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Japan is All Set to Test World’s First Space Elevator

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space elevator
Image Source: dazeddigital.com

The old fantasy story of the celestial castle has been the base of many famous sci-fi movies. In the past century, many scientists have also given their theories, on how a ladder can be placed between the earth and space. But, until now, nobody has come with a real plan for such an experiment.

Even with a low rate of success, the scientists from the Shizuoka University Japan, have announced that they are going to test a miniature elevator in the space, in the coming week. Japan is all set to send two tiny, 4-inch cubic satellites, to the International Space Station (ISS), with an H-2B rocket. The 2.4 inches elevator, will be contained in one of the satellites, and after, reaching into the orbit, the motors will power the satellites with a 33-foot steel cable. The elevator will then travel from one satellite to another through the cable, having a camera attached to it, that will record the whole experiment.

This experiment is going to be the first of its kind. Many scientists have thought of carrying out such experiments, but it is difficult to achieve the favourable conditions for one. First of all, no material has been found that is as strongest that can be used to build the elevator and the cable to hold the elevator throughout the travelling.

The geo station to launch the elevator must be nearby the equator of the earth, where the possibility of hurricanes and tornadoes is scarce. Also, the gravity and wind in the upper atmosphere can be a hurdle for such an experiment. If such experiment is succeeded, not only the astronauts but also tourists can go up in the space in the time of approximately eight days.

After Apple Amazon Also Joins the $1 Trillion Club

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amazon
Image Source: marketwatch.com

It is quite difficult to believe that once a non-profit online bookstore, that was founded in a small garage, has hit the $1 trillion mark in business, after 21 years. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is one of the biggest beneficiaries of Amazon’s growth and under his leadership, Amazon has become the second tech company that has hit the $1 trillion valuations.

Noticeably, Amazon valued $600 billion in January 2018, and in just 165 days of trading, it has joined the 1 trillion club, as the second member, just after Apple. In the past, Jeff Bezos has done a few massive investments that have led Amazon to reach this position. In the beginning, Amazon was an online bookstore but now it has its hand in various other fields too.

Amazon has excelled in AI and has acquired a pharmaceutical store PillPack for $1 billion. It has revolutionised the way of shopping and its retail unit has added a lot of revenue to its growth. The main contributing industry that has helped Amazon to achieve the $1 trillion mark is AWS. The Amazon Web Services has been contributing as of 65% to the company’s growth, providing a $25 billion in revenue annually. Also, its fastest-growing ad business has generated $2 billion in quarterly sales recently.

No wonder that Amazon has become the number one retailer in the US that captures nearly half of all U.S. dollars spent online. Some analysts have even mentioned that soon Amazon can overtake Apple if it keeps growing at such pace.

Twitter is Preparing to Roll Out New Features Presence & Threading

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Image Source: bgr.in

Facebook, Instagram and many other social media platforms have included the status feature to their inbox that shows if the user is currently active or not. Facebook also allows the user to choose between showing its status to its followers or not.

On 1 September 2018, Jack Dorsey the CEO of Twitter also talked about some new features like Presence, to be added to Twitter, through one of his tweets. He wrote, “Playing with some new Twitter features: presence (who else is on Twitter right now?) and threading (easier to read convos)”.

As he has talked about Presence and Threading, it clearly shows that those two features are somewhat similar to the Facebook’s Messenger’s features. With Presence, you will be able to see all the online users and you can easily engage with them. Also, Threading will help you follow or stick to a particular thread of conversation, in an easier way as compared to the current embed and click-through method.

Most of the Twitter users have given positive feedback to the threading feature as they mentioned that with the present thread it is difficult to go through all the tweets using the @reply and is a bit annoying. But, most of the users disliked the Presence feature as showing the other users the online status can be disturbing. Upon which the Twitter’s head of product Sara Haider replied, “would definitely want you to have full control over sharing your presence.”

It means that the user will be able to update its status according to one’s will. According to Dorsey’s tweet, Twitter is only performing the test right now and he has not mentioned the particular date when the new features will roll out on Twitter.

Microsoft Ends its Surface Pro Financing Program

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Surface Pro
Image Source: azureedge.net

Approximately, a year ago, Microsoft launched a financial program with a payment plan called Klarna Financing, for selling its expensive and pretty Surface Pro Laptops. The program targetted mainly the students and the educators, who wanted to buy an expensive laptop but could not afford it.

The scheme included a 24 months payment program. The buyer could get the laptop on a no interest lease, for that he/she had to pay a particular amount every month till next 24 months. After a successful completion of 24 months, the buyer would own the laptop. Also, the program had offered the buyer to upgrade the laptop with a newer version after 18 months or more, only if the buyer had kept the laptop in good condition. But in case of a failed payment, the buyer had to pay 20% extra.

Now this year, Microsoft has quietly shut down the program and will no longer accept any enrollments for the program. It stated in the FAQ of the company that Microsoft decided to end the program after “much thought and consideration.” It has not given much information about why it is shutting the program down.

The customers who are already registered with the program will continue getting the benefits and will be able to upgrade their laptops to the newer version. Also, for more information, the customers will have to contact the company directly about the Klarna program as Microsoft is also going to shut down the Surface Plus Portal on September 30th of this year.

Lenovo Premium Yoga Laptops & X1 Extreme ThinkPad Unveiled at IFA 2018

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Lenovo Extreme
Image Source: pcmag.com

Many of the tech giants have gathered at the IFA in Berlin and are ready with their new products to be showcased in the event. On Thursday, another tech giant Lenovo unveiled its new X1 Extreme ThinkPad with two other premium Yoga Laptops, C930 and S730.

The latest Lenovo X1 Extreme is embedded with the NVIDIA’s GeForce 1050Ti graphics and will be the first ThinkPad laptop to own it. It has a 15.6 inches 4K high-resolution touch screen with the Dolby Vision support. The laptop is built upon the Intel Core i9 variants with the 8th generation chipsets. The lightweight laptop supports up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM, and up to 2TB of PCIe SSD storage. Also, the laptops claim to have 15 hours of battery life after 100% of charging and the laptop gets charged up to 80% within an hour, thanks to the Rapid Charge technology. For secure login, it has also got the touch and face recognition features. The appearance of the laptop is similar to the older ThinkPad laptops and the chassis is built using carbon fibre, that is capable of absorbing shocks.

Lenovo also announced two more laptops in its Yoga laptops series, the Yoga C930 and S730. The C930 laptop uses the 8th generation Intel Core i5 processor. It holds up to 4 GB of RAM, and 258 GB of SSD storage. The laptop has a foldable 13.3 inches 4K IPS-technology touch screen. It also has a privacy shutter on the webcam and is integrated with a rotating soundbar.

Even being a part of the Yoga series laptop, the S730 is not 360-degree foldable and also does not support a touch feature. The laptop is like a notebook having a slim body with 13.3 inches screen that makes it the look-alike of the Mac AirBook. The laptops support the 8th Generation Intel Core i5 and Core i7 variants, with Intel HD 620 graphics. The laptop holds up to 16GB DDR4 RAM and up to 1 TB PCIe SSD storage.

The laptops will be available in the market during the last 3 months of the year. The price of the X1 Extreme laptop ranges from $1859 ( around Rs. 1,31,900). The Yoga C930 is going to cost $1,399 (around 99,280) and S730 will be available in approximately $999.99 (around Rs. 70,900).

Dell’s New 2-in-1 Laptops with XPS Features at Lower Price

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Dell
Image Source: slashgear.com

It’s still one day left for the IFA 2018, but, we see that Dell could not wait much and has announced the new series of its Inspiron and Vostro laptops. Dell, on Thursday, made the announcement of the launch of a large range of 2-in-1 laptops. The range includes the Inspiron 7000, Inspiron 5000, XPS 13 Chromebook, Vostro 14 and 15 5000 laptops. Dell had recently launched its XPS 13 models that are on the higher price side. And, these new laptops have also got some premium features from the XPS 13 series in them. So you can get the XPS 13 features at a lower price.

The Inspiron 7000 laptops are in three different screen sizes i.e., 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch, with full HD 4K resolution. All these new laptops are upgraded with the Intel’s latest Whiskey Lake 8th-Gen processors. The 15-inch and the 17-inch 7000 laptops are also going to have the Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics card and Intel Optane Memory. The laptops are also upgraded with the ram up to 16GB. Now, another interesting feature that has been added to that new 7000 laptops is that the support of the Amazon Alexa Assistant.

The Dell Inspiron 5000 2-in-1 laptop has similar features to the 7000 series. But the screen size is 14 inches and it has variants in i5 and i7 8th generation processor with an optional support for Nvidia GeForce MX130 discrete graphics. Also, the Inspiron Chromebook with similar features supports the RAM size ranging from 4GB to 128 GB, powered with 8th-Gen Intel Core i3 processor.

All the 2-in-1 laptops are now available in the aluminium exteriors with slimmer bezels. The sleek screen has also reduced the size of the webcam up to 2.7mm that is located on the top of the screen. The USB-C port is also available in all the three laptops that is useful for both Power Delivery and DisplayPort.

The laptops are supposed to be cheaper than the XPS 13 series, but yet with those features, you can’t have them at that lowered price. The Inspiron 7000 lineup costs $879.99 (around Rs 62,000) for the basic 13-inch laptop and the basic model of Inspiron 5000 costs $599.99 (around Rs 42,300). The price of the Dell Chromebook is not clear yet, but all the laptops will be available from the mid of October this year.