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The scope of the damage Hurricane Helena caused is still not totally clear.

5G networks have rapidly expanded worldwide, delivering faster speeds and reduced latency, however, due to the use of higher frequency bands, more base stations are required compared to 4G.

This need for increased infrastructure presents challenges, particularly in densely populated areas where site availability and installation costs are higher - such as Tokyo, the world’s most densely populated city, illustrates these challenges perfectly.

In 2018, NTT DOCOMO partnered with Japanese glassmaker AGC to address this issue by developing the world’s first glass antenna. Using AGC’s ATTOCH technology, the antenna can be installed inside existing windows, allowing buildings to seamlessly integrate into the mobile network without obstructing views or altering their appearance. It's been improved over the years and is now fully 5G compatible.

WAVEANTENNA

The antenna is constructed using transparent conductive materials sandwiched between layers of glass, which enhances its durability while maintaining the transparent look of standard windows. The technology also features a Glass Interface Layer (GIL) that reduces signal attenuation and reflection, two common issues when signals pass through glass.

The WAVEANTENNA, as it’s known, supports 5G Sub6 frequencies, which are more effective at penetrating walls and barriers compared to millimeter waves. This makes it ideal for dense urban environments where 5G networks struggle with interference and signal loss.

Akinobu Ueda, from the Radio Access Network Engineering Department at Japanese comms giant NTT DOCOMO, explains: “It is difficult to get permission from building owners to install small cell base stations in the mid to lower floors of a building, as the base stations can spoil the scenery of an area. The same holds true for indoor installations. In addition to spoiling the interior design of a building, it’s difficult to create the ideal service area as attenuation occurs when signals pass through the building.”

Last month, JTower, a Tokyo-based company, installed the first WAVEANTENNA in the city's Shinjuku district, marking an important milestone for the technology. The antennas have also been adapted for use in vehicles, helping to reduce dropped signals.

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Compare broadband plans using this value method to simplify your search. It's not as hard as you may think.

Like a highway system, the vagus nerve branches profusely from your brain through your organs to marshal bodily functions, including aspects of mind such as mood, pleasure, and fear.

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An acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe show encourages the audience to think about why they're voting the way they do.

(Image credit: Michiel Devijver)

Babies under six months can't be vaccinated directly against COVID. A new study found that most infants hospitalized for COVID had mothers who didn’t get the vaccine while they were pregnant.

(Image credit: Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag)

Microsoft has provided an update on Windows 11’s Recall feature – which has been on ice for some time now, since its revelation caused a massive stir due to security and privacy worries – and when it plans to forge ahead with the feature and bring it to Copilot+ PCs.

As the BBC reports, Microsoft said in a statement that the plan is to launch Recall on CoPilot+ laptops in November, with a bunch of measures being implemented to ensure the feature is secure enough detailed in a separate blog post.

So, what are these measures designed to placate the critics of Recall – a capability which is a supercharged AI-powered search in Windows 11 that leverages regular screenshots (‘snapshots’ as Microsoft calls them) of the activity on your PC – as it was originally envisioned?

One of the key changes is that Recall will be strictly opt-in, as Microsoft had told us before, as opposed to the default-on approach that was taken when the feature was first unveiled.

Microsoft notes: “During the set-up experience for Copilot+ PCs, users are given a clear option whether to opt-in to saving snapshots using Recall. If a user doesn’t proactively choose to turn it on, it will be off, and snapshots will not be taken or saved.”

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Also, as Microsoft previously told us, snapshots – and other Recall-related data – will be fully encrypted, and Windows Hello authentication will be a requirement to use the feature. In other words, you’ll need to sign in via Hello to ensure that it’s you actually using Recall (and not someone else on your PC).

Furthermore, Recall will use a secure environment called a Virtualization-based Security Enclave, or VBS Enclave, which is a fully secure virtual machine isolated from the Windows 11 system, that only the user can access with a decryption key (provided with that Windows Hello sign-in).

David Weston, who wrote Microsoft’s blog post and is VP of Enterprise and OS Security, explained to Windows Central: “All of the sensitive Recall processes, so screenshots, screenshot processing, vector database, are now in a VBS Enclave. We basically took Recall and put it in a virtual machine [VM], so even administrative users are not able to interact in that VM or run any code or see any data.”

For that matter, Microsoft can’t get in to look at your Recall data, either. And as the software giant has made clear before, all this data is kept locally on your machine – none of it is sent to the cloud (that could be a big security worry if it was). This is why Recall is a Copilot+ PC exclusive, by the way – because it needs a powerful NPU for acceleration and local processing for Recall to work responsively enough (as the cloud can’t be leveraged to speed up the AI grunt work).

Finally, Microsoft combats a previous concern about Recall taking screenshots of, for example, your online banking site and perhaps sensitive financial info – the feature now filters out things like passwords, credit card numbers and so on.

Other privacy tightening measures include the ability to exclude specific apps or websites from ever having snapshots taken by Recall (and we should note that private browsing sessions, such as Chrome’s Incognito mode, are never subject to being screenshotted – at least in supported web browsers).

An icon will appear in the taskbar when a Recall snapshot is being saved, incidentally, and it’ll be easy to pause these screenshots from there if you wish to do so.

(Image credit: Microsoft) Analysis: Recalled from the bench - but with a lot to prove

Microsoft has basically taken Recall back to the drawing board on the security and privacy fronts over the past few months, and in broad terms, the results deserve a thumbs-up. (Although let’s be honest, elements like the tight encryption should have been in place to begin with – and it’s a bit frightening that they weren’t).

If you’re still concerned about Recall despite these measures, you simply don’t have to enable it. And with it being off by default in a clear manner now, there’s no danger of less tech-savvy folks ending up using the feature by accident, without realizing what it is.

The path Recall is on now is that it’s returning to testing in October, so very soon, and with the release coming to Copilot+ PCs in November, it’s on something of a fast track to arrive with the computing public – well, those who’ve invested in a Copilot+ laptop anyway. We’re sure that for those folks, Recall will still be marked as in ‘preview’ and it’s debatable whether you should be taking the plunge with an ability like this when it’s not quite fully finished.

Of course, we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here – the next step is for Recall to arrive in Windows 11 test builds, and see what Windows Insiders make of it. If problems crop up in those preview builds, we may yet see Recall delayed for release to Copilot+ PCs.

Microsoft is talking a much bigger security game for Recall here, without a doubt, and let’s hope there are no setbacks or mistakes in terms of actually implementing all of this. Given how the initial incarnation of Recall was put together – with a worrying lack of attention to detail – it’s easy to be cynical here, but presumably Microsoft is not going to fall into this trap again.

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Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by Israeli airstrike this weekend. The Biden administration said it gives the victims of the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group "a measure of justice."

(Image credit: Fareed Khan)

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Full spoilers for Never Let Go follow.

Never Let Go is the latest movie by hit production company Lionsgate, which is a studio known for the huge horror franchise Saw, as well as popular action franchises The Hunger Games and John Wick (which recently got a trailer for Ballerina). Although this creepy survival horror hit, which gave similar vibes to A Quiet Place, had potential, it really ran out of steam in the third act.

It is annoying that this appears to be a common occurrence with new movies. While I'm not entirely opposed to mystery and questions, sometimes it feels like the script was missing something and the result might leave audiences disappointed, and hungry for something they'll never get to have. That was definitely the case with Never Let Go, which teased this great, evil threat and then fizzled out at the very end.

Movies shouldn't have to over-explain what's going on, but it's nice when they give us something to work with. For me, Never Let Go was ambiguous to the point of being frustrating, leaving me with more questions than I had going in, which is never a good sign.

The evil, which is just named 'The Evil', is this apparent great threat that has taken over the world and leaving Momma (even she doesn't have a name) and her two boys as the only survivors. By the end, we find out this is a lie, and it literally does not elaborate beyond that. The boys go off into this civilization they've been sheltered from their whole lives, and that's it. We don't find out what it is, if it was all in their mother's head or if it's some demonic figure isolated to their remote cabin.

The boys could not see The Evil, but it still doesn't answer why it was so central to their lives for all these years. A lot of it didn't add up and despite the good performances and the creepy atmosphere, the story was lacking compared to the best horror movies.

Should we completely do away with ambiguous endings?

Inception's final scene is an example of an open ending done right. (Image credit: Warner Bros)

No, not entirely, but they do seem to be happening in abundance and the result is not always good. But as we've seen throughout film history, it can be done very well. Take a look at Inception – one of the best Christopher Nolan movies – and its now iconic totem ending. We never get to find out if Cobb was in the real world or not, but given the richness of the hours that preceded that final shot, the ending is memorable. Frustrating, sure, but it's great.

Never Let Go wasn't able to reach those heights as we barely knew anything about the threat to begin with. There was little to keep the audience engaged, if anything I found myself braced for another jump scare where Momma would see another manifestation of The Evil but that was more to do with loud audio cues than me being scared of the antagonist. I don't really care if I know nothing about what's jumping out to scare me in the first place. Lore building is important.

Endings are tricky, but many big-budget movies are really struggling to stick the landing. A prime example of that is Lionsgate's abysmal Borderlands, which insulted video game fans everywhere and then fizzled out into an unsatisfying conclusion. Not ambiguous, just boring. Can you tell I absolutely loved it? In all seriousness, if you want to read my takedown of Borderlands, here's why I called it the death of good video game adaptations.

It's not all bleak though, 2024 has seen plenty of great movies, and A24 in particular is leading the charge with recent movies like I Saw the TV Glow and MaXXXine, which was one of five A24 movies I couldn't wait to watch in 2024 – both of which nailed that all-important finale. I just wish the bigger names would follow suit.

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Terry Crews went to college on an art scholarship, played football in the NFL and now stars in movies and hosts America's Got Talent. The key, he says, is to be really good at failure.

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Lenovo has unveiled the latest addition in its Yoga lineup, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 (14”, 9th Gen) with an AI-driven AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processor.

The new device supports the Lenovo Creator Zone, a new AI-powered software suite that allows users to generate and edit images through various methods including Text-to-Image, where users input descriptions to create images, Sketch-to-Image, which combines sketches with text for visual representation, and Image-to-Image which enable variations of existing images based on reference images and descriptions.

It also supports advanced AI features such as Lenovo X Power Software Accelerate for faster previews and exports and X Power Hardware Boost for sustained performance.

A slim yet weighty device

The Yoga Pro 7 is powered by a 73Whr battery, which Lenovo claims is enough power to get through a full day of work or school on a single charge, but despite its powerful hardware, the Yoga Pro 7 maintains a slim profile. The Yoga Pro 7 measures 25.5 x 226.49 x 15.6mm and weighs 1.54 kg. While it is not entirely a lightweight device, it is only 15.6mm at its thinnest point.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 is equipped with the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processor with 10 cores and 20 threads, designed to deliver high-performance and efficient AI processing. This processor can achieve up to 50 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second) through its dedicated AI engine.

One of the standout features of the Yoga Pro 7 is its 14.5-inch 2.8K PureSight Pro OLED Display. It comes with a resolution of 2880 x 1800 pixels, supports a 120Hz refresh rate and a 16:10 aspect ratio. Lenovo’s PureSight Pro technology ensures color accuracy with Delta E<1, meaning that the colors displayed are as close to real life as possible. This is complemented by 100% Adobe RGB, 100% sRGB, and 100% P3 color gamut coverage.

This device also supports the Yoga Premium Suite which features a Soft Touch-coated keyboard with 1.5mm key travel, 0.3mm deep dish keys, a dual speaker system, four microphones with voice ID noise cancellation, and an FHD IR camera for clear video calls.

In addition to the AMD Ryzen chip, this device is equipped with 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, clocked at 6400 MHz, and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD. The PCIe Gen 4 interface ensures faster data transfer speeds, making it easy to move large files or run heavy applications.

The graphic performance of the Yoga Pro 7 uses an AMD RDNA 3 880M integrated graphics which is a decent chip for video editing, 3D modeling, or game development.

For connectivity, this device features Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, ensuring fast and reliable wireless connections. It also comes with a variety of ports for connecting external devices. On the left side, there are two USB Type-C full-function ports (one supporting USB 4.0 Gen 1, PD 3.0, and DP 1.4), as well as an HDMI 2.1 port that supports up to 4K at 60Hz. On the right side, there’s a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 (Always-On) port, along with an audio combo jack for headphones or speakers.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 (14”, 9) is expected to be available in EMEA starting September 2024 with a price of €1,699.

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It's that time of year again, where a powerful leaf blower can make all the difference, and clean your lawn quickly (even if a certain Oscar winner disagrees).

Wi-Fi HaLow is a low-power, long-range variant of Wi-Fi, based on the IEEE 802.11ah standard. It operates in the sub-GHz range (850-950 MHz), enabling it to penetrate obstacles such as walls and buildings and connect a larger number of IoT devices over much greater distances.

In February, Morse Micro showcased Wi-Fi HaLow’s capabilities by achieving a 3-kilometer (1.8 miles) video call, setting a record for long-range connectivity using the 802.11ah standard. In its latest range test, Morse Micro conducted trials at Joshua Tree National Park, a rural area known for its expansive open spaces and minimal RF interference. This test successfully achieved an impressive range of 16 kilometers (10 miles), five times the previous distance.

For the experiment, Morse Micro used its MM6108-EKH01 evaluation kit, which features a Raspberry Pi 4 and an MM6108-MF08651 Wi-Fi HaLow reference module. The kit outputs 21 dBm of power through a 1 dBi antenna, resulting in 22 dBm of total radiated power. The goal was to assess Wi-Fi HaLow’s real-world performance with standard equipment.

15.9 kilometers

Morse Micro calculated the theoretical maximum range of the system based on the IEEE 802.11ah standard, considering factors like signal strength, antenna gain, and free-space path loss. The estimated range was 15.9 kilometers. During field tests at Joshua Tree, the team achieved a 2 Mbps UDP throughput at the maximum range, demonstrating that Wi-Fi HaLow can maintain long-distance connectivity while delivering meaningful data rates.

HaLow isn’t just about distance, however. The technology’s power-saving capabilities can extend battery life significantly. This could be a game-changer, especially for devices running on coin batteries, allowing them to function for months without a battery change.

Writing about the latest milestone, Morse Micro’s team said, “Our testing in Joshua Tree National Park demonstrates that Morse Micro’s Wi-Fi HaLow isn’t just about impressive numbers - it’s about delivering real value in environments where you need it most. This test proves that we can reach the maximum theoretical Wi-Fi HaLow range while still providing significant and usable throughput. Whether you’re working in remote, rural areas or deploying IoT solutions across vast landscapes, Wi-Fi HaLow can perform consistently and reliably.”

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