Technology

Logitech launches MX Creative Console for digital creativity

Published

5 hours ago

September 24, 2024

Logitech launches MX Creative Console for digital creativity

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Logitech announced the launch of MX Creative Console, which lets digital creators focus on their artistry while it makes chores like visual editing easier with new AI capabilities.

It’s a kind of tool targeted at creators, who have come on strong as digital media commentators in visual media.

With instant access to essential controls and ultimate customization, the MX Creative Console streamlines workflows and automates repetitive tasks.

“Digital creativity is undergoing a massive transformation, constantly evolving the way people create. The MX Creative Console is designed to help people redefine their workflow, enabling them to work smarter and faster,” said Anatoliy Polyanker, general manager of the MX Business Unit at Logitech, in a statement. “With the latest additions to the Logitech MX Ecosystem, the MX Creative Console and recently-announced MX Ink, we are tapping into the key trends of democratizing digital creation, 3D design and spatial computing, and AI-enabled workflows.”

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A solution for creative professionals: Logitech MX x Adobe

The collaboration enables deep integration through tailored plugins for popular Adobe applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom Classic, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Audition and Adobe Illustrator.

MX Creative Console enhances the ability to work with AI capabilities such as Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill and Adobe Premiere Pro’s Text-Based Editing. To celebrate this collaboration, each console comes with a complimentary three-month Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps membership, providing significant value for both new and existing users.

Maxim Bondar, head of global business and marketing at Logitech MX, said “At MX, our vision is to build an advanced ecosystem for the most demanding users, for the advanced users, such as software developers, creative professionals, engineers — those people who work at the computer daily spend and eight hours a day.”

He added, “These peripheral devices are really the tools of the craft. This is super important to be productive, to stay in the flow and to create, at the speed of thought. We are building an ecosystem.”

Bondar said the MX team is focusing on digital content creation, and he said Adobe believes it has grown five times in the last few years.

“Creative professionals are feeling under pressure because they need to deliver more content faster,” Bondar said. “Something that they have been doing and have been asked to do in weeks now need to be ready in days. And despite all the things that they have available, they are still they’re still under pressure of the deadline.”

Tailored to individual workflows

MX Creative Console offers versatility and a personalized experience for each user. It features a keypad with dynamic display keys to access and trigger the most important actions and a customizable dialpad that serves as a smart analog navigation controller.

With the free Logi Options+ software, the console offers seamless app integration across Windows and Mac, with customizable controls, plugins, profiles, and icons available through the Logi Marketplace. The
software will continue to expand its capabilities with new features and plugins.

Bondar noted Adobe Creative Cloud is a powerful tool, allowing people to create just about anything. You need to remember complex shortcuts to be more productive with it, sometimes pressing four keys simultaneously. Few people mastered this. The MX Creative Console has buttons to deal with those shortcuts.

The console includes the MX Creative Keypad, which is a wired device that has nine LCD keys that dynamically change according to the application of the framework being used. (The LCD keys consume a lot of power and so they need the power cable). Power users can assign functions to those keys as needed so they don’t have to worry about memorizing those shortcuts. Meanwhile, the creative dial pad can also be contextually assigned tasks. It comes with predefined profiles for Adobe applications. It changes its function as you change the application. It’s all aimed at making life easier for the creative community. If you’re in Adobe Premiere, it will show Adobe Premiere tools.

“We really wanted to make sure that the device is easy and straightforward for them to start with,” Bondar said.

Designed for sustainability

The MX Creative Console features plastic parts with 72% post-consumer recycled plastic for Graphite, aluminum produced with renewable energy and FSC-certified paper packaging; and uses micro-textures instead of paint. This ensures users can master their creative workflow while aiming at minimizing the product’s carbon footprint and promoting circularity.

Availability and pricing

Working with Illustrator on MX Creative Console.

MX Creative Console, available in pale grey and graphite, is available for preorder today and
will start shipping on October 14, 2024 for $200 on www.logitech.com and at other global
retailers. The device is compatible for Windows and Mac.

“All these devices can be fine tuned and personalized in the way that you want. And we also develop the software and the way to customize these profiles that you have when you start from in a very easy way so that eventually you can really break down yours,” Bondar said.

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Technology

Intel’s Beast Lake monster gaming CPUs were canceled, could rumored Razer Lake chips fill that void?

Published

20 mins ago

September 24, 2024

NewsAdmin

Intel has a new Lake in the pipeline – a processor family name, in other words – and this fresh sighting is Razer Lake.

VideoCardz noticed that leaker HXL posted on X to air the new codename that Intel is apparently mulling for its future desktop chips.

MSDTLGA1700: ADL-S, RPL-S, RPL-S RLGA1851: ARL-S, ARL-S R(❌)LGAxxxx: NVL-S? RZL-S?🤔 https://t.co/S4F8JCG2HrSeptember 23, 2024

Another well-known hardware leaker on X, Bionic Squash, then weighed in to observe that Razer Lake is indeed a correct codename for the family of CPUs that’ll follow Nova Lake.

So, if this is correct, right now we have Arrow Lake desktop CPUs (ARL-S, the ‘S’ referring to desktop) arriving imminently, and as we heard recently, HXL confirms that ARL-S R, meaning the rumored Refresh, has been canceled.

Arrow Lake uses a new CPU socket and we don’t know what else will support that socket, but Nova Lake, due in 2026, will switch to a new socket. After Nova Lake desktop (NVL-S), according to HXL we’ll get Razer Lake (RZL-S) in that same socket.

Take all of this with some caution, of course, as with all the chatter that filters down from the rumor mill. With Nova Lake supposedly coming in 2026, we can theorize Razer Lake could arrive in 2027 or 2028.

An Intel Core i9-14900K with its promotional packaging

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Analysis: Razing the online opposition?

This is quite interesting viewed from the perspective of previous Intel CPU rumors, as what we heard before was that Nova Lake was to be followed by Beast Lake. Indeed, Nova Lake was framed as version 1.0 of Intel’s Royal Core project – adopting Rentable Units (giant performance cores that can be split into units, replacing hyper-threading) – and Beast Lake was supposed Royal Core 1.1.

With the Royal Core concept purportedly scrapped, now we seemingly have Razer Lake instead of Beast Lake. Now, Beast Lake was hoped to be a generation to usher in monster gaming CPUs, so might Razer Lake be a similar idea? Well, the name certainly has a gaming theme…

In all seriousness, we have no idea what Razer Lake might be – if anything – and no details are provided here, save for the socket. The name does seem odd, though, considering it’s Razer Lake and not ‘Razor’ Lake, heavily treading on the toes of a certain maker of gaming peripherals and laptops in quite an outlandish manner, on the face of it. (What next – Risen Lake?)

We’d say Razer might be misspelled (or misheard), but a second leaker clearly backs up the name spelled in that way. And we’re not nearly at April 1 yet. Razer Lake doesn’t really make any sense to us, unless it’s ‘razing’ in the sense of totally destroying the opposition (again, possible a gaming reference?).

What also seems odd here is that we only have one generation of processors down to use the LGA 1851 socket that Arrow Lake introduces. It would seem weird for Intel to have a series of motherboards that was only compatible with a single generation of Core CPUs, frankly – so are we missing a piece here? Is Arrow Lake Refresh set to be replaced with something, rather than going straight to Nova Lake on a different socket. Or will Nova Lake stick on LGA 1851 somehow? (HXL certainly doesn’t think so).

This leak brings up more questions than answers, so we guess we’ll just have to sit tight and wait to see if anyone else pipes up with further info on Razer Lake – or indeed whatever might follow Arrow Lake. Are we really going to straight to Nova Lake from Arrow?

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Technology

Will implants that meld minds with machines enhance human abilities?

Published

41 mins ago

September 24, 2024

NewsAdmin

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

A cyborg bested me. When I played the online game WebGrid, using my finger on a laptop trackpad to click on squares appearing unpredictably on a grid, my speed was 42 squares per minute. When self-described cyborg Noland Arbaugh played it, he used a chip embedded in his brain to send telepathic signals to his computer. His speed? 49.

Arbaugh was paralysed from the neck down in 2016. In January, he became the first person to be surgically implanted with a chip made by Neuralink, a company founded by Elon Musk. Since then, Arbaugh has been operating his phone and computer with his thoughts, surfing the web and playing Civilization and chess.

But Neuralink isn’t the only outfit melding human minds with machines using brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Thanks to a series of trials, a growing number of people paralysed from spinal cord injuries, strokes or motor conditions are regaining lost abilities. The successes are taking some researchers by surprise, says neurosurgeon Jaimie Henderson at Stanford University in California. “It’s been an incredible ride.”

Where that takes us remains to be seen. Musk recently mused about making a bionic implant that will allow us to compete with artificial superintelligence. Others are contemplating more profound implications. “In the future, you could manipulate human perception and memories and behaviour and identity,” says Rafael Yuste at Columbia University in New York.

But while BCIs are undeniably impressive, as Arbaugh’s WebGrid score demonstrates, the relationship between brain activity, thoughts and actions is incredibly complex. A future in which memories can…

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Science & Environment

Take a look inside a $1.1 million ‘zero emissions’ home

Published

59 mins ago

September 24, 2024

NewsAdmin

Take a look inside a $1.1 million 'zero emissions' home

Courtesy: Wojciechowski Family

Real estate is a key puzzle piece in achieving the U.S.’ climate goals, according to federal officials.

Residential and commercial buildings account for 31% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, after accounting for “indirect” emissions like electricity use, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s more than other economic sectors like transportation and agriculture.

The Biden administration has adopted various policies to cut residential emissions.

The Inflation Reduction Act, enacted in 2022, offers financial benefits including tax breaks and rebates to homeowners who make their homes more energy-efficient, for example. The White House also recently issued guidelines for buildings in order to be considered “zero emissions,” meaning they are “energy efficient, free of onsite emissions from energy use and powered solely from clean energy,” according to the Department of Energy.

Morgan Wojciechowski, 33, is among the first homeowners to get that federal “zero emissions” label. (That assessment was bestowed by the third-party firm Pearl Certification.)

Wojciechowski, her husband Casey, and their three dogs — Dixie, Bo and Charlie — moved into the newly built residence in Williamsburg, Virginia, in August 2023.

Wojciechowski, who is also the president of Healthy Communities, a local real-estate developer focused on sustainable construction, spoke with CNBC about her new home, its financial benefits and how consumers can best upgrade their homes to be more efficient.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Morgan Wojciechowski and her husband Casey.

Courtesy: Wojciechowski Family

Greg Iacurci: What does it mean for your home to be considered ‘zero emissions’?

Morgan Wojciechowski: It’s a very, very, very highly efficient home that’s all-electric. Those are kind of the first two bullet points of the White House definition.

The third part is we are part of the green energy program with [our power provider] Dominion. Not only am I producing solar [energy] and any excess is going back onto the grid, but the power from the grid coming into my home is clean and sustainable. It’s about $10 extra a month for me to get that clean energy.

GI: How much did your house cost to build?

MW: Like $1.1 million.

GI: And how big is the house?

MW: 5,800 square feet.

It’s a large home. But mine is not what everybody’s doing. My home was my personal project because I believe in sustainability and wanted to do it in a home that would be my forever home. But one that’s more replicable would be like what [Healthy Communities] builds at Walnut Farm, which is like 1,500 square feet. We’re selling it for $433,000.

GI: Can you break down your home’s estimated savings?

MW: Our utility bills are projected to be about $917 a year with [solar] panels, or around $80 a month.

The annual savings are $7,226 [relative to an average U.S. home, according to rater TopBuild Home Services]. That’s just from the efficiency of the home with solar.

If you took the solar production away, I would be saving $5,431 annually. The solar offsets it.

Courtesy: Wojciechowski Family

GI: What do you mean solar offsets it?

MW: You create energy. Your home uses that energy and sends excess energy back to Dominion. Those credits are stored in an account, and then those credits offset your bill. It’s called net metering.

GI: So the power company is paying you that money?

MW: Those credits are applied to your next billing cycle. They offset your overall utility bill, and that’s where your savings come in.

Solar panels only make sense if you build an energy-efficient home that’s really all-electric.

Courtesy: Wojciechowski Family

GI: Why is that?

MW: You have to have a home that’s constructed energy-efficiently enough or retrofitted — by replacing your windows with higher-grade windows, adding insulation — so that you will need fewer panels on your rooftop, so you have a quicker return on your investment. Solar only makes sense if you’re going to have a return on your investment within a few years.

GI: That makes solar more attractive?

MW: If you don’t do energy-efficient upgrades to a pre-existing home or if you don’t build a home that’s energy-efficient enough, you have to add more panels to compensate for the lack of energy efficiency. And if that number gets too big it turns people upside down.

Solar has to make sense with the home that you’re putting it on, or else, don’t do it. Maybe just upgrade your windows, add insulation, condition your crawl space, upgrade your mechanical systems.

Scientists creating 'talking' plants to reduce crop waste

There are a lot of things consumers can do. You don’t have to do it all at one time. You don’t have to have a solar home to be zero emissions; you have to have an energy-efficient house that’s all-electric, and you have to buy renewable energy from your utility company.

That’s extremely approachable. Lots of people can do that. Everybody can join in at their level of sustainability.

GI: How do you recommend people get started?

MW: I would tell a consumer, why don’t you start with windows and doors. That’s a very easy one. Do that and see how you notice any [efficiency] changes.

In a lot of older homes windows are very old and they leak. Air is coming in and out. If you think about it, a house is like an envelope. You you want to seal the inside of your home the best that you can.

I would hit insulation next.

A lot of older homes have HVAC systems, duct work inside of their attic. Insulate it so that it’s a conditioned space, so that those building systems don’t have to work in overdrive to keep up with really hot temperatures or really cold temperatures. That keeps it more energy efficient.

And there are tax incentives [available] for energy-efficient upgrades to your home. Consumers can get and write them off, so that’s attractive to people as well.

GI: If you’re a renter, there are certain things that are out of your control. I suppose you can ask your landlord.

MW: Depending upon what your rental situation is. I feel like that’s a little bit more daunting, to change someone else’s mind. Once you get to your own home, eventually, then you have more say of what you can do.

Until then, you could be mindful about the energy you use. Turn lights off. I mean, that’s a real thing. People don’t turn lights off. I mean, even though I have a really efficient home, I have timers on things because I don’t want to be wasting energy. That’s an easy one that anybody could do.

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Technology

The Duolingo app just got two big updates. Here’s what’s new

Published

1 hour ago

September 24, 2024

NewsAdmin

The Duolingo app just got two big updates. Here's what's new

Duolingo, the popular language learning app, has always offered fun and interactive ways to learn new languages. It has now added two new features that make it even more feature-packed. As part of its latest update, the app now includes Adventures and Video Calls.

Adventures is a game-like feature that allows you to explore different settings and storylines within the Duolingo universe. It features two characters, Lily and Oscar. Adventures is designed to help you improve your language skills by putting you in simulated real-world situations.

Currently, one adventure is available for each course unit. It is only accessible for English speakers learning French and Spanish speakers learning English. However, more languages will be added in the upcoming weeks and months.

Duolingo’s new video call feature uses artificial intelligence to help you practice your conversational skills in a realistic setting. As the title suggests, the feature lets you make a video call — in this case, to the Duolingo character Lily. You can converse just like you would with a real person, but in an environment without pressure.

Duolingo explains that “Video Call is designed to simulate natural dialogue and provides a personalized, interactive practice environment.” Some Duolingo users tell us the video call option is already showing up within the app, although there isn’t a sign of Adventures yet.

Finally, Duolingo has announced a new partnership with Loog, a manufacturer of portable instruments. As a result of this collaboration, a new three-octave electric piano compatible with the Duolingo Music course has been introduced. The device is priced at $249 and is currently available for preorder, with shipping scheduled to begin in November.

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Science & Environment

Morgan Stanley sees this stock doubling on eventual data center deal

Published

1 hour ago

September 24, 2024

NewsAdmin

Morgan Stanley sees this stock doubling on eventual data center deal

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Technology

The Foldable iPhone may get UPC tech for Face ID first

Published

1 hour ago

September 24, 2024

NewsAdmin

The iPhone 17 series was previously expected to adopt the under-panel camera technology for Face ID. However, a recent report from the Korean publication The Elec claims that Apple has delayed the application of the ‘Under-Panel Face ID’ technology. Reputed display industry analyst Ross Young from DSCC fame has already reversed his claim that Apple will have a phone with an under-panel camera in 2025. Sources from the Korean screen business now confirm that.

Will the foldable iPhone be the first to use the ‘Under-Panel Face ID technology?

According to The Elec Apple is waiting for at least two of its major display suppliers to master the under-panel camera technology. Only then, will the company start using the technology for its iPhones. Samsung and LG supply displays for Apple’s devices.

However, according to the report, none of the companies are near to producing display panels that can maintain reasonable visibility for the under-panel sensors that Apple expects. According to a previous report, Apple has delayed the launch of its foldable iPhone to 2027. It was also reported that the foldable iPhone may come with a ‘wrap-around design‘. However, the latest news is that a foldable iPhone with a Galaxy Z Flip design may arrive in 2026

For those unfamiliar, there have been Android devices for a while that utilize the under-panel camera technology. In fact, Samsung’s own book-style foldables, including the latest Galaxy Z Fold 6 use the under-panel camera tech to hide the 4 MP selfie camera under the large foldable AMOLED display. On one hand, it does not obstruct the view, while on the other, it lets you make video calls and take occasional selfies without having to switch to the external display. However, the clarity and overall image quality from the under-display camera is certainly much inferior as compared to the punch-hole selfie camera on the external display.

An industry insider noted, “Apple hasn’t even decided which model among the foldable product it’s currently preparing and the existing bar-type iPhone to apply the under-panel Face ID to first.”

Samsung is working with Canada’s OTI Lumionics to meet the requirements

The Elec also reports that Samsung is currently working with Canada’s OTI Lumionics to overcome the challenges and meet Apple’s expectations of the technology.

OTI Lumionics uses a fine metal mask (FMM) to pattern-deposit organic cathode patterning material (CPM) and then deposits the cathode with an open metal mask (OMM), avoiding the CPM. However, reports indicate that diffraction still occurs when the IR laser passes through the panel in the under-panel Face ID currently in development.

LG is also working on related technologies. The company has reportedly developed a ‘freeform optic’ lens to overcome some of the limitations of the existing UPC technology.