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China on Wednesday revealed a drone concept similar in mission – and appearance – to the US-made Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie as countries race to invest in “loyal wingman” drones to help protect pricier crewed fighter jets.The long-range FH-97 drone concept unveiled on Wednesday can carry different types of weapons, and has swarm and electronic warfare capabilities, said Wu Wei, a representative of China Aerospace Science Technology Corp’s (CASTC) Feihong product line.He did not provide specifics in his presentation at Airshow China in Zhuhai.The United States, Britain, Australia, India and Russia are among the countries developing “loyal wingman” drones, which are cheaper and more expendable than crewed fighters.CASTC did not provide technical details of the FH-97 concept, nor say whether it was planned for export, though many foreign observers watched the presentation.The FH-97’s appearance is nearly identical to the Kratos XQ-58A, which made its first flight in 2019. The XQ-58A has a maximum speed of Mach 0.85 and a range of about 2,200 nautical miles.Zhang Zhongyang, vice president of CASTC said the plan was to turn Feihong into an “international top-notch brand… and become a major player at the centre stage of the world arena.”China has exported military drones to countries including the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Serbia.“The chief customer is certainly the PLA, but in recent years the Chinese are also aggressively marketing these systems for exports,” said Collin Koh, a defence research fellow with Singapore’s Rajaratnam School of International Studies.China also used the country’s biggest air show to display the weapons capability of one of its most advanced stealth attack drone projects, the GJ-11.The Global Times reported that the GJ-11 on display at the show had its two weapons bays open for the first time. Inside each were four unidentified munitions that appeared to be precision air-to-ground glide bombs.Bradley Perrett, a specialist on Asian aerospace and defence, said the GJ-11 was designed to slip undetected through radar coverage and attack heavily defended targets.“In doing that, it would take the place of a much larger and more expensive fighter with a pilot,” he said. “Development won’t be easy, but when it’s complete the type will present a new threat to Taiwan and potentially Japan.”Chinese companies have 27 drone exhibits at the Zhuhai show.The post China reveals drone concept similar to US-made Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie appeared first on ARY NEWS.

HP’s ZBook lineup — which encompasses the lightweight ZBook Firefly, the affordable ZBook Power, the powerful ZBook Fury, and the best-of-all-worlds ZBook Studio brands — doesn’t attract a lot of attention. As a mobile workstation-class device, the ZBook Studio is not as flashy as most gaming laptops or as affordable as most “creator” laptops, but in many ways, it’s better than both.In the parlance of the tech nerd, the HP ZBook Studio G8 is a “mobile workstation.” On the hardware side, that typically means that you’re getting a Xeon processor, error-correcting (ECC) RAM, and an A-series or Quadro graphics card, paired with some sort of reliability testing (MIL-SPEC or MIL-STD), software certifications from major developers like Adobe, and an extended warranty. All of this usually comes attached to a price so high you’ll get altitude sickness if you stare at it for too long.We don’t normally review mobile workstations on PetaPixel because the price increase associated with things like ECC memory and an enterprise GPU doesn’t translate into a measurable performance gain for photo and video editing, but HP did something interesting with the ZBook Studio G8: the company sort of split the difference.The Studio G8 doesn’t use ECC memory or an Intel Xeon CPU, and it can be configured with a normal GeForce RTX 30-series GPU, but it still comes with all the other workstation perks. In other words: it offers the same performance as a high-end gaming laptop and the same sleek, professional design as a high-end consumer laptop, with better build quality, guaranteed reliability, and a longer warranty than either of the other categories. As a result, it comes in a little cheaper than similar options from, say, the Dell Precision lineup.That’s not to say it’s cheap. The model HP sent us for review still costs an eye-watering $4,400:Even if you downgrade some of the components, you’re still going to spend a lot of money. We actually asked the folks at HP to send us “Good, Better, Best” configuration options that they would recommend, and the most affordable of the bunch will still run you almost $2,800:But that’s not to say that the price isn’t justified, or at least justifiable. From design to usability to raw performance, this laptop is fantastic. It’s just important to set expectations from the get-go: We’re not talking about a budget laptop today. We’re not even talking about a semi-affordable laptop. We’re talking about a mobile workstation that charges a substantial premium in exchange for professional-grade reliability and guaranteed performance.If paying a $1,000 premium for MIL-STD reliability testing, software certifications, and an extended warranty sounds crazy to you, then a mobile workstation is the wrong choice and there’s no reason to read on. However, if that sounds like a reasonable investment and you like the fact that HP isn’t forcing you to throw additional money away on certain enterprise-grade specs you don’t want or need, then read on, because the HP ZBook Studio G8 turns out to be an excellent laptop for creative professionals.Design and BuildThere are only a few laptops that can compete with the likes of Apple and Razer when it comes to chassis design, but the HP ZBook Studio G8 is right up there with the best. The magnesium-and-aluminum alloy chassis is as rigid as a tank, extremely thin, and carved into a sharp design language that I loved from the moment I set eyes on this laptop.Build quality really is top-notch. HP’s workstation-grade “Z” devices all undergo MIL-STD-810 testing, ensuring a level of reliability that surpasses anything you can expect from a standard consumer laptop. The MIL-STD-810 standard includes a suite of tests that check for resistance against vibration, dust, sand, humidity, altitude, drops, temperature shock, and even a “Freeze/Thaw” test.Adding to the laptop’s reliability quotient is a three-year warranty direct from the manufacturer, a perk that usually costs extra (if it’s available at all) when you buy a consumer laptop.Crack the ZBook Studio G8 open, and you’ll reveal an excellent keyboard that combines a satisfying click with a good amount of travel, zero mush, and per-key RGB lighting that gives the laptop just a little bit of gaming flare. The lighting is controlled by HP’s “OMEN” dashboard, and it’s a fun touch on an otherwise very professional-looking laptop.This is accompanied by a slick, glass-topped trackpad that provides a precise and extremely well-optimized experience that can compete with the best-of-the-best. Because the speaker grill is positioned above the keyboard, the trackpad isn’t quite as big as the ones you’ll find on the latest Apple and Dell computers, but it was plenty big enough for me.Port selection is solid, with only a little room for improvement. On the left side of the machine is an audio-combo jack, a USB Type-A port, and a Kensington lock; on the right side, you’ll find a sealable SD card slot, a Mini DisplayPort 1.4 port that’s connected directly to the GPU, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports that can carry 40Gbps of data, power, and a display signal.My gripes are minimal. Mainly, I was annoyed that the Thunderbolt 4 ports are connected directly to the iGPU with no way to re-route that signal in the BIOS (this is according to HP). As a result, anyone using a high-end 4K external display will want to use the Mini DisplayPort for true 10-bit color or high refresh-rate gaming.For that reason alone, I really wish that HP had included an HDMI 2.1 port in this configuration instead of the MiniDP port. None of the monitors I’ve ever reviewed came with a MiniDP to DP 1.4 cable in the box, wihch forces me to buy a new cable in order to get full performance out of the ASUS ProArt PA32UCG I was using when I reviewed this laptop and eliminates the option of using this as a “single-cable” setup with Thunderbolt providing data, display, and power.Fortunately, the included display is more than good enough to do professional creative work. The model we’re testing includes a touch-enabled 4K AMOLED screen that was able to hit well over 100% sRGB, 99.9% DCI-P3, and 91.6% Adobe RGB with an excellent Delta E of less than 2 and a maximum brightness of ~400 nits.If OLED isn’t your thing, the ZBook Studio G8 is also available with a 4K 120Hz “HP DreamColor” LCD display with an advertised peak brightness of 600 nits and 100% coverage of DCI-P3, or an even more affordable Full HD model that promises 100% coverage of sRGB.It’s nice to see a manufacturer offer both a 4K LCD and a 4K OLED option with identical gamut coverage, as well as a more affordable (but still acceptable) Full HD option. If you’re sold on the peace of mind of a mobile workstation but hate the price tag it carries, the lower-end screen option opens the door to get creative with your configuration, especially if you plan to use an external display much of the time.As for our 4K OLED unit, you can see the results from our DisplayCAL tests below:The HP ZBook G8 covers 99.9% of DCI-P3 (left) and well over 100% of sRGB (right).If there’s a big downside to the high-res screen on our model it’s probably battery performance, which is decidedly middle of the road.As with other high-performance notebooks, the ZBook Studio’s 83WHr battery can’t support the computer’s full 110W TDP (30W to the CPU, 80W to the GPU), and when you’re pushing the computer to its battery-powered performance limit, you can expect no more than about two hours of intense photo editing. In a more reasonable, battery saver or balanced mode, I was able to get about six hours of use for writing, occasional content consumption, and light photo editing, but don’t expect this laptop to compete with something that’s powered by AMD.Overall, I found a lot to love and very little to complain about when it comes to the design and build quality of the ZBook Studio G8. It’s an excellent laptop that felt like a little piece of military equipment with just enough design flare. The excellent keyboard and trackpad, the professional-grade display, and the dual Thunderbolt 4 ports all make it a solid contender for serious creative work.Photo Editing PerformanceGiven the extremely thin design, I was skeptical that the HP would be able to squeeze every ounce of performance out of its Core i9-11950H and NVIDIA RTX 3070. I was only kind of right. In most of our benchmarks, the ZBook couldn’t quite out-perform the latest Razer Blade 15 Advanced, which technically uses an ever-so-slightly slower Core i9-11900H, but the thinner ZBook Studio was still able to churn out top-shelf performance numbers.Whether you’re running Photoshop, Lightroom, or Capture One, you can expect the Studio G8 to fly through most photo and video editing tasks with ease, all while staying remarkably quiet compared to some of the gaming laptops I’ve tested.For our comparisons today, we’re showing the results from the HP side-by-side with the same tests run on an M1 iMac, an AMD-powered ASUS Zephyrus G14, and the aforementioned Blade 15 Advanced. Full specs below:Lightroom ClassicIn our standard import and export tests, the ZBook clocked in a tiny bit slower than the Razer Blade, but faster than our other test machines. As a reminder, these tests consist of importing 110 61-megapixel Sony a7R IV and 150 100-megapixel PhaseOne XF RAW files, generating 1:1 (Lightroom Classic) or 2560px (Capture One Pro) previews, applying a custom-made preset with heavy global edits, and then exporting those same files as 100% JPEGs and 16-bit TIFFs.You can see the results for Lightroom Classic below:Capture One ProThe story is even better in Capture One, where the computer’s RTX 3070 finally gets to flex its muscle.As we’ve mentioned in several of our past reviews, Lightroom does not use any sort of GPU acceleration during import or export, relying exclusively on the performance of your CPU and RAM to generate the numbers you see above. However, Capture One does take advantage of the GPU, so when it comes time to export the heavily-edited Sony a7R IV and Phase One XF variants in C1, the HP ZBook Studio G8 was able to close the gap with the Blade and trade blows at the top of the pack.The results are essentially a wash between the three PCs, all of which benefit from NVIDIA RTX 30 series GPUs, with the M1 iMac falling way behind:PhotoshopFinally, we ran our usual Photoshop test: Puget Systems‘ industry-standard PugetBench benchmark.PugetBench assigns an Overall and four Category scores after timing a wide variety of tasks including basic stuff like loading, saving, and resizing a large .psd, GPU-accelerated filters like Smart Sharpen and Field Blur, and heavily RAM-dependent tasks like Photo Merge. As we have in the past, we ran version 0.8 of this particular benchmark, because it was the last version to include a Photo Merge test.As you can see, the powerful GPU, 32GB of 3200MHz RAM, and the NVIDIA RTX 3070 GPU come together to put up impressive numbers in every category tested:Performance TakeawaysThere’s no questioning the HP ZBook Studio G8’s performance chops. Is it the most powerful laptop money can buy? Definitely not. HP’s own ZBook Fury lineup, the Alienware x17, and the Lenovo Legion 7i (to name a few) can all be configured with more powerful (and power-hungry) CPU/GPU combinations that would no-doubt outperform the ZBook Studio. However, it’s awesome to see this kind of performance across the board from such a thin device.This is seriously impressive photo editing performance packed inside of a chassis that’s thinner than we previously thought possible for an Intel-based workstation.Excellent Design, Great Performance, Painful Price TagIf you can stomach the price, the HP ZBook Studio G8 is a phenomenal laptop for photo and video editors who want great performance paired with guaranteed reliability. That latter point really matters to working pros, who often opt for high-end gaming laptops with less-than-ideal build quality and lower-quality displays in order to achieve this kind of performance.However, even when you understand the benefits, the Studio G8’s price is really hard to swallow. The variant I tested here costs about $1,000 more than you would spend on an (already expensive) Razer Blade 15 Advanced with basically the same core specs, a more powerful GPU, faster PCIe Gen 4 storage, and a next-gen OLED display that covers 100% of both DCI-P3 and AdobeRGB.You really have to value those un-sexy mobile workstation perks if you’re going to justify that kind of price hike.Pros

Microsoft will begin rolling out Windows 11 on October 5. However, the company has finalised the new version and released it to its Release Preview channel.You can switch to the Release Preview in Windows 10 and get the free Windows 11 upgrade early.Here’s how you can get the free Windows 11 upgrade:

Apple Watch Series 7, the latest addition to Apple’s wearable tech family. The Series 7‘s new features have the potential to add more convenience to a lot of everyday tasks, from checking the time to responding to texts and tracking your sleep.Apple unveiled the $399 Apple Watch Series 7 during its product launch event on Sept. 14 alongside the iPhone 13 family, a refreshed iPad Mini, and a new entry-level iPad. The company hasn’t specifically said when the Series 7 will launch, beyond later this fall.Here are the best exciting new features of the Apple Watch Series 7.Apple Watch Series 7 will have a QWERTY keyboard for real typing The Apple Watch is getting a new, QWERTY keyboard that takes advantage of its larger screen, which is about 20% bigger than the Series 6’s, allowing you to type similarly to the way you would on your phone.What’s new: A full-size keyboard means that you won’t be limited to sending a canned response to a text, scribbling a quick note or dictating a message, as is the case with the Apple Watch Series 6.How you’ll use it: The Apple Watch Series 7’s QWERTY keyboard will let you tap each key to type, or use Apple’s QuickPath feature to swipe between letters without lifting your finger.The bottom line: The Series 7’s QWERTY keyboard should make it easier to send longer and more complex messages that are uncomfortable to scribble or too private to dictate. It’s another example of how the Apple Watch has evolved to become better at working independently of your phone in the years since its launch.Larger screen The Apple Watch Series 7 is getting its first major redesign since the Series 4 launched in 2018. The new watch will come in 41-millimeter and 45mm sizes for the first time, representing a shift away from the 40mm and 44mm sizes that were available on the Series 4 through Series 6.The Apple Watch Series 7’s screen is about 20% larger than the Series 6’s and more than 50% bigger than the Series 3’s. The borders that frame the screen are also 40% smaller than those of the Series 6, allowing Apple to expand the screen size without making the device much larger. Apple says older watch bands will still be compatible with the Series 7.A brighter screen in always-on modeApple is also updating the Apple Watch’s display in a different way by making the screen more visible in always-on mode. It’s another addition that should make it even faster to get quick bits of information from your watch.What’s new: The Apple Watch Series 7’s screen is up to 70% brighter in always-on mode when your wrist is down, according to Apple. However, Apple specifically says this applies to indoor usage, so it’s unclear whether you’ll see meaningful gains outdoors in direct sunlight.How you’ll use it: The Series 7’s improved brightness means it should be even easier to see information like the time, your activity rings and your next meeting without having to wake the watch’s screen.Fast charging as compared to Series 6 The battery of the Apple Watch Series 7 is expected to last as long as the Series 6, but Apple says it’s slashing the amount of time it takes to charge your watch. The Apple Watch Series 7 can charge up to 33% faster than the Apple Watch Series 6. It should take 45 minutes to charge from zero to 80%, and 8 minutes of charging should enable 8 hours of sleep tracking.We’ve been asking for more battery life out of the Apple Watch for years, but that’s especially relevant now that Apple has added native sleep tracking to its smartwatches. Rather than extending the watch’s battery life, Apple is making it easier to quickly charge the watch during short windows throughout the day, presumably so that you don’t have to charge it overnight.The Apple Watch Series 7 has a brawnier buildApple is largely focusing on exercise tracking for the Apple Watch. The Series 7 should be more suitable for outdoor activity since Apple claims it has a more durable build.What’s new: The Apple Watch Series 7 is rated for IP6X dust resistance (a first) and is coated in a crystal cover that Apple says is 50% thicker than that of the Apple Watch Series 6. That means you should feel at ease wearing it to the beach or during a hike.How you’ll use it: The Series 7’s increased durability could pair nicely with the new cycling features in WatchOS 8. The new software brings an updated version of fall detection that Apple says can tell the difference between falling off a bicycle and a different type of accident. Apple also says WatchOS 8 should be able to automatically detect outdoor cycling workouts.The post The best new features of Apple Watch Series 7 appeared first on ARY NEWS.

image Credit: CartonaYear-old startup Capiter announced last week that it raised a $33 million Series A to digitize Egypt’s traditional offline retail market.It’s looking to take a large pie in the budding e-commerce and retail play, where multiple startups are pulling their weight including Cartona, also a year-old startup out of Egypt.Today, Cartona is announcing that it has raised a $4.5 million pre-Series A funding round to connect retailers and manufacturers via an application.The company confirmed that Dubai-based venture capital firm Global Ventures led the round, with Pan-African firm Kepple Africa, T5 Capital and angel investors also participating.Cairo-based Cartona, founded in August 2020, focuses on solving the supply-chain and operational challenges of players in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry by helping buyers access products from sellers on a single platform.Buyers, in this case, are retailers, while sellers are FMCG companies, distributors and wholesalers.The problem retailers in Egypt and most of Africa face mainly revolves around limited access to suppliers. There are also issues around transparency in market prices, which are dependent on traditional logistical capabilities.For suppliers, the lack of data and inability to make data-backed decisions to improve margins and aid growth add up to unoptimized warehouses.“The trade market is completely inefficient and it’s not good for the supplier nor the manufacturers, and it’s definitely not good for retailers,” CEO Mahmoud Talaat told TechCrunch in an interview. “So we came up with the idea of Cartona, which is basically a fully light-asset model that connects manufacturers and wholesalers to retailers.”Talaat founded the company alongside Mahmoud Abdel-Fattah. Before Cartona, Abdel-Fattah founded Speakol, a MENA-focused adtech platform serving 60 million monthly users, while Talaat was the chief commercial officer of agriculture company Lamar Egypt.Cartona works as an asset-light marketplace. On the platform, grocery retailers can get orders from a curated network of sellers. The company says this way, it can provide visibility through real-time price comparisons and clarity on delivery times.Also, FMCGs and suppliers can optimize their go-to-market execution through the use of data and analytics. Cartona tops it off by providing embedded finance and access to credit to retailers and suppliers.Cartona makes money through all these processes. It takes a commission on orders made, charges suppliers for running advertising to merchants (since they compete for the latter’s attention), and provides market insights on buyer behavior, price competition and market share.“It is time to capitalize on technology beyond warehouses and trucks. Data and technology will transform traditional retail to a digitally native one, which in return will drastically improve the supply chain efficiency,” Abdel-Fattah said about how the company sells information to retailers and suppliers.Cartona has over 30,000 merchants on its platform. Together, they have processed more than 400,000 orders with an annualized gross merchandise value of EGP 1 billion (~$64 million). Cartona also works with more than 1,000 distributors, wholesalers and 100 FMCG companies, offering consumers more than 10,000 products, including dry, fresh and frozen food.The company’s business and revenue model is similar to other companies in this space, but the main difference lies in whether they own assets or not.Taking a look at the players in Egypt, for instance, MaxAB operates its warehouses and fleets; Capiter uses a hybrid model in which it rents these assets and owns inventory when dealing with high-turnover products. But Cartona solely manages an asset-light model.The CEO tells me that he thinks this model works best for all the stakeholders involved in the retail market. He argues that not owning assets and leasing the ones on the ground shows that the company is trying to improve the operations of existing suppliers and merchants instead of displacing them.“I believe that the infrastructure already exists. We already have many warehouses, many small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, and wholesalers and distributors and companies that have a lot of assets. If you want to fix the problem, we think one should enable the people who are strategically located in small streets all over Egypt and have the infrastructure but don’t have the technology needed to optimize their warehouses and carts.”The current margins for suppliers with warehouses are slim, and Cartona provides the technology — an inventory and ordering system — to provide efficiency in its supply chain.The general partner at lead investor Global Ventures, Basil Moftah, said in a statement that Cartona’s technology and not owning inventory proved critical in the firm’s decision to back the company.“The trade market is one of the most sophisticated, yet [it is] characterized by multiple critical inefficiencies across the value chain,” he said. “Cartona’s asset-light approach tackles those inefficiencies by optimizing the trade process in unique ways and does so with minimal capital spent.”Proceeds of the investment focus on improving this technology, Talaat said. In addition, Cartona is expanding its team and operations beyond two cities in Egypt — Cairo and Alexandria — to other parts.A longer-term plan might include horizontal and vertical product expansion into pharmaceuticals, electronics and fashion.

Twitter will now allow people to tip their favorite content creators with bitcoin and will also launch a fund to pay some users who host audio chat rooms on its Spaces feature, the company said on Thursday.The company also said it will test new ways to help users have a safer experience on Twitter, such as warning when people are entering a “heated” conversation, or letting them leave tweet threads they no longer want to be part of.The product announcements are the latest in Twitter’s effort to compete with rival platforms like Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s YouTube for popular content creators with large followings, and turn around its image as a site where polarized discussions can fester online.Twitter users globally on iOS devices can now send and receive digital payments, which was previously limited to a small group of testers.“We believe we can continue to incentivize the types of conversations that people want to see,” said Esther Crawford, product lead for creator monetization at Twitter, in a briefing with reporters.The San Francisco-based company added it is exploring how to allow users to filter out certain words they do not want to see in the replies to their tweets, which could be used to stop name-calling or abusive speech.About BitcoinCreated following the 2008 global financial crisis, bitcoin initially promoted a libertarian ideal and aspired to overthrow traditional monetary and financial institutions such as central banks.The founding white paper, published on October 31, 2008, was penned by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym whose identity remains unknown.The eight-page document included the key goal of processing online payments between two parties without passing via a financial institution.A first block of 50 bitcoins was created in January 2009, which has risen to 18.8 million units currently in circulation.No more than 21 million can be created, helping bitcoin’s price to trade way above its rivals.Thousands of other cryptocurrencies have meanwhile since been created, led by the likes of ethereum, ripple and tether.There are two ways to get hold of bitcoin. Historically, individuals have “mined” for it by using computers to solve complex mathematical puzzles.But as bitcoin’s price soared, so did the number of miners, reducing the chances of accessing units this way.Mining also requires huge amounts of energy, meaning the cost of accessing a bitcoin can exceed the gain, not withstanding the environmental impact amid global efforts to tackle climate change.The alternative way is to buy a whole or fractions of bitcoin on an exchange platform using traditional currencies.Purchased funds are held in protected virtual wallets, but with hacks still possible, some investors have decided to hold portfolios offline.The post Twitter will allow people to tip their favorite content creators with bitcoin appeared first on ARY NEWS.

The beta version of Battlefield 2042 is slated to be released next month and players reported receiving code right after pre-ordering it.According to a report, multiple Reddit users had claimed that they got the codes after they registered for the beta on Amazon. A series of posts regarding the code leaks were seen on the micro-blogging platform named Twitter as well.The leaks made the players believe as if the video gaming giant have already rolled out the codes ahead of the beta version’s release on October 8.An official gave a clarification on the issue.