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Europe's Space Agency Prepares to Solve 5 Mysteries of Jupiter
Europe's Space Agency Prepares to Solve 5 Mysteries of Jupiter
Home to a tangerine storm larger than Earth, owner of peachy winds so frigid you'd probably freeze on impact, and collector of 79 separate moons, Jupiter is something of a spectacle. Even its enormity is barely comprehensible. Take every planet in our solar system, slap their masses together, multiply that by two and you get a chunk about the size of it.
Who knows what could be going on over there. I mean, really.
Which is why, in April 2023, the European Space Agency plans on sending a space probe to join NASA's Juno orbiter in studying the Jovian lifestyle. It's called Juice, or the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. "Juice will make detailed observations of the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons -- Ganymede, Callisto and Europa -- with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments," ESA said in the mission's overview.
And on Monday, the agency also laid out five specific mysteries it wants to tackle once Juice gets to its destination at this mammoth of a planet in, hopefully, 2031.
ESA's first major question is the obvious one you might've guessed from Juice's full name: What's going on with Ganymede, Callisto and Europa?
In short, these three moons are at the forefront of the agency's endeavor because they're all suspected to have some sort of water on, or under, their surfaces. Europa, in particular, is projected by astrobiologists to have a hefty amount of H2O and, well, water equals the potential for alien life, which leads us to another of Juice's queries.
Has there ever been life on any of Jupiter's moons -- or, I guess, on Jupiter? In truth, probably not on the latter, because there's neither land nor water on this planet. There's only gas and atmospheric water vapor. Basically, if you tried to stand on Jupiter, you'd just fall in until you were crushed by the planet's immense gravity concentrated toward the center. That's if you could make it that far.
But returning to Europa, an icy world very much with solid ground, scientists currently have this region at the top of their lists of places we might find evidence of extraterrestrial life. In fact, NASA is building a spacecraft dedicated to scanning Europa for such remnants. It's called the Clipper, and it's quite impressive.
Jupiter, center, and its moon Europa, left, are seen through the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam instrument 2.12 micron filter.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)
Next, turning to Ganymede, another of ESA's wonders is: Why is Ganymede the only moon in our solar system with its own magnetic field? This one's pretty odd. Ganymede's magnetic field is so strong, in fact, that it even gives rise to auroras in its atmosphere, similar to the way Earth's magnetic field produces the northern lights when electrons get caught within.
Ganymede in the shadow of Jupiter, with its aurorae glowing.
NASA, ESA
But for some unknown reason, the rest of its moon community can't relate to its magnetic ventures. It's an outsider that way. "Juice's tour of Jupiter will include multiple flybys of these ocean-bearing moons, before culminating in orbit insertion around Ganymede -- the first time a spacecraft will have orbited a moon in the outer Solar System," ESA said.
Further, getting a little more general, ESA also wants to know if, and how, Jupiter's complex space environment shaped the trajectory or conditions of its moons. With 79 individual satellites orbiting it, this Jovian world basically holds its own solar system -- if Jupiter were the sun, that is.
And finally, the fifth and final box ESA hopes to tick while dissecting Jupiter is how such colossal balls of gas come into existence in the first place. Though colored with hues on the cooler end of the spectrum, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn are also wispy cradles of zippy molecules floating around our solar system. What would give rise to these extreme mini-universes?
If all goes well, by the 2030s, we may have some answers.
A year has 525,600 minutes. Matt Suda spent 206,989 of them -- more than a third of last year -- listening to Spotify.
Suda was one of the earliest customers to get his hands on an invite-only release of Car Thing, Spotify's first-ever hardware device, which goes on sale Tuesday. Unlike him, you probably didn't spend more time streaming music than sleeping last year. But Spotify is betting that Suda and about 140 million of you have something in common: Your car doesn't have a fancy infotainment system to rival a Tesla's.
"I was just interested in seeing Spotify's take on actually building their own hardware," said Suda, a 26-year-old student in Houston, who drives a 2012 Honda. "I wasn't expecting a whole lot. But getting the device and using it -- you can understand more the problem they're going after."
Spotify's main listening location is the home, but the car is a close second, said Gustav Söderström, Spotify's chief research and development officer. He says Americans spent an "insane" 70 billion hours a year on the road pre-pandemic. But while roughly 50% to 70% of cars on US roads may be able to connect to a phone, they're not so fresh-off-the-line as to have an entertainment display that easily streams tunes and podcasts.
To Spotify, that meant drivers in roughly 140 million cars might stream Spotify more -- or start paying for it if they don't already -- if a device could replicate Apple's Car Play or Android Auto for them.
"Why would we do something ourselves here?" Söderström said. "If this already existed, we wouldn't have."
Enter Car Thing.
Sarah Tew/CNET
It may look like a bit like a sideways Zune, Microsoft's failed music player that launched in 2006. But with a credit-card-size touchscreen, mics to pick up voice commands, five buttons and a dial, the $90 Car Thing is a souped-up Spotify remote control for your ride. It mounts to your dash, with the goal of bringing a better way to safely stream music to drivers missing one of those fancy infotainment systems -- no dashboard teardown or new car required.
When Spotify first unveiled Car Thing in April, more than 2 million people signed up for its waitlist. The earliest people invited to try it got it free; by fall, people had to start paying $80. On Tuesday, it's finally going on sale in the US, with a $10 price hike to $90.
Currently, Car Thing works only with Spotify's premium tier. That means on top of the $90 you pay for the hardware, you also must pay for a Spotify membership. Its standard subscription is $10 a month, though it comes as cheap as $5 a month for students.
So Car Thing is only for Spotify -- but only for now.
Its software is on track for an update in "a few weeks" that will unlock it to control other audio apps, Söderström said. If you love Audible, Car Thing will be able to play, pause, skip and adjust volume for your audio books. The update will even allow Car Thing to work for services that are Spotify's direct competitors. "We want to be an open platform," he said.
That openness could, eventually, extend to "deeper integrations with potential partners" if Car Thing takes off, he added. While Spotify wouldn't elaborate on future partnerships, a Car Thing that could toggle between Spotify and Google Maps or Waze would give it the one-two punch of both music navigation and, well, literal navigation.
Broadening Car Thing may be wise, because those 140 million cars may be a more niche market than it seems, according to Tatiana Cirisano, a music industry analyst and consultant at researcher MIDiA. Just 22% of US consumers stream music in the car.
"Streaming services are battling for market share over this relatively small demographic," Cirisano said.
With sales opening in the US on Tuesday, Spotify is about to start learning: Is Car Thing tapping into a caravan of unmet need for millions of drivers? Or is it driving headlong toward a dead end?
But as vehicles steer toward a future of being more autonomous, anything Spotify can do to solidify itself as the must-have music service in the car may pay dividends down the road.
"Full autonomy is probably the most elusive goal of all, but the dream is: You get into your car and all the windows turn into displays," said Edward Sanchez, a senior automotive analyst at Strategy Analytics. "That's what everyone's salivating at the prospect of."
Sarah Tew/CNET
Getting to mile one
The concept for something like Car Thing had been percolating at Spotify for a while, but the device's date of conception might be marked in 2018, when it got its name. First proposed over dinner among a handful of Spotify hardware designers and brand agents, Car Thing was a semi-serious placeholder that the design team adopted for a code name. The name was funny, very literal and a bit childish, said Andreas Cedborg, Spotify's head of hardware product.
"People think, 'Hey, you can't name it like that,'" Cedborg said. "But, yeah, you can."
Hints about Spotify making hardware for the car soon trickled out. In 2018, some marketing materials made their way to a smattering of Spotify users, advertising a voice-command device you could mount on your dash and pay for as an add-on to your Spotify subscription. Images showed a round device with a lit-up text display with a green circle border. Spotify declined to comment on images at the time, but the company now says it was just a test; it never produced the device pictured.
By May 2019, Spotify came clean it was experimenting with a device called Car Thing. It was different from the device in the leaked test images, but it was also a long way from what Car Thing would become.
Spotify's first iteration of Car Thing.
Spotify
The first Car Thing's screen was too small, its dial too big, Cedborg said. Its green accents, a nod to Spotify's flagship color, made it stick out from the rest of the dashboard rather than blending in. It also had its own battery, which the current version eschews in favor of a cable that connects to your car's USB port or 12-volt socket. While a battery would make Car Thing more self-sufficient, freezing temperatures inside a car during winter would ding battery life, and scorching heat with a car baking in the sun risked explosion. A battery also adds weight, making it trickier to mount well.
The Car Thing team's eureka moment was combining a hat-trick of voice commands, touch screen and physical inputs like buttons and dials. Drivers needed all three, working in concert, they realized. A touchscreen is impossible for typing each letter of a song title while driving, but voice commands handle long titles easily. Yet voice commands are a frustrating way to get to the bottom of a long playlist; a physical dial makes that simple. This three-prong approach was "the user interface that we didn't see anywhere in the car world," Söderström said.
After three more years of testing, redesign, user research and pandemic delays, Car Thing was ready for its unveiling. In April, Spotify published a blog post that yes, Car Thing was real. Yes, Car Thing was the name. And yes, it had arrived -- sort of. Spotify introduced the waitlist, and people who signed up for it could potentially get it free.
The current design of Car Thing.
Sarah Tew/CNET
"We just can't make enough of them," CEO Daniel Ek said in October about getting Car Things into the hands of waitlisted customers. Progress was crimped by global chip shortages, a problem that halted carmakers' assembly lines, made Apple's iPhone 12 launch weeks late and turned finding a Sony's PS5 game console into a Christmas miracle. (Ek wasn't available to discuss Car Thing's US launch.)
But this slow seeding of the device allowed Spotify to gather feedback about Car Thing in the wild, figuring out what needed change or improvement.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Road ahead
The version of Car Thing on sale Tuesday is the same physical device purchased off the waitlist. What's changed is the software. And the price.
In pricing Car Thing at $90, Spotify is straddling two worlds. On one side, Car Thing isn't meant to be a revenue engine. Hardware "is a means to an end," Söderström said. Spotify hopes you'll pay for its service more so than its hardware. But on the other side, Spotify doesn't want to sell Car Thing at a loss just to make back the money on memberships. It wants to get Car Thing in as many cars as possible, but it will gauge Car Thing's success by the new subscribers and higher listening rates from existing members it attracts.
Despite the price hike, Spotify wants to get the price down. The $10 price increase was the result of the rising cost of chips, the company said. One thing that could help bring down price is selling Car Thing, eventually, outside the US, since scaling production can bring down the unit cost of making them. Spotify isn't committing to international expansion, but there are clear markets where Car Thing could go next, Söderström said, pointing theoretically to parts of Central and South America and Europe.
The company could also pursue bundles and deals that could make Car Thing a stronger value, he said.
Gustav Söderström is Spotify's chief research and development officer.
Spotify
Söderström likens Car Thing to the Kindle, Amazon's hit e-reader. As Amazon's play to keep Apple from dominating digital books, Kindle was a means to an end, too. When the Kindle first launched in 2007, it was $399. Today, coincidentally, Kindles start at $90, the same price as Car Thing.
Car Thing also comes at a time when Spotify's public image has been buffeted by drama over its most popular podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience. The debate pits accusations of dangerous COVID-19 misinformation against advocacy of freedom of speech. Spotify declined to comment on the Rogan debate.
Though 2 million on the Car Thing waitlist is a big number, it may have included flocks of people looking to score a freebie and a gaggle who were enticed by the hype around Spotify's first hardware. Sara Kayden, the marketing lead for Car Thing, says Spotify's conversion rate -- the amount people who actually buy Car Thing when they get off the waitlist -- was "healthy," without specifying further.
The buyer reaction to Car Thing so far runs the gamut. Social media is dotted with both raves and regrets by people who got one off the waitlist. One Redditor mounted Car Thing to his Harley Davidson motorcycle and paired it to his Bluetooth headphones. Before Car Thing, switching tracks or adjusting volume was "nearly impossible" with his phone in his pocket and leather gloves on.
But others have complained Car Thing was overpriced even when it was $80.
Suda, the Spotify power user who scored Car Thing early and free, is still using the gadget every time he drives, nine months later. He's noticed that Car Thing's software has gotten zippier. "To me, it just makes it easier to listen and it's actually safer, if you don't have CarPlay or any of that fancy stuff," he said.
In 2019, when Spotify revealed its first iteration of Car Thing, it also brought to light the possibility of a "Voice Thing" and "Home Thing." It was hardware that never materialized. Still, "it wasn't vaporware," Söderström said. "I've tried it. But it's not something we're launching right now." Spotify declined to comment on what its next thing in hardware would be. Regardless, they should definitely code-name it Next Thing.
And if Next Thing is ever to become a Real Thing, Spotify must pray Car Thing follows the roadmap of Kindle rather than Zune.
Xiaomi's Poco X3 NFC has a big battery and a 120Hz screen for $235
Xiaomi's Poco X3 NFC has a big battery and a 120Hz screen for $235
Xiaomi sub-brand Poco launched its latest phone this week, which it's billing as a "true midrange champion." The Poco X3 NFC, which was unveiled Monday in a virtual launch, is a 4G device with a 6.67-inch LCD screen and features designed to entice "young, gaming enthusiasts."
Those features, which are typically found in more fancy flagships, include ultra-fast refresh rates, a large battery and a set of stereo speakers. It's also the first phone to debut Snapdragon's new 732G processor, which is a cut above the 730G chipset found in Google'sPixel 4A.
The phone is a large, glossy and heavy handset that starts for a competitive price of 199 euros (which converts to roughly $235, £180 or AU$320) for the 64 GB variant and 249 euros for the 128GB phone. They're available in Europe for now, but Xiaomi also plans to launch the line internationally.
Unlike the Poco X2 and the Poco F2 Pro, which appeared to be rebranded Redmi phones, the X3 NFC has a fresh and original design that includes an X-shaped quad camera and a side fingerprint sensor. The phone's rear is made of polycarbonate (plastic), while the front uses Gorilla Glass 5.
The camera relies on artificial intelligence to automatically improve results and is made up of a 64-megapixel Sony IMX682 main sensor, an 8-megapixel wide-angle sensor, a 2-megapixel macro lens and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. Its front camera is 20-megapixel lens housed in a hole-punch display cut out.
The X3 NFC's combination of features and price will bring it into direct competition with phones such as the OnePlus Nord or even the more affordable devices from Samsung's popular A line of phones.
Europe's Space Agency Prepares to Solve 5 Mysteries of Jupiter
Europe's Space Agency Prepares to Solve 5 Mysteries of Jupiter
Home to a tangerine storm larger than Earth, owner of peachy winds so frigid you'd probably freeze on impact, and collector of 79 separate moons, Jupiter is something of a spectacle. Even its enormity is barely comprehensible. Take every planet in our solar system, slap their masses together, multiply that by two and you get a chunk about the size of it.
Who knows what could be going on over there. I mean, really.
Which is why, in April 2023, the European Space Agency plans on sending a space probe to join NASA's Juno orbiter in studying the Jovian lifestyle. It's called Juice, or the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. "Juice will make detailed observations of the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons -- Ganymede, Callisto and Europa -- with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments," ESA said in the mission's overview.
And on Monday, the agency also laid out five specific mysteries it wants to tackle once Juice gets to its destination at this mammoth of a planet in, hopefully, 2031.
ESA's first major question is the obvious one you might've guessed from Juice's full name: What's going on with Ganymede, Callisto and Europa?
In short, these three moons are at the forefront of the agency's endeavor because they're all suspected to have some sort of water on, or under, their surfaces. Europa, in particular, is projected by astrobiologists to have a hefty amount of H2O and, well, water equals the potential for alien life, which leads us to another of Juice's queries.
Has there ever been life on any of Jupiter's moons -- or, I guess, on Jupiter? In truth, probably not on the latter, because there's neither land nor water on this planet. There's only gas and atmospheric water vapor. Basically, if you tried to stand on Jupiter, you'd just fall in until you were crushed by the planet's immense gravity concentrated toward the center. That's if you could make it that far.
But returning to Europa, an icy world very much with solid ground, scientists currently have this region at the top of their lists of places we might find evidence of extraterrestrial life. In fact, NASA is building a spacecraft dedicated to scanning Europa for such remnants. It's called the Clipper, and it's quite impressive.
Jupiter, center, and its moon Europa, left, are seen through the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam instrument 2.12 micron filter.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)
Next, turning to Ganymede, another of ESA's wonders is: Why is Ganymede the only moon in our solar system with its own magnetic field? This one's pretty odd. Ganymede's magnetic field is so strong, in fact, that it even gives rise to auroras in its atmosphere, similar to the way Earth's magnetic field produces the northern lights when electrons get caught within.
Ganymede in the shadow of Jupiter, with its aurorae glowing.
NASA, ESA
But for some unknown reason, the rest of its moon community can't relate to its magnetic ventures. It's an outsider that way. "Juice's tour of Jupiter will include multiple flybys of these ocean-bearing moons, before culminating in orbit insertion around Ganymede -- the first time a spacecraft will have orbited a moon in the outer Solar System," ESA said.
Further, getting a little more general, ESA also wants to know if, and how, Jupiter's complex space environment shaped the trajectory or conditions of its moons. With 79 individual satellites orbiting it, this Jovian world basically holds its own solar system -- if Jupiter were the sun, that is.
And finally, the fifth and final box ESA hopes to tick while dissecting Jupiter is how such colossal balls of gas come into existence in the first place. Though colored with hues on the cooler end of the spectrum, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn are also wispy cradles of zippy molecules floating around our solar system. What would give rise to these extreme mini-universes?
If all goes well, by the 2030s, we may have some answers.
If you're a dictator, what you don't want is the world watching your every move -- but that's the attention Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko cast on himself Sunday.
Dubbed Europe's last dictator, Lukashenko earned Belarus a fresh round of local protests and international sanctions when he used military force to ground a RyanAir plane flying between Greece and Lithuania on Sunday. As the plane flew over Belarus' airspace, Lukashenko's government sent a MiG fighter jet to ground the flight full of civilian passengers.
And what for? To take down a journalist and his Telegram group.
Police boarded the plane and arrested Roman Protasevich, a 26-year-old journalist who runs Nexta, an anti-establishment news channel that operates mostly on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, where it has over 1.2 million subscribers in a country of about 9 million.
Online platforms are rattling restrictive regimes in Europe's east: In the aligned nations of Belarus and Russia, heroic activists like Protasevich and imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny use the twin powers of Telegram and YouTube to expose corruption and governmental malignancy.
That these dissidents are being targeted for elimination and imprisonment now, after years in the public eye, is a sign of how threatening their online presence has become to Lukashenko and Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.
"These guys have really figured out how to use the internet to counter these regimes in the last few years," William Partlett, a professor at Melbourne Law School who researches post-Soviet societies, told me on a recent phone call. Because state TV is so controlled, creative and defiant young people flocked to YouTube and Telegram, where they can create their own news channels.
While the Russian and especially Belarusian governments often target specific journalists or publications, Partlett says internet freedom has been strong in Belarus and Russia compared to a country like China.
But now that resistance movements are being so effectively built using internet platforms, that freedom might soon become more compromised.
A RyanAir flight headed for Lithuania was diverted to Belarus. Belarus claimed there was a bomb threat on board, and had a MiG jet escort the flight to Minsk airport.
NurPhoto/Getty
Hanging by a thread
Anyone living in Belarus under the age of 27 has only ever known one president. The country, also known as "White Russia," held its first free elections in 1994. They were won by Lukashenko, and he's been in power ever since.
For this reason, and for his autocratic ways, Lukashenko is known as Europe's last dictator.
Lukashenko "won" the last election held in the country, officially scoring 80% of the polls. The European Union rejects this result, and observers believe the election was actually won by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a school teacher and wife of a jailed opposition leader.
What followed were the biggest and most sustained protests the country has seen since independence, involving hundreds of thousands of people. Lukashenko met these democratic spasms with autocratic force: Over 30,000 protesters have been detained, reports The Economist, and over 4,000 say they've been tortured. Some have died.
Protests over last year's election were the biggest Belarus has seen since independence.
Getty
In this environment, Nexta, created by Protasevich six years go, flourished. Its YouTube channel, with over 600,000 subscribers, circulates news. Its Telegram group spreads videos of police brutality against demonstrators and serves as an organizing ground for future protests.
Several Belarusian journalists and internet channels have been targeted by the regime ever since, often with trumped-up charges of tax evasion or similar crimes. The case of Protasevich, who fled Belarus in 2019 and has since been branded a terrorist, shows that leaving the country isn't enough to keep dissidents safe.
Similar channels have frustrated Russia's government. Alexei Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition leader, first gained traction a decade ago by blogging about Kremlin corruption. In recent years, his team set up a network of YouTube channels, spread across each region of the massive country, that countered state TV. His goal has been to unseat the Kremlin candidates in regional elections, encouraging liberal Russians to vote for whoever has the best chance to displace elected officials from Putin's United Russia party. Telegram groups are used to help organize rallies and demonstrations.
The strategy proved successful in 2018, when the United Russia party lost three gubernatorial seats.
Those in power have taken notice.
After years of suppressing Navalny -- barring him from elections, having him arrested and charging him as a foreign agent -- Putin in 2020 apparently decided to eliminate him. Navalny's underpants were reportedly smeared with a toxic agent as he traveled from Siberia to Moscow. It's indicative of a broader clampdown on freedoms, both on and offline, that's happening in the two nations. (Putin denies being behind the poisoning.)
"Navalny existed and made all these videos for years and years, but something is happening now. Now they have him in prison. They've forced down a jet to get Protasevich," Partlett explained. "They're starting to lose the internet narrative."
Despite his subsequent imprisonment, Navalny has shown that it's possible to rile regimes even from a jail cell. He regularly posts to Instagram through his lawyer, and shortly after his imprisonment his team posted a two-hour documentary on YouTube documenting a $1.5 billion mansion owned by Putin, intending to highlight the endemic graft of Russian politics. It's been viewed 116 million times.
Recent protests against Lukashenko in neighboring Poland. NEXTA's headquarters are in Warsaw.
Nur Photo/Getty
No firewall
What happens next?
Lukashenko has been met with almost universal admonishment from world leaders. The EU will ramp up sanctions, initially put in place after last year's fraudulent election, and Ukraine has banned energy imports.
"The outrageous and illegal behavior of the regime in Belarus will have consequences," warned EU President Ursula von der Leyen. "Those responsible for the RyanAir hijacking must be sanctioned."
The key outlier is Russia. "It's an independent state," said Leonid Kalashnikov, a senior member of Russia's State Duma parliament, according to state media. "If they see a threat to their security, then they must fight this threat."
As is so often the case, experts worry that the sanctions are likely to hurt Belarus' citizens more than its leader. A new rule, for instance, bars Belarus' state airliner from flying to any European airport, making it harder for citizens to escape the regime.
Just as worrying is what this means for the limited internet freedoms enjoyed in Belarus and Russia.
Russia has flirted with creating its own internet, separating itself from the world in the same vein as China, but little has come of that idea. It banned Telegram in 2018, but inadvertently blocked thousands of other websites before deciding to lift the ban, indicating that the gargantuan task of creating its own internet is out of reach.
So without the ability for widespread new-era censorship, Belarus' leader is resorting to age-old suppression tactics. The power of tools like YouTube and Telegram is evident in the desperation move of hijacking an international flight. In trying to block news on the internet, Lukashenko got attention from the world.
AMD RX 6600 XT GPU tested: Fast performer for 1080p gaming
AMD RX 6600 XT GPU tested: Fast performer for 1080p gaming
The latest step in the graphics card pas de deux between AMD and Nvidia is the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT GPU. It's also the current entry-level model in AMD's line of graphics processors for gamers specifically looking for speed or higher quality in 1080p resolution. The RX 6600 XT's nominal $379 price and performance slots seamlessly between Nvidia's $329 GeForce RTX 3060 and $399 3060 Ti -- all in the seemingly choreographed fashion we're used to from the two manufacturers.
Both AMD and Nvidia are desperately attempting to get gamers to upgrade from the four-year-old GeForce GTX 1060, which still has the biggest installed base. But this is the absolute worst time to buy a graphics card... and has been for a while. Yes, the cryptocurrency mining crackdown in China and regulatory smackdown in Europe may lessen the demand for GPUs, but we're still in the middle of a silicon supply crunch that affects many components of graphics cards and that's expected to last at least until the end of the year. So it's bound to keep availability low, shopbots busy and prices high. And if you're looking at these low-ish end cards, you're probably really price-sensitive to begin with, making it a doubly bad time -- unless you're de sperate.
The ROG Strix RX 6600 XT OC is a dual-fan card; there will also be triple fan cards from add-in board manufacturers.
Lori Grunin/CNET
Like Nvidia's 3060 models, there's no official AMD-branded version of a card using the RX 6600 XT GPU, so we tested the Asus ROG Strix RX 6600 XT OC, a $550 dual-fan overclockable model that acquits itself well for what it is. (There's also a smaller, lower-key version of the card in the Asus Dual product line line for $500.) But in our testing, the 6600 XT at best matched or marginally outpaced the RTX 3060, even conservatively overclocked, which at least partly stems from the AMD GPU's 8-lane PCIe connection rather than NVIDIA's 16-lane connection. However, without knowing what the actual-real-true prices are as opposed to the what-planet-do-you-live-on prices, it's difficult to make a call about which GPU to recommend you make a fruitless attempt to buy.
The lesser slot requirement may make it a little more flexible for fitting into older systems, but it really cuts potential performance; if it took advantage of the higher-bandwidth slot it might give the 3060 Ti some competition.
AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT
Memory
8GB DDR6
Memory bandwidth (GBps)
256
GPU clock (GHz, base/boost)
2.3/2.6
Memory data rate/Interface
16 Gbps/128 bit
Texture fill rate (gigatexels per second)
342.3
Compute Units and Ray Accelerators (each)
32
Stream cores
2,048
Texture mapping units
128
TGP/min PSU (watts)
160/500
Bus
PCIe 4.0 x 8
Size
2.6 slots; 9.6 x 5.3 x 2.0 in/243 x 134 x 52 mm
Connections
1 x HDMI 2.1, 3 x DisplayPort 1.4
Manufacturer price
$550
Ship date
August 11
Asus has done a fine job eking out what it can from the GPU and it certainly delivers on the 1080p high-frame-rate promise. Physically, the card's a bit chunky for what it delivers at 2.6 slots wide, but the space allocated to the passive cooling (four heatpipes forcing the heat toward a large heat spreader and heatsink) allows it to reduce reliance on the fans at high speeds. This makes it pretty quiet and I kept having to check the monitoring utility to convince myself the fans were even spinning.
In addition to monitoring, the GPU Tweak 2 utility Asus provides lets you choose from a silent mode (with a 0dB fan toggle), gaming mode (which weights performance, cooling and noise equally) and an OC mode to maximize performance via an overclock preset or manual controls over the GPU and memory clocks, voltage, fan speed and a power target. Like the other cards in the line, there's also a toggle switch to jump between two BIOSes, one optimized for performance and the other for noise.
You can use the company's Armoury Crate software to control the logo lighting scheme, but I'm not a big fan of the software; it's just too cumbersome for my taste.
The GPU has passive cooling in addition to the fans, with four heat pipes and a backplate heat spreader across most of the card and a vent on the inside end. A physical BIOS switch lets you change between two modes (performance vs. quiet) if you don't want to use Asus' Tweak UI utility.
Lori Grunin/CNET
The card supports all the latest AMD features. They include Radeon Boost (which selectively renders scene elements at a lower resolution, based on visibility, for higher frame rates), Radeon Anti-Lag (reduces latency by lightening the load on the CPU), FidelityFX Super Resolution (upscaling from lower-resolution textures to achieve faster frame rates, a la Nvidia DLSS) and Smart Access Memory (AMD's Resizable BAR implementation, in which the CPU can store game-related data in GPU RAM rather than system RAM so the GPU doesn't have to traverse the system bus to retrieve it).
AMD is less reliant on developer support than Nvidia for much of its acceleration, but it's not entirely driver-based. Smart Access Memory only works on systems equipped with a modern AMD Ryzen CPU, for example.
Unless you're looking for the cheapest RX 6000-series AMD options, I don't think the RX 6600 XT is the best choice for its price class; the RTX 3060 Ti seems like it delivers far better performance for (theoretically) not much more. And I wouldn't rule out an even lower-end model appearing later this year to satisfy your budget-constrained 1080p play -- there was an RX 5500, so it's always possible we'll see even lower end RX 6500 or RX 6500 XT models at some point for basic 1080p gaming.
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How Much Cheaper Are Store-Brand Groceries Than Name Brands?
How Much Cheaper Are Store-Brand Groceries Than Name Brands?
This story is part of Home Tips, CNET's collection of practical advice for getting the most out of your home, inside and out.
Store-brand groceries might not have all the flashy packaging and advertising oomph of your favorite cereal, seltzer and snacks. If you can grin and bear a cheesy knockoff in place of those name-brand products, though, you can save a bunch on your monthly food spending.
In a summerlong series on saving money to combat inflation, we've calculated whether it's cheaper to buy groceries online or in person and laid out some strategies for saving at Whole Foods. But it turns out one of the most surefire ways to save at the supermarket is by letting some of that brand loyalty go by the wayside.
If you're curious about exactly how much you can save buying store-brand groceries, I've done the math and the final figures are pretty shocking. On average, it's about 40% in total savings across various grocery categories. I compared the cost difference for buying name brands versus store-brand products at two popular grocery stores. Read on for a full savings breakdown in case you decide to make the switch.
Read more:Is Grocery Shopping Online Cheaper Than at the Store? I Did the Math
Who makes store-brand products?
First things first, it's well documented that most major food manufacturers label their products under a number of different brands, including generic or store brands. According to recent statistics captured by the Private Label Manufacturing Association, one in five store-brand products is manufactured by a private label manufacturer. It makes sense: Those manufacturers can then appeal to people who are paying at either price. But they want you to go for the brand name price, rather than the store brand. That's why advertising exists; to make you believe that brand name products are somehow better, when the truth is that identical products are often going down parallel conveyor belts, getting two different labels at the end of the production line.
This store-brand toasted cereal retails for around $2. A box of General Mills Cheerios is more like $5.
David Watsky/CNET
Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that all store-brand, O-shaped, toasted oat cereals are actually General Mills Cheerios in disguise, but it stands to reason that for a lot of store-brand products, the quality or flavor is potentially equal to their name- counterpart. And considering the opportunity for savings, they're certainly worth a taste test. While some brand-name products are unlikely to have a generic equivalent, (like, is anyone really seeking off-brand Cool Ranch Doritos?) commodity items like canned beans or rice would seem especially safe bets in the store-brand category.
Trader Joe's beloved pepita salsa is just one example of a store-brand item that's gained fandom and loyalty all its own.
Trader Joe's
Here's how much you can save buying store brand: Wegmans vs. Stop & Shop
I chose both Wegmans and Stop & Shop to represent high-end and average grocery store chains, using Instacart to generate current prices.
Discount grocery stores such as Trader Joe's and Aldi keep their costs low because they deal primarily in their own brands. Wegmans is an interesting example since it has a lot of its own brand loyalty, not only as a grocery store chain, but also for its Wegmans label. (Seriously, I know people who would cross state lines to stock up on its flavored seltzers. Take that, LaCroix.) Stop & Shop is generally perceived as a midrange grocery chain, with good selection and good quality, and not considered expensive, but neither is it revered for its generic brand, which is simply called SB or Store Brand.
Despite perceptions, however, both Wegmans and Stop & Shop are relatively aligned on prices, for both national and store-brand products. Wegmans came out a little ahead in price for name-brand products, in fact: The whole order was about $2 less than Stop & Shop's. Store-brand prices were within 20 cents of each other for the full list at both stores.
*Indicates store-brand item whose quantity was greater for listed price
Buying store brand can mean huge savings
For both Wegmans and Stop & Shop, the huge savings in buying generic products can't be denied. The original shopping list of 20 staple items amounted to about $125 in both locations, with the store-brand version of the list coming to just under $75. That's an average of 40% savings over the whole list.
Granted, this doesn't represent a complete shopping list, since certain grocery categories were excluded intentionally. Some of these items, such as condiments, are products that you might shop for once in a while, rather than weekly. Regardless, the math is clear: Store-brand products are significant potential savings in your grocery shopping experience.
Certain grocery stores including Trader Joe's and Wegmans have managed to cultivate cult-like fandom for their own brands.
Wegmans
How I evaluated name brands vs. store brands
Using grocery shopping list templates available online, I generated a list of 20 common staple ingredients from the pantry, bakery, dairy, deli and freezer sections, covering a variety of prices. Items such as whole fruits and vegetables and butchered meats aren't typically subject to brand (or they're rarely revealed) and I discluded them for the purposes of this investigation. For each of the items I selected, I compared prices between national, well-known brands and the store brand of the same item, at roughly the same size, using Instacart. If there's a discrepancy in size, I've noted that with an asterisk, but did not adjust the price accordingly, since I wanted to reflect an accurate total of what you'd pay for a grocery list's worth of either name-brand or store-brand products.
In most cases, the store-brand model was the larger size of the two items anyway, meaning even more savings if you factor in its relative value. For example, at Wegmans, Bonne Maman Strawberry Preserves are $6.39 for 13 ounces, whereas Wegmans brand Strawberry Preserves are only $4.09 for a full 18 ounces, nearly 50% more product. The savings on your grocery receipt will amount to $2.30, but if you scale up the Bonne Maman price to match the same amount of store-brand product, its price would become $8.85, representing a savings of $4.76, or over 50%, for the Wegmans brand.
Read more: Hungryroot Review: Meal Kits and Grocery Delivery Together as One
Certain upscale and imported goods like Bonne Maman preserves will cost you significantly more than store brand.
Bonne Maman
Where are the biggest savings on store-brand items?
Between both Wegmans and Stop & Shop, the more the brand-name item cost, the more savings were typically available, not only in terms of pure dollars and cents but also as percentage savings between the brand name and store brand. Brand-name items above $5 tended to result in the largest percentage discount, with bigger-ticket items such as olive oil, coffee and spaghetti sauce pushing 50% off or more for their generic or store-brand counterparts.
Pricier items such as olive oil and marinara sauce are where you're likely to see bigger savings if you opt for store brand.
Colavita
Less expensive items, especially those under $2 to begin with, may offer only 10% to 30% savings overall. For example, approximately 17 ounces of Colavita Extra virgin olive oil costs $12.79 at Stop & Shop, whereas the equivalent store-brand olive oil costs only $5.79, which amounts to over 55% off the name-brand price.
On the other hand, 16 ounces of Goya chickpeas are only $1.19 to begin with. With the store brand being only 10 cents less, the savings only amount to 8%. Olive oil, however, is more likely to be subject to quality and flavor nuance, so while the savings can be much larger, it may be a matter of personal preference if the savings are worth it. Chickpeas are generally less subject to flavor or texture scrutiny.
Costco's Kirkland is another budget store brand that has garnered its own customer loyalty.
Costco
Does every grocery store have its own brand?
While store brands are growing, not every grocery store has its own brand, and many just carry no-name or generic brands in addition to name-brand products. Among store brands, there are those that carry the name of the store in its proprietary label, such as Wegmans, Publix, Kroger and others that have a separate label for store-brand products, such as Stop & Shop's SB, Walmart's Great Value and Costco's Kirkland Signature. Whichever the case, it's worth getting to know your local grocer's store-brand products, to see where you may be able to generate huge savings in your grocery bill.
