The once-popular general DNA-testing firm holds a trove of sensitive genetic data from its customers. Read...

Governor Arnold Palacios, who led a coalition of Democratic Party of the Northern Mariana Islands and independent candidates in the 2024 CNMI general elections, has congratulated President-elect Donald J. Trump on his election as the 47th President of ... Read...

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Intel’s latest “Arrow Lake” processor wasn’t up to snuff. On Friday, a key executive promised to outline went wrong, and to fix it. On a podcast with Hot Hardware, Intel vice president and general manager Robert Hallock acknowledged that the Arrow Lake launch “didn’t go as planned.” That was evidenced in PCWorld’s Arrow Lake review and reviews by others. Hallock was frank about what Intel needed to do: explain what went wrong, either by the end of November or early December, and then work to fix it. “Here’s this old adage that we’ve talked about with journalists and hardware companies alike, that a new platform is hard,” Hallock said. “Anytime you radically overhaul anything, it presents new and sometimes unexpected challenges. And I think what people have been interested to hear is what happened. “And I can’t go into all the details yet, but we, we’ve identified a series of issues, multi-factor,” Hallock said. “They’re at the OS level, they’re at the BIOS level. And I will say that the performance we saw in reviews — to be very clear, through no fault of reviewers — was not what we expected, not what we intended. The launch just didn’t go as planned, and that’s been a humbling lesson for all of us, and has kind of inspired a fairly large response internally to get to the bottom of what went happened and to fix it.” Hallock said that, in one scenario, memory latencies climbed as high as 180 nanoseconds, rather than being closer 70 to 80 ns. “And that was so far off what we were anticipating or measuring,” Hallock said. “I want to be very clear that we are accepting and internalizing the faults that this is on us, and we need to make it right,” Hallock said. Ideally, Intel would do that by November 30, he said, but he said that the explanation could stretch into December. Games will specifically be addressed, Hallock added. “So those bars are going to be going back up to where they should be going,” he said. It’s not exactly clear what Intel will do to fix Arrow Lake. Firmware and driver updates will certainly be included, but Hallock didn’t go into specifics. Hallock declined to comment on the longevity of Arrow Lake’s socket, a position Intel has taken before. He also said that “reviewers didn’t have time” to test overclocking, something that he hoped reviewers would have had time to do. “My commitment to you guys and to reviewers at large and to users is we’re going to come back with a full audit, an itemized list, and we’re going to explain every single one of these,” Hallock said. “What was the performance cost, what exactly happened, and what we’re going to do to fix it.” Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Long 10-hour campaign Very well written Excellent actors who bring CoD to James Bond level Finally staged on a much larger scale again Beautiful locations: casinos, coastal towns, luxurious villas Booming 7.1 sound Graphically on a new level for CoD Cons AI glitches here and there when Sadam’s guard simply runs in front of our assault rifle Rare object pop-ins, for example in the Iraq level Our Verdict Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a genuine epic-action single-player experience with a campaign that’s not only the longest in the series’ history at 10 hours, but also full of Constant surprises. In addition to its thrilling action, the strong acting and the sometimes truly congenial mission designs are also impressive.Ultimately, Black Ops 6 delivers what we’ve been missing in recent years, complete with intelligent, emotional, and smart storytelling, well-written characters, and truly epic action that could well be a Game of the Year candidate. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today The single-player campaign of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 isn’t just a feast for James Bond fans. It has everything that makes CoD, CoD. The bombastic staging. The blockbuster action. The mass battles in Washington DC. The moment when a CIA black site is raided by special forces from a secret organization and half the government district is reduced to rubble. All classic stuff that’s great to have again. But it also brings the spirit of Sean Connery’s Bond, who could undress women with just one look, when we wrap a senator’s wife around his fingers or catch our good friend Bill Clinton red-handed at his governor’s party in the capital city. Keep reading for why we love Call of Duty: Black Ops 6‘s single-player campaign and how it seriously blew us away. The best campaign in a long time It’s a Call of Duty for James Bond fans. Not just action fireworks with huge battles, but also a smart espionage thriller with excellent actors.IDG We think of Roger Moore when we’re deliberately captured by a drug cartel, given a little tour of the mansion, and made to feel like the boss is in control, revealing his secret plans. That’s how James Bond used to be characterized. He didn’t always shoot and punch his way through, but instead infiltrated opponents undercover and elicited his adversary’s plans through dialogue. We really like this because Raven Software has tackled one of the major weaknesses of CoD campaigns in recent years: they were too samey, too familiar, too much of a copy of the better originals. MW2 and MW3 were 10 times more ambitious than their new versions, if we think of the invasions of Washington, New York, Paris, and Hamburg. CoD has lost its blockbuster epicness in recent years because the single-player campaigns were conceived far too small, too safe, too bland. They felt more like limited series, not Hollywood cinema. Black Ops 6 turns up the heat again. Almost every level has its very own atmosphere — the splendor of a casino here, Governor Clinton’s presidential campaign there — and we’re treated to stretch limousines, the Secret Service, and dubious politicians. Many missions have alternative endings If you want to, you can almost always shoot your way through. But there are also ways to act more like a gentleman agent. You know, Sean Connery instead of Daniel Craig.IDG What we really like is that the missions are designed as self-contained experiences that often contain multiple different endings. For example, we can play the Washington mission in Sean Connery style as a gentleman who organizes a few photos that show Clinton in bed with his secretary to thus obtain the photo that overcomes the retina scan at the entrance to a security center… …or play in a way that lures him into an ambush, knocks out his secret service, beats him up in the kitchen, to then get the needed photo. You know, the Daniel Craig way. With Black Ops 6 offering a whopping 10 hours of fun, you can expect plenty of high-octane moments — but the campaign also takes its time to savor moments.IDG Daniel Craig was an extremely rough Bond, one who favored brutal hand-to-hand combat over the good old Walther P99, one who was often quite bloody in the shower afterwards. He’s a new generation of Bond, not the cool Brosnan type who could fight his way through a ship, jump into the sea, swim ashore, and check into a five-star hotel wet in boxer shorts as if he owned the place. Raven Software likes to quote James Bond when appropriate: Casino Royale in this case. The iconic scene between Daniel Craig as 007 and Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre is almost a 1:1 homage in its choreography.IDG In general, Black Ops 6 has a lot of replay value. If you want classic Call of Duty, you’ll get it. Just as Daniel Craig easily kills 50 Russian Speznas elite units within 10 minutes in the last third of No Time to Die, we can also shoot our way through if want to. This is much more challenging in Black Ops 6 than before, though, because the special units of the secret organization called Pantheon use their forces more intelligently, to quickly surround us and throw grenades at us or even seal off entire corridors with electromagnetic fields. But we can also take the stealth route with the silenced Glock, in Sean Connery fashion, posed for the cover of Dr. No with a silencer because he used it the most of all the Bond actors. And just as the mission design is smartly conceived, the story is just as well written. Very black-ops style, very opaque, with lots of players laying their cards on the table late in the game. A bit like Casino Royale, where Le Chiffre was also just the way to the big fish. Black Ops 6 delivers twisty storytelling Every action game fan needs to experience Black Ops 6. This is CoD‘s BioShock moment: so unexpected and it works so well, opening up a whole new storyline in a fun way.IDG Black Ops has always been the Inception of the CoD world. A mind-melting parade with brilliant storytelling, where we don’t know what’s going on for a long time or who we can trust, where friends become enemies faster than Adler smoked his cigarette. Black Ops 6 is generally well written and we like the pacing. It has no problem slowing down from time to time so that we can enjoy the magnificent levels and environments. The development team had a lot more time than usual — a whopping 4 years — and you can feel that in all the masterful details.IDG A lot of work has gone into the lavishly detailed Casino Luttazi. You don’t just want to shoot your way through it; you want to sit down and play poker there, like in Casino Royale. We also spend quite a lot of time in a villa where we get to know the team and Sev with a personal vendetta, a real quick-change artist who can go from an Afro look with Rasta curls to Mexican drug boss in two or three minutes. Like Halle Berry in Brosnan’s best film, Die Another Day. Black Ops 6 introduces many new characters, all of whom are well written and strongly acted. Former Stasi hacker Felix Neumann, for example, is played by Tom Wlaschiha, who has already made a big impression in Amazon’s action series Jack Ryan.IDG Then there’s the ex-Stasi code specialist Felix Neumann, who’s basically the Q of the troupe, the laid-back guy who always has a new toy ready for us but also likes to cook for the crew from time to time. Marshall is the classic US soldier. He’s a little too loyal, has often been screwed over by his country, but still wants to believe in the great cause. And there’s Adler, whom we knew as an older man but appears here as younger yet just as pissed off by Washington. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is all about epic action and is much bigger than its smaller-scale predecessors. These ambitions are evident in the storytelling, the sets, the action, but also the moments of surprise when friends become enemies.IDG And then there’s a story component that we’d rather not spoil, but will delight fans of the zombie storyline. It also involves brainwashing and mind manipulation, forcing us to ask ourselves: Are we doing this right now? Are we experiencing this right now? Is this just a hallucination? Let’s just call it Call of Duty‘s BioShock moment, and it makes this entry in the CoD franchise one that’s a must-experience. Great writing, strong acting, bombastically staged, all in a fantastic package. Our verdict on Black Ops 6 At last, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is once again a real action epic with a campaign that, at 10 hours, is not only the longest in the series’ history but also full of surprises and twists.This is a true James Bond-style espionage thriller that we can play loud, impulsive, and raw, whether as Daniel Craig’s Bond or as Sean Connery’s Gentleman 007. You can sweet-talk wives, catch politicians red-handed, outwit retina scanners with high-tech cameras, track down bodyguard routes, work with your brain instead of bullets.Black Ops 6 delivers much of what we’ve been missing in recent years. We get huge sets, like a Casino Royale-style casino where we don’t just shoot and blow up safes but also play poker like Bond against Le Chiffre. Recent CoDs have felt small, only taking place at a harbor or a military base; Black Ops 6 cranks it all up and more to great success. Read...

Today, the internet has become like water and electricity, a necessity for everyday life and something we take for granted. Most people never think about routers, network cables, frequency bands, and more as long as everything works. But wireless networks — Wi-Fi — are not flawless and few users have never had problems. Common problems include weak coverage in parts of the home, devices being disconnected and having to be reconnected manually, choppy music and video playback on connected devices, and slower-than-promised speeds on large downloads. By optimizing your router’s settings and placement in your home, you can achieve a more stable and faster Wi-Fi network. Often this is enough, but otherwise there is help from different types of networking equipment. Related: How to choose a new router and get started with important settings Optimal router settings Foundry Different routers offer different levels of customization for Wi-Fi settings, but the vast majority have at least the following settings: Channel width Channel width refers to how much of the available frequencies in a frequency band the communication between router and devices takes up. Narrow channels allow for more channels, which means that several different networks can operate simultaneously in the same location without interfering with each other. But wider channels mean more data can fit per transmission, resulting in a higher overall speed for connected devices — as long as the signal is strong enough. If your router can choose the channel width automatically, this is likely to give you the best results. Some routers can automatically vary the channel width to optimize the network. If you have to choose for yourself, or just want to test whether it can be useful, you can test from the top down — start with 160MHz in the 5GHz band and step down to 80- and 40MHz and see how it affects the experience of devices around the home. If your router supports the 6GHz band, you can probably push a little harder and choose the widest possible channels, but as radio is complicated, it’s always best to test the waters. Foundry Channel – manual or automatic Depending on the channel width, there are different numbers of channels to choose from. For example, with 160MHz channel width there are only three channels, while with 40MHz there are 14 in the 5GHz band. The 2.4GHz band can only use channels of 20- or 40MHz, and the normal one is 20Mz because it can fit three channels without overlap (channels 1, 6, and 11). In houses without interference, 40MHz can work. Normally, it’s best to let the router choose itself as it has a better idea of which channel has the least “noise,” but if you have coverage problems in a particular part of the house and can see that a neighbor in that direction is using the same channel as your router has chosen, you can try a different channel. TP-Link Combined or separate frequency bands Behind the scenes, Wi-Fi over 2.4GHz and 5GHz are completely separate and use different antennas, but normally the router creates a common network name (SSID) to which devices connect. Which frequency band they connect with can either be up to the device itself, chance, or the router (see below). This usually works well, but you may find it useful to choose two separate networks with separate names instead. This can be useful, for example, if you have smart home devices that only support 2.4GHz and are having trouble connecting (which is relatively common). It can also help if you have devices that insist on connecting to the 5GHz band even though the signal is weak due to an obstruction such as a brick wall or some other reason. Lower frequencies penetrate walls better, so the 2.4GHz band is often more reliable at a distance from the router. Band steering On networks that combine multiple frequency bands, devices or routers must choose which band to communicate in. Most routers have a feature called band steering that automates the selection based on various parameters. On newer routers from Asus, you can set how it should choose, but as you can see in the picture below, solid knowledge is required to do a better job than the router, if possible. The Quality of Service (QoS) function balances the network and ensures that no single device takes up all the bandwidth.Foundry If you have a specific problem, such as devices that insist on connecting on the 5GHz band even in parts of your home where the signal is so weak that the internet is slow, you can experiment with the settings. The Small Net Builder website has a good guide to Asus settings. Quality of Service gives all devices a chance Quality of Service, or QoS, is a feature found in many higher-end routers that balances the network so that no single device hogs all the bandwidth. Without QoS, a computer running Bittorrent, for example, with hundreds of active connections, can saturate the connection to the internet service provider on its own. QoS can also be used to prioritize certain types of traffic. Most typical are online games that require very short response times to mitigate lagging. Setting QoS to prioritize games reduces the likelihood that temporary spikes in network activity will cause games to hack. Video calling is also something that can benefit greatly from a QoS service in the router, as it requires both relatively short response times and a steady stream of data. Routers with large processors often do better without QoS than less well-equipped routers. Problems that can be solved with QoS are often due to something called bufferbloat, where the router queues up too many packets and can’t forward them all in a reasonable time. A faster connection won’t help, and incorrect router settings can make it worse. Bufferbloat test results from Waveform.Foundry You can test for yourself how much bufferbloat your router suffers from with tests at dslreport.com or waveform.com. Both give a rating, so you don’t need to understand all the numbers. But in case you’re wondering, it’s all about how much response times degrade when the connection is heavily loaded. Whether you have a lot of bufferbloat or not, you can try enabling QoS if your router has the feature, especially if you experience occasional problems with gaming or video calls. If you can’t find the settings for your particular router, search for “[router model] qos” and you’ll probably get both an answer to whether it has the feature at all and, if so, how to enable it. Change the order of priority in Adaptive QoS.Foundry As an example, take my newly purchased Asus router, which has a feature called Adaptive QoS. Here, I can choose one of five preset profiles that prioritize different things — gaming, streaming, general browsing, distance learning, or remote work. You can also set the prioritization order manually. I should point out, however, that Adaptive QoS is one of several features in Asus routers that require you to authorize security firm Trend Micro to collect data from you. Other router manufacturers may have other similar agreements for certain features. Netspot Map your home and find the radio shadows If you’ve tested out the best Wi-Fi settings on your router but are still having problems with slow internet, or devices occasionally losing connection in remote parts of your home, it might be time to look at upgrading your network. Before splurging on a new, more powerful router or any kind of extension, it’s a good idea to check what the signal strength is actually like in your home. There are a number of programs that can help you with this, such as Netspot. You will need a floor plan of your home and a laptop. Once you have installed the program and launched it, select the Survey tab and create a new project. Here you can upload an image of the floor plan or draw it manually. A calibration function ensures that the distances are correct, and before you start taking measurements, you can choose how large an area each measurement point should cover. I recommend the default setting. Then you simply carry the computer around to different locations in your home and let Netspot measure the signal strength. Click on the floor plan to show where you are at each measurement and on the stop button when you’re done. The results are displayed as a color chart of the floor plan, with warmer colors indicating stronger signals. Areas in blue show parts of the home where the router has difficulty reaching. Measuring many places around your home can give you a good idea of where it might make sense to place an extender, or whether a router with stronger antennas is likely to reach all corners. It can also help you spot poor router placement, and if you move it to a location that should provide better coverage, you can repeat the survey and check whether it actually did. Dmitry Didorov Reduce the load with cable connections If your problems don’t seem to be due to a weak signal, it could be that you are utilising the full capacity of your Wi-Fi network with many connected devices. If you have a large family where everyone watches a lot of streaming services, this can easily happen. An easy way to give the router and the devices that can only connect wirelessly some wiggle room is to connect desktop computers and other fixed devices with an Ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi. Televisions, games consoles, smart home hubs and media players often have a connector for network cables. If your router doesn’t have enough connectors, you can buy a cheap switch from Netgear or TP-Link, for example. A switch also allows devices connected to it to communicate directly with each other without going through the router, which can further reduce the load on it. For example, if you have a media library on a NAS device and stream from it to a TV or computer and both are connected to the switch, it can have a big effect on the speeds of the Wi-Fi network for other connected devices. Sabine Kroschel Get a Wi-Fi booster, repeater, or mesh Sometimes the only solution to Wi-Fi problems is to upgrade your hardware. There are different options depending on what you have today and what the possibilities are for running cables in your home, for example. Wi-Fi amplifier A Wi-Fi repeater extends an existing network by creating its own network with the same name (SSID). Newer models can connect either by cable or wirelessly. The latter is obviously more flexible, but offers slower speeds and longer response times as devices connected to the extension communicate with the router in two stages. TP-Link Repeater Wi-Fi repeater is the name of an older technology that is not as common today, where a radio intercepts the signal from the router and simply sends it out again. It rarely gets much better and I do not recommend it. Linksys Mesh With mesh routers, you place two or more base stations in the home, where one acts as the main unit and is connected to the broadband. They connect to each other wirelessly but do so either smarter or with separate antennas and channels so that that transmission doesn’t clash with the regular network. For those who have Wi-Fi problems with a regular router and want a simple solution, a mesh system with two or three base stations is often the simplest solution, but rarely the cheapest. Use Netspot to find the best placement of base stations, then just sit back and enjoy. Roadlight Some traditional routers now have a built-in mesh function so you can expand your network afterwards with compatible base stations. Asus, for example, has a feature called AI Mesh, while TP-Link calls its equivalent Onemesh. Both of these manufacturers are flexible with what additional devices you use as base stations, such as another regular router, a mesh router, or a dedicated Wi-Fi extender that supports the mesh system. Unlike regular Wi-Fi extenders, all devices in one of these mesh networks must be from the same manufacturer and support the mesh technology in question. One important thing to consider if you’re getting mesh is to position the base stations so that they have the best possible signal to each other. This means that their signals should overlap but not too much, and there should be as few walls as possible in the straight line between two base stations. Related: How to keep your home network secure: Smart tricks and settings Read...

Did you have “saving $500 on a high-performance gaming laptop” on your bingo card today? Well, you may want to pencil that one in because this HP Envy 16 gaming laptop is on sale at Best Buy for $1,000, a big 33 percent drop from its original $1,500 price tag. This isn’t just any laptop. It’s a speedy gaming machine that will have you enjoying your endless hours playing all sorts of games, powered by a GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card that can push graphics to the max. Those games are going to look good on its 16-inch IPS panel with a resolution of 2560×1600 and refresh rate of 120Hz. The HP Envy is also great for general productivity and creative work, running on a fast Intel Core i7-13700H processor alongside 16GB of DDR5 RAM, promising snappy load times and high-performance multitasking with no lag. It’s capped off with a just-as-speedy 1TB SSD that’s plenty big to store all your photos, videos, apps, and games. Frankly, finding a laptop with this level of configuration at this kind of price is a rare and pleasant surprise. Don’t miss this chance to snag an HP Envy 16 gaming laptop for just $1,000 at Best Buy! Save $500 on this RTX 4060 gaming laptopBuy now at Best Buy Read...

Taoiseach Simon Harris is expected to announce the date for a general election later. Read...

It comes after the Auditor-General rejected a request to investigate the government`s tobacco tax decision. Read...