Author: easyfilo

Enlarge / Intel’s NUC 12 Extreme kit. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Intel’s NUC Extreme mini PC kits have always been hard to recommend. It’s true that they’re considerably smaller than even the smallest mini ITX PC cases; it’s impossible to fit this much performance into less space if you’re using general-purpose PC components. But they’re also expensive, they haven’t been as fast as standard desktop PCs, and their upgradability has been limited. Those three things essentially defeat the purpose of building a beefy desktop gaming PC or workstation.

Codenamed “Dragon Canyon,” the newest version of the NUC Extreme Kit helps to fix the latter two problems by switching to actual socketed desktop processors rather than soldered-in laptop versions. It’s still an expensive box—you’ll pay about $1,150 for a Core i7 version with no RAM, SSD, GPU, or operating system and $1,450 for the Core i9 version we tested—but its performance now comes much closer to that of a typical desktop.

The NUC Extreme still isn’t for everyone, but if money is no object and you want the smallest desktop you can get, the 12th-gen NUC Extreme is less of a compromise than the previous versions were.

Enlarge / The back of the iPhone 13 mini. (credit: Samuel Axon)

There are already four American-accented English voices for Siri, but Apple will add a fifth in iOS 15.4. The new voice aims to provide a gender-neutral option for the first time, as reported by Axios.

The voice is labeled “Voice 5” in the Settings panel in the current beta release, though developer Steve Moser noted on Twitter that the voice is named “Quinn” under the hood. Apple confirmed to Axios that the voice is built from recordings by a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Moser also tweeted an example of what the new voice sounds like:

iOS 15.4 Beta 4 changes 🧵: Apple adds a 5th American Siri voice with filename ‘Quinn’ pic.twitter.com/HFQZV1oF0I
— Steve Moser (@SteveMoser) February 22, 2022

For most of the time since Siri first became a core iPhone feature back in 2011, a female voice was the default. That changed last year when Apple changed the iPhone setup to prompt the user to pick a male or female voice when first starting the iPhone, with no default choice selected.

Enlarge / The burial mask of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen recovered from the boy king’s tomb. (credit: Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images)

Among the many items recovered from King Tut’s tomb was a dagger made of iron, which is a material that was rarely used during Egypt’s 18th dynasty. That iron likely came from a meteorite, and a recent paper published in the journal Meteorites and Planetary Science sheds further light on precisely how that iron dagger was forged, as well as how it came into Tut’s possession.

Tutankhamen was the son of Akhenaten and ascended to the throne when he was just 8 or 9 years old. He wasn’t considered an especially important pharaoh in the grand scheme of things, but the treasures that were recovered from his tomb in the 1920s are what led to his fame. Those treasures included the famous gold burial mask (pictured above), a solid gold coffin, thrones, archery bows, trumpets, a lotus chalice, and various pieces of furniture.

These became part of a global touring exhibition, which received worldwide press coverage during the 1960s and 1970s in particular. The mummy even inspired a couple of songs: Steve Martin’s hit “King Tut” (which debuted on Saturday Night Live in 1978) and the lesser-known “Dead Egyptian Blues,” by the late folk rock singer Michael Peter Smith (which contains the immortal line, “Your sarcophagus is glowing, but your esophagus is showing”).

Enlarge / Quarterback Aaron Rodgers #12 of the Green Bay Packers warms up prior to the game against the Minnesota Vikings at Lambeau Field on January 2, 2022, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (credit: Getty | Patrick McDermott)

In what may be the worst bait-and-switch in the history of bait-and-switches, sports fans tuned in to The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday in anticipation that one of his regular guests, NFL MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers, might deliver significant news on the future of his career. But there was no such news. Instead, Rodgers gave a hearty endorsement for a horrifying 12-day cleanse that can sometimes involve oily enemas, bloodletting, and forced vomiting.

“There will be no news today,” Rodgers said to McAfee on the show. “No decision on my future. As I was texting with you yesterday, I just got out of a 12-day panchakarma. Look that up. I know you did after we talked. It’s a cleanse that originated in India. It’s been going on for thousands of years, and it’s something I’ve done in the offseason. So I’m just getting my hand above the sand now and seeing what’s going on there.”

Panchakarma is described as a cleansing and purification technique in Ayurvedic medicine, which is a long-standing, pseudoscientific Indian medicine system. The system is not based on science and has little scientific evidence backing it, according to the National Institutes of Health. The best that can be said for it is that a tiny amount of data suggests Ayurvedic herbal mixtures may help relieve osteoarthritis pain and manage type II diabetes. But more data is needed to solidify those benefits, and evidence is lacking for benefits of any other conditions.

Enlarge / Trump decided to make his own social network after being banned from Twitter. (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan)

The rollout of Donald Trump’s social network has predictably been a disaster. Truth Social’s debut on Monday was marred by technical problems and a gigantic waiting list, while some people who actually were able to use the service complained of being “censored.”

Truth Social “has been almost entirely inaccessible in the first days of its grand debut because of technical glitches, a 13-hour outage and a 300,000-person waitlist,” The Washington Post wrote yesterday. Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes said on a Fox News show that Truth Social’s goal is to be “fully operational at least within the United States” by the end of March. The waiting list is now over 500,000.

Truth Social is available only on iOS. I used the iOS app to sign up on Monday, to test whether I could create an account despite all the technical problems. My account was created, but I am still #188,221 on the waiting list. An Android app is supposedly “coming soon” to the Play Store. A status-update page said Monday that Truth Social developers have “stabilized the account creation process” and “are working to increase the rate of new account creation.” Truth Social was built using Mastodon open source software.

Enlarge / Russia’s chief of spaceflight, Dmitry Rogozin, is barred by US sanctions from traveling to the United States. (credit: Yuri SmityukTASS via Getty Images)

On Wednesday morning, the sprawling Russian corporation that oversees the country’s space activities, Roscosmos, issued a statement from its general director on Twitter that appeared to speak both to NASA as well as Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

“We value highly our professional relations with NASA, but as an (ethnic) Russian and a citizen of Russia I am very unhappy with the openly hostile policy of the USA toward my country,” said the statement by Dmitry Rogozin, who heads Russian space policy and interfaces directly with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

What prompted the statement from Rogozin is not immediately clear. On Monday, he tweeted, “Glory to Russia” following Putin’s speech on Ukraine and Russia’s right to occupy territories of the former Soviet Union. Rogozin is a member of Putin’s inner circle, having previously served as a deputy prime minister in the government before leading Roscosmos.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Hackers for one of Russia’s most elite and brazen spy agencies have infected home and small-office network devices around the world with a previously unseen malware that turns them into attack platforms that can steal confidential data and target other networks.

Cyclops Blink, as the advanced malware has been dubbed, has infected about 1 percent of network firewall devices made by network device manufacturer Watchguard, the company said on Wednesday. The malware is able to abuse a legitimate firmware update mechanism found in infected devices in a way that gives it persistence, meaning it survives reboots.

Like VPNFilter, but stealthier

Cyclops Blink has been circulating for almost three years and replaces VPNFilter, the malware that in 2018 researchers found infecting about 500,000 home and small office routers. It contained a veritable Swiss Army Knife that allowed hackers to steal or manipulate traffic and to monitor some SCADA protocols used by industrial control systems. The US Department of Justice linked the hacks to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, typically abbreviated as the GRU.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

After being pressed by the media and government organizations about paid reviews on its site, Amazon is taking its fight against compensated reviews to the courts. On Tuesday, the company filed lawsuits against AppSally and Rebatest, firms that Amazon claims sell “fake” positive Amazon reviews.

The claims: 5-star reviews for sale

Amazon’s two lawsuits in the King County Superior Court in Seattle against AppSally (PDF) and Rebatest (PDF) provide in-depth details of fake review packages purportedly offered by the companies, which have both been operating since at least 2018. Amazon believes AppSally and Rebatest are hurting customer trust by selling packages that let sellers pay for positive reviews of their products.

Amazon’s Community Guidelines say that “creating, modifying, or posting content in exchange for compensation of any kind, (including free or discounted products, refunds, or reimbursements)” and “offering compensation or requesting compensation (including free or discounted products) in exchange for creating, modifying, or posting content” is not allowed.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It’s time for another Dealmaster. The latest update to our roundup of the best tech deals from around the web includes a good price on Eufy’s Solo IndoorCam C24. Normally priced at around $40, the Anker sub-brand’s indoor security camera is now down to $30 at Amazon when you clip an on-page coupon. This deal matches the best price we’ve seen over the past year and comes within $2 of the lowest price we’ve tracked.

We’ve recommended the IndoorCam C24 in past gift guides; it was formerly branded the “Indoor Cam 2K,” but it remains an excellent value all the same. It captures clear and reasonably smooth 2K-resolution video during the day and night, with a solid-if-not-spectacular 125-degree field of view and an 8X digital zoom. You can save your recordings locally over a microSD card or NAS (via RTSP), through the cloud via a reasonably priced subscription plan (which starts at $3/month or $30/year), or through Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video service. The device also supports Alexa and the Google Assistant in addition to HomeKit.

Eufy’s app is easy to use and is filled with common-sense features. You can manually record a screenshot or clip, set off a remote alarm function, or use a built-in mic and speaker to issue alerts in real time. The IndoorCam C24 does a good job of picking up movement and alerting you accordingly, but you can also use the app to set up designated activity zones and adjust the sensitivity of the motion detection altogether. The camera can detect pets and specific sounds like a baby’s crying, too, and there’s a web portal for live-feed viewing.