items like the Five of Swords. He also offers quests to reclaim old exotic weapons you may have missed. Where to find Xur (April 16-20) The trouble with Xur is finding him. We always know when Xur will show up — at the daily reset at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET each Friday. The question is where Xur will be. Previously in Destiny … [Read more...] about Destiny 2: Beyond Light: Where to find Xur for the weekend of April 16