Split (1)

train · 2.59M rows

text stringlengths 11 92.3k
It’s impossible not to draw parallels between this, the largest of Amazon’s tablets, and Apple’s £339 iPad.
There are a few headline improvements for the new Fire HD 10 which comes in three colours; black, marine blue and punch red.
It now features a new Full HD display boasting 224ppi as opposed to its predecessor’s 149ppi. That's still not in the same league as more expensive tablets on the market but as with everything to do with Amazon's hardware, the spec list needs to be considered alongside the price.
Much of the specification is, on paper, as good as many rivals. There’s a new quad-core processor with cited performance of 30 percent more than the previous model and twice the RAM for good measure.
Storage has also been improved, up from 16GB to 32 or 64GB. There’s still microSD support, while there’s the kind gift of free unlimited cloud storage for all Amazon content and photos taken with Fire tablets.
Again there’s 10 hours of battery life cited (we’ve got around 8-10 hours on our cycles so far depending on how much streaming video we’ve watched).
Despite many other manufacturers turning their back on Amazon-powered tablets, Amazon isn’t and is selling better hardware for ever more sensible prices. The deal is that Amazon wants you to be inculcated into its Prime, Kindle and Audible ecosystem.
However, we would recommend you opt for the £10 more expensive version of the tablet that removes the ‘special offers’. These special offers essentially just turn the screensaver into a constant ad for new apps.
It’s not so bad, but it’s a user experience that’s akin to the bloatware that used to pop up everywhere on Windows – “here’s your new PC that we’ll filled with crap you don’t want!” The Fire ads aren’t that bad and some of the ‘offers’ are apps you’ll want. But it still worsens the experience even though there is zero performance hit.
One area where the HD 10 has been downgraded is in its rear-facing camera, reduced from 5MP to a shockingly bad 2MP. Presumably this is a cost-saving measure, but it is a misstep because the quality of the produced images are predictably average, the actual experience of taking a picture is weak. We also had repeat offers even after we had downloaded the apps in question.
The dual-speakers are fairly decent for a tablet but instead of just being Dolby-branded, it is called ‘Dolby Atmos audio’ in the marketing materials (the Atmos-branding isn’t on the box though, strangely). This is quite odd when you consider the cost and audio quality of many Dolby Atmos soundbars and AVRs.
The inclusion of Alexa in more devices is, of course, welcome and she is her usual self here – if you’ve got an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot already, the transition to using Alexa on the Fire HD 10 will be pretty seamless.
As ever, Fire OS is extremely Amazon-centric, but it is really simple to use (although you really do need Amazon Prime to make it sing). You’re able to access more information using X-Ray. So much of Amazon’s hardware is centred around the content on offer and the presentation is typically straightforward.
The Amazon Fire for Kids app is included and you’re offered to setup an user account for any children in your family.
At £190-less than the basic iPad, the Amazon Fire HD 10 certainly has pricing on its side. It can't really be argued with as a route to getting a decent tablet, but it's nowhere near the best you can get. The core specs are OK (aside from the cameras, which are terrible) and if you just need a tablet for streaming, shopping and basic browsing then it's a great option.
If you want a better screen or a tablet for work then you'll need to look elsewhere - probably to the iPad or Samsung's Galaxy Tab S3.
Oh, and check out our guide to the best tablets, too.
Buffalo News writer, Allen Wilson, has his first mock draft of 2010 up and has the Steelers taking Mike Iupati from Idaho. If the Steelers do indeed draft offense with the first round pick, I can see Iupati being it right now. However, I am still thinking we draft defense first at this point in time.
Well, thanks to all of our readers of the blog, Twitter and Facebook, we have made it to the Final Four of the 2010 Pittsburgh Sports Blog contest. I do not think they are happy to have a #8 seed crash the party and they surely have the wrong info up on our post dates. Our blog page is set up to only show what I deem articles, not all blog post. If you would like to see us advance to the finals, then please vote for us here. If not, please vote for WHYGAVS instead. Once again, thanks to our true readers and fans for past votes.
Regina Leader-Post writer, Murray McCormick, did an interview with the newest Steelers special teams hopeful and former Saskatchewan Roughriders middle linebacker Renauld Williams.
The new NFL Labor site has a great post up on the breakdown of the tender offer amounts for 2010 Restricted Free Agents.
From the night so cheery side, Former Steelers offensive lineman Carlton Haselrig has been jailed on a probation violation after being arrested Saturday evening on charges he assaulted a child. Let us hope none of this is true for all parties sakes.
Nose tackle Chris Hoke is the latest Steelers player to have his post-season interview posted up on Steelers.com. You can watch it below.
10 acre buildable lot. Property is between South Haven and Bangor would be great to build a home or to have as a hunting property. We are also selling adjoining 65 acres.
Beautiful large acreage lot directly on the Black River. Geneva Township - low taxes. South Haven schools. 3 miles from downtown South Haven. 1 mile north Beeches golf course.
Beautiful large acreage lots directly on the Black River. Geneva Township , Low taxes, South Haven schools. Approximately 3 miles from downtown South Haven. 1 mile north Beeches golf course.
Beautiful large acreage lots in a private setting. Located on the Black River. Low taxes Geneva Township,South Haven schools. Approximately 3 miles from downtown South Haven. 1 mile north is Beeches golf course.
Beautiful wooded lot in charming Sunset Shores Subdivision that has access to Lake Michigan via newer stairway to the ''Beach. Many new homes have recently been built. Location 3 miles north of South Haven, and aprx 15 mi. to Saugatuck. Easy access to I196 expressway off North Shore Dr.
WASHINGTON - Once upon a time, small ball was not Barack Obama's game. Tuesday, it was the essence of his State of the Union address. The visionary of 2008 - purveyor of hope and change, healer of the earth, tamer of the rising seas - offered an hour of little things: tax-code tweaks to encourage this or that kind of behavior (manufacturing being the flavor of the day), little watchdog agencies to round up Wall Street miscreants and Chinese DVD pirates, even a presidential demand "that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18." Under penalty of what? Jail? The self-proclaimed transformer of America is now playing truant officer?
It sounded like the Clinton years with their presidentially proclaimed initiatives on midnight basketball and school uniforms. These are the marks of a shrunken presidency, thoroughly flummoxed by high unemployment, economic stagnation, crushing debt - and a glaring absence of ideas.
Of course, this being Obama, there was a reach for grandeur. Hope and change are long gone. It's now equality and fairness.
That certainly is a large idea. Lenin and Mao went pretty far with it. As did Clement Attlee and his social-democratic counterparts in postwar Europe. Where does Obama take it? Back to the decade-old Democratic obsession with the Bush tax cuts, the crusade for a tax hike of all of 4.6 points for 2 percent of households - 10 years of which wouldn't cover the cost of Obama's 2009 stimulus alone.
Which is why Obama introduced a shiny new twist - the Buffett Rule, a minimum 30 percent rate for millionaires. Sounds novel. But it's a tired replay of the alternative minimum tax, originally created in 1969 to bring to heel all of 155 underpaying fat cats. Following the fate of other such do-goodism, the AMT then metastasized into a $40 billion monster that today entraps millions of middle-class taxpayers.
There isn't even a pretense that the Buffett Rule will do anything for economic growth or job creation (other than provide lucrative work for the sharp tax lawyers who will be gaming the new system for the very same rich). Which should not surprise. Back in 2008, Obama was asked if he would still support raising the capital-gains tax rate (the intended effect of the Buffett Rule) if this would decrease government revenues.
Obama said yes. In the name of fairness.
This is redistribution for its own sake - the cost be damned. It took Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels about 30 seconds of his State of the Union rebuttal to demolish that idea. To get the rich to contribute more, explained Daniels, you don't raise tax rates. This ultimately retards economic growth for all. You (a) eliminate loopholes from which the rich benefit disproportionately (tax reform) and (b) means-test entitlements so that the benefits go to those most in need.
Tax reform and entitlement reform are the really big ideas. The first produces social equity plus economic efficiency; the second produces social equity plus debt reduction. And yet these are precisely what Obama has for three years steadfastly refused to address. He prefers the easy demagoguery of "tax the rich."
After all, what's he got? Can't run on his record. Barely even mentioned Obamacare or the stimulus, his major legislative achievements, on Tuesday night. Too unpopular. His platform is fairness, wrapped around a plethora of little things, one mini-industrial policy after another - the conceit nicely encapsulated by his proclamation that "I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or to Germany." As if he can command these industries into existence. As if Washington funding a thousand Solyndras will make solar economically viable.
Soviet central planners mandated quotas for steel production, regardless of demand. Obama's industrial policy is a bit more subtle. Tax breaks for manufacturing - but double tax breaks for high-tech manufacturing, which for some reason is considered more virtuous, despite the fact that high tech is less likely to create blue-collar jobs. Its main job creation will be for legions of lawyers and linguists testifying before some new adjudicating bureaucracy that the Acme Umbrella Factory meets their exquisitely drawn criteria for "high tech."
What Obama offered the nation Tuesday night was a pudding without a theme: a jumble of disconnected initiatives, a gaggle of intrusive new agencies and a whole new generation of loopholes to further corrupt a tax code that screams out for reform.
If the Republicans can't beat that in November, they should try another line of work.
Lenovo's Yoga line of Windows hybrids has been refreshed, and awkwardly named the Yoga 2 11 and Yoga 2 13. The smaller 11-inch model is the subject of this review and after a few days of use it's clear it's a good small laptop and a tablet that is appropriate for occasional use.
The Yoga 2 11 is thin and light for a notebook. A photo later in the gallery shows how favorably it compares size-wise with the 11-inch MacBook Air. It fits in smaller gear bags and is easy to carry around on a daily basis.
Dimensions 11.7" x 8.12" x 0.67"
The Yoga 2 11 is well constructed for such an inexpensive laptop (starting at $599). It feels almost as sturdy as ThinkPad models costing much more. It feels very solid in large part due to the display hinges. These allow pushing the lid all the way back and under the keyboard, stopping at any point in between.
This flexible screen is where the Yoga derives its name. It can be positioned to form a laptop, tablet, and put in tent mode. The latter allows positioning the laptop in an inverted "V" shape facilitating watching videos or for giving intimate presentations. The hinge is not too rigid to make it hard to adjust, but is stable enough to support the notebook in any position.
The Bay Trail processor in the Yoga 2 11 is not the fastest, but has worked surprisingly well in my testing. Tablet use is fluid, and notebook use is not bad. Gaming is not the best but other functions are snappy and lag-free.
The keyboard is not as good as a ThinkPad model, but it's not bad. The key travel is very shallow, but doesn't impact fast touch typing. The trackpad is small, but nice and responsive. The integrated mouse buttons are located along the bottom of the trackpad, and must be hit squarely to activate.
I am not a fan of convertible notebooks, as none I've tried (out of dozens) have yielded a good tablet experience. I find that tablets with a keyboard attached (although hidden) are just too heavy for comfortable use in the hands.
The Yoga 2 11 doesn't change that impression, as the 3+ lb. form is just too heavy to use as a tablet. That discomfort is compounded by holding the tablet with the keyboard exposed under the screen. It feels abnormal to be gripping the keyboard keys on the back of the tablet.
The touch tablet operation is otherwise solid, and the Bay Trail processor runs it well. The touch interface scrolls smoothly, and apps run as expected without lag.
The Yoga 2 11 from Lenovo is a convertible notebook that is a good fit for those wanting a good laptop for occasional use as a tablet. It offers six hours of operation on the battery, which is not great for a tablet. The starting price of $599 is what I would expect for a hybrid with a Bay Trail processor.
The Yoga is very portable and a good fit for the road warrior.
The 11-inch Yoga 2 is not much bigger than the MacBook Air.
The battery is not user-replaceable.
While not as good as a ThinkPad keyboard, this one is not bad. The entire touchpad is not clickable, only the strip at the front of the pad.
The styling of the Yoga 2 11 is similar to the familiar black ThinkPad design.
The Yoga 2 is heavy while used in the hand in tablet mode. It is also strange gripping the exposed keyboard under the screen.
The display hinges are very sturdy for propping up the device in tent mode for watching video or giving presentations.
The Yoga is OK for occasional tablet use.
The keyboard is exposed when using the Yoga as a tablet.
The Yoga 2 11 compares favorably size-wise with the 11-inch MacBook Air.
The refreshed model of Lenovo's Yoga bends over backward to do everything.
The team is scheduled to play its first match against Delhi Daredevils on the 8th of April 2018 on their home ground PCA Mohali.
The TECNO Camon portfolio currently includes two models Camon i and Camon i Air priced at Rs 8,999 and Rs 7,999 respectively.
TECNO Mobile has announced its association with the Indian Premier League (IPL) team Kings XI Punjab as their Official Smartphone partner. The team is scheduled to play its first match against Delhi Daredevils on the 8th of April 2018 on their home ground PCA Mohali.
Riding on the competitive spirit of the team, the primary aim of this association is to further amplify TECNO’s overall brand awareness and establish a strong brand recall amongst the youth of India. The association comes immediately after the launch of TECNO’s Camera-centric” Camon i and Camon i Air smartphones in India. The “Best in any light “proposition of TECNO Camon series resonates well with the Indian youth looking for a great smartphone with a superlative camera performance that can help them shoot at any time of the day, in any light condition.
The TECNO Camon portfolio currently includes two models Camon i and Camon i Air priced at Rs 8,999 and Rs 7,999 respectively. The key feature of the Camon smartphones is Full View display with its photographic prowess that is claimed to capture crisp and clear pictures in any light conditions.
On a soft spring night in Mexico City, drawn toward the city’s immense main square, the Zócalo, I happen on a free concert by the Cuban troubadour Silvio Rodriguez. Tens of thousands have jammed into a temporary corral, singing along to mid-century anthems like “Ojalá” and “Unicornio” beneath the darkened windows of the presidential palace. Behind the stage, the cathedral towers glow indigo, then magenta, then gold. Riot cops lean casually against a department-store window, their helmets, clubs, and plastic shields piled on the sidewalk. Several decades ago, Rodriguez’s lyrics entered the canon of Latin America’s left and his soft, downy voice was the sound of revolution. Now the atmosphere is mellow and almost prim. At least at the fringes of the crowd, nobody is drinking or smoking pot.
Welcome to the seat of the Aztec empire, the heart of New Spain, and, until a dozen years ago, the bull’s-eye of a bleakly damaged historic urban core. Today, the neighborhood overflows with pleasantness and the Zócalo is a regular venue for free concerts, televised soccer matches, book fairs, and protests. Michael Bloomberg should see this, I think.
When New York’s mayor left office at the end of last year, he took a conclave of top consiglieri, including his planning chief Amanda Burden, streets guru Janette Sadik-Khan, and cultural-affairs commissioner Kate Levin, to form Bloomberg Associates, a consulting outfit that will carry the New York way of urbanism to cities around the globe and provide its services free of charge. Now I understand what Sadik-Khan told me at the end of her tenure when I asked her what she’d be doing next: “The same thing, only globally.” Bloomberg Associates has been discreet—secretive, actually—about its plans, but in February the mayor of Mexico City put out a press release announcing that his administration would be the group’s first client. It hasn’t made much of a splash there.
Bloomberg is not the first ex-mayor of New York to come bearing solutions. In 2003, Rudy Giuliani swooped in to look around, collected a $4.3 million fee paid by the telecom billionaire Carlos Slim Helú, and sent in a crime-stopper report that more than a decade later still gets giggles in Mexico City. (His suggestion that the notoriously corrupt police crack down on squeegee men, street hawkers, and freelance parking-lot “attendants” seemed particularly out of touch.) Still, a city that was once considered menacing, filthy, and ungovernable is now merely exciting. In many ways, it resembles the city that Bloomberg took over from Giuliani in 2002. The population is 9 million and growing (21 million if you count the greater metropolitan area); crime is ebbing but remains a serious problem; the air is clearer than it used to be, but my weather app still sometimes predicts “smoke.” Mexico City suffered a cataclysm even more traumatic than New York’s, in the form of a 1985 earthquake that shattered thousands of buildings. Since then, rebuilding and gentrification have reshaped the city’s mental map.
But at the center of the megalopolis is an area that has out-Bloomberged Bloomberg. Much of it is virtually the private fiefdom of his fellow plutocrat Slim, who, rather than running for mayor himself, has persuaded a series of politicians to help him remake Mexico City in his image. In the past dozen years, he has transformed himself into a kind of imperial developer and erected glass condos, revived crumbling palaces, created new business districts, built a museum, and expanded the wealthy Polanco district. “He’s trying to turn Mexico City into something out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis,” grumbles Victor Delgadillo, an urbanist at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad de México.
The centro histórico had already been crumbling for decades when the 1985 earthquake brutalized Mexico City. Depopulated and dangerous, it contained a scattering of run-down museums and government offices—and a daytime throng of sidewalk vendors who spilled into the street and made driving through it an extreme sport. Now the wedge west of the Zócalo is transformed. Tourism is up, and the streets no longer go dead after dark. Baroque palaces have regained their patina of charm, courtyards their sense of serenity. Once-vacant apartment buildings are filling up again, and announcing at a dinner party that you live in the centro no longer gets you expressions of puzzlement or pity. Urban innovations like bike lanes, pedicabs, and bus rapid transit have begun to flow out from the oldest sector into the rest of the megalopolis. On Sundays, when cars are banned from the wide Paseo de la Reforma, flocks of gaily spandexed cyclists descend on the historic core.
All this upgrading has not (yet, anyway) unleashed a localized geyser of gentrification, partly because so many buildings are at least nominally vacant. Delgadillo has no love for neoliberal urbanism—reshaping a city through private investment—but he says that displacement, if you can call it that, has been limited to longtime residents who bought the apartments they lived in at subsidized prices and are now cashing out. Besides, gentrification has a different geography. Mexico City’s wealthy follow their own automotive orbits, from guarded enclaves to shiny office parks, with perhaps a long lunch break in the country-club-like patio of the Restaurante San Ángel Inn. Closer to the center, the tranquil and verdant neighborhood of Condesa, which used to be a slightly shabby bohemian neighborhood, is now increasingly glossy. Its once run-down Art Deco buildings have been brought back to a state of tasteful outlandishness. When I visited, violet jacaranda blossoms canopied the streets and studded the sidewalks, and designer dogs dashed through the pools of Parque México.
But areas like that are slivers on a sprawling map. Mexico City’s scattering of little towns has been connected by an undulating ground cover of cinderblock houses, many homemade and raw, their façades painted in brilliant blocks of color. Even the historic center is largely unbeautified terrain. A few blocks north of the cathedral, beneath a continuous arcade of plastic awnings, is the Giuliani-proof barrio of Tepito, where squatters occupy windowless ruins, young men charge through crowds pushing hand trucks piled high with bales and boxes, and vendors hawk made-in-China trinkets and knockoffs with labels advertising misspelled brands: Kelvin Cline, Channel, Samung.
Bloomberg, like Giuliani before him, might fantasize for a moment about cleaning up the chaos and running a bike lane through a rowdy slum, but that would mean ripping, Robert Moses style, through a dense social fabric. Instead, he ought to study what’s already been accomplished: the miraculous resurrection and gradual repopulation of a troubled downtown. Team Bloomberg goes to Mexico City bearing examples from Brooklyn, but it may return full of suggestions for St. Louis, Cleveland, and Detroit.
*This article appeared in the May 5, 2014 issue of New York Magazine.
The Singapore-based 37-year-old loves photography and has had the same equipment for seven years. "I have only three lenses. I don't keep shopping for lenses," said Mr Prabhakara.
Q: Money-wise, what were your growing-up years like?
A: I grew up in a middle-class family. My father was a teacher. We were careful about money and would save for a rainy day.
Where I grew up in India, real estate was always a big investment area. Stock markets and mutual funds were also very popular. Q How did you get interested in investing?
A: Once I got my MBA (Master of Business Administration) and started earning, I started investing in equities and real estate investment options. My friends and colleagues were very savvy at investing and you tend to learn the most from your peers.
Q: Describe your investing strategy.
A: I'm a value investor.
Q: What's in your portfolio?
A: I hold investments across ETFs, bonds, mutual funds, hedge funds and real estate.
Q: What does money mean to you?
A: It's the means to a certain convenience or lifestyle. It's not the be-all or end-all of life. I think health is the most important. That said, we've been lucky to have good jobs and a comfortable life.
Q: What's the most extravagant thing you have done?
A: A $1,000 helicopter ride in New Zealand in December 2012, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity we didn't want to miss. I found out about a helicopter ride that takes you to (New Zealand fjord) Dusky Sound.
My wife was initially not very happy that we were spending $1,000 on impulse for a helicopter ride of about 45 minutes. But when we were there, every single moment was worth it.
Q: What has been one of your biggest regrets in investing?
A: We had a certain exit opportunity in one of our venture investments, but we didn't move fast enough.
Q: What are your immediate investment plans?
A: Right now, it's a bit of a strange market. We expect a lot more volatility. We've been very conservative, like moving out of equities into some cash.
Q: How are you planning for retirement?
A: Now we want to start getting into regular income-yielding investments which can sustain us beyond our retirement, maybe in 10 or 15 years. They could be income-linked and are a little more conservative.
They don't have to have 10, 15 per cent returns, but will be wealth-protection related, rather than for huge capital gains. But we'll get to that in the next four to five years.
A: A rented condo in River Valley and I drive a Lexus SUV.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.