Favorite Tech Articles of the Day

TL;DR: 1minAI’s lifetime subscription is on sale for $79.97 (85% off) through January 12. You’ve heard of ChatGPT, Gemini, and the other top AI tools, but probably not the newest one that’s rising as their biggest competitor. Why? It combines them all into a single platform without subscription fees—and we think it’s far easier to use, especially if you’re new to AI. So, you need to generate articles for work? (We won’t tell). Use 1minAI’s preset tool and select a tone, length, number of sections, and keywords, then describe your desired content. This is where you can also select your preferred AI model like GPT-4o, Gemini 1.5 Pro, or Claude 3.5 Sonnet, among others. There are also AI tools for images, documents, audio, video, and code. 1minAI works on a credit system. You trade credits for AI-generated content, but unless you’re generating full books daily, you’re probably not going to run into any walls. Your lifetime subscription gives you 4,000,000 credits every month. That means you can generate about 32,000,000 words or 640 images. And just by logging in, you can get an extra 450,000 credits every month.  Get lifetime access to this all-in-one AI tool for $79.97 (reg. $540) until January 12 at 11:59 p.m. PT. No coupon is needed.   1minAI Advanced Business Plan Lifetime Subscription – $79.97 See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. 

TL;DR: Get a lifetime license to Microsoft Office Pro 2021 for Windows for $59.97 with no ongoing fees. It may be hard to go without apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but a Microsoft 365 subscription gets expensive quickly. Instead of renting your productivity, a cheaper option is to get a lifetime license for slightly older software. That’s exactly what’s available when you get a Microsoft Office Pro 2021 Lifetime License, and it’s only $59.97 (reg. $219).  This software license gives you lifetime access to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams (free version), OneNote, Publisher, and Access, too. Once you’ve redeemed your purchase (do this within seven days), you’ll be able to download each of these apps onto one device for life.  Remember, this license is different from Microsoft 365, which is Microsoft’s subscription service that gives you access to more recent versions of the same apps. The tradeoff is that Microsoft Office 2021 apps still work great, but you only have to pay for them once.  Stop paying monthly for the apps you rely on.  Get a Lifetime License to Microsoft Office Pro 2021 for Windows for $59.97.    Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows: Lifetime License – $59.97 Get It Here StackSocial prices subject to change.

Baseus has announced the launch of its S2 solar-powered security camera, which features solar tracking technology, advanced motion detection, and a wire-free design. The S2 ($149) builds on the foundation laid by the Baseus S1 Pro, which introduced features like a rotating solar panel and advanced AI motion detection. While the S1 Pro boasted 3K resolution and a dual-lens system with optical zoom, the S2 takes clarity a step further with Ultra 4K resolution, delivering sharper visuals for more detailed monitoring. At the heart of the S2 is its sun-powered tracking system, which rotates the solar panel 40 degrees left and right to maximize sunlight exposure. This feature complements the S1 Pro’s solar panel, which could tilt and rotate more dynamically, improving efficiency by 30 percent over static panels. The S2 refines this concept by generating double the energy of fixed panels, further reducing the need for manual recharging. The S2 also introduces dual sensor detection, combining PIR motion sensing with radar. This is a step up from the S1 Pro’s AI motion detection, offering even greater accuracy in tracking movement and reducing false alarms caused by animals or weather. The camera’s Ultra 4K resolution ensures sharp video quality, complemented by advanced night vision for reliable performance in low light. In contrast to the S1 Pro’s 16GB built-in storage and optional SSD expansion via its base station, the S2 supports up to 256GB of local storage via TF cards, eliminating the need for subscription fees. Built to withstand extreme conditions, the S2 maintains the same IP67 weatherproofing as the S1 Pro, ensuring reliable operation in harsh weather. The S2 emphasizes the same simplicity as its predecessor with a design that allows for quick installation. The S2 will be available for purchase beginning in June.

A day after launching the most hotly anticipated product in the PC world, the Nvidia GeForce 50-series family of graphics cards, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang appeared on stage at CES to answer reporters’ questions. A key one: In a world where AI is increasingly used to generate or interpolate frames, is the end result a world in which PC graphics is entirely AI generated? No, Huang replied. There’s a reason we asked Huang the question. Nvidia says that while DLSS 3 could inject AI-generated frames between every GPU-rendered frame, DLSS 4 can infer three full frames off of a single traditional frame, as Brad Chacos noted in our earlier report on the GeForce 50-series reveal. A day earlier, rival AMD was essentially asked the same question. “Can I tell you that in the future, every pixel is going to be ML [machine learning]-generated? Yes, absolutely. It will be in the future,” AMD’s Frank Azor, its chief architect of gaming solutions, replied. Huang disagreed. “No, he replied to the question, asked by PCWorld’s Adam Patrick Murray. “The reason for that is because just remember when ChatGPT first came out, and we said, Oh, now let’s just generate the book. But nobody currently expects that. “And the reason for that is because you need to give it credit,” Huang continued. “You need to give it — it’s called condition. We now condition the chat or the prompts with context. Before you can answer a question, you have to understand the process. The context could be PDF, the context could be a web search. The context could be you told it exactly what the context is, right? “And so the same thing goes with video games. You have to give a context. And the context for video games has to not only be story-wise relevant, but it has to be spatial, world, spatially relevant. And so the way you condition, the way you give it context, is you give it some early pieces of geometry, or early pieces of textures, and it could generate, it could up the rest.” In ChatGPT, the context is called Rapid Retrieval, Augmented Generations [RAG], the context which guides the textual output. “In the future, 3D graphics would be 3D grounded condition generation,” he said. In DLSS 4, Nvidia’s GPU rasterization engine only renders one of out of the four forward-looking frames, Huang said. “And so out of four frames, 33 million pixels, we only rendered two [million]. Isn’t that a miracle?” The key, Hunag said, is that they have to be rendered precisely: “precisely the right ones, and from that conditioning we can generate the others.” “The same thing is going to happen in video games in the future I just described will be, will happen to not just the pixels that we render, but the geometry that we render, the animation that we render, you know, and the hair we render in future video games.” Huang apologized if his explanation was poor, but concluded that there is still and will always be a role for artists and rendering in video games. “But it took that long for everybody to now realize that generative AI is really the future, but you need to condition, you need to ground with the author, the artists, [and the] intention.”

Do gamers need SSDs? Inside their PCs, certainly, that’s one of the easiest recommendations for a speedier computer. What about portable storage? Corsair thinks they do, and it’s showing off a new line of USB4-powered portable SSDs at CES. The new EX400U series is much more simple and streamlined than previous Corsair designs, looking kind of like a tiny tin of mints, or maybe less charitably a shrunken-down Mac Mini. That design language might be a bit intentional…because these drives are MagSafe compatible. They’ll stick to the back of your iPhone. The case is a hair over 64mm wide (just a bit wider than a Magsafe charger) and 12mm thick. Corsair The only obvious external features are the singular USB-C port (USB 4 and also compatible with Thunderbolt 4) and logo on top. The press release says that these drives can transfer data at up to 4000MB/s read and 3600MB/s write — which should handily beat pretty much any older external drive, and compete with other USB4 drives if you have the available hardware. The EX400U will cost $140 for 1TB, $200 for 2TB, and a whopping $360 for 4TB. They’re scheduled to launch on January 23rd. Corsair Xeneon Edge You’ll always need storage, but as a multi-monitor addict, I confess my eye was caught by the Xeneon Edge. It’s a compact 14.5-inch touchscreen, extremely horizontal with a 2560×720 resolution, designed for widgets and interactive controls. We saw a similar more conservative take on this with the iCue Nexus Companion screen, but this one is, well, a lot bigger. Corsair The newer version of the screen is closer to a full-on monitor, operating over USB-C DP-Alt mode or HDMI. So there’s no reason you couldn’t stick videos or other standard information from a PC (or any other source) on the display. It’s also a lot more flexible, with an option to mount it horizontally, vertically, or even in place of a 360mm radiator in a PC case. Which case has a clear view of the backside of a triple-fan mount, without shrouds or filters? Shut up, it’s cool! Think of all the RGB you can show off while your PC melts because it doesn’t have enough cooling! The Xeneon Edge is scheduled to go on sale sometime in the second quarter of the year (before July, if you don’t speak corporate lingo). There’s no price available yet, but the iCue Nexus Companion originally sold for $100, and it was only 5 inches diagonally. So I think you can make a decent guess.