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Who needs a $650 video card? Pretty much anyone who wants to play games in 4K at decent frame rates. That's the basic pitch for NVIDIA's new $650 GTX 980 Ti, its latest high-end video card which, naturally, packs in even more power than last year's GTX 980. The new card sports 2,816 parallel processing CUDA cores and 176 texture units, around 38 percent more than the GTX 980, as well as 2 additional gigabytes of RAM giving it 6GB. It's also based on NVIDIA's new GM200 GPU, which is at the heart of the company's absurdly expensive $1,000 Titan X card. Basically, that means in the instances where its former heavyweight card slows down in 4K -- for example, by running Grand Theft Auto V -- the 980 Ti should shine. NVIDIA says the new card gets around 60 FPS in GTA V, while many benchmarks of that game with the 980 see between 35 and 45 FPS. The 980 Ti is also good news for anyone waiting for a good deal on the 980, since NVIDIA is also dropping the retail price of that card from $550 to $500.

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Sure, you drive a Volvo and not an Aston Martin, but that doesn't mean you can't pretend to be a charming spy who controls his car with a high-tech watch. Volvo will soon release its On Call app for Android Wear devices and the Apple Watch, after all, and it comes with all the features its predecessors for tablets and smartphones have. That means you can poke around your arm candy to remotely lock or unlock the car's doors, switch on the heater or air conditioner and check fuel and mileage. You can also ask it for help if your Volvo's lost in a sea of cars in a parking lot. And just like the older apps, it quickly connects you to an operator, who then tracks your location through GPS, if your airbags get deployed. Volvo wrapped the smartwatch apps in a new design based on the Sensus connected interface, but you'll have to wait until the end of June before you can give them a spin.

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A Japanese variant of the F-15 Eagle

The US knows that it's not enough to protect its own networks against cyberattacks -- its allies have to be safe, too. Appropriately, it's agreeing to shield Japan from digital assaults against its military and critical systems. The move gives the island nation a big security boost (its online defense unit has a mere 90 people) and hopefully reduces the chances that less-than-sympathetic neighbors China and North Korea will compromise a strategically vital country. While it's doubtful that the pact will deter many hacking attempts, it could make any local cyberwarfare campaigns that much tougher.

[Image credit: AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko]

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Tesla Model S in Texas

If you want to buy a Model S in Texas, you're going to have to jump through some hoops for at least the next couple of years. Bills that would let Tesla sell cars directly to customers aren't going to get a vote before the state's legislative session wraps up on June 1st, leaving the electric vehicle maker high and dry until the next session kicks off in 2017. This doesn't mean that you're completely out of luck if you want Tesla-made transportation in Austin (see above for proof), but you can't simply pick one up.

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Apparently, after all these years, Spotify still doesn't really get me. I've used the service since 2010. Technically I was a subscriber since before it hit US shores. And yet, Spotify clearly has no idea what kind of music I like. I say this because I recently traded in my carefully curated running playlist for Spotify's dynamically generated ones and, not to spoil the rest of the story, it really failed. But let's start at the beginning.

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Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.

Inhabitat's Week in Green

California is giving away free solar panels to its poorest residents. Between now and 2016, the state will donate 1,600 free photovoltaic systems -- and each array will save a household $22,800 in energy costs over 30 years. Meanwhile in Southern California, director James Cameron gifted his wife a field of solar sunflowers to power her sustainable school. In other energy news, Tesla's battery-producing Gigafactory is starting to take shape in Nevada -- and this week we took a first look at the gigantic building thanks to an aerial drone.

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In 2013, a pair of private investigators in the Bay Area embarked on a fairly run-of-the-mill case surrounding poached employees. But according to a federal indictment unsealed in February, their tactics sounded less like a California noir and something more like sci-fi: To spy on the clients' adversaries, prosecutors say, they hired a pair of hackers.

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Uber has rewritten its privacy policy to make it easier to grok and added some very important changes. According to the updated guidelines, the ride-sharing app will soon give drivers the power to track your location if you allow it to, so long as it remains running in the background. This, Uber claims, will allow them to pick you up a lot faster than just dropping a pin to signal where you're waiting. Drivers will be able to meet you on the way, for instance, or right out the door you used to exit a large building. Also, the app will start asking for permission to access your contact list, so the service can send promotional materials to your friends and family.

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Just as steel's physical properties change depending on how it's produced, so too do 3D printed materials. However, unlike steel, we don't yet fully understand how different these newfound techniques affect the resulting printed item. Sometimes a printed item -- even if it's made from something common like aluminum -- ends up having a very different microstructure had it been created with traditional, subtractive methods. You can see an example of that below. Heck, even using the same material on different printer models can result items with wildly divergent properties. But DARPA is looking to change that. The DoD's advanced research agency announced Friday that it is launching an Open Manufacturing program to create comprehensive reference documentation for 3D printing and usher in an era of productive predictability.

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Researchers from the University of Miami have started looking more closely into category five hurricanes this month. No, not by chasing them around -- they're thankfully quite rare -- but by simulating their effects inside a huge indoor tank. Oceanographers from the institute built the 66 x 20 foot tank officially called SUSTAIN or Surge-Structure-Atmosphere Interaction Facility on an island off the coast of Florida. The scientists merely have to flip a switch for the paddles inside to start churning the waters and for fans to begin mimicking howling winds -- in just few minutes, it all turns into a small-scale storm.

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