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Research from UK-based price comparison service and switching website Uswitch found that one in six 5G users feel the technology doesn’t live up to its promise. Less than half said they notice faster speeds or more stable connections since jumping to the fifth-generation cellular network. One of the problems with 5G has long been its coverage in rural areas. That’s an issue everywhere mobile networks are found, including the UK, where 17% of those who live outside of urban areas say they’ve never been able to connect to a 5G signal—three times more than those in cities....

According to a new Financial Times report (reprinted by Ars Technica), the standard procedure among tech companies is to shred servers and hard drives every few years instead of wiping and selling them. The report outlines different ways the practice is harming the planet. Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined Morgan Stanley $35 million for auctioning thousands of hard drives before erasing them, leaking millions of customers’ data....

For over two decades, TechSpot has remained an influential voice in PC technology and historically we’ve mostly hired from within our ranks, with over 9 million readers coming in monthly to keep up with the latest industry trends. We currently have freelance openings for the following positions: Daily news reporter: This position requires you to be active daily, discovering, writing and posting news stories on our frontpage. Excellent writing and proofreading skills are a must....

Headphones This AC1750 router is one of the best selling routers on the market. It is cheap and gets the job done, but lacks many advanced features of higher end models. For a basic installation, it should do just fine though. As reviewed by cnet Asus’ dual-band RT-AC88U offers excellent performance and a ton of features. It’s expensive but if you must stay on the bleeding edge, the RT-AC88U delivers, with a whopping eight Gigabit LAN ports and offering 4x4 MU-MIMO – a cool feature that is more about future-proofing than something you’ll be able to take advantage of immediately....

Before I get into color testing, let’s look at uniformity. After all, this is a curved display where uniformity is often an issue. While results here aren’t amazing and most flat panels will produce a noticeably more even image, the GN32LD is on par with other curved displays in this metric. The edges of this display are inaccurate relative to the center, giving a slight vignette-style appearance, but I’m yet to use a curved monitor where this isn’t an issue....

The upload performance in our single large file test was impressive with the DS3612xs sustaining a throughput of 818.5MB/s and the TS-879 Pro reaching 643.6MB/s. Compared to their Gigabit Ethernet configurations, the DS3612xs was over seven times faster and the TS-879 Pro almost six times faster. The game copy evaluation includes a mixture of small and large files. Synology’s unit hit 555.3MB/s, 26% faster than the TS-879 Pro’s 441.3MB/s, though the latter was still nearly five times faster than its Gigabit Ethernet configuration....

For a variety of good reasons, 1440p remains the most popular category of gaming monitors. In case you missed it earlier, we have additional coverage looking at the best monitors overall for productivity and enthusiasts, as well as a selection of the best gaming monitors for those of you wanting 4K resolution, ultrawides or a super-fast 1080p display. But this article is solely dedicated at 1440p options which we’ve split in five categories: we’ve got 1440p medium refresh rate monitors – around the 144Hz mark....

Wordle is a play on the creator’s last name, Josh Wardle. The game plays like the multicolored peg game, Mastermind but with five-letter words instead. Players have six chances to guess the word of the day while receiving feedback on the presence and position of each letter in the guess. You can play once per day for free on Wardle’s Wordle website. Self-proclaimed New York entrepreneur Zach Shakked recently submitted his iOS version of the game to the App Store and had it removed in less than 48 hours....

AMD just took the CPU performance crown, new consoles look like minimalist PCs, and Intel’s working on a flagship GPU based on the Xe architecture, set to compete with Ampere and Big Navi. 2020 has been a topsy-turvy year for a whole lot of reasons. But even then, an Intel graphics card? You’d be forgiven for chalking it off as yet another 2020 oddity, but that’s where things get interesting....

Big fans, extreme ventilation and no obstacles for airflow seems to be the key to the Core X9’s excellent thermal performance. Under full load we reported our lowest CPU temperature yet, while the GPU also ran quite cool at 72 degrees. These temperatures will no doubt be reduced further by adding a second 200mm intake fan at the front of the case. Final Thoughts Digital power supplies are all the rage now and the Thermaltake DPS G 750w is one of the more affordable options available at $140....

Gizmodo Japan and PC Watch (via Kotaku) highlighted the item, which is essentially two cushions attached to a frame to create a message-table-like experience, with users squashing their face between two pads as they lie on their front. As it stands at a 45-degree angle, it can be used while playing games on mobile devices, using a phone, reading a book, and even eating, which surely can’t be good for you....

TikTok last year surpassed the ad takings of that other teen/young adult-aimed app, Snapchat. It’s set to outperform Twitter by the end of this year, too. Research firm Insider Intelligence predicts that TikTok’s revenue will triple in 2022 to $11 billion, more than Snapchat ($4.86 billion) and Twitter ($5.58 billion) combined. Should TikTok continue on its current trajectory, it is expected to catch up with YouTube and its $23.6 billion in ad revenue by 2024....

Best Ultra Cheap B350 Motherboard Best Value ATX B350 Motherboard Best Mini-ITX B350 Motherboard Best Overclocking B350 Motherboard Best Looking B350 Motherboard Best Ultra Cheap B350 Motherboard The Asrock AB350M might only offer two DIMM slots but you get a real 3-phase vcore VRM with extra chokes, and M.2 support. The rest of the board is pretty basic but there’s nothing inherently bad about the design or feature set and you get a great motherboard for the price....

The 3DFabric Alliance applies the combined expertise of multiple industry partners to create and refine chiplet-based design and packaging technologies. The 19-member alliance, which is expected to expand, spans the entire product ecosystem and includes partners specializing in design, automation, memory, substrate, test, and other areas of the manufacturing process. These members will work together to develop 3DFabric technology specifications according to TSMC-established rules and standards. The Alliance is part of TSMC’s larger Open Innovation Platform (OIP)....

TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is caught in the middle of the spat between the US and China, which accounted for 13% of the company’s total revenue between April and June. That figure stood at 17% for the whole of 2020, but US sanctions against Chinese companies such as Huawei and the country’s chip industry in general have impacted the amount of revenue TSMC generates from Chinese customers. Speaking at the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association’s annual convention (via Reuters), TSMC Chairman Mark Liu said: “The U....

National Health Service (NHS) scientists in the United Kingdom, with help from Bristol and Cambridge universities, have successfully transfused two humans with blood grown in a lab. The BBC notes that this world’s first is part of a continuing study to determine how lab-grown blood performs in the body. As of Monday’s announcement, both subjects have had no ill effects. It is worth noting that for safety, only a small amount of blood is transfused in these trials (about one or two teaspoons)....

The Chinese Long March 5B rocket launched on July 24, taking the second module (Wentian) to the Tiangong space station. The module contained equipment that allows the astronauts to perform scientific experiments, as well as three extra spaces to sleep and another airlock for spacewalks. As planned, the Long March 5B core booster detached from the rocket when it reached space. Unlike most modern rockets, the part doesn’t reignite its engine to make a controlled re-entry, leaving many concerned about where the 100-foot-long, 22-ton object would land....

On Thursday, Valve released a booklet about the Steam Deck that touches on the company’s plans for future versions of the device. It didn’t provide many specifics, but Valve isn’t stopping at just one Deck. Valve wrote the marketing booklet to explain the company’s and Steam Deck’s design goals to audiences in Asian territories like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. It contains a concise description of Valve, Steam, and the Steam Deck for audiences who are possibly less familiar with them....