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"The words we shared built chat GPT, the images we shared built Stable Diffusion. Generative AI is just another word for surveillance capitalism. Taking our data with dubious consent and activating it through services it sells back to us. It is a visualisation of the way we organise things, a pretty picture version of the technologies that sorted and categorised us all along.
Instead of social media feeds or bank loans or police lineups, these algorithms manifest as uncanny images, disorienting mirrors of the world rendered by a machine that has no experience of that world. If these images are unsettling because they resemble nothing like the lives they claim to represent, it's because that is precisely what automated surveillance was always doing to us."
Eryk Salvaggio, The Age of Noise, 2024
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"The words we shared built chat GPT, the images we shared built Stable Diffusion. Generative AI is just another word for surveillance capitalism. Taking our data with dubious consent and activating it through services it sells back to us. It is a visualisation of the way we organise things, a pretty picture version of the technologies that sorted and categorised us all along.
Instead of social media feeds or bank loans or police lineups, these algorithms manifest as uncanny images, disorienting mirrors of the world rendered by a machine that has no experience of that world. If these images are unsettling because they resemble nothing like the lives they claim to represent, it's because that is precisely what automated surveillance was always doing to us."
Eryk Salvaggio, The Age of Noise, 2024
Source: cyberneticforests.substack.com
#ai#surveillance capitalism#eryk salvaggio
Ito Shinsui, Rainbow, 1912
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One AI : Access all premium AI's from a single dashboard.
https://openaireview.blogspot.com
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of AI tools out there? Or maybe you’re tired of paying hefty monthly fees for multiple AI services? Well, I’ve got some exciting news for you.
Let me introduce you to OneAI, a game-changing platform that’s set to revolutionize how we access and use artificial intelligence.
What exactly is One AI?
In a nutshell, OneAI is the world’s first cloud-based AI app that brings together the most advanced premium AI tools in a single dashboard.
And here’s the kicker – you can access all of this without paying any monthly fees. Sounds too good to be true, right? Let’s dive deeper and see what OneAI has to offer.
OneAI isn’t just another run-of-the-mill AI platform. It’s a carefully curated collection of the world’s leading AI technologies, including:
1. ChatGPT 4.0 & ChatGPT 4
2. Google’s Gemini Pro
3. DALL·E 3
4. Leonardo AI
5. Microsoft Copilot Pro
6. Meta’s Llama 3
7. Stable Diffusion XL
8. Google’s PaLM 2
Now, imagine having all these cutting-edge AI tools at your fingertips, accessible through a single, user-friendly interface. That’s the magic of OneAI.
The possibilities are virtually endless, but here are some highlights:
* Create top-notch content and sales copy using ChatGPT 4
* Design stunning 4K HD AI images with DALL·E 3
* Produce ultra-HD 8K AI videos and realistic paintings via Leonardo AI
* Write complex HTML, CSS, and programming codes using Copilot Pro
* Translate languages and get answers to intricate questions with Llama 3
* Transform text into lifelike portraits with Stable Diffusion XL
* Develop powerful AI tools and apps using PaLM 2
And that’s just scratching the surface. With OneAI, you’re limited only by your imagination.
Here’s where things get really interesting. If you were to subscribe to each of these AI services individually, you’d be looking at an annual bill of over $12,000.
OneAI lets you access all of them for a fraction of that cost. We’re talking about potentially saving thousands of dollars every year. For small businesses and freelancers, that’s a game-changer.
But Wait, There’s More! OneAI isn’t just about accessing existing AI tools. It’s a platform that empowers you to create your own AI-driven business. Here are some exciting possibilities:
* Launch your own monthly AI subscription service
* Start an AI content creation agency
* Sell AI-generated content on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork
* Create and sell AI tools and apps
Plus, OneAI comes with a commercial license, meaning you can use it to create and sell as many assets as you like to your clients.
OneAI boasts an intuitive, easy-to-use dashboard that doesn’t require any technical expertise. Whether you’re an AI expert or a complete novice, you’ll find OneAI accessible and user-friendly.
About Creator
Uddhab Pramanik is the creative force behind USP Internet Services Pvt. Ltd. This forward-thinking entrepreneur has made a name for himself as a leading software developer on popular platforms like Jvzoo and WarriorPlus.
Pramanik’s products stand out for their high quality and competitive prices. Over time, he has left a lasting mark on the industry by releasing countless impressive software solutions. Some of his most popular offerings include Ink Buddy AI, MobiApp AI, AI Wizard, etc.
His groundbreaking work hasn’t gone unnoticed, cementing his status as an industry pioneer. In the following section, we’ll take a closer look at the exciting features of One AI, providing an in-depth review of what this innovative software brings to the table.
Features and benefits
Key Features of One AI
One AI boasts a robust lineup of premium AI tools, each offering unique capabilities that cater to various needs. Here’s a closer look at what you get:
* ChatGPT 4.0 & ChatGPT 4: The latest in conversational AI, providing intelligent, human-like responses that can streamline communication and content creation.
* Gemini Pro: A multi-modal AI tool that integrates various forms of input and output, enhancing both creativity and productivity in your projects.
* DALL·E 3: Generate stunning AI images effortlessly with the latest advancements in image synthesis technology.
* Leonardo AI: Create ultra-HD AI videos and realistic paintings, pushing the boundaries of digital art and design.
* Microsoft Copilot Pro: Boost your productivity with AI-powered assistance in writing high-demand HTML, CSS, and programming codes.
* Meta Llama 3: Access powerful language models for translation, complex question answering, and more, making communication across languages easier than ever.
* Stable Diff XL: Transform text into high-quality, realistic images and portraits, perfect for marketing materials and creative projects.
* PaLM 2: Google’s revolutionary AI for developing powerful tools and applications, with next-level natural language processing capabilities.
Why Choose One AI?
One AI stands out in the crowded field of AI tools by offering an unparalleled combination of accessibility, affordability, and power. Here are some of the top reasons why One AI could be the game-changer you’ve been waiting for:
* No Monthly Fees: Access the world’s leading AI tools without the recurring costs that usually come with premium AI services. This alone can save you thousands of dollars annually.
* All-in-One Dashboard: Manage all your AI needs from a single platform, eliminating the hassle of juggling multiple subscriptions and interfaces.
* Commercial License Included: With the commercial license, you can create and sell as many AI-generated assets as you like, making One AI not just a tool, but a potential revenue stream.
* User-Friendly Interface: Even if you’re new to AI, One AI’s intuitive dashboard makes it easy to get started. No technical expertise required.
* Support and Training: One AI comes with dedicated live chat support and exclusive training videos to ensure you make the most of every feature.
How One AI Can Transform Your Workflow
One AI is more than just a collection of AI tools—it’s a platform designed to supercharge your creativity, efficiency, and profitability. Here’s how it can make a difference:
* Create World-Class Content: Use ChatGPT 4 to generate compelling content and sales copies that engage and convert.
* Produce Stunning Visuals: With DALL·E 3 and Leonardo AI, you can create eye-catching images and videos that stand out in any marketing campaign.
* Streamline Development: Microsoft Copilot Pro allows you to write clean, efficient code faster, while PaLM 2 helps you develop powerful applications with ease.
* Expand Your Reach: Meta Llama 3 enables you to break language barriers and reach a global audience with accurate translations and multilingual content.
* Maximize Profits: Whether you’re freelancing or running a business, the ability to create and sell AI-generated content without monthly fees can significantly boost your bottom line.
Personal Experience – Ease Of Use: How One AI Works
After using it extensively for the past few months, I can confidently say that One AI has been a game-changer for my business.
Getting Started
The onboarding process was refreshingly simple. After signing up, I was greeted with a clean, intuitive dashboard that gave me instant access to a suite of AI powerhouses including ChatGPT 4, DALL-E 3, and Stable Diffusion XL.
As someone who previously juggled multiple subscriptions and logins, having everything in one place was an immediate time-saver.
One feature that stood out right away was the unified interface. Whether I was generating text with ChatGPT or creating images with DALL-E, the experience felt cohesive. This made switching between tasks much smoother than I expected.
Exploring the AI Tools
* ChatGPT 4:
The crown jewel of One AI is undoubtedly its integration with ChatGPT 4. The quality of text generation is remarkable, often producing content that requires minimal editing.
I’ve used it for everything from drafting blog posts to crafting social media captions. One small quirk I noticed is that occasionally it can be a bit verbose, so I sometimes need to prompt it for more concise responses.
* DALL-E 3:
As a visual content creator, having DALL-E 3 at my fingertips has been invaluable. The image quality is consistently impressive, though I’ve found that very specific or complex prompts can sometimes yield mixed results. It’s been a learning process to refine my prompts for optimal output.
* Stable Diffusion XL:
While similar to DALL-E in many ways, I’ve found Stable Diffusion particularly useful for generating more artistic or stylized images. It seems to handle certain aesthetic styles better than DALL-E in my experience.
* Gemini Pro:
Google’s Gemini Pro has been a pleasant surprise. Its multimodal capabilities have come in handy for tasks that involve analyzing both text and images. However, I’ve noticed it can sometimes be a bit slower to generate responses compared to ChatGPT.
Real-World Applications
One of the most significant impacts One AI has had on my workflow is in content ideation and creation. For a recent client project in the fitness industry, I used ChatGPT to brainstorm article topics, outline key points, and even draft sections of content.
I then used DALL-E to create custom header images for each article. The ability to seamlessly move between these tasks in a single platform saved me hours of work.
Another area where One AI has proven invaluable is in coding assistance. As someone with intermediate programming skills, having access to Microsoft’s Copilot Pro has been a godsend.
It’s helped me debug tricky JavaScript issues and even assisted in building a small web app for a client. The code it generates isn’t always perfect, but it provides an excellent starting point that I can then refine.
For multilingual projects, the integration of Meta’s Llama 3 has been particularly useful. I recently had to translate a series of marketing materials from English to Spanish and French.
Llama 3 not only provided accurate translations but also helped me understand nuances and idiomatic expressions that might not translate directly.
Monetizing with One AI
Beyond improving my own workflow, One AI has opened up new revenue streams for my freelance business.
I’ve started offering AI-enhanced content packages to clients, leveraging the platform’s capabilities to deliver higher-quality work more efficiently. This has allowed me to take on more projects and increase my rates.
I’ve also experimented with selling AI-generated assets on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. For instance, I created a gig offering custom AI-generated book covers using a combination of DALL-E and Stable Diffusion.
The demand has been surprisingly high, and I’ve been able to command premium prices due to the quality and uniqueness of the output.
One particularly successful venture has been creating and selling prompt libraries. I’ve developed curated collections of effective prompts for different industries (e.g., e-commerce, real estate, tech startups) that help others get better results from the AI tools. This passive income stream has been growing steadily.
Challenges and Limitations
While my overall experience with One AI has been overwhelmingly positive, it hasn’t been without its challenges. Here are a few areas where I’ve encountered some friction:
1. Learning curve: Despite the user-friendly interface, there’s still a learning curve in understanding how to effectively prompt each AI tool for optimal results. It took me several weeks of experimentation to feel truly proficient.
2. Occasional downtime: I’ve experienced a few instances of server issues or tool-specific outages. While rare, these can be frustrating when working on time-sensitive projects.
3. Limited customization: While the unified interface is generally a plus, there are times when I wish I had more fine-grained control over specific tool settings.
The Financial Impact
One of the most significant benefits of One AI has been the cost savings. Prior to using the platform, I was spending upwards of $200 per month on various AI subscriptions. With One AI, I’ve been able to eliminate those recurring costs while gaining access to an even broader set of tools.
In terms of revenue, the efficiency gains and new service offerings have allowed me to increase my monthly income by approximately 40%. This boost has more than justified the initial investment in One AI.
* Looking Ahead
As I continue to integrate One AI more deeply into my workflow, I’m excited about the potential for future enhancements. The team behind One AI seems committed to regularly adding new features and integrating cutting-edge AI models as they become available.
For anyone working in content creation, digital marketing, or really any field that can benefit from AI assistance, I highly recommend giving One AI a try.
While it may not completely replace human creativity and expertise, it’s an incredibly powerful tool that can elevate your work and open up new possibilities.
The ability to access such a comprehensive suite of AI tools without the burden of multiple subscriptions is truly game-changing. One AI has not only streamlined my workflow but has also expanded what I thought was possible in my freelance business.
As AI technology continues to evolve, I’m confident that platforms like One AI will play an increasingly crucial role in shaping the future of work.
My Opinion: Is One AI Worth It?
Comprehensive AI Access
One AI’s standout feature is its ability to provide access to multiple leading AI models through a single, unified dashboard. This includes popular tools like ChatGPT 4, Google’s Gemini Pro, DALL-E 3, and more.
For businesses and individuals who regularly utilize various AI services, having them consolidated in one place could streamline workflows and boost productivity.
* Potential Cost Savings:
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of One AI is its pricing model. Unlike traditional subscription-based AI services, One AI advertises a one-time fee structure.
For heavy AI users, this could translate to substantial savings compared to paying separate monthly subscriptions for each tool. However, it’s important to note that the long-term viability of this model remains to be seen, especially as AI technologies continue to advance rapidly.
Versatile Applications
The range of AI models accessible through One AI opens up possibilities for diverse use cases:
* Content Creation: Leverage ChatGPT 4 for writing assistance and ideation.
* Image Generation: Create visual assets with DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion.
* Code Development: Utilize Microsoft’s Copilot Pro for programming support.
* Language Tasks: Access Meta’s Llama 3 for translation and complex queries.
This versatility makes One AI potentially valuable for content creators, marketers, developers, and other professionals who rely on AI tools.
* User-Friendly Interface
One AI emphasizes a user-friendly dashboard, which could make advanced AI capabilities more accessible to those without deep technical expertise. This democratization of AI tools is a positive trend in the industry.
* Commercial Licensing
. Considerations and Comparisons
While One AI offers an attractive package, potential users should consider a few factors:
1. Model Versions: Ensure that the versions of AI models offered through One AI meet your specific needs, as they may not always be the absolute latest.
2. Integration Depth: While convenient, using AI models through a unified platform may not offer the same level of customization as direct API access to individual services.
3. Data Privacy: Users should carefully review One AI’s data handling practices, especially when dealing with sensitive information.
Is One AI Worth the Investment?
For many users, especially those already juggling multiple AI subscriptions, One AI could represent excellent value. The potential for significant cost savings, combined with the convenience of a unified platform, makes it an intriguing option.
However, the “worth” of the investment will ultimately depend on individual needs and usage patterns. Power users who require the absolute cutting edge of each AI model may still prefer direct access to individual services.
Conversely, those looking to explore various AI capabilities without committing to multiple subscriptions might find One AI to be an ideal entry point.
While it shows great promise, potential users should carefully evaluate their specific needs and compare One AI’s offerings to standalone services.
As with any rapidly evolving technology, staying informed about updates and alternatives is crucial. One AI represents an exciting development in making advanced AI more accessible, but users should approach it with both optimism and a critical eye to ensure it truly meets their requirements.
By acting quickly, you will receive the vendor’s most huge bonuses, along with my incredible bonuses featured in the final section of this One AI Review!
One AI OTOs, Discount Coupons and Pricing Options
For a limited time, you can take advantage of the early bird discount for One AI with the options listed below. Choose the one that best suits your needs before this special offer ends!
1. OneAi Front-End $17
2. OTO 1: OneAi Unlimited $67
3. OTO 2: OneAi Enterprise $37
4. OTO 3: OneAi Vision $47
5. OTO 4: OneAi Plug-N-Play $147
6. OTO 5: OneAi Money Site $67
7. OTO 6: OneAi Agency: $197
8. OTO 7: OneAi TurnkeyProfit: $67
9. OTO 8: OneAi Unlimited AI Driven Traffic: $167
10. OTO 9: OneAi Reseller: $77
11. OTO 10: OneAi Whitelabel: $297
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Can I Solve Science?
New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/can-i-solve-science/
Can I Solve Science?
A brilliant essay by Stephen Wolfram explores this challenging question.
Created Using Ideogram
Next Week in The Sequence:
Edge 377: The last issue of our series about LLM reasoning covers reinforced fine-tuning(ReFT), a technique pioneered by ByteDance. We review the ReFT paper and take another look to Microsoft’s Semantic Kernel framework.
Edge 378: We review Google’s recent zero-shot time-series forecasting model.
You can Subscribe to The Sequence Below:
TheSequence is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
📝 Editorial: Can AI Solve Science?
Discovering new science is considered by many, including myself, as one of the ultimate tests of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). We are witnessing glimpses of the potential impact of ‘AI for science’ with models such as those discovering new computer science and math algorithms, or the famous AlphaFold, which is actively used for discovering new proteins.
Is AI going to discover everything?
Can AI help explain the universe?
What are the limits of AI when it comes to science?
There are many theories about the possibilities of AI in scientific domains, but not a formal theory. Last week, computer scientist and physicist Stephen Wolfram published a long and detailed essay attempting to explain the potential and limits of AI in discovering new science. Wolfram’s theory relies heavily on one of his favorite theories: the principle of computational irreducibility.
Wolfram introduced the idea of computational irreducibility in his 2002 book, ‘A New Kind of Science’. This theory also relies on the idea that the universe can be modeled using formal computations. Some of these computations are reducible, which means they allow shortcuts to speed them up, while others do not allow for such flexibility and require executing all the computation steps. Science is possible because, even though many phenomena are computationally irreducible, they contain pockets of reducibility in which patterns can be inferred.
What does this have to do with AI? Well, AI is a form of approximating predictions by inferring regularities in data. In that sense, AI can be applied to solve those pockets of reducibility, but what about the rest? Well, easily, the irreducible parts can be processed using a formal computation language like Wolfram Language (coincidentally 😉).
In summary, Wolfram believes that AI can help advance most scientific workflows, but it will always be limited by the nature of computational irreducibility. In other words, this will prevent AI from autonomously solving science. However, combining AI with computational languages opens the doors to all sorts of possibilities when it comes to advancing science.
Whether you agree with Wolfram’s theory or not, you have to admit that it is certainly interesting. AI, by itself, cannot solve all science, but the combination of AI and computational languages could get pretty far.
📌 Exciting news! The speaker lineup for apply() 2024 is now live.
Join industry leaders from LangChain, Meta, and Visa for insights to master AI and ML in production.
Here’s a sneak peek of the agenda:
LangChain Keynote: Hear from Lance Martin, an ML leader at LangChain, a leading orchestration framework for large language models (LLMs).
Explore Semi-Supervised Learning: Aleksandr Timashov, ML Engineer at Meta, dives into practical approaches for training models with limited labeled data.
Deep Dive into Uplift Modeling: Toyosi Bamidele, Data Scientist at Visa, demystifies uplift modeling for estimating marketing interventions’ impact.
Dive deep into these topics with our expert speakers and gain actionable insights for mastering AI and ML. Stay tuned for the full agenda!
🔎 ML Research
Stable Diffusion 3
Stability AI published a paper outlining the technical details behind Stable Diffusion 3. The paper emphasizes on the rectified flow as a method to improve the mapping between noise and data which is essential to diffusion models —> Read more.
Yi
The team from 01.ai published a paper detailing thearchitecture behind the Yi family of models. Yi is based on 6B adn 34B pretrained models and that further fine-tuned for instruction and chat scenarios —> Read more.
Chatbot Arena
AI researchers from the prestigious LMSys lab at UC Berkeley published a paper detailing the popular Chatbot Arena platform. Chatbot Arena is one of the most popular tools for evaluating and benchmarking foundaiton models —> Read more.
Orca-Math
Microsoft Research published a technical report about Orca-Math, a version of Mistral 7B fine-tuned in mathematical problems. The mode achieved a remarkable 86.8% performance in the GSM8k dataset surpassing models such as LLAMA-270B and GPT-3.5 —> Read more.
Human Level Forecasting with LLMs
AI researchers from UC Berkeley published a study evaluating whether LLMs can forecast events at the level of human forecasters. The evaluation relies on a LLM-RAG system that can collect information, generate forecasts and aggregate predictions —> Read more.
AtP
Google DeepMind published a paper proposing Attribution Patching(AtP) a fast gradient descent method for causal attribution of behavior in LLMs. AtP is a form of activation patching which can identify the modes that lead to false positive predictions —> Read more.
🤖 Cool AI Tech Releases
Claude 3
Anthropic released the Claude 3 model family showcasing impressive performance —> Read more.
Inflection 2.5
Inflection AI unveiled the new version of its marquee foundation model which seems to achieve impressive performance across different benchmarks —> Read more.
Einstein 1 Studio
Salesforce released Einstein 1 Studio, a set of low-code tools for customizing Einstein CoPilot —>Read more.
TripoSR
Stability AI released TripoSR, a model that can generate 3D objects from single images —> Read more.
🛠 Real World ML
Can I Solve Science?
Stephen Wolfram published a long and super insightful essay detailing the history, possibilities and challenges of AI when comes to discover new science. The essay builds on Wolfram;s ideas of computation reducibility and outlines a clear bou`ndary about the areas that “AI in science” is applicable and those in which it isn’t —> Read more.
Python Upgrades at Lyft
The Lyft engineering team discusses their processes for upgrading Python at scale —> Read more.
📡AI Radar
San Altmant rejoined the OpenAI board of directors.
Multiverse Computing raised $27 million to apply quantum computations to AI.
Allen AI’s (AI2) Incubator secured $200 million in compute resources.
Accenture acquired edtech platform Udacity to boost AI education.
Databricks disclosed an impressive $1.6 billion in revenue accelerated by AI.
Andreessen Horowitz is raising two new AI funds.
Accenture and Cohere announced a partnership focused on security in generative AI.
Snowflake and Mistral announced a strategic alliance to enable LLM capabilities in its Cortex platform.
AI agent platform Brevian came out of stealth mode with a $9 million seed round.
OpenAI disclosed a series of emails from Elon Musk that challenge the arguments of the recent lawsuit.
India unveiled some pretty aggresive AI regulations.
Hugging Face is getting into robotics with some big hires.
Data observability platform Metaplane raised $13.8 million in a Series A.
#2024#3d#3d objects#accenture#AGI#ai#ai agent#Algorithms#AlphaFold#artificial#Artificial General Intelligence#Behavior#benchmarks#billion#board#book#Bytedance#challenge#chatbot#claude#claude 3#code#computation#computer#Computer Science#computing#data#data observability#data observability platform#Data Scientist
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Dale's Digital Delights: Generating 10 AI Illustrations of Electronic Appliances for Free Laxica's Luminary Lineup: 10 Free AI-Prompted Digital Illustrations for Electronics Brand Bing Image Creator Creations: Generating 10 Free AI Illustrations for Electronics Brand Stable Diffusion's Dynamic Designs: 10 Free AI-Prompted Digital Illustrations for Electronics A digital illustration of a sleek laptop computer. The
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Visit Galaxy Book4’s Smarter, Stronger Futures
Samsung Galaxy Book4 Series Advanced Features Samsung has announced the launch of the Galaxy Book4 Ultra, Book4 Pro, and Book4 Pro 360 its most intelligent PC lineup to date. The newest series of AI PCs delivers the highest level of productivity, mobility, and connectivity. It also has a more vibrant and engaging display, a strong security system, and an intelligent CPU. The device itself is made better by these improvements, which also elevate the Samsung Galaxy ecosystem as a whole, pushing the PC market and speeding up Samsung’s goal of AI innovation for the future.
“Samsung is dedicated to giving consumers the freedom to explore new possibilities that improve their daily lives. The vast Galaxy ecosystem and open cooperation with other top players in the market can help us reach this new paradigm, according to TM Roh, President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. “The ecosystem will benefit from best-in-class connectivity brought by the Galaxy Book4 series, which will expand people’s interactions with their PCs, phones, tablets, and other devices for truly intelligent and connected experiences.”
Leveling Up Intelligent Productivity with Secure Performance An clever processor powers the powerful performance of the Galaxy Book4 series, maximizing productivity. A speedier central processing unit (CPU), a more powerful graphics processing unit (GPU), and a recently added neural processing unit (NPU) are all combined into one compact package in the newest series’ Intel Core Ultra 9 processor. Together with over 100 Independent Software Vendors (ISV) and Intel’s industry-first AI PC Acceleration program, the new CPU is enabling innovative new AI capabilities and assisting in increasing productivity on the Galaxy Book4 series.
Furthermore, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU enhances the user experience. Fast, generative AI-based creation tools powered by NVIDIA Studio technology boost creativity. For instance, RTX-optimized Stable Diffusion allows you to quickly generate beautiful visuals with simple text. Users of the Galaxy Book4 Ultra can also immerse themselves completely in games thanks to the NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology, which produces visuals of higher quality for more than 500 well-known ray-traced games and applications.
The device can function to its fullest capacity since improved hardware performance completely supports intelligent productivity. With a new, improved cooling system that includes an 11% bigger vapor chamber and a twin fan with an unequal blade spacing design, the Galaxy Book4 Ultra reduces heat and fan noise. Because of its improved power efficiency, your device can last longer between charges. Moreover, users of the Galaxy Book4 Ultra can rapidly add 55 percent more battery life in just 30 minutes with the 140W adaptor, which is 1.4 times larger than its predecessor.
The importance of data security and privacy has increased along with the intelligence and connectivity of gadgets. For this reason, Samsung is strengthening security protocols at the chipset level for the Galaxy Book series for the first time, building on the heritage of security it has created via numerous Samsung Galaxy devices with Samsung Knox. A new standalone Samsung Knox security chip, added to the multi-layered security initiatives already in place with Intel and Microsoft, safeguards key system data independently in all three models.
Superb Display and Cutting-Edge Connectivity to Operate Anywhere, Anytime With the improved display of the Galaxy Book4 series, you can see clearly and continue working while on the road. The Dynamic AMOLED 2X display of the series provides excellent indoor and outdoor viewing with crisp contrast and vibrant color. While anti-reflective technology lessens distracting reflections, Vision Booster automatically improves visibility and color reproduction in bright settings using an Intelligent Outdoor Algorithm. All three variants of the Galaxy Book4 series now have touchscreens, which enhances the watching experience and makes it fully interactive with a touch-based user interface that is optimized and comfortable, similar to what you would find on a smartphone or tablet.
For a whole PC experience, having cutting-edge audio is equally as critical as having excellent pictures. Rich bass and upper octaves are delivered by AKG Quad speakers with Dolby Atmos for clean, clear sound. With the help of bi-directional AI noise cancellation and studio-caliber dual microphones, you can record clear video conversations even in busy outdoor settings. Realistic sounds with lower latency are made possible by LE Audio, an improved Bluetooth audio standard, when used with Galaxy Buds Pro, enhancing the immersiveness of activities like gaming.
With Auto Switch, you can effortlessly connect your Buds to a variety of devices, including your PC, TV, tablet, and smartphone, so you can experience hands-free device listening. The Galaxy Book4 series’ larger touchpad and several connectors, including a new HDMI 2.1 port, are further features intended to improve use. Powerful opportunities are opened when on the go thanks to the compact and lightweight design that houses all these functions.
Users of the Galaxy Book4 series can enjoy even greater increased productivity and creativity when paired with Galaxy smartphones and tablets. With Samsung Studio, a new video production tool accessible on all Samsung Galaxy devices, you can continue editing videos taken with your phone or tablet in greater detail on your PC.
It is designed to let everyone be a creative. With AI-enabled optimization for picture-perfect results, Photo Remaster is now accessible on Samsung Gallery for PC, allowing you to rapidly edit photographs and automatically remove undesired shadows and reflections. With Second Scree, you may increase your productivity by using your tablet as a Book4 display. It offers multiple modes, including Duplicate, Extension, and now Rotation.
Read more on Govindhtech.com
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"realistic jolteon"
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Chapter 1: The Lamp
Our story starts off in a more humble climate than others you may have heard, moreso than Manhatten, suburban chicago, the North Pole or a giant department store. The camera starts at my feet and pans upwards to a sign reading “East Hastings” in Vancouver’s iconic Downtown Eastside, revealing the Carnegie Hall in the background.
My first apartment in Vancouver is just around the corner on Cordova & Princess. Down the street in Gastown is the first restaurant I took a job doing dishes at, during my first Christmas in Vancouver. Incidentally, this would end up being the last house I lived in while I still had both my feet.
Not long after I moved to this interesting winter wonderland shared with cockroaches, rats, traffic noise, lineups towards a soup kitchen, and the occasional flooded basement a doctor said my right foot had had enough. My poor foot had done it’s best to support me for years after a childhood accident and it was time to send it to foot heaven. I wondered if foot heaven was the same as cat heaven, which is where my mom said my brown cat went to after it fell out of a 2 story window.
It shouldn’t be too surprising my right limb and I had to part ways- honestly I’m surprised it hadn’t gone sooner, or that it wasn’t joined by another appendage. You would be too if you’d seen some of the crazy winter antics my dad and my two brothers and sister got upto each year around december.
One year in the 90s saw our family cross country skiing when a blizzard brought the entire city of Nanaimo to a standstill. The marsh is perfectly safe, it’s frozen over he would say as we coasted confidently onto its icy surface. Or the time my dad tied a GT Racer sled to the trailer hitch of his 15 passenger van towing it on the backroads of mount benson, only stopping when he would notice the sled veering off towards a ditch.
Not long after losing the foot I also lost the apartment I was living in while trying against my sister’s advice to carry on as if things were normal.
At the time the housing crisis in Vancouver was in full swing, and when most folks weren’t either ice skating down on Robson or taking in the German Christmas market they were looking for a place to live for January.
They like me had done the best with the apartment they had- they had put plastic over their heritage windows to cut down on the BC hydro bill, they had placed the Christmas tree in front of the large hole in the drywall the last tenants had left, they had poured nearly half a bottle of pine extract into their scent diffusers to cover up the cigarette smell in the hallway, they had set up all manner of elaborate rat traps to avoid being contaminated by the plague, they had insisted to the landlord that, yes, those dark looking spots under the sink are black mold, all the while dreaming of finding a more ideal living situation.
To put it simply, it’s difficult trying to find one of these rumored nice apartments, much less trying to do so with only one foot, hopping from one viewing to the next trying to outrun the rest of the marathon of young professionals in search of the holy grails of affordable living.
At last I resigned, calling my parents half a month before Christmas to tell them about my housing woes. Well, just come home for the season, my dad said on the phone, it’ll just be for a few months until your foot man or whatever you call him makes you a new leg and you’ll be walking again in no time! Really, it’s what you should done in the first place, come home and we’ll take care of you.
So on to the ferry I went with a backpack containing a modestly redacted version of my life in Vancouver, the rest of it residing in a friend’s garage for the winter. I was trying not to slip and fall with my single blundstone and crutches, somehow avoiding the 3 ferry sailing waits that would transpire in the days to follow.
As luck would have it I arrived just in time to help my mom set up her elaborate Christmas village- arranged with a stunning eye for detail and careful planning- most towns and cities in Canada would have a hard time comparing to the structural engineering marvel and ease of traffic infrastructure my mom had created.
There was hardly ever a traffic jam in “The Winter village of Avonlea”, and the crime rate was next to zero. “Over here we’ll put the post office, and across the way we’ll place the butcher adjacent to the bakery” she would instruct me, “so the postman will save time gathering groceries on his way home from work, and we’ll place the city hall on the corner of Bedford Halls Lane and Bing Boulevard.”
Oh and don’t get me started on the tree decorations. My dad was allowed to pick the tree out, and that was the full extent of his involvement. Every year it became the host to a multitude of angels, small wooden sleds, doves, owls, pigeons, even the occasional crow. There were glass spheres coated with gold, silver, and platinum. Snowglobes snowed every day of the week, lords leaping and ladies dancing in circles all the way to the shining pinnacle on top of the tree. Some years it was another larger angel, other years a star, one year it was curiously a picture of elvis.
When it came to Christmas decorating my mom was the queen of the ice castle. My dad was self-decidedly in charge of creating our seasonal chaos scenarios to prepare us for adulthood, while my mom was in charge of everything inside the house. You dared not alter the carefully planned set up in any way lest you awaken the demon Krampus.
That was about 6 years ago, and of course things have changed since then. I now have 4 legs instead of only 1. I have my actual leg, my brand new prosthetic leg, and a climbing leg and a running leg. You have every leg you’ll need to carry out a great bank heist, my sister-in-law joked. I would need to I figured in order to continue paying for them. All said and done the price of a leg is pretty well comparable to a brand new honda accord.
After a harrowing few years of recovering and moving back to Vancouver, going from one house to the next, and I was finally in a moderately stable fairly well priced townhouse. It was Christmas again and this year I was heading to the ferry to see my mom and dad who still lived on the island. I had a smaller backpack this time as well as a curiously shaped duffel bag with a surprise for mom. Looking at the bag you might think it was a pile of field hockey sticks, or a set of broken golf clubs. In reality it was one of my retired legs, refashioned with a black fishnet stocking, a black high heel and a detachable light and lampshape.
You see every few years the legs wear down and they need to be replaced. like a ford car or an apple computer these things don’t last long, even with casual use. Once they’re retired they make a surprisingly great basis for all kinds of creative art sculptures. Thus was born a beautiful lamp centerpiece to my mom’s carefully thought out Christmas decoration extravaganza, which I had assumed she would love.
Arriving at the house I almost slipped on every icy step to the front door. The sandpaper I’d nailed to the stairs when I first moved home had worn down from repeated use. It didn’t help I was half blinded by a recently updated series of LED lights surrounding every tree, shrub, corner of the house, and window. Even the snowpeople couldn’t escape the maniacal creeping LED vines.
The house inside was decorated equally as elaborately with little left to the imagination. I hugged my mom and dad, carefully moving my body in twists and turns to avoid knocking any of the holiday flourishes over, like those weird people you see in grocery stores who try to sneak past you without touching you or making eye contact.
Since all the siblings have moved away home and founded small Christmas-minded colonies of their own my mom had gotten even more carried away with the decorations, making you feel like you were stepping into a densely forested North Pole mock up in a department store. She loved it, Dad appreciated it, and the grandkids were only allowed in with careful supervision.
“Well mom, I brought you a gift for your decorations” I said with a laugh opening the bag. I pulled out the awful, gloriously gaudy leg dressed in holiday cheer, in my mind a beautiful iconic recollection of the great holiday movies of old. I traipsed through the dense menagerie of holiday decorations and gingerly placed the lamp in the picture window, fully in view from the sidewalk.
Plugging it in the light sprung to life with a soft brownish glow emitted by an edison style bulb. My mom’s face was aghast at first, as if she had seen jacob marley ascending the staircase towards her room covered in chains.
Her expression then softened up a little bit and she said with a smile “Oh dear, that’s awful… just terrible”. My dad was laughing as he walked to the kitchen and back with 2 cans of Wildcat in hand. I pulled off my leg for the night and we sat under the glow of the lamp, the tree, the village, the decorations, and the christmas hearth log on channel 3 and talked cheerfully until I fell asleep on the couch.
The next morning I woke up at instinctively at 7am to see the morning sunrise reflect off Mount Benson and reached for my leg.
Now, one thing you might not realize about putting on a prosthetic leg is there’s a process to it, like putting together a desk from Ikea. It starts with either a polyurethane or silicone liner you roll onto your leg, followed by a gel sock covered in fabric or a few layers of wool socks before putting on the leg itself, in my case followed by rolling on another silicone sleeve that attaches the prosthetic to the rest of my leg holding it all together.
I stood up and walked towards the kitchen for a coffee, as I did I noticed something was off in the living room. The lampshade was missing. In its place in the reflection of the picture window I saw a red and white cylinder shape that ascended into a curve. While I was sleeping my mom had replaced my prosthetic leg lamp with a candy cane, and the lamp was nowhere to be found. “Hey Mom”, I shouted upstairs, “my lamp! Where did you put it?” “It’s in the trash out by the the curb” she shouted back, “out front.”
Just then a sanitation truck was pulling up beside the bins on the front sidewalk. One of the bins was overflowing with a familiar looking piece of footwear sticking out prominently from one side. It was my new $35,000 prosthetic leg with a brown leather blundstone still attached to it, being lifted up towards the crusher.
I lept for the door and ran down the stairs slipping on the icy porch! “ hey wait!” I shouted, “my foot!!!” As I ran my right foot was snagged by a lights cord and I fell flat onto my face in the snow, then snapped back. By the time I reached the sanitation worker he was laughing and he said, “hey, what’s with the fishnet?” I looked down, and adorned on my right side was the bottom half of the leg lamp I’d made for my mom, complete with a fishnet stocking, a black high heel, and a long brown extension cord.
By some weird twist of fate she confused the two and had thrown my good leg in the trash in a careless effort to rid her house of my hilariously ironic gift! I had tripped face first into the snow because the leg lamp was still plugged in!
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New Post Vivo Announces NEX Dual Display Edition with 2 AMOLED Displays & 10 GB RAM! has been published on http://www.reviewcenter.in/8366/vivo-announces-nex-dual-display-edition/
Vivo Announces NEX Dual Display Edition with 2 AMOLED Displays & 10 GB RAM!
Vivo’s NEX lineup is unique for its own reasons and looks like Vivo is putting a lot of effort in making NEX better and project it as their ultra high-end flagship. At a launch event in China, Vivo has announced the NEX Dual Display Edition, which offers a revolutionary dual-screen design, comes with an advanced triple camera setup and much more.
Commenting on this grand occasion, Spark Ni, Senior Vice President of Vivo said, “As Vivo’s premium line-up, the NEX series offers not only an extraordinary user experience to consumers, it also unleashes our imagination towards the future of design and development of smartphones. Combining a futuristic dual-display design and innovative technologies, NEX Dual Display Edition demonstrates Vivo’s continuous exploration and pursuit of exceptional innovations for consumers.”
The Vivo NEX Dual Display has a 6.39-inch Super AMOLED Ultra FullView™ Display at the front with a screen-to-body ratio of 91.63%. There is also an additional 5.49-inch Super AMOLED display at the back. There is the Lunar Ring on the back which glows and a band of colors helps users get the notifications and it can even pulse with music.
The new Vivo NEX Dual Display Edition comes with a triple camera set up on the back consisting of a 12MP Dual-Pixel main camera having Sony IMX363 sensor and 4-axis OIS, along with a specialized Night Video Camera and a Time of Flight (TOF) 3D Camera. Vivo claims that the combination is perfect for usage in any scenario, as the Night Video camera can shoot clear and stable footage in motion and low-light environments, while the TOF 3D Camera features point-to-point distance measuring.
Vivo has brought practical camera modes for NEX Dual Display Edition, such as Mirror Mode and Pose Director. Mirror Mode allows users to see themselves in the rear display while being photographed or filmed, while Pose Director can show a posed image or video in the rear display as a reference. There are various other features like AI Scene Recognition, AI Filters, and AI Portrait Framing, along with the diffusion lighting from the Selfie Softlight as part of the Lunar Ring.
In terms of hardware as well, Vivo provides the top-notch hardware available in the market right now. The Vivo NEX Dual Display Edition is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, coupled with 10GB of RAM and 128GB onboard storage. Just like the original NEX, the NEX Dual Display Edition comes with In-Display Fingerprint Scanning technology, along with TOF 3D Camera with 3D sensing technology for enhanced facial recognition and protection.
As of now, Vivo has not mentioned anything regarding the pricing and availability of NEX Dual Display Edition. However, when the phone goes for sale, it is pretty sure that it will break more headlines.
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2019 BMW 3 Series Shows Off Its Sporty M Performance Parts
The range of accessories include a new front splitter to dress up the sedan’s looks, and bigger brakes to make it stop better.
The 2019 BMW 3 Series doesn’t hit the market until March 2019, and there’s an even longer wait for the full-bore M3. To sate the desire of performance-hungry drivers, the automaker has a range of M Performance Parts for the sedan that makes the four-door look a little meaner.
On the outside, BMW offers a variety of sporty enhancements that are available in a high-gloss black or carbon-fiber finish. There are two front splitter options that offer different levels of aggressiveness. Carbon fiber mirror caps also dress up the sedan’s appearance, and M-branded side sills let customers show off that they have the upgrades.
At the back, there two trunk lid spoilers available to let customers decide how obvious they want the piece to be. Gray-tinted taillights add a darker aesthetic to the rear. A diffuser comes in a carbon, high-gloss black, or matte black finish. Plus, BMW offers exhaust tips in a mix of titanium and carbon fiber.
Get the complete scoop on the 2019 3 Series
A set of 18-inch M Performance brakes are also among the available upgrades. They include perforated and grooved discs with higher thermal resistance than the standard units. A set of four-piston red calipers clamp down on them.
To dress up the appearance further, there are M Performance wheels to add to the 3 Series. The designs include 18-inch units in matte black with double spokes. There are also 20-inch forged parts in a mix of jet black and burnished finish, and 20-inch forged wheels with Y spokes that come either entirely in matte black or a mix of matte ferric grey and gloss lathed. In case you need to swap out winter and summer rubber, a set of M-branded tire bags let owners carry them in style.
Moving inside, customers can dress things up with a variety of parts. An M Performance steering wheel features a red strip at the top and has hand-sewn, cross-stitch seams. Carbon fiber shift paddles can add more style. A carbon fiber trim kit can add a sportier aesthetic to the rest of the cabin, too.
If you’re planning on taking the new 3 Series to the track, the M Performance drive analyzer records driving data from the onboard computers and relaying the info to a smartphone app. It can also interface with a phone’s video camera for recording your laps. Alternatively, the setup can connect with something like a GoPro mounted on the front or rear towing ring for a better view.
When the 2019 3 Series finally arrives in March, folks in the U.S. will only be able to get the sedan with a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder producing 255 horsepower (190 kW) and 295 pound-feet (400 Newton-meters) of torque. An eight-speed automatic is the only available gearbox, but there’s a choice of rear- or all-wheel drive. Later, a 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six will join the lineup with 382 hp (295 kW) and 369 lb-ft (500 Newton-meters) of torque.
Source: BMW
Gallery: 2019 BMW 3 Series BMW M Performance Parts
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BMW M Performance Parts for the new BMW 3 Series. A wide range of options for accentuating the dynamic character of the middle class limousine.
Munich. To coincide with the presentation of the new BMW 3 Series Limousine (combined fuel consumption: 6,1 – 4,1 l/100 km; combined CO2 emissions: 139 – 108 g/km) * an extensive range of M Performance Parts is also being introduce as Original BMW Accessories for the new edition of this premium middle class car. With components directly inspired by and derived from motor racing for the interior and exterior as well as for the drive system and chassis engineering, customers will be able to systematically enhance the sports feel of their BMW 3 Series vehicle as they wish. The development of M Performance Parts always draws on the vast racing expertise of BMW M GmbH. All components are perfectly matched – both with each other and with the specific properties of each model. On the one hand, they give the vehicle a more dynamic and striking appearance, but they also have a functional advantage, for example, positively influencing the car’s aerodynamic properties or augmenting its lightweight construction concept.
Exterior package for a sharper appearance and optimised aerodynamics. The varied package of M Performance aerodynamic and exterior components for the new BMW 3 Series Limousine comprises no fewer than ten items. The individual components in high-gloss black or carbon-fibre not only underline the vehicle’s sporty appearance but also enhance the four-door car’s talents in terms of driving dynamics. For example, the M Performance front splitter or the M Performance front splitter pro, the M Performance rear spoiler and M Performance rear diffuser – available in a choice of carbon, black high-gloss or black matt – optimise the air stream around the vehicle while reducing uplift. This leads to improved road holding and a more dynamic driving response. The M Performance exterior mirror caps made of carbon fibre are a particularly attractive eye catcher in the way they display the typical texture of carbon-reinforced plastic. As with all carbon-fibre components, they are made by hand, sealed with clear lacquer, and then mirror-polished to give them their impressive depth effect. Their sporty flair is further enhanced by the M Performance side sill films. They stretch over the entire lower sill and contain the M Performance branding inscription. The back lights, grey tinted when viewed from the rear, and in the side section reminiscent of M Performance graphics, represent a particularly striking highlight, as do the M Performance tailpipes. They also feature high corrosion resistance and a long service life, thanks to their material mix of titanium and carbon fibre.
M Performance 18″ braking system and 18-inch and 20-inch wheels. The M Performance 18″ braking system is recognisable from the red colour of the brake calipers. Not only does this give it an attractive appearance, but the sports brakes also feature considerably enhanced deceleration performance for sporty driving. Compared to the serial-production brakes, the 18-inch brake discs are bigger, perforated, grooved, and of lightweight construction. They have a higher thermal resistance, for which reason they remain extremely stable even under extreme conditions. The four-piston brake calipers are made of aluminium, in line with the consistent lightweight construction concept of the vehicle.
To start with, the range of M Performance wheel sets will comprise four designs in two sizes at the market launch of the new BMW 3 Series Limousine. The 18-inch matt black M Performance light alloy double spoke 796M wheels are suitable for use both in summer and winter. In 20-inch size, the choice is between the M Performance forged cross-spoke 794 M bicolor wheels (jet black, burnished) and the 20″ M Performance forged Y-spoke 795 M wheels, in either bicolor (ferric grey matt, gloss lathed) or black matt.
For storing and transporting the wheels, M Performance tyre bags are recommended. They provide protection against soiling, their markings ensure clear identification, and they radiate an extra motor racing atmosphere into the home garage.
Visual and tactile interior highlights. Of course, motor racing sensations can be generated in the interior of the new BMW 3 Series Limousine as well. For example, the M Performance steering wheel, with its highly distinctive grip areas and large thumb rests, red centre marking at the ‘12 o’clock’ position, and silver-grey, hand-sewn cross-stitch seam. The racing look can be further enhanced by the carbon-fibre shift paddles (for models with Steptronic sport transmission) and the M Performance steering wheel trim panel made of carbon fibre with an Alcantara insert and M Performance inscription. To match this there is also the M Performance carbon-fibre interior trim, also with an open-pored structure.
In the footwell of the new BMW 3 Series Limousine, the M Performance foot mats emphasise sportiness, with the M Performance inscription and a flag in typical M colours, along with a leather-look surround including a decorative seam in contrasting colours.
Drive analyser and camera holder for data and video recording With the M Performance drive analyser, the driver of the new BMW 3 Series Limousine can record a range of driving data for subsequent analysis – a function that is particularly useful above all on the race track. The system consists of an OBD stick that is plugged into the on-board diagnosis interface, and a smartphone app. The drive analyser is derived directly from motor racing and supplies the driver with all important driving dynamics data, as well as offering extensive professional recording and analysis capabilities. It is also possible to record trips with a smartphone video camera, including cumulative driving data and route calculation using GPS positioning data. BMW provides M Performance holders for action cameras, to enable optimum recording from a spectacular perspective when driving on the race track. For external recording, these are simply mounted to the front or rear towing ring; to make recordings in the vehicle interior, it is snapped into place in the base support of the Travel & Comfort system on the headrest of the drive or front passenger seat. It allows the camera to be turned through 360 degrees, to enable images to be made from numerous perspectives.
Attract attention with door projectors with BMW M motifs Every time you enter or exit the vehicle, the BMW M logo or other M Performance-related motif can be projected onto the tarmac with an M Performance slide set for BMW LED door projectors. Just as stylish is the M Performance key wallet made of high-quality Alcantara with carbon-fibre insert, which can be permanently fixed to the car key with a socket head screw in M light blue to protect it from scratching or other damage.
Source: https://bloghyped.com/2019-bmw-3-series-shows-off-its-sporty-m-performance-parts/
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2018 Acura RLX Sport Hybrid First Test: Flagship Charting its Way
The Acura RLX probably isn’t the first, second, or third car that comes to mind when you think of midsize luxury sedans. How do you boost the relevancy of a sedan with few buyers in a segment with slow sales? You give it a bolder look and drop the price.
If this was the strategy, it might just be working. After slipping in the sales charts every year since its debut in 2013, the RLX is now on the upswing. First-quarter sales this year jumped 58 percent from 2017. Acura sold 463 copies of its midsize sedan, still well below the 10,000+ sales BMW garnered for its 5 Series.
A 2018 refresh brings a polarizing new design. I noticed it draws attention, but it’s overwhelming to the eyes if you look at it too long. Like other new vehicles in Acura’s stable, it has a diamond pentagon grille with an enormous badge in the middle. New headlights, a redesigned hood, restyled LED taillights, a gloss black rear diffuser, and exposed dual exhaust finishers are just some of the other updates to the exterior. To simplify the lineup, Acura is offering only two trim levels, one for each powertrain option: the all-gas RLX and the RLX Sport Hybrid. The hybrid model made up 13 percent of total RLX sales before the refresh, but Acura says that figure is up to more than 40 percent now.
We recently tested the Sport Hybrid, which uses a 3.5-liter V-6 paired to three electric motors for a total system output of 377 hp and 341 lb-ft of torque. The powertrain carries over from the 2017 model year, backed by a familiar seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. In Motor Trend tests, the sedan hit 60 mph in 4.9 seconds.
“I really like the power delivery on this thing,” associate road test editor Erick Ayapana said. “It’s smooth and linear, and it feels quicker than its acceleration numbers suggest.”
The Acura’s time matched a 335-hp 2017 BMW 540i we previously tested. In the figure eight, the RLX Sport Hybrid fell short of the BMW’s time of 25.7 seconds at an average of 0.73 g, clocking 26.9 seconds at an average of 0.67 g.
Perhaps a more direct competitor is the Lexus GS 450h, given it’s a fellow hybrid. Making 338 hp, the Lex took 6.0 seconds to reach 60 mph, yet it managed a superior figure-eight time of 26.3 seconds at an average of 0.70 g.
“I did feel the AWD doing a nice job of shuffling the power around on the skidpad where normally I’d be adjusting my line with the steering wheel,” road test editor Chris Walton noted of the RLX during testing. “There’s not a lot of grip from the tires, however.”
On the road, the RLX doesn’t feel floppy like many other large sedans. Instead, you’re able to steer the car precisely to where you want it to go. It benefits from Acura’s torque-vectoring Super Handling-All Wheel Drive, which doles out power as needed between the front and rear wheels as well as the individual back wheels. That said, this 4,341-pound sedan feels pretty heavy at low speeds, and steering requires a bit more muscle than usual.
Unlike many hybrids, this RLX benefits from sharp, not deflated, brakes, although they are perhaps a bit oversensitive. Our test team also praised the RLX for its reasonable body control under hard braking.
The RLX Sport Hybrid boasts better EPA fuel economy figures than the most efficient BMW 540i (21/30/24 mpg city/highway/combined), but it doesn’t perform as well as the Lexus GS 450h (29/34/31 mpg). The Acura’s 28/29/28 mpg rating from the EPA matches pretty closely with our Real MPG tests, which came in at 26.4/29.3/27.8 mpg.
The cabin remains relatively insulated from wind and road noise while cruising on the highway, although it’s not the quietest luxury sedan we’ve encountered. Plush materials encompass you once you’re inside, but all that fine leather is surrounded by old technology. One week with Acura’s infotainment system will have you eyeing the system on the Honda Accord. The two-screen setup is cumbersome and eats up free space on the center stack. Old graphics on the top navigation screen reduces its appeal, and the bottom screen is slow to respond to touch. Also, you won’t find Apple CarPlay or Android Auto on this sedan.
Despite its Acura badge, but don’t be fooled—this sedan is priced up there with competitors from BMW and Lexus. At $63,265, our tester was admittedly fully loaded with standard 12-way power front seats, a power moonroof, a head-up display, heated front and rear seats, ventilated front seats, a 14-speaker Krell audio system, a surround-view camera, a heated steering wheel, and navigation. Many of these features are offered on the standard Advance package. Standard safety features include adaptive cruise control with low-speed follow, collision mitigation braking, lane keeping assist, and a new traffic jam assist feature that helps drivers keep centered in their lane and at a set distance from the vehicle in front. The only extra feature on our tester was a premium $400 red paint job. For the new model year, Acura lowered the price on the Sport Hybrid by $4,050 compared to the outgoing model with the Advance package. The automaker previously offered a less expensive, lower-contented RLX Sport Hybrid with the Technology package, but it had a take rate of just 1 percent.
The RLX is Acura’s lowest-selling model shy of the NSX supercar. Acura sells way more MDX and RDX crossovers, but the RLX holds its own as a spacious flagship and unlikely cruise missile with solid cornering abilities. That said, the refresh fails to address the model’s aging technology and “large barge” feeling.
2018 Acura RLX Sport Hybrid SH-AWD BASE PRICE $62,865 PRICE AS TESTED $63,265 VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, AWD, 5-pass, 4-door sedan ENGINE 3.5L/310-hp/273-lb-ft SOHC 24-valve V-6 plus 47-hp/109-lb-ft front elec motor; 377 hp/341 lb-ft comb TRANSMISSION 7-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 4,341 lb (57/43%) WHEELBASE 112.2 in LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT 198.1 x 74.4 x 57.7 in 0-60 MPH 4.9 sec QUARTER MILE 13.6 sec @ 101.4 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 120 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 0.85 g (avg) MT FIGURE EIGHT 26.9 sec @ 0.67 g (avg) REAL MPG, CITY/HWY/COMB 26.4/29.3/27.8 mpg EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 28/29/28 mpg ENERGY CONS, CITY/HWY 120/116 kW-hrs/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 0.68 lb/mile
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A Christmas Foot, Chapter 1: The Lamp
Our story starts off in a more humble climate than others you may have heard, moreso than Manhatten, suburban chicago, the North Pole or a giant department store. The camera starts at my feet and pans upwards to a sign reading “East Hastings” in Vancouver’s iconic Downtown Eastside, revealing the Carnegie Hall in the background.
My first apartment in Vancouver is just around the corner on Cordova & Princess. Down the street in Gastown is the first restaurant I took a job doing dishes at, during my first Christmas in Vancouver. Incidentally, this would end up being the last house I lived in while I still had both my feet.
Not long after I moved to this interesting winter wonderland shared with cockroaches, rats, traffic noise, lineups towards a soup kitchen, and the occasional flooded basement a doctor said my right foot had had enough. My poor foot had done it’s best to support me for years after a childhood accident and it was time to send it to foot heaven. I wondered if foot heaven was the same as cat heaven, which is where my mom said my brown cat went to after it fell out of a 2 story window.
It shouldn’t be too surprising my right limb and I had to part ways- honestly I’m surprised it hadn’t gone sooner, or that it wasn’t joined by another appendage. You would be too if you’d seen some of the crazy winter antics my dad and my two brothers and sister got upto each year around december.
One year in the 90s saw our family cross country skiing when a blizzard brought the entire city of Nanaimo to a standstill. The marsh is perfectly safe, it’s frozen over he would say as we coasted confidently onto its icy surface. Or the time my dad tied a GT Racer sled to the trailer hitch of his 15 passenger van towing it on the backroads of mount benson, only stopping when he would notice the sled veering off towards a ditch.
Not long after losing the foot I also lost the apartment I was living in while trying against my sister’s advice to carry on as if things were normal.
At the time the housing crisis in Vancouver was in full swing, and when most folks weren’t either ice skating down on Robson or taking in the German Christmas market they were looking for a place to live for January.
They like me had done the best with the apartment they had- they had put plastic over their heritage windows to cut down on the BC hydro bill, they had placed the Christmas tree in front of the large hole in the drywall the last tenants had left, they had poured nearly half a bottle of pine extract into their scent diffusers to cover up the cigarette smell in the hallway, they had set up all manner of elaborate rat traps to avoid being contaminated by the plague, they had insisted to the landlord that, yes, those dark looking spots under the sink are black mold, all the while dreaming of finding a more ideal living situation.
To put it simply, it’s difficult trying to find one of these rumored nice apartments, much less trying to do so with only one foot, hopping from one viewing to the next trying to outrun the rest of the marathon of young professionals in search of the holy grails of affordable living.
At last I resigned, calling my parents half a month before Christmas to tell them about my housing woes. Well, just come home for the season, my dad said on the phone, it’ll just be for a few months until your foot man or whatever you call him makes you a new leg and you’ll be walking again in no time! Really, it’s what you should done in the first place, come home and we’ll take care of you.
So on to the ferry I went with a backpack containing a modestly redacted version of my life in Vancouver, the rest of it residing in a friend’s garage for the winter. I was trying not to slip and fall with my single blundstone and crutches, somehow avoiding the 3 ferry sailing waits that would transpire in the days to follow.
As luck would have it I arrived just in time to help my mom set up her elaborate Christmas village- arranged with a stunning eye for detail and careful planning- most towns and cities in Canada would have a hard time comparing to the structural engineering marvel and ease of traffic infrastructure my mom had created.
There was hardly ever a traffic jam in “The Winter village of Avonlea”, and the crime rate was next to zero. “Over here we’ll put the post office, and across the way we’ll place the butcher adjacent to the bakery” she would instruct me, “so the postman will save time gathering groceries on his way home from work, and we’ll place the city hall on the corner of Bedford Halls Lane and Bing Boulevard.”
Oh and don’t get me started on the tree decorations. My dad was allowed to pick the tree out, and that was the full extent of his involvement. Every year it became the host to a multitude of angels, small wooden sleds, doves, owls, pigeons, even the occasional crow. There were glass spheres coated with gold, silver, and platinum. Snowglobes snowed every day of the week, lords leaping and ladies dancing in circles all the way to the shining pinnacle on top of the tree. Some years it was another larger angel, other years a star, one year it was curiously a picture of elvis.
When it came to Christmas decorating my mom was the queen of the ice castle. My dad was self-decidedly in charge of creating our seasonal chaos scenarios to prepare us for adulthood, while my mom was in charge of everything inside the house. You dared not alter the carefully planned set up in any way lest you awaken the demon Krampus.
That was about 6 years ago, and of course things have changed since then. I now have 4 legs instead of only 1. I have my actual leg, my brand new prosthetic leg, and a climbing leg and a running leg. You have every leg you’ll need to carry out a great bank heist, my sister-in-law joked. I would need to I figured in order to continue paying for them. All said and done the price of a leg is pretty well comparable to a brand new honda accord.
After a harrowing few years of recovering and moving back to Vancouver, going from one house to the next, and I was finally in a moderately stable fairly well priced townhouse. It was Christmas again and this year I was heading to the ferry to see my mom and dad who still lived on the island. I had a smaller backpack this time as well as a curiously shaped duffel bag with a surprise for mom. Looking at the bag you might think it was a pile of field hockey sticks, or a set of broken golf clubs. In reality it was one of my retired legs, refashioned with a black fishnet stocking, a black high heel and a detachable light and lampshape.
You see every few years the legs wear down and they need to be replaced. like a ford car or an apple computer these things don't last long, even with casual use. Once they’re retired they make a surprisingly great basis for all kinds of creative art sculptures. Thus was born a beautiful lamp centerpiece to my mom’s carefully thought out Christmas decoration extravaganza, which I had assumed she would love.
Arriving at the house I almost slipped on every icy step to the front door. The sandpaper I’d nailed to the stairs when I first moved home had worn down from repeated use. It didn’t help I was half blinded by a recently updated series of LED lights surrounding every tree, shrub, corner of the house, and window. Even the snowpeople couldn’t escape the maniacal creeping LED vines.
The house inside was decorated equally as elaborately with little left to the imagination. I hugged my mom and dad, carefully moving my body in twists and turns to avoid knocking any of the holiday flourishes over, like those weird people you see in grocery stores who try to sneak past you without touching you or making eye contact.
Since all the siblings have moved away home and founded small Christmas-minded colonies of their own my mom had gotten even more carried away with the decorations, making you feel like you were stepping into a densely forested North Pole mock up in a department store. She loved it, Dad appreciated it, and the grandkids were only allowed in with careful supervision.
“Well mom, I brought you a gift for your decorations” I said with a laugh opening the bag. I pulled out the awful, gloriously gaudy leg dressed in holiday cheer, in my mind a beautiful iconic recollection of the great holiday movies of old. I traipsed through the dense menagerie of holiday decorations and gingerly placed the lamp in the picture window, fully in view from the sidewalk.
Plugging it in the light sprung to life with a soft brownish glow emitted by an edison style bulb. My mom’s face was aghast at first, as if she had seen jacob marley ascending the staircase towards her room covered in chains.
Her expression then softened up a little bit and she said with a smile “Oh dear, that’s awful... just terrible”. My dad was laughing as he walked to the kitchen and back with 2 cans of Wildcat in hand. I pulled off my leg for the night and we sat under the glow of the lamp, the tree, the village, the decorations, and the christmas hearth log on channel 3 and talked cheerfully until I fell asleep on the couch.
The next morning I woke up at instinctively at 7am to see the morning sunrise reflect off Mount Benson and reached for my leg.
Now, one thing you might not realize about putting on a prosthetic leg is there's a process to it, like putting together a desk from Ikea. It starts with either a polyurethane or silicone liner you roll onto your leg, followed by a gel sock covered in fabric or a few layers of wool socks before putting on the leg itself, in my case followed by rolling on another silicone sleeve that attaches the prosthetic to the rest of my leg holding it all together.
I stood up and walked towards the kitchen for a coffee, as I did I noticed something was off in the living room. The lampshade was missing. In its place in the reflection of the picture window I saw a red and white cylinder shape that ascended into a curve. While I was sleeping my mom had replaced my prosthetic leg lamp with a candy cane, and the lamp was nowhere to be found. “Hey Mom”, I shouted upstairs, “my lamp! Where did you put it?” “It’s in the trash out by the the curb” she shouted back, “out front.”
Just then a sanitation truck was pulling up beside the bins on the front sidewalk. One of the bins was overflowing with a familiar looking piece of footwear sticking out prominently from one side. It was my new $35,000 prosthetic leg with a brown leather blundstone still attached to it, being lifted up towards the crusher.
I lept for the door and ran down the stairs slipping on the icy porch! “ hey wait!” I shouted, “my foot!!!” As I ran my right foot was snagged by a lights cord and I fell flat onto my face in the snow, then snapped back. By the time I reached the sanitation worker he was laughing and he said, “hey, what’s with the fishnet?” I looked down, and adorned on my right side was the bottom half of the leg lamp I’d made for my mom, complete with a fishnet stocking, a black high heel, and a long brown extension cord.
By some weird twist of fate she confused the two and had thrown my good leg in the trash in a careless effort to rid her house of my hilariously ironic gift! I had tripped face first into the snow because the leg lamp was still plugged in!
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CPU vs AI-dedicated VPU: A Comparative Look
It is probable that Intel’s Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake central processing units (CPUs) will have capabilities that are comparable with regard to AI-dedicated VPUs
According to Phoronix, both Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake from Intel may feature a virtual processing unit (VPU) that is equivalent to one another. This finding shows that Intel intended for an early-stage adoption for the time being.
As a consequence of the rapid developments being made in artificial intelligence, Intel has built what it refers to as a “VPU,” which is a specialist AI engine.
The central processing units known as Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake by Intel each have a virtual processing unit (VPU) that was developed specifically for AI-related work.
In 2025, Intel intends to accelerate the pace of development even further with the Lunar Lake platform
The Intel Versatile Processing Unit, also known as the Intel VPU, is an effort that was taken by Intel to expedite research in general artificial intelligence (genAI) on the consumer front.
The idea was presented for the first time in May 2022 for Meteor Lake central processing units (CPUs), at which time the company showed a large improvement in performance in software such as Stable Diffusion, in addition to producing much higher figures for power efficiency.
In a word, it is a step towards catering to every area of the company, and since AI-based apps are currently on the rise, the addition of VPUs will make Meteor Lake stand out because it will be able to manage the increasing demand.
Additionally, because it is a step towards catering to every section of the business, it is a step towards catering to every section of the business.
Now making a comeback, Linux has been looking forward to early “VPU” upgrades for a considerable amount of time, and the next-generation Lunar Lake range from Intel is gaining support for it as well. Phoronix demonstrates that the PCI IDs associated with the respective VPUs of Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake hint that both lineups may feature a sort that is equivalent to one another.
This conclusion can be drawn from the fact that both VPUs have the same PCI ID. Nevertheless, at this time we do not have any information about the particulars of the case. You may want to have a look at the advantages that virtual processing units, or VPUs, have to offer, which Intel has broken down into two distinct tiers below:
Microsoft 365 Copilot is an improved tool for creating audio effects and acting as an AI helper for gaming effects.
Increasing the amount of artificial intelligence that can be found in client computers.
The following are some examples of advantages that come with the second tier:
Compute capabilities backed by AI are essential for the advancements. GOPS AI Compute Is Required For the Development of Large Language Models (TOPS) — ChatGPT
currently, with the assistance of VPUs, Intel is making the transition towards the future, and the progress that took place today is in no way a step in the wrong direction as the technology is currently in a “naive” state, and Intel still has a great lot of work to do. In other words, the progress that took place today is not in any way a step in the wrong direction.
On the other hand, some working inside the sector have said that specific AI engines that can be integrated into CPUs have a tremendous amount of potential. This is especially true for the field of generative artificial intelligence, since this solution will be able to address a wide range of problems that call for the use of “complex” technology.
The Meteor Lake machines, which Intel has only recently released, are expected to make their debut on December 14th, according to Intel’s most recent publication.
You may learn about the capabilities given by the portfolio, notably the advancements achieved in the field of artificial intelligence, by watching our thorough description of the 1st Generation Core Ultra family. The video is available for viewing on our website.
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2017 MLB Season Preview & Predictions
It's that time of year again, when I'm wrong in public and write "it's that time of year again, when I'm wrong in public" to diffuse just how wrong in public I'm about to be. Baseball predictions are hard and pointless, but you're here, so we'll suspend our disbelief together.
Last year, the gimmick was false confidence. It ended with a prediction that Hector Olivera would win the National League Rookie of the Year award. He was arrested for domestic violence, traded, suspended, convicted, and released before the year was over.
He did not win the National League Rookie of the Year award.
This year, no gimmicks. I'll use the same alchemy of available information and gut feeling that I always do, except maybe this way will lead to fewer dumb emails from people who thought I was actually confident in last year's predictions. I'm not confident. I'm scared and cold, just like you.
AL East
This is easily the most difficult division to predict. Not at the top, with the Red Sox having a clear advantage according to the computers and our common sense, but the rest of the way down. Will the Yankees have enough youthful power to overcome their declining veterans? Will the Rays stop giving up dingers like it was 1987? Will the Orioles cobble together an average rotation? Will the Blue Jays overcome the loss of Edwin Encarnacion?
Maybe! Unless they don't. Unless they do. Give me answers to all of those questions, and we'll have a proper order for the East. But without those answers, we're just stumbling around with gut feelings and unconscious biases. The Blue Jays feel nice in second place because we're used to them. The Orioles look like a last-place team because it physically hurts me to watch Ubaldo Jimenez pitch. And so on.
The Red Sox are the easy pick for first, and there's a temptation to suffer from Red Sox fatigue and talk yourself into a wacky surprise of a pick. Don't fall for it. Even if David Price is out until May, this is a team with everything you want to see in a franchise: a stable mix of veterans and youngsters, a deep minor-league system, and the money and willingness to fix problems as they come up.
The Blue Jays made the postseason in consecutive seasons after going decades without getting in, and they have a deceptively deep rotation with a lot of upside. They're counting on an awful lot of over-30 guys, and that'll keep them away from first, but don't be surprised if they play deep into October again.
The Rays were blindsided by the jumpy home run ball last year, but they're too smart not to have address the problem internally over the offseason. They have the best defensive outfield in the game, and entire organization seems like it's built to prevent runs by suffocating hits. Their hitters also seem good at suffocating hits, which is why third place is as high as I can go.
The Yankees are going to be the Yankees from the GIF again, and it's going to happen soon. They've done a remarkable job building up the farm, and their worst contracts are coming off the books soon. This will be a year of purgatory, but it will be one of the last.
The Orioles might hit 250 home runs, bless them, but they might allow 260. There are a couple of ways that it might work. There are a couple hundred ways that it might not.
AL Central
It's taken a while, but the Indians are finally the clear favorites. This used to be the realm of the brainless Tigers prediction, easy as pie, until the Royals came around. Now there are two rebuilding teams and two reloading teams sinking under the weight of time and money. And there are the Indians, who won the pennant last year despite losing two of their best starting pitchers.
The Indians have health on their side right now, and they should get to show off the rotation that would have made them World Series favorites or close to it. They also made the most inspired move of the offseason, signing Edwin Encarnacion, who fits perfectly in the lineup.
The Tigers won 86 games last year, which is about six or seven more than I would have guessed if you asked me in February. They got nothing out of Jordan Zimermann, who seemed like the best value of the offseason, and Justin Upton was a bit of a flop, too. They should get more from both of them this season, but the question is if the pitchers will stay healthy and effective.
Also, I regret to inform you that the bullpen might be a problem, but there's no way anyone could have seen that coming.
The Royals were dealt an unfair, devastating blow with the death of Yordano Ventura, and there's no quantifying just how much they'll miss him. They're a team staring over the abyss, with important pending free agents and aging players who might not be this good again.
The White Sox and Twins are rebuilding. This has been enough content about the White Sox and Twins to hold you over for a couple months.
AL West
Another tricky division to peg, but this time at the top. The Astros have the burgeoning young stars and they enjoyed a productive offseason. The Rangers have history on their side, having won the last two divisions. The Mariners will pick one of these years to not be the Blue Jays of the west, just like the Blue Jays decided to stop being the Blue Jays a couple years back. The Angels are a little better than you think, and the A's aren't exactly a 100-loss disaster.
The Mariners have power and speed, and they should help their pitchers out with improved outfield defense, too. The rotation will need all the help that's offered, but everyone in the starting five makes sense for a win-now team, with the right mix of risk vs. reward.
The Astros have both risk and reward, too, but there's a little too much risk to pick them as easy favorites. They should play a game in the postseason, at least, and they have the talent to win 100 games with a few breaks, but that starting pitching, man. It was the wrong offseason to have that problem.
The Rangers were supposed to be rebuilding, remember. Their 2015 was a surprise, and their 2016 was, too. They needled the sabermetric community by winning nearly every one-run game they played, setting all-time records and tinkling on logic. They can win again, and they can do it in a way that makes us all less cynical. An awful lot has to go right for them, though.
The Angels can't rebuild — not when they have so many untradeable high-priced players who at least contribute a little bit, and not when they have the best player in baseball — but they don't have the money to reload. They split the difference and added some underwhelming but logical players, and now they'll have to hope their young pitchers stay healthy and stop acting like, well, young pitchers.
The A's are a creative small-market team that's struggled to produce capable major leaguers from their own farm system. That's a problem. They've been active enough to build a competent roster, but an optimistic and worthwhile goal would probably be .500.
NL East
The Nationals and Mets are the Mr. Pibb version of Yankees/Red Sox, with an annual rivalry that'll do just fine until some of the other teams can join in. The good news: Some of the other teams are about to join in.
The Nationals are the favorites, though, with one of the deepest rotations in baseball, if not the deepest. It's worth noting that they won 95 games with Bryce Harper being merely okay and several veterans falling down the stairs. They probably won't get the same kind of season from Daniel Murphy, but that doesn't mean this isn't one of the most well-rounded rosters in baseball.
The Mets are close, though! The Mets are close, especially if Matt Harvey pitches as well as he's capable of pitching, and the spring reports were looking good. They'll struggle to score runs, though, with so many boom-bust guys in the lineup that they're almost daring the baseball gods to light the fuse.
The Phillies can pitch! A little. When healthy. Possibly. But they're on the right track, and I'll reward them by being a little aggressive with this prediction. They could win 84 or 85 games, which would mean that we'd pay attention to them all the way into September. When they fell, they fell hard, but they didn't stay down for that long.
The Marlins, like the Royals, deserve better. They'll wear a patch on their sleeve and a hole in their hearts, and they'll have to make do. They have the best outfield in baseball, depending on your confidence in the young Red Sox or the renaissance of Andrew McCutchen, but there are just too many gaps in the rest of the roster to get overly confident.
The Braves might be the best last-place team in baseball, depending on the AL East, but they've done a nice job of being interesting in a crucial year for the franchise. I don't know if Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey are going to combine for 64 starts this year, but I know there's a chance, and that they're two of the most watchable 40-somethings in baseball history.
NL Central
The Cubs won the World Series. Seems like people should have made a bigger deal about that, but here we are. They'll win the NL Central in 2017, too. The fine print doesn't matter as much.
The Pirates are pretty good, too! Just not as good the Cubs. But if Jameson Taillon and Tyler Glasnow break out together, they might be as good as the Cubs. Let's all hold hands and wait for these young pitchers to not disappoint us, because when has that ever happened?
The Brewers aren't really better than the Cardinals, but this is my court-mandated Super Esoteric PickTM, and I'll stick with it. They have a young lineup that's worth paying attention to, even if their rotation features more Matt Garza than the FDA recommends.
The Cardinals aren't really worse than the Brewers, but I enjoy a good trolling and cigar before the season. More honestly, though, this is a team that overachieved their Pythagorean record last year, and I'm not convinced the lineup or rotation is steady enough to guarantee 89 wins and wild-card contention. Maybe I'm just bitter about the time Mike Matheny almost broke my face with a home run in 2005.
The Cincinnati Reds are an American professional baseball team based in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Reds compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division. They were a charter member of the American Association in 1882 and joined the NL in 1890.[2] (source)
NL West
The NL West has been a Giants/Dodgers battle for the last couple years, as it has been throughout history, and that shouldn't change much here. Except, hold on, watch out for the Rockies, who might score a million runs. And the Diamondbacks are probably talented enough to pay attention to, even if Yasmany Tomas is going to trip over the period at the end of this sentence.
The Dodgers are rich, the Dodgers are talented, the Dodgers have an enviable farm system, let's all blow kisses toward the Dodgers.
Miss u, Frank McCourt.
The Giants are also rich, but they've spent millions keeping players like Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, Buster Posey, and Hunter Pence around, while spending big on Jeff Samardzija and Johnny Cueto. They, uh, don't have an enviable farm system, though that means they're good for at least one surprising rando making a huge difference this season.
The Rockies are the dark horse team of 2017, with Nolan Arenado leading an impressive lineup that plays in a good ballpark for impressive lineups. The pitching isn't exactly suspect, but it's just dodgy enough to keep them away from the top two. If the rotation makes significant progress, though, we'll know by the end of May, and it'll be all aboard the Dinger bandwagon.
The Diamondbacks probably aren't as bad as they were last year. That's the good news. The bad news is that they won't be as good as they were supposed to be before last year, either. A.J. Pollock coming back will help a great deal, and it's not like Shelby Miller can be any worse, but a thin farm and a rotation that's almost entirely comprised of pitchers who stumbled last year will keep them away from the postseason again.
The Padres are rebuilding and proud of it. They're doing it right, so don't make fun of them.
...
Okay, maybe a little bit.
...
But Manuel Margot is going to be one of your favorite players, so you might as well start appreciating him right now.
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"real life eevee"
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