In its quarterly financial reports, Microsoft goes out of its way to avoid reporting detailed results for its Surface division. Fortunately, there are enough indirect results to figure out those numbers. Here’s how to do the math for yourself. …read more Source:: ZDNet

pacopico writes: First World View hung Google SVP Alan Eustace at the end of a balloon and then dropped him 135,908 feet back to Earth. Then, it sent a KFC chicken sandwich to the edge of space. Now, World View has figured out how to get high-altitude balloons to sail winds in the stratosphere and…

Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein writes: YouTube very quietly made a very cool and rather major improvement in their video players today… YouTube is now adjusting the YT player size to match videos’ native aspect ratios. This is a big deal, and very much welcome. YouTube provided some before-and-after screenshots Friday, and acknowledged that “We launched…

The Audiophiliac compares Hifiman’s new $1K cans against some higher priced models. In short, the Ananda held its own. …read more Source:: CNet

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: The German state of Lower Saxony is set to follow Munich in migrating thousands of official computers away from Linux to Microsoft’s Windows. As initially reported by Heise, the state’s tax authority has 13,000 workstations running OpenSuse — which it adopted in 2006 in a well-received migration from Solaris —…

The personal computers in science fiction books, movies, and games are way cooler than the dinky pieces of hardware we’re stuck with in the real world. Granted the modern laptop has a bit more style than the beige boxes of yesteryear, but they still aren’t half as l33t as the custom PowerBooks in Hackers. Luckily…

Will Google play catch-up — or leapfrog the iPhone X? …read more Source:: CNet

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have now created their own Richter-like scale [for measuring alien signals] to explain whether a finding is a damp squib or has truly seismic implications. The new scale allows scientists to rate interesting signals detected in searches for extraterrestrial intelligence from 0 to 10, where…

RHA Audio makes high quality headphones and with the removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack, wireless is the solution. For $69.95, the MA390 Wireless is an excellent affordable option with a three-year warranty and a minimal level of water resistance. …read more Source:: ZDNet

Is the iPhone X really worth all that extra cash? …read more Source:: CNet