Amazon’s $25 minimum on their add-on items can be a bit of a bummer when you’re just trying to order something small, but How-To Geek points out you can use an Amazon Echo to get around that.
All you need to do is set up voice purchasing and 1-click purchases on Alexa (You can toggle those on under Settings > Voice Purchasing in the Alexa app on your phone), then ask Alexa to order the product you want. Then, instead of clicking through on Amazon and piling $25 worth of items into your shopping cart just to get one thing, ask Alexa to order it.
There have been weird ways around this in the past that tend to stop working after a while, so who knows how long this one’ll last, but it’s worth a shot for now. Head over to How-To Geek for more information.
How to Bypass Amazon’s $25 Add-On Item Minimum Using Alexa | How-To Geek

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Nvidia has officially launched the Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti mobile graphics processors, with over 30 laptops expected to be shown off at CES this week. Graphics giant Nvidia has announced the official launch of GeForce GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti graphics processors for laptops, which again do not include the -M suffix which would traditionally indicate a mobile variant.
Designed for gaming laptops and due to land in more than 30 devices within the first quarter courtesy of all the usual hardware partners, the new GeForce GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti mobile GPUs are based on the company’s Pascal architecture. The result, Nvidia boldly claims: up to three-fold improvements in performance and power efficiency compared with the company’s last-generation Maxwell-based mobile GPUs, but at a lower cost than its previously launched GTX 1080, GTX 1070, and GTX 1060 processors.
As is to be expected, the difference between the GeForce GTX 1050 and the GTX 1050 Ti lies in the amount of hardware that is unlocked on the chip: The GTX 1050 includes 640 CUDA cores running at a peak boost clock of 1,493MHz; the GTX 1050 Ti, by contrast, offers 768 CUDA cores running at 1,620MHz boost clock. In both cases, Nvidia claims, overclocking is supported with selected chips hitting a 300MHz increase over stock clocks thanks to a design which mandates a dual-FET power supply and multi-phased power controllers.
Power efficiency also comes into its own when running on battery: In internal testing, Nvidia claims to have hit a 30 percent battery life improvement over Maxwell hardware with greatly reduced micro-stutter, as caused by traditional software-based frame rate limiters. Both models also support DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0b and dual-link DVI outputs, though precisely which ports will be available depends entirely on which ports the laptop maker chooses to break out. Likewise, the amount of video RAM available is up to the laptop manufacturer with a maximum of 4GB of GDDR5 being supported.
Nvidia’s various hardware partners are to show off their own GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti laptops at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, with manufacturers already confirmed to include Acer, Dell and its Alienware subsidiary, Asus, HP, Lenovo, and MSI. More information on the lineup is available at the official microsite.

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Faraday Future unveiled the FF 91, its first production EV, at CES in Las Vegas Tuesday night. Unlike the fantasy racecar at last year’s show, the FF 91 (pronounced “nine-one”) actually moved and drove—drove itself, parked itself, and did 0-60 in 2.39 seconds live onstage (with a driver). Also unlike last year’s car, Faraday has plans for the FF 91, including the production of 300 limited editions in March and mass production sometime in 2018.
The interior of Faraday Future’s FF 91 is designed to be luxurious, and customizable to the driver’s and passengers’ needs.
That’s big talk from a company with known financial troubles, underscored by a recent, steady stream of executive departures. Key players remain, like Sampson and Richard Kim, the vice president of design. Still, it’s hard to know what FF can realistically accomplish in a still-volatile EV market. Consider that Tesla, a far more established EV company, still struggles with financial and production problems.
Faraday Future’s job on Tuesday night was simply to prove it has something real. It started by showing how the FF 91 could park itself, which it did live in the lot outside of the press conference.
The demo had its hiccups: The car took a long time to find the free spot, and as with other automated parking systems we’ve seen, it had to drive itself all the way past the parking spot to see it as empty, whereas humans can see the spot ahead and go straight into it.
Faraday Future showed off the automated parking feature on the FF 91.
The FF 91 can drive itself because it contains a raft of sensing technology, far more than I’ve seen on any other self-driving car prototype: 10 front- and rear-facing cameras; 13 long- and short-range radars; 12 ultrasonic sensors; and one high-definition 3D LiDAR.
That LiDAR is distinctive for being integrated into the hood of the FF 91. Where other automakers are trying to hide this bulky component, Faraday Future gave its LiDAR a glowing blue circle to show when it’s operating, and it can also rise out of the hood like a high-tech periscope.
After its parking adventure, the FF 91 drove itself onto the stage, with Vice President of Propulsion Engineering Peter Savagian riding in the driver’s seat.
Faraday Future tested the acceleration of its FF 91 against the Tesla Model X (shown) and other prominent competitors.
Savagian got to show the sizzle. He started with videos of 0-60 acceleration tests that pitted the FF 91 against Tesla, Ferrari, and Bentley competitors. All EV fans know that one of the joys of the technology is the instant torque that shoves you back in your seat while traditional transmissions are still working their way through the gears. Guess what: The FF 91 smoked them all.
To underscore the results, Savagian trotted out all the competitors to repeat their 0-60 acceleration tests live onstage. As each car shot away, Savagian took swipes at all the noise and smell from the Ferrari and Bentley’s internal combustion engines, compared to the swift, yet silent Tesla and Faraday Future cars. The FF 91 smoked them all again, though by a mere hundredths of a second over the Tesla Model S 100D.
Faraday Future’s CES press conference included live acceleration tests from Ferrari, Tesla, and Bentley automobiles, as well as its FF 91.
Okay, so the car can move. The next step is to make more of them. Faraday Future is starting with a splashy soft launch, where it will sell 300 limited editions of the FF 91 in March—yes, just two months away. The company will also assert its environmental friendliness by donating part of the profit from the limited edition to an environmental group yet to be named, and auctioning off an FF 91 for the direct benefit of that group.
Making 300 cars is a good start, but it’s another thing altogether to mass-produce thousands. Faraday Future said it would start doing that sometime in 2018, and it opened reservations for those cars Tuesday night. All you have to do is plunk down $5,000 (refundable) to get in line for the FF 91.
Faraday Future’s FF 91 is shown as it prepares to accelerate from 0 to 60 in less than 2.4 seconds.
The fact that this deposit is five times bigger than the $1,000 deposit for the Tesla Model 3 doesn’t mean the FF 91 will cost five times as much in total—Faraday Future actually hasn’t set a price yet, though given all the technology, it will likely be expensive. The higher deposit does suggest that Faraday Future is looking for serious and well-heeled buyers. If you want one of the special limited editions coming in March, you’ll need to upgrade that reservation deposit by an unspecified amount.
A lot of people expect Faraday Future to fail. The company has many interesting ideas and seems committed to its EV mission, but it may just plain run out of money and executives before it can reach the point of sustainability. Even the self-driving tech looks a little shaky, as an FF 91 balked at driving onstage during the last part of the presentation. But if enthusiasm and optimism can combat adversity, the Faraday Future executives that remain displayed gobs of it. Nick Sampson’s last words at the close of the event were almost poignant in their defiance: “Despite all the naysayers and skeptics,” he said, “we will persist. We will carry on.”

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