Tag: robots
USDA Report Values Hemp Market at $824 Million
The USDA reports stats that define America’s enormous hemp industry and show where it is struggling and thriving.
The post USDA Report Values Hemp Market at $824 Million appeared first on High Times.
New Law Could Help Free Louisiana Man Serving Life in Prison For Cannabis
A new Louisiana law could open up opportunities for Kevin O'Brien Allen to be released from prison.
The post New Law Could Help Free Louisiana Man Serving Life in Prison For Cannabis appeared first on High Times.
Eggtronic Laptop Power Bank review: Plenty of power in a svelte design
At a glance
Expert's Rating
Pros
- The display is actually useful
- Fabric covering is a nice touch
- Above-average efficiency
Cons
- Both USB ports should have the same charging speeds
Our Verdict
If you're looking for a power bank with multiple ports, a sleek design, and fast charging capabilities, this is it.
Eggtronic isn't a company I've heard a whole lot about, and if you visit the company's website, you're likely to come away as confused as I was the first time I visited it. More specifically, the website looks like a landing page for a company that manufacturers tech products for others. However, that's not the case. For the last few weeks, I've been testing the $69.99 Eggtronic Laptop Power Bank and, well, I'm very happy with it.
Compared to the majority of power banks, which typically consist of black plastic housing with a power button and a few LED lights and some ports on one end, Eggtronic's design stands out. The Laptop Power Bank has a fabric covering on top and bottom, a small display on the top that shows the exact battery percentage, and three ports: two USB-A and one USB-C.
The USB-C port pulls double duty. You use it to charge the pack, and you can, of course, use it to charge your phone, laptop, or even a Nintendo Switch. The USB-C port supports charging at up to 20V/2.25A (45W) of output, and up to 20V/1.5A (30W) of input. The middle USB port supports up to 12V/1.5A (18W) of output, with the standard USB port offering the base charging speed of 5V/2.4A (12W) of output.
Note: This review is part of our roundup of portable power banks. Go there for details on competing products and our testing methods.
As part of my typical testing procedure, I connected the Eggtronic Laptop Battery Pack to an AVHzY USB Power Meter and allowed it to measure each port's output. The USB-C port triggered DCP 1.5A, QC 3.0, QC 2.0, Samsung 9V, and Huawei 9V. I was also able to successfully trigger the full Power Delivery output of 20V/2.25A.
The middle USB port triggered the same charging standards and capped out at its listed maximum output of 18W. Finally, the last USB port triggered Apple 2.4A, DCP 1.5A, and Samsung 5V.
I also used the AVHzY USB Power Meter to measure the total output capacity to calculate the efficiency of the 20,000mAh (74Wh) capacity. Over the course of a few hours, the pack used a total of 64.3734Wh, giving it an efficiency rating of 86.99 percent. The average efficiency of all the packs I've tested (well over 30 by now) is 83.44 percent—meaning the Eggtronic is slightly above average.
Charging the pack was speedy, going from empty to 100 percent in 2 hours and 40 minutes when charging at its full 30W max speed.
mentioned in this article
Mophie Powerstation XXL
You can use all three ports on the Eggtronic to charge various devices at the same time, with a maximum output between the three of 63W. There isn't a power button on the pack. You plug in a device, it detects something is there, and starts charging. And, finally, the pack does support passthrough charging so you can charge the pack via the USB-C port while simultaneously charging another device via either standard USB port.
I really like the Eggtronic Laptop Power Bank. It's well designed, has plenty of power, and has above-average efficiency. If its efficiency had beat out the Mophie Powerstation XXL—our current top pick for best power bank—the Eggtronic would have replaced it.
The video game industry has a love-hate relationship with NFTs
NFTs, an allegedly artistic offshoot of the cryptocurrency market, are a hot topic. They're also a controversial one, and thanks to an intrinsic connection with technology, one that was bound to intersect with gaming at some point.
We aren't going to cover the full width and breadth of non-fungible tokens in this article. Suffice it to say, they're digital receipts for artwork which, importantly, are not actually the ownership or copyright of the art itself, and which can be transferred via the same kind of cryptographic verification as Bitcoin. If you need a crash course on the concept, try this quick video from the Wall Street Journal… or perhaps this more tongue-in-cheek one from Cracked and the inevitable follow-up.
If you're a fan of NFTs, they're a revolution in monetizing art. If you're not, they're a get-rich-quick scheme trying to make cryptocurrency lightning strike twice, suffering from the same glut of hucksters and thieves that so frequent the crypto markets. NFTs are controversial for a number of reasons: their impact on the environment due to requiring processing power for verification, the tendency of NFT sellers to pump out mass-produced “art” to serve a questionable market (or just steal some and sell it anyway), and the very concept of selling a digital certificate as a commodity and a nebulous type of ownership.
A new kind of microtransaction
What do NFTs have to do with gaming? On the surface, not a lot. Introduced as a means of transferring ownership of specific pieces of art, non-fungible tokens aren't really compatible with mass media like games, movies, or TV shows. But that hasn't stopped some developers, both large and small, from trying to get in on the craze — and make a quick buck while there's an opportunity to do so.
The core idea of implementing NFTs in games seems to be mostly connected to in-game items, typically a skin or item of clothing for the player's avatar. These at least have something in common with the individual pieces of art mostly pushed alongside more conventional NFTs — Valve was selling community-made items in Team Fortress 2 a decade ago. As with other NFTs, these items can be sold and re-sold on the blockchain. But unlike other blockchain technologies, the fact that said items actually rely on the game itself to both function and hold value means that it lacks the decentralized nature that appeals to so many anarcho-capitalists.
Sega was one of the first well-known publishers to express interest in selling NFTs, registering a trademark for that purpose despite intense fan backlash. In the feverish scramble of 2021, Square Enix, Konami, Fable creator Peter Molyneux, whoever owns the name “Intellivision” these days, and even the makers of NeoPets got in on the action.
Ubisoft is an NFT cheerleader
But by far the biggest cheerleader for NFTs among major gaming companies was, and remains, French publisher Ubisoft. The company became the first major gaming figure to push NFTs into its own game with “limited” in-game items for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Despite intense backlash from both gamers and its own employees, Ubisoft seems committed to featuring NFTs in existing and new games as of the time of writing. Replying to the backlash, Ubisoft made non-committal statements of understanding but refused to back down. Ubisoft recently licensed its Rabbids characters for metaverse market The Sandbox.
Ubisoft
Square Enix is the other big publisher that also seems keen to hop on the NFT train. After an initial sounding of support last year, the company's president Yosuke Matsuda said at the start of 2022 that they will continue to invest resources into the concept.
All that sounds bad, at least if you're of the prevailing opinion that NFTs are ill-conceived at best and outright scams at worst. And any casual observer, watching the rise of microtransactions, battle passes, and “live service” games, might assume the worst: That the industry as a whole can't wait to jump on the latest trend that promises big returns for little to no work. But you'd be wrong. The industry, or at lea st a refreshingly large chunk of it, seems to be as skeptical of the NFT “revolution” as the rest of us.
Most publishers and developers aren't onboard
Take EA as an example. Electronic Arts is generally the number one target for the ire of gamers who tire of AAA excess and profiteering. But after initially calling NFTs “the future of our industry,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson told investors that the concept was “not something we're driving hard on.” He went on to compare NFTs to passing fads like 3DTVs.
And EA isn't the only game maker to turn a 180 on the concept. After announcing player-avatar NFTs for the upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, developer GSC Game World listened to feedback from the community and reversed its position, posting a terse apology and abandoning “anything NFT-related” in the project.
Phil Spencer, Microsoft's CEO of gaming, called NFTs “more exploitative than about entertainment.” At the Game Developers Conference last month, an overwhelming 70 percent of developers responding to the State of the Game Industry Survey indicated that they were not interested in non-fungible tokens. Even fewer wanted anything to do with cryptocurrency.
Perhaps the biggest denouncement of NFTs in the entire industry came from Valve. The company banned games dealing in cryptocurrency and NFTs from its storefront Steam in October of last year, shutting off the most pervasive and lucrative means of accessing the PC gaming market. (Inevitably, the Epic Game Store says it'll take NFT games that Steam doesn't want.)
No F***ing Thanks
Taking this broad look at the larger players in the industry, along with the general reaction from developers at a whole, gaming seems to be gunshy at the very least towards NFTs and a greater reliance on crypto-fueled aspects. Which is surprising, given that AAA publishers can generally be counted on to try just about anything that might squeeze a few more dollars out of their properties. It's possible that the NFT craze has risen and fallen so quickly, and been accompanied by so much negative sentiment, that even the notoriously fickle gaming industry is taking a pass. A tangential relationship to cryptocurrency, the cause of so many woes for PC gamers who want a new graphics card, might have something to do with that.
The market for those who want gaming-related NFTs doesn't seem to be suffering, as plenty of indie developers fill the niche. But the consensus among major developers appears to be forming: NFTs don't offer anything they can't already have with existing tools. NFT sales continue strong, but a crash in spending looms over the speculative market, and it may not be long before the nouveau finance types look for the next big scheme. Exceptions like Ubisoft and Square notwithstanding, it looks like we might be able to put aside the fear that NFTs will become pervasive in the gaming world.
Unified mobile and web dataset from data.ai
App Annie has changed its name to data.ai, establishing a big enterprise market opportunity: “Unified Data AI”. The company provides cutting-edge insights into different app genres and mobile applications. The name reflects the company’s vision to drive comprehensive digital performance with products and partnerships. data.ai is the first company to combine consumer and market data […]
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The 13 best video game intros
Google’s free Chrome OS Flex can turn an old PC into a Chromebook
Google has released Chrome OS Flex, a way to take older Windows and Mac hardware and replace the operating system, turning them into Chromebooks. It's an interesting development given Windows 11's strict hardware requirements, which could leave legions of older PCs stranded when Windows 10 goes end-of-life in 2025.
Although Google is calling Chrome OS Flex an “early access” and “unstable” project, the concept is intriguing: Instead of disposing an old PC that's nearing the end of its life, you can turn it into a Chromebook instead. Google has launched the new operating system on its dedicated Chrome OS Flex site, though you'll have to sign up with an email to receive download instructions.
Google appears to be positioning Chrome OS Flex for a dual purpose: a way for consumers to try out the benefits of Chromebooks, and a way for enterprises to evaluate how well they can be managed. For example, a Chrome OS Flex “fleet” can be managed with Chrome Enterprise Upgrade, Google says. If this all sounds familiar, you're right: Google bought CloudReady a few years ago, and used that company's work as a way to turn laptop PCs into Chromebooks. Google describes CloudReady as a “previous version of Chrome OS Flex.” “Google will automatically update CloudReady devices to Chrome OS Flex, when Chrome OS Flex is stable,” the company added.
Traditionally, DIY PC enthusiasts would either leave an older PC running, scavenge it for parts, or replace the Windows operating system with a resource-light version of Linux. Now, Google is offering them an additional option: Replace Windows with Chrome OS, and enjoy the benefits of that streamlined operating system. And that's a point to be reiterated: Chrome OS Flex doesn't offer the ability to run Chrome OS in a window or a virtualized environment, a la the new Android apps for Windows. Instead, it replaces Windows, and all of its files.
On a support page, Google says that Chrome OS Flex will be a more limited version of CloudReady, at least for now: “Chrome OS Flex will not allow some system-level access currently available on CloudReady Home Edition, including: command line access via shell and command line access via teletype (TTY),” Google says.
Don't expect things to go smoothly, either. “This operating system is still in early access on the dev channel—you may experience some instability,” Google says.
Matthew Smith / IDG
Installing Google Chrome OS Flex looks similar to installing Windows 11 via installation media on a new PC. You'll need a USB key with 8GB or more. PCs will need at least 4GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. The CPU restrictions are more lenient: You'll need a 64-bit CPU, period. Which is basically any processor made after the year 2000. There are GPU restrictions, though: Intel GMA 500, 600, 3600, and 3650 graphics hardware do not meet Chrome OS Flex performance standards, Google says.
The real gotcha, however, appears to be simply in the diversity of compatible PC hardware, and how it will interact with Chrome OS Flex. Google has published a list of “certified models” that are either currently certified or planned to be certified with Chrome OS Flex, and many, many of them are listed with the caveat “minor issues expected” next to them. (“Models are likely to support at least basic functionality, but are still being worked on by our team,” Google says rather circularly, in describing what “minor issues” might mean. “You might run into minor issues.”)
The certified models include both PCs and Macs.
So why wouldn't you want to install Chrome OS Flex on an older PC? Well, there is the substantial list of caveats that come with the installation. For one, forget Android apps, Google Play, or Parallels Desktop support—that's out, Google says. Google can't manage firmware updates on Chrome OS Flex devices, nor can it provide verified boot capabilities. ARM PCs? Nope.
All this makes it seem like adding Chrome OS Flex to an older PC is very much a “use at your own risk” type of project—but one that can still turn your older PC into a Chromebook, for free. It's worth checking out before you toss it out.
We tried HHC with Bay Smokes
Here's what happened when this writer tried HHC with Bay Smokes, reporting back on her experience with the brand's new carts.
The post We tried HHC with Bay Smokes appeared first on Leafly.
Destiny 2 Witch Queen Collector’s Edition Finally Sheds Light On Eris And Mara After Forsaken
The collector's editions for Destiny 2 expansions include a lot of the usual stuff, like statues and stickers, but the most interesting items included are always their physical lore books. The book inside The Witch Queen Collector's Edition doesn't hit quite as hard as the journal included in the Beyond Light CE (which details how Clovis Bray was almost mind-controlled by the Vex), but it does feature a bunch of interesting tidbits about Ikora Rey, the Darkness, and the Hidden. It also gives us something we've been waiting for: word from Fenchurch.
The lore book in The Witch Queen CE sets the stage for the story of the expansion, though one fascinating entry in particular fits nicely in with the story we've seen unfold in the Season of the Lost. That season was all about Mara Sov, the Awoken queen, who has been missing in action since all the way back during the Forsaken expansion. Mara has been around, though, even if we didn't know the full details of her exploits. In fact, the CE lore book tells us that in the period between Forsaken and the Shadowkeep expansion, she was hanging out with Eris Morn. She might also have destroyed one of the Darkness' Pyramid ships.
Within the Witch Queen CE lore book is a report from Fenchurch Everis, who most players will know from a voice line delivered by Tower cosmetics merchant Tess Everis at the Eververse kiosk: "No word from Fenchurch today. He must have found something interesting." Canonically, Fenchurch is the guy who finds all the weird artifacts Tess sells in the Eververse Store, but he also has a story role with the Vanguard, serving as one of the Hidden, Ikora's secret group of Guardian spies. The entry in the Witch Queen CE is one of his reports to Ikora, which actually completely explains another of his previous reports--one that was among the spookiest recent lore entries in the game.
That lore entry is called "Fragment," and it appeared way back during the Season of the Drifter in 2019. In it, Fenchurch submits a report about a day when he was patrolling on the moon with some other Guardians, before he suddenly was overwhelmed by a splitting headache. He went to lie down, but instead instantly fell asleep and had a strange dream. The lore entry mentions specific people in the dream, but Fenchurch uses Hidden codes that obscured who the main participants are. One is definitely Eris, but the other--VIP #0704--was unknown until now.
In his dream, Fenchurch saw Eris and tried to catch up to her in a crowd, but couldn't. He woke up a few moments later to find a Hive thrall standing there, looking at him and not moving. Fenchurch blasted the thrall and found a weird piece of black material, the fragment the entry is named for, sticking out of its chest. Fenchurch's Ghost, Neville, tried to scan the fragment but had a hard time doing so. Eventually, Fenchurch touched it with his hand and had a sudden vision.
The vision showed Eris and VIP #0704 together in a field of black debris, apparently that of a destroyed ship, with #0704 dressing a big gash in Eris' thigh. Before the vision ended, Eris turned and said something to Fenchurch in Russian, which roughly translates to "pathetic" in English. (We never do find out what this Russian part is all about.)
The CE lore entry has Fenchurch offering a new report on the vision, the weird thrall, and the black item he found stuck in its chest, after talking to Eris and convincing her to tell him what the hell was going on. Eris explains that Fenchurch's vision was an event that actually happened, and that she sent the thrall to find a Guardian in order to make a report in case she and VIP #0704 died doing whatever they were doing.
There's a whole lot more to the situation we learn from the new report, though. First and foremost, we can pick up that VIP #0704 is, in fact, Mara Sov.
Fenchurch reports what Eris tells him: Between the Forsaken expansion and the Shadowkeep expansion, Mara consulted VIP #0101 (who we soon figure out is Elsie Bray, the Exo Stranger) about the approaching Pyramid ships. (As an aside, assigning #0101 to Elsie has to be a Terminator joke: T-101 was the designation for Arnold Schwarzennegger's killer robot in a movie about time-traveling robots, and Elsie is a time-traveling robot.) We saw during Forsaken that Mara was aware of the Darkness' Black Fleet before just about anybody else--she's been making plans to deal with it since the original Destiny.
Using a combination of Elsie's future tech from other timelines and some time traveler insights, as well as the Warmind artificial intelligence Rasputin and the AI Failsafe from the Exodus Black, Mara was able to pinpoint one of the Pyramid ships within the solar system long before the rest of the ships showed up during the Season of Arrivals, and before the one on the moon was discovered in Shadowkeep. This one was in orbit around a dwarf planet called 136199 Eris, a body that exists in the solar system (in the real world as well as the game) but which is pretty distant. Together, Mara and Eris made for 136199 Eris to see what the deal was with the Pyramid ship.
What happened next isn't super clear. Apparently, after discovering the ship, the pair moved closer to investigate. Fenchurch doesn't know exactly what happened after that. Apparently, Mara left the ship to get closer to the Pyramid, and then even abandoned her spacesuit--which sounds very similar to the origin story for Mara described in the lore book Marasenna. Fenchurch isn't sure, but he believes Mara either interacted with or even entered the Pyramid ship; he also doesn't know if Mara was able to affect the Pyramid at all, or if the debris field he saw in his vision was actually the result of Mara destroying the Pyramid ship. What he does know, however, is that whatever happened caused Mara to die.
Death isn't the end for Mara, however. Like Hive gods Savathun, Oryx, and Xivu Arath, Mara has managed to use the power of the Dreaming City and her Techeun witches to create a "throne world" on the Ascendant Plane--in fact, if you've ventured into the Shattered Throne dungeon in the Dreaming City, you've seen it. A person or entity with a throne world can be killed in the material world, but they survive in the Ascendant Plane, which essentially renders them immortal. That's why, during the Taken King expansion, Guardians had to kill Oryx in his throne world in the King's Fall raid--if they didn't, Oryx wouldn't stay dead.
The throne world is how Mara survived her apparent death during The Taken King, when the Awoken fleet attacked and disabled Oryx's Dreadnaught. And she survived her death here, too, by zapping back to her throne world. At this point, though, Savathun and her daughter, Dul Incaru, had taken up residence there, as we see in the Shattered Throne dungeon. Eris used her weird Hive powers to pull Mara back from the throne world, but to do that, the two of them had to fight Dul Incaru and Savathun.
Fenchurch says that Eris and Mara made it through that battle and wound up on the surface of 136199 Eris. However, the fight was a hard one, and Eris was injured--when Fenchurch saw Mara treating Eris' wound amid the debris on a frozen planet, this is why. We still don't know what all that debris actually is, though.
Before this, the relationship between Mara and Eris, who worked for the Awoken queen for years, was a strained one, presumably because of the trauma Mara suffered during the battle with Oryx in The Taken King and her death afterward. Mara sacrificed a lot for Eris' plan to take down Oryx, including a huge number of the Awoken people, and in the end, her brother, Uldren Sov. But after the fight with Dul Incaru and Savathun, and faced with the prospect they might die, Mara and Eris managed to reconcile. That point is important for a couple reasons: First, Mara and Eris are both a big part of the story of The Witch Queen; and second--according to Elsie Bray in the dark timeline she seeks to prevent--Eris is eventually corrupted by the Darkness and becomes a bigger threat than even Savathun. The Dark Future lore book says that in that timeline, Eris eventually helps the Darkness defeat the Traveler and the Light, and is even responsible for Mara's death.
Back on the dwarf planet, Eris was worried she might not survive the ordeal; though she's a former Guardian, she has no Ghost, and is therefore mortal. Fenchurch says that Eris used some Hive magic to zap a report onto a piece of the black metal in the debris field and then transported it to the moon, along with the compulsion for a "lesser Hive" to bring that report to the nearest Guardian, which is how the thrall came to Fenchurch and the reason he saw the vision.
The report ends with Fenchurch frustrated that Eris' explanation of the vision he saw leaves even more questions, specifically about what Mara did to the Pyramid ship in orbit around 136199 Eris. Was she able to destroy it, and if so, how? Can she do it again, and if not, why not?
In her response, Ikora notes that, like Savathun, Mara is moving pieces around a chessboard and she keeps secrets for a greater purpose. She also suggests that Mara might be trying to come to terms with the fact that she won't be able to control events as much as she wants.
"I believe Mara has begun to consider that she may not be the prime executor of her own endgame," Ikora writes to Fenchurch. "She may be just one component of the bomb--the payload or timing device. At the end of her own journey, she is necessary but not sufficient. She can no longer fight alone."
It seems Mara has a big role in the story to come, as we saw set up in Forsaken and lately in the Season of the Lost. Destiny 2's story lately has been pushing the idea that the way to defeat the threat of the Darkness is through alliances, and this lore entry gives a sense that we'll need to continue to strengthen our relationship with Mara Sov. It also hints at more of what Mara might have up her sleeve--she's seen a whole lot of things we have no idea about, and I have a feeling we're going to see her take on the Darkness directly before too long.
Kentucky Lawmakers File Cannabis Legalization Bills
Kentucky, a state that does not allow its residents to use cannabis legally, introduces bills to legalize weed — medically and recreationally.
The post Kentucky Lawmakers File Cannabis Legalization Bills appeared first on High Times.
Delta-8 disposables and vape carts from Exhale Wellness offer classic strain options to go
Delta-8 disposables and carts are a great way to get your favorite highs wherever life takes you. Exhale Wellness has a fire lineup.
The post Delta-8 disposables and vape carts from Exhale Wellness offer classic strain options to go appeared first on Leafly.
‘Bing Bong’ sensation Nems shows off new strain and tells homemade bong story
NYC's Bing Bong phenom Nems shares NYC weed history and previews his new line of cannabis products in an exclusive interview with Leafly.
The post ‘Bing Bong’ sensation Nems shows off new strain and tells homemade bong story appeared first on Leafly.