HP has a bunch of tempting Halloween deals which are live right now on laptops, desktop PCs, monitors, as well as printers and various other accessories.
You can see the full range of deals – which run through until the end of tomorrow, and are, as ever, subject to stock levels – on the HP store. Although we’ve picked out some of the best deals for your delectation, as follows…
This laptop has an Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 8GB of system RAM, a 256GB SSD (plus 2TB hard drive), and a 17-inch, 120Hz display with G-Sync, alongside an Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU. Apply the discount code HALLOWEEN10 at checkout to get 10% off, saving you almost £150.View Deal
If you want to spend slightly less on a gaming machine, then this 15-inch model again runs with an Intel Core i7-8750H CPU with 8GB memory, a 128GB SSD (backed with a 1TB hard disk) and a GTX 1060 (3GB) graphics solution. Type in the discount code HALLOWEEN10 at checkout for 10% off, which saves you nearly £110.View Deal
Those after a bargain basement notebook should check out this portable with an Intel Core i3-7020U processor, 4GB of memory, 1TB hard disk, along with a 15-inch Full HD anti-glare screen. Apply the discount code HALLOWEEN30 at checkout which gives you a £30 reduction to make the machine even more wallet-friendly.View Deal
This desktop gaming PC is plenty powerful courtesy of an Intel Core i7-8700K processor – which is liquid cooled – coupled with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card. You get 16GB of system memory, a 256GB SSD, plus a 2TB hard disk for media storage. Enter the discount code HALLOWEEN10 at checkout to get 10% off, saving you almost £180.View Deal
There’s some tempting stuff in HP’s Halloween sale, then, in particular on the notebook front. But you won’t wait have to wait long for further bargains to arrive, because November sees what’s regarded as the biggest sale of all, and there will doubtless be some great Black Friday laptop deals to be had.
A lot has happened to Premiere Pro since we took a look at it in July 2017: in the intervening time, Adobe has released three major updates to this venerable Mac and PC video editing software.
It would be impossible to look at everything that has changed in the space of this review, so we will focus instead on some features we feel will have the most impact on veteran editors and newbies alike.
Let’s start with the new Learn feature. It offers you three interactive tutorials to quickly teach you how to use their software. It’s an innovative approach which is triggered by default the first time you launch the software and is well worth checking out to understand where all the tools you need to get started are located, and what they do.
New to Premiere Pro? The built-in Learn mode will get you up and running in no time
The ability to open multiple projects at the same time is perhaps a feature you thought should’ve been implemented a long time ago, but this omission has finally been rectified. You can now see projects side by side (well, tab by tab to be more precise) and effortlessly move media and edits from one project to the other. If you work on similar videos, or often use the same assets, this is an incredibly useful addition.
Graphics and effects
Another feature which is a puzzle as to why it took so long to implement, is colour consistency between Premiere Pro and the special effects extravaganza that is After Effects. If you go to Preferences > General, you’ll see a new checkbox called “enable colour display management”. With this on, you then have a dedicated colour pipeline between these two programs. Is it because this feature requires GPU acceleration that is wasn’t available before? In any case, you will undoubtably hear a lot of video makers shout “finally!”
Adobe didn’t stop there to improve Premiere Pro’s visual effects capabilities. You could already use After Effects templates straight from within Premiere Pro, but you no longer need to have After Effects installed on your computer in order to do so, which can potentially save you a few gigabytes if another member of your team is responsible for creating those assets.
Select multiple text layers and alter their size, colour etc, all at the same time
Other useful improvements to the Essential Graphics section include the ability to move multiple layers at once by pinning a layer to another. When you highlight multiple text layers you can now alter the properties of all of them at the same time, like tracking, color etc.
The font menu has also been tweaked allowing you to see an example of what each font looks like directly from the selection menu. And should you need your titles to roll on or off screen – in any direction of your choice, there’s now a simple button that enables you to do just that.
Working with shapes is easier now: not only can you apply gradient colours to them, including graduated transparency, but it’s also possible to animate those shapes’ properties from the Essential Graphics panel – no need to jump into the Effects Controls to do this anymore.
Color matching
If you’ve ever struggled to match the color between shots, you’ll love the fact that Premiere Pro can now compare a chosen clip in your timeline with another. Click on ‘Apply Match’ and it will analyze the color of the second clip and apply it to the first. There’s even a face detection option to make sure the skin tones are as consistent as as possible.
All of these changes, though most welcome and highly beneficial to many editors’ workflow, are nothing next to what Adobe did with the Lumetri effects. Not only can you apply multiple Lumetri effects to any one clip, and set them up to affect only specific parts of your image, the curves have been redesigned to make them simpler to understand and easier to manipulate: to change a particular hue for instance, you can use a color picker to select a part of your clip – this will add three points to the color curve. Moving those points will alter that particular color without affecting any other parts of your image.
Compare two shots and click on ‘Apply Match’ to make sure their color is as automatically consistent as possible.
You can apply masks to limit which part of the image you’re altering – a useful tool should your clip have areas of similar color and you only wish to alter one of them. As you’re dealing with moving images, you can alter the mask one frame at a time… but you’ll notice, if the selection is clear enough, that Premiere Pro may have already tracked your selection for you as the camera pans, saving you a lot of time.
Visual effects aren’t the only areas Adobe has focused its attention on: the Essential Sounds panel also saw a number of improvements, like Reduce Noise and Reduce Reverb sliders, and it’s now possible to automate ducking so your background music never drowns out any dialog. Just make sure the audio clips’ type has been assigned to either Dialog or Music first. Once ready, change the settings to your liking in the Ducking section, and then click on ‘Generate Keyframes’ to let Premiere Pro do all the hard work for you.
Make sure your score never drowns out your dialogue with automatically generated ducking keyframes
Finally, if you work with data-driven infographics, you’ll no doubt appreciate the fact that Premiere Pro now accepts data directly from a spreadsheet: just drop one into the Essential Graphics panel and you’ll then be able to cycle between different rows of the database to change the content of your graphic.
Final verdict
These are just some of the changes to Premiere Pro since July 2017. The actual list of everything that Adobe has improved is very long and just shows that they’re definitely not resting on their subscription money. They’ve been working hard to improve the app, offer new, highly welcomed features, and fix things along the way (that should have been fixed long ago in some cases).
If you’re a professional editor, this subscription model easily pays for itself. More casual editors would have to weigh the pros and cons carefully, but seeing all you can do with this app may well convince a fair number to take the plunge.
Apple is having yet another launch to round out its 2018 announcements, and the good news is you’re in the right place to follow along with all the unveilings live.
This is our live blog, and once the event starts we recommend sticking here and refreshing the page to keep abreast of all the latest news on rumored the MacBook 2018, Mac mini 2018 and iPad Pro 2018.
If we’re lucky, we may even hear of a MacBook Air 2018 and perhaps a few other surprises too.
Apple is hosting the event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House in New York. We’ll be there in the room to keep this updated with the latest, and the good news is it’s earlier in the day than other normal Apple launches.
8:26 – Look where we are! We’re outside where Apple will be holding the event, and it’s cold. Very cold. But, Apple have kindly given us breakfast burritos to keep us warm.
7:55 – Tim Cook is awake… well, it’s more than likely he has been up and at ’em for the last few hours but he has now tweeted. Below you can see an image of the event hall in New York.
As always, there’s no clear messaging in his image or tweet that suggests what exactly we’ll see in the next few hours. There’s no fooling us though Tim, we know it’s set to be iPads and MacBooks.
Good morning New York! We’re looking forward to an exciting day at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. See you in a few hours! pic.twitter.com/MvyyAemoIjOctober 30, 2018
6:30 – It’s worth reminding you now that you can watch the launch later through a variety of livestreams from Apple. You can use Safari, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Firefox and even Twitter to watch the launch.
Here’s our guide on how to watch the Apple launch, but be sure to keep this live blog open too so you can read alongside while you’re watching it.
6:20 – OK, we’re up and ready to go. This is being written from the UK, but our US team is going to be out of bed very soon to shower, and more importantly eat, ahead of today’s big launch.
Telefonica has become one of the first major technology companies to reveal exactly what guidelines it will place on the use of AI technology.
The Spanish telecoms giant and parent company of O2 has released its Principles of Artificial Intelligence, laying out how it plans to utilise the technology to ensure a positive impact on society.
Promising “integrity and transparency” in its design and development of AI technology, Telefonica’s rules include the company’s ongoing stance on areas such as equality, transparency, clarity, privacy, and security.
AI rules
“We’re concerned about the possible use of artificial intelligence for the creation or dissemination of fake news, addiction to technology, and the possible reinforcement of social bias in the algorithms in general”, said José María Álvarez-Pallete, Chairman & CEO of Telefónica.
“These phenomena undermine the trust of our customers, our most valuable asset, and hinder the development of a fairer society. Consequently, we will do everything in our power to collaborate with other entities in order to eradicate them”, he adds.
Telefonica is currently hard at work developing its 5G network infrastructure, and AI could certainly play its part there, allowing the company to offload testing or analytical tasks to an AI system.
Among the provisions demanded for AI in its new guidelines are that the system provide fair results, without discriminating against race, gender or sexual orientation, as well as generating “tangible benefits” for people.
AI systems also need to have privacy and security by design, and be transparent and explainable, allowing users to know what data is being collected in their interactions and for what purpose.
The porn habit of an employee at the US Geological Survey (USGS) led to a government network becoming infected with malware, an official report has revealed.
The employee, who has not been named, had “an extensive history of visiting adult pornography websites”.
Investigators found malware on many of the 9,000 sites he or she accessed.
The US Office of the Inspector General has recommended that the USGS blacklist “rogue” websites.
“Our analysis confirmed that many of the pornographic images were subsequently saved to an unauthorised USB device and personal Android cell phone,” the report explained
As well as government computers, the employee’s personal mobile was also found to be infected.
Lost or deleted some important messages from your iPhone? Don’t worry, there are three ways to recover deleted texts from an iPhone: using iCloud, using iTunes, and using a third-party app. We’ll guide you step-by-step through each method in an effort to restore your iPhone messages.
As a good housekeeper you’ve deleted all your old text messages, and then realised that you do – in fact – need some or all of them. Well fear not. You can recover deleted text messages from your iPhone.
Indeed, it’s possible you can do so without having recourse to anything more difficult than restoring from backup – we recommend iTunes. And at worst you may be able to get those messages back using a third-party app.
If you have ever backed up your iPhone to iCloud or iTunes you should be able to restore your iPhone text messages from the backup.
Unfortunately, iCloud doesn’t back up texts in all territories, and for all phone operators. My iPhone on O2 falls into this category. So the following may not work. You’ll need only to go to step 2 to find out.
Log in to with your Apple ID and password
Click on Text Messages (if it isn’t there your messages haven’t been backed up).
If it is there searched the messages to find the ones you need.
Now go to your iPhone and choose Settings, iCloud on your iPhone.
Turn off Text Messages (or ensure it is turned off). I know this sounds counter-intuitive but stay with it.
You’ll see a pop-up. Select: ‘Keep on My iPhone’.
Now turn back on text messages.
Tap ‘Merge’, and wait. After a few minutes the deleted text messages should appear back on your iPhone.
You can also try restoring your iPhone to an iCloud backup, should you have one from before the text messages were deleted. Check in Settings > [Your Name] > iCloud > Manage Storage > Backups.
If you do, then you can factory reset your iPhone before restoring it via that iCloud backup, if you have one. Note that the last successful iCloud backup time/date is available beneath the Back Up Now button.
iTunes
Don’t worry if iCloud didn’t work. We have two further options to try. First let’s try recovering deleted text messages via an iTunes backup. This can often be the best way.
Unless you disabled the automatic sync option in iTunes, you should have created a backup everytime you synched with your PC or Mac.
Connect your iPhone to the PC with which you sync it. iTunes should open (if not, open it manually)
You should see your iPhone appear. Select it
Now choose ‘Restore backup’
All the data you previously backed up will now replace the data on your phone. It will take a few minutes. As long as you haven’t backed up subsequent to deleting those messages, they should now appear on your phone
Third-Party App
If neither of the options above has worked, it is time to go nuclear. Well, not nuclear exactly but it may cost you a couple of quid, and there is no guarantee it will work.
We’ve never used any of these, but a there are some third-party apps appear to have a good online reputation: , , , and .
Because even after you have ‘deleted’ messages they remain on your handset until overwritten, you should be able to recover deleted messages using these utilities (and others) – but there are no guarantees.
