T8
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Volvo’s XC90 brings Swedish minimalism to a sea of luxury SUVs
There's one word to describe Volvo's high-end SUV offering: smooth. The ride is smooth. The steering is smooth. The braking is (now) smooth. The interior? Smooth. It's like a serene lake in Sweden that also has massage seats. If only it had more USB ports.
Volvo borrows cachet and power from its Polestar EV brand
The $155,000 Polestar 1 plug-in hybrid with 600 horsepower and a 100-mile driving range isn't coming to market until next year, but its parent Volvo is giving us a taste ahead of that. It just unveiled the "Polestar Engineered" flavor of its upcoming S60 hybrid sports sedan, and will also offer the option on its V60 estate and XC60 SUV vehicles in 2019.
Meitu's new phone uses AI to snap better selfies
Chinese selfie app and smartphone company Meitu has unveiled its newest flagship, and it's all about making you look better. The T8 includes a front-facing camera with optical image stabilization and dual-pixel phase detection autofocus (PDAF) similar to Samsung's Galaxy S7 and the ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom -- rare components in a selfie camera. It also has a feature called Magical AI Beautification. Like Meitu's popular beauty apps, it can detect your skin tone, age and gender, then touch up your selfie accordingly.
Robugtix's 3D-printed T8 spiderbot will terrify your friends for $1,350 (video)
Whether they run, jump or swim, there are plenty of robots around to be fearful of. None have quite exacerbated our arachnophobia as much as Robugtix's T8 octopod, however. The 3D-printed spiderbot not only looks the part, but employs 26 servo motors to drive its unnervingly life-like movement. Bigfoot's baked-in "Inverse Kinematics Engine" deals with all of the background computations, so you don't have to be a coding genius to work it. Instead, users send "short and simple commands" to the bot via wireless XBee or any other method you can hook up to its Rx / Tx pins. Expected to ship at the end of September, the T8 is available now for a special pre-order price of $1,350, and you can add $85 to that if you want one of Robugtix's analog-stick controllers for real-time direction. If that sounds a bit pricey, there's another option in the much cuter $250 iitsii hexapod, which is predicted to ship late August. Check out the shudder-inducing video of the T8 below, then follow it up with the iitsii demo to help you forget.
iRiver busts out low end T8 Candy Bar and S100 PMPs in Korea
iRiver's just announced two new lines of cheap PMPs for your fanciful, color-loving ears. First up, the T8 Candy Bar boasts a classic USB stick design, and is available in eight outrageous colors. They pack 4GB of storage and a battery life of up to 17 hours -- but not much else. Up next the slightly more interesting S100, which comes in both 4GB and 8GB varieties, with a 2.83-inch, 240 x 320 resolution color display, FM Radio, microSD slot, and 720p video playback. Both the T8 Candy Bar and the S100 are available in Korea only so far, and the T8 runs 69,000 Won (around $58) while the S100 starts at 129,000 Won (around $106) with several different configurations. Shot of the S100 is after the break.
Panasonic adds Windows 7 to laptop line, unveils Let's Note N8 and S8
Oy vey! Today must be some industry-wide Windows 7 announcement day, as Panasonic is hot on the heels of Dell and Toshiba with no less than six lappies set to sport Vista's agile younger sibling. The Let's Note (ToughBook, to you and us) F8, R8, T8 and W8 models are likely to take on the new OS without alterations to their hardware, but the hot news comes in the form of the brand new N8 and S8. Powered by Core 2 Duo P8700 chips, both machines will come with 12.1-inch WXGA LCD screens, 250GB HDDs, up to 4GB of RAM, WiMAX, WiFi, HDMI and SDHC connectivity. They also share a stonking claim of 16 hours of battery life, and the one feature that distinguishes between them is the internal DVD burner on the S8. All that goodness will be out come October 22, with expected pricing around ¥200,000 (about $2,230) for the N series. You'll find a gallery of the unveiling event at the Akihabara News link below. %Gallery-74215% [Via Akihabara News]
Mobinnova élan smartbook powered by NVIDIA Tegra
Ready for the smartbook revolution? Too late, cause here they come -- and the first officially-announced product we've got is the Mobinnova élan netbook, a NVIDIA Tegra-powered machine that weighs in at just two pounds but can pump out 720p video on its 8.9-inch screen. It's not at all clear what OS this guy's running, but we're told that it has an "innovative 3D graphical user interface," supports hardware-accelerated Flash video -- which is huge freaking deal, if you ask us -- has WiFi and 3G, and can play video for five to ten hours on a single charge. That's pretty impressive, but we'll wait to see what pricing looks like -- if it's cheaper than the sub-$300 10-inch netbooks that are starting to arrive we'd say it could be a huge winner. That's not all for Mobinnova's Tegra announcements either: there's also the T8 tablet, which repackages the élan in a 10.1-inch tablet form factor with GPS and HDMI out. Definitely interesting -- check the full presser after the break.
Insider Trader: Jewelcrafting nerf incoming
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Bornakk just announced on the forums that Jewelcrafters are about to see a new nerf, and as a result, people are already beginning to weigh the benefits of switching to a different profession for min-maxing, or working out how they are going to re-itemize their gear. Bornakk:In the next major content patch we will be removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon's Eye gems. Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus. When this change occurs, players with qualifying jewelcrafting skill will be provided a yet to be determined amount of Dalaran Jewelecrafter Tokens as compensation. This probably won't be enough to entice players to drop the profession, but it is a bit of a blow. Stratfu points out that because Mage T8 is equipped primarily with yellow and blue sockets, the only way to actually meet socket bonus requirements will be to use sub-par gems. The JC-only Runed Dragon's Eye offers +32 spell power, and currently fits into any socket, conforming to meet the necessary color requirements. This is compared to the +19 spell power that the rest of us folks get from Runed Scarlet Rubies. While Jewelcrafters will still be able to use these gems, they won't be able to stick them just anywhere.
The best loot comes from hard modes, not just Yogg-Saron
Yesterday, Ensidia earned the world-first Yogg-Saron kill. This is not the world-first Ulduar clear, because Algalon is designed to be the hardest boss in there, but that's a story for another post. What I want to talk about here is loot. Specifically, I want to talk about the quality of Yoggy's goods, which is the same as the quality of every other drop in normal-mode Ulduar-25: ilvl 226 for armor, and ilvl 232 for weapons. The same pattern holds on 10-man, with Yogg-10's drops being ilvl 219, like the rest of Uld-10. This is a departure from previous tradition, where the last boss of a raid would drop items of higher caliber. Kel'Thuzad, for instance, drops items a full tier above the rest of Naxx (ilvl 213 vs. 200 on 10-man, ilvl 226 vs 213 on 25-man).
Shifting Perspectives: A 3.1 miscellany
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, our author ferrets around her inbox for several unanswered questions concerning patch 3.1. Greetings, Druids. For a while now I've been adding to a list of questions I've had for the upcoming 3.1 patch. Some of these are questions I got from other players, some are questions that occurred to me while reading various versions of the 3.1 PTR patch notes, and others are mostly-illegible bits scribbled in the middle of testing Ulduar fights -- dasiewlerjewDIFEEIRKdfklsd? 3349FHDFHDIOJKfkdsfadioer. REIOWEL? Must've written that one on Kologarn. I believe it is a super-secret, devilishly clever guide to the fight that brilliantly exploits group positioning to produce a clean, one-shot kill on the first attempt, but alas, we will never know. Such are the dangers posed by bad handwriting, people. Study your Palmer Method! This evening, I will attempt to answer all of the following questions, or to point you in the direction of other bloggers who have. These deal with all three Druid specs, so let's get started!
Select Tier 8 set bonuses updated in latest PTR build
As I mentioned when the Tier 8 set bonuses were first revealed, some of them will probably change before patch 3.1 hits live realms. Better ideas come up, bugs are fixed, things are rebalanced, all of that. It's proven true so far, because tonight's PTR build has changed a few of them, most notably the ones that had incorrect or missing values in the tooltips. Here are the set bonuses changes we've seen so far in this build:Druid Balance 2Piece Bonus -- Increases the bonus granted by Eclipse for Starfire and Wrath by 15%. Paladin Protection 2Piece Bonus -- Increases the damage done by your Seals of Vengeance, Corruption, and Righteousness by 10%. Protection 4Piece Bonus -- Shield of Righteousness now increases your shield block value by 225 for that attack and for 3 sec afterward. Holy 4Piece Bonus -- Your Sacred Shield can now trigger its effect every 4 sec instead of every 6.
Priest T8 set bonuses clarified
As of the latest PTR build we now have access to most of the set bonuses for the tier 8 gear that's going to drop in Ulduar, including the bonuses for both priest sets, shadow and healing. In case you haven't seen them before, the bonuses are as follows: Healing: Two-piece: Increases the crit chance of your Prayer of Healing by 10% Four-piece: Casting Power Word: Shield also grants you 250 spell power until cancelled. Shadow: Two-piece: Increases the damage done by your Devouring Plague by 15%. Four-piece: Your Mind Blast also grants you 240 haste rating until cancelled. The parts listed in bold up above are new; these numbers are just placeholders in the PTR client right now, but Ghostcrawler has clarified that the intended values are somewhere along those lines. No word yet on what "is cancelled" is supposed to mean, as far as I know.
Tier 8 set bonuses hit the PTR
A new build has hit the patch 3.1 PTR, and with it has come something that many people have been waiting on most of all: Tier 8 set bonuses! We have all of them listed below, but keep something in mind while you read them: They are probably not finished, just take this as a preview. Set bonuses always shift and change before they go live, and I can guarantee that some of these will. At the very least, they'll have some typos and grammatical issues cleaned up, and we'll find out where the missing percentage symbols are supposed to go.Death Knight DPS 2Piece Bonus -- Increases the critical strike chance of Death Coil and Frost Strike by 5%. DPS 4Piece Bonus -- Increases the bonus damage done per disease by 20% on Blood Strike, Heart Strike, Obliterate, and Scourge Strike. Tank 2Piece Bonus -- Increases the damage done by Rune Strike by 5%. Tank 2Piece Bonus -- Increases the damage done by Rune Strike by 10%.
The Daily Quest: Of class quests, Warcraft music and Big Black Kitties
Patch 3.1 is still burning up the PTR and sending most classes into a tail spin trying to figure out what their new talent builds will be when the patch goes live. Forget the madness of the ever-changing class mechanics for a few minutes to peruse today's WoW-related posts from around the blogosphere. Big Red Kitty shows off what could be the latest Hunter pet models or what could be a texture glitch seen running amok on the Test realm (see pic above.) More on his site. To PTR or not PTR, that is the question explored at Shields Up. They look at both sides of the controversial topic. Tier 8 gear have you interested in raiding for the first time? Check out The Virtues of the Effective Raider, a good primer for people first dipping their toe into WoW raiding. And for those more experienced in raiding, check out our weekly raiding columns, Ready Check and Raid Rx. Though the Echoes of War music was released months ago, Blizzard made an official announcement this week. Next week, they'll be announcing the launch of The Burning Crusade... Hoping for more class-specific quests? You'll have to wait a little longer according to European CM Vaneras. They take time to create and implement. He doesn't specifically say they are making more, but does go into the process involved.
Tier 8 Ulduar weapon models previewed, Val'anyr included
3.1 and Ulduar are coming soon. No doubt a lot of you have been looking forward to seeing what your reward for hacking apart a variety of priceless Titan artifacts and servants of the Old Gods would be. MMO-Champion, as always, has your back! They've released a preview for the weapon and accessory models that'll be in Ulduar, and they look fantastic. The theme of the instance seems to carry through into all of its gear, and I'm going to love just how good my guild and I will look after a bit of time in there. The image above is a paladin holding one of the Ulduar shields and the much-touted Val'anyr, Gavel of Ancient Kings, and that's just the tip of the iceberg from MMOC, who promises a video of it in action very soon. Bear in mind these are still tentative models and the art may change, but even then, what are you waiting for? Santa won't get mad if you peek. Go go go! Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Druid changes
All right, Druids. I've been rolled out of bed to come look at the new PTR test notes, because apparently this is a big deal or something. As far as I'm concerned, all important business can wait until a reasonable hour in the morning, like 3 PM, but because this site is run by crazy people here I am.So let's go skim the patch notes quickly -- /flick flick flick -- and try to answer the most important question first:Is Tauren cat form still in the game?/flick flickYes.Man, %*#$ this patch.Leaving aside this EGREGIOUS OMISSION, we're going to take a look at the preliminary Druid changes in patch 3.1 past the cut here, and courtesy of Michael Sacco and some data-mining gnomes, we also have the Druid Tier 8 shoulder graphic, which is pretty cool and reminds me a lot of Tier 5. I'm also seeing some undocumented changes in the game files off MMO Champion, but I'll have to examine those later today. I haven't been able to get on the PTR yet, so I can't confirm whether these changes have actually gone live on the test realm.
MMO-Champion's Tier 8 preview video
I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty hungry for patch 3.1 information. There's not a whole lot of it yet, but I suspect we'll be hit with a deluge of it by mid-Februrary. That's just my personal guess though, and I can't say there's much to back it up. It's sort of a void of information right now. I'm still itching to see and hear more about it though, so I was pretty happy to see the video MMO-Champion posted earlier today. It highlights the Tier 8 sets that can currently be found in the datafiles, which we've seen before but not in such a clear and simple video, with nice and (generally) neutral lighting. Death Knights, Hunters, Rogues, Mages, Warlocks, and Priests are highlighted, in that order. The last few classes don't have any skins (or hints of skins) buried in the game yet, so we'll need to wait awhile to see those. Out of the ones we can see, I'm not really sure which set is my favorite. They're all pretty cool and fit the class decently enough, except for possibly Hunters which is still cool but looks a lot like a Plate set for some reason. The Priest set is pretty amazing, so I'm definitely looking forward to getting my hands on it eventually.
More on Ulduar and hard modes
Daelo, the lead encounter designer, has dropped a few more details about Ulduar, the tier 8 raid that is coming in patch 3.1 (whenever that happens to be). We heard yesterday that there will be more "hard modes" in the raid, analogous to Sartharion. Today we learn that, again like Sartharion, completing the hard modes will give you not only achievements but also additional, better loot. There is also, apparently, going to be an optional encounter in the raid that will be hard-mode-only; I'm picturing something like Nightbane here. Furthermore, Ulduar in general, according to the post, will be harder than Naxxramas is. Naxx was tuned easy on purpose, and the devs have been saying for a while that Ulduar will not be that way, to the same extent. The analogy Daelo makes in his post is that if Naxx is "the introduction to raiding 101 class for players who have never raided before," Ulduar is "the second year class." So we won't be hitting a brick wall, but it probably won't be compared to UBRS either like Naxx often is now. Either way, we won't know much for sure until it's up on the PTR, but I'm certainly looking forward to it.
Panasonic gets official with F8, T8, W8 ToughBooks
It's been nearly a year since Panasonic rolled out its 7-series ToughBooks, and it looks like they're now finally being shoved aside for some new and improved 8-series models -- namely, the F8, T8 and W8, which, among other things, each include Qualcomm's Gobi dual-3G chipset. At the top of the heap is the 14-inch F8 (pictured above), which boasts a more than adequate 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo processor, a ruggedized 160GB hard drive, a DVD drive and, yes, a handle, all in a surprisingly lightweight 3.7-pound package. The T8 and W8, on the other hand, take things down to the 12-inch form-factor, and each pack a low-voltage 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo processor along with mostly identical specs, with the notable exception of a touchscreen that's exclusive to the T8 and a DVD drive that's only available on the W8. Look for all three to roll out in November, with the F8 setting you back $2,499, and the T8 and W8 each running $2,099.[Via Electronista]
RAmos T8 iMovie PMP: 32GB, .4 inch thick, $219
RAmos tends to tease us with slick product photos / renders all the time and then pump out shoddy, derivative crap, so we're not going to get too excited about the new T8 iMovie (sigh, terrible name), but here it is looking pretty slick on video -- and the specs are solid for $219. That's a 4.3-inch 480 x 272 touchscreen in a 10mm (.4 inch) thick case, with 32GB of storage and decent codec support, TV-out, and micro speakers. Too bad we don't know if it's coming Stateside, but if you're headed to the Olympics, it's probably worth checking out. Video after the break.[Via PMP Today]
