In this special edition of the Full Nerd, AMD’s Scott Herkelman stops by to talk all things Radeon VII, including why it doesn’t have ray tracing, and why an 8GB version isn’t in the cards.

Herkelman also dishes on how we may be seeing the VHS vs. Beta death match all over again with variable refresh monitors (Guess which one is FreeSync?).

You can witness it all in the video embedded above. You can also watch The Full Nerd Special Edition on YouTube (subscribe to the channel while you’re there!) or listen to it on Soundcloud if you prefer the audio alone.

[ Further reading: These 20 absorbing PC games will eat days of your life ]

Speaking of audio, you can subscribe to The Full Nerd in iTunes (please leave a review if you enjoy the show). We’re also on Stitcher, Google Play, or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader to: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:226190044/sounds.rss 

Microsoft has teamed with New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on a series of “hackathon” projects. The projects pair the technology company’s AI expertise with the Met’s collection of artwork to “transform future connections between people and art,” according to Microsoft. 

The “Met x Microsoft x MIT” partnership came out of a collaboration last December, where a two-day hackathon combined Microsoft’s AI technology and the museum’s data. It’s a part of the Met’s Open Access Program, designed to make the museum’s collections more accessible on the Internet. A number of Microsoft Azure cloud services were used, including Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Machine Learning, conversational AI, and more.

Although we don’t know how or when these projects will become publicly available, the five that emerged from the collaboration include:

Artwork of the Day: While Microsoft’s Bing search engine publishes a photograph on its homepage every day, Artwork of the Day is slightly different: It will use AI to find an piece of art in the Met that somehow relates to you, based on information publicly known about you. For instance, if it’s known that your hometown is Chicago, Artwork of the Day might show you a painting of that city. 

Tag, that’s it!: This project suggests pairing humans with machines to crowdsource keywords for works of art that the Met archives, and then using those keywords in conjunction with the Wikimedia platforms to suggest related art when those keywords are called up.

Storyteller: Storyteller will take a different slant on the “Tag!” hack: As a person is telling a story out loud, Microsoft’s conversational AI will listen in for keywords and select art to illustrate the story, as it’s being told. Microsoft envisions that the resulting stream of images could be shared on social media or printed.

Gen studio: Images are the medium of this hack, where each image is analyzed for connections to other works of art in the Met archive. The hope here is that users will be able to explore cross-cultural connections, so that—for example—images of the sun in Mayan art would lead into depictions of the sun in Native American or African art, creating visual relationships between cultures.

My Life, my Met: Finally, My Life, My Met turns the focus to you and your social media feed. This hack intelligently matches the images in your Instagram feed with over 400,000 images available through The Met’s Open Access program. “Your celebration of a recent football win may be replaced by a late fifth-century B.C. Terracotta askos in the form of a duck,” Microsoft suggests. 

Nest is adding Google Assistant functionality to Nest Guard, the base station for its Nest Secure home security system.

The feature is rolling out from today through a firmware update, and it will enable owners to ask questions and get answers through the device—the same way it can be used on a smartphone or Google Home smart speaker.

The announcement marks the first time Nest, which is owned by Google, has disclosed that there is a microphone in the Nest Guard unit. The specifications page on Nest’s website doesn’t mention a microphone alongside all the other sensors on the device.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the internal microphone isn’t enabled by default and the Google Assistant function needs to be affirmatively enabled by a user.

Martyn Williams/IDG

The feature, which is switched on and off in the Nest app, allows a homeowner to announce “I’m home” and have a pre-programmed routine do things such as switch on music and lights. It won’t be possible to disarm the alarm through a voice command, however; that will still require a numeric code or Nest RFID key fob.

The Google Assistant feature will also enable the system to entertain questions about the weather, your schedule for the day, the latest football results, or whatever else you decide to throw at it.

To enable the feature, make sure you have the latest version of the Nest app from the Google Play Store, and then hit the settings icon in the top right corner of the Nest home screen. Scroll down to security and choose your Nest Guard in the devices section. If you have the latest software, the option to add Google Assistant and toggle the microphone on and off will be at the top of the screen. If it’s not there, check a few days later for a software update.

Google Assistant is already available in some Nest indoor home security cameras, and this expands Nest’s already deep roots in the Google smart home ecosystem.

Google and Amazon, which has the Alexa digital assistant, are locked in a battle to become the default voice assistant for the home. By offering easy-to-use voice assistants in a variety of devices, each company hopes to drive increased use of its services and, with that, discover more about people’s lives.

You may have used Excel for years without delving into Styles (or stylesheets), but they can make work easier and faster—and more visually appealing. In this feature, we’re going to go over Cell Styles, and Smart Art, Drawing, Graphics, Picture, and Chart Tools. (We’re skipping 3D Model Tools for now because they don’t have Styles.)

Cell Styles

If you type a sentence in Excel, most of us just format the sentence using the features in the Font, Alignment, or Number groups, which include additional features such as colors, borders, orientation, and more. Or we might right-click for the popup/context menu and choose the features from there.

JD Sartain / IDG Worldwide

However, you can also select the group called Styles > Cell Styles, and choose preset styles with custom fonts, colors, and attributes, as well as borders, shading, and paragraph levels such as Heading 1, Heading 2, Title, and more. Play around to learn more about your choices. 

The best way to explain how Graphic Styles work in Excel is to just create some.

Smart Art Tools & Styles

Smart Art Graphics are Excel’s premade business graphics. A partial list of the graphics includes:

• Block Lists
• Process Arrows and Diagrams
• Organizational Charts
• Radial Cycles
• Segmented Pyramids
• Picture Grids
• Image Captions
• Interconnected Rings
• …and 200 plus more.

1. Open Excel. From the Insert tab > Illustrations group, click the Smart Art Graphic icon (between Shapes and Store on the Ribbon menu).

2. Browse through the list and select a Smart Art Graphic for this exercise. We chose Process > Step Down Process, then clicked OK.

JD Sartain / IDG Worldwide

3. Excel drops the graphic in the center of the page showing the selection handles/circles, which means the graphic is active. When a graphic is active, Excel displays a new tab on the Ribbon menu called [something] Tools > Design/Format where the “something” is determined by the selected graphic, such as Smart Art Tools, Drawing Tools, Chart Tools, Graphics Tools, and Picture Tools. If you de-select (or click outside) the graphic, these menu items disappear.

4. The Smart Art Tools > Design menu includes the following groups: Create Graphic, Layouts, Change Colors, Smart Art Styles, and Reset. From here, you can select a different Layout, a different Smart Art Style, or Change Colors.

5. Under the Smart Art Tools > Format menu, you can edit the Shapes in 2D (for easy editing); alter the Shape Styles; change the shape, color, outline, or Effects; change the WordArt Style; alter the arrangement or alignment of the graphics; and alter the size.

NOTE: Notice that the text inside a text box can use the popup/context menu, the Ribbon menu, or the preset Styles menus from the Drawing Tools > Format menus tab. The text inside an illustration or picture (such as a Graphic, Chart, Drawing, Smart Art, Word Art) uses the corresponding Tools > Design / Tools > Format menus.

JD Sartain / IDG Worldwide

JD Sartain / IDG Worldwide

10. With the graphic still selected, choose Smart Art Tools > Format, and another menu of Styles and formatting features appears. Select Shape Effects to add a Shadow, Reflection, Glow, Soft Edges, Bevel Style or 3D Rotation.

NOTE: Notice that Shape Fill and Shape Outline change the background color of the graphic box or adds a border around the graphic box, not the graphics inside the box, unless you select the graphics inside the box separately or use Ctrl+ Left Click (Ctrl+ Select) to select multiple graphics inside the box. For example, you might select both arrows and make them the same color.

JD Sartain / IDG Worldwide

Drawing Tools & Styles

1. From the Insert tab > Text group (far right side of Ribbon menu), select the WordArt button (the right-tilting letter ‘A’).

2. Choose a text design, and a text box opens that says: Your Text Here. Enter some text (we entered the words Excel Styles).

3. Notice that the new tab says Drawing Tools > Format. Select WordArt Styles > Text Effects > Transform. As you move your cursor down the menu list, the selected text changes so you can see and decide which text effect you prefer; follow Path or Warp.

4. For the second graphic on this Excel screen, choose a Shape from Insert > Shapes. Select a gradient from Drawing Tools > Format > Shape Fill and a border or outline from Drawing Tools > Format > Shape Outline. Insert some WordArt in the center of the banner, then add a color, gradient, or pattern and outline from the same menu.

Keep reading to learn about Graphics Tools, Picture Tools, and Chart Tools

The best smart thermostat will have an outsize impact not only how comfortable you are in your home, but also on your household budget. Heating and cooling your home accounts for nearly half of the average home’s utility bills, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

A programmable thermostat can help reduce those costs by turning your HVAC system on when you anticipate being home, and off when you don’t think you’ll need indoor climate control. A smart thermostat goes far beyond relying on a simple schedule. It will not only enable you to create more sophisticated schedules for every day of the week, and give you complete control over your HVAC system, even when you’re away from home. We continually test and evaluate smart thermostats and can help you find the right one for your home.

Best smart thermostat

Nest usually gets all the attention—and the company deserves credit for shaking up a once sleepy market—but we think the Ecobee4 is the best choice when it comes to smart thermostats. The big change over the Ecobee3? The new model harbors an Amazon Echo clone. We’re not sure the addition was absolutely necessary, but it doesn’t inflate the thermostat’s cost over our previous pick (and there’s really no reason to upgrade if you already own one).

Most of the other smart thermostats we’ve tested rely on measuring a home’s temperature in just one spot: Where the thermostat is located. Trouble is, that spot is usually in a hallway or somewhere else that you never spend any time in. The Ecobee4 lets you place sensors in multiple rooms in your home, so you’ll always be comfortable where you do spend most of your time. The Ecobee4 is also compatible with just about every other smart home device you can imagine, including Samsung’s SmartThings, Wink, Haiku ceiling fans, and Apple’s HomeKit ecosystem.

Runner-up

Don’t count Nest out of the thermostat game. The Google division has worked harder than anyone to build out a comprehensive smart home ecosystem with its own products—the Nest Cam security camera series and the Nest Protect smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors—as well as a wide array of third-party products: Everything from ceiling fans to lighting controls and even smart appliances. The recent addition of the Nest Temperature Sensor makes this device even smarter.

So why does it garner runner-up status here? Nest counts on your buying other Nest products to help determine when you’re home and away, for starters. And anyone investing—or planning to invest—in Apple’s up-and-coming HomeKit ecosystem should steer clear of Nest products.

Best budget smart thermostat

If you don’t need all the bells and whistles that fancier smart thermostats offer (and you don’t need to control a humidifier, dehumidifier, or ventilator), Honeywell’s Lyric T5 is a great choice. It’s not as sophisticated as our top picks in this category, but it’s considerably less expensive.

Runner-up

Building the Nest Thermostat E with plastic, instead of glass and stainless steel, helped the company shave $80 on its price tag. While it’s designed to blend into its surroundings, versus calling attention to itself in the way its pricier stablemate does, the model E has most of the same smarts, and it’s compatible with the Nest Temperature Sensor. It is not, however, capable of controlling some of the more sophisticated HVAC systems on the market. Make sure it’s compatible with yours before you purchase one.

What to look for when shopping

C-wire requirement Most smart thermostats require more electrical power than a set of batteries can provide. Fortunately, they don’t require so much power than they need to be plugged into the wall. They rely instead on low-voltage power provided by your HVAC system. Many smart thermostats require the presence of a dedicated C (common) wire for this purpose, while others can siphon electricity from another source, typically the R (power) wire. But the latter practice is known to cause problems with some HVAC systems, including permanent damage. If you pull out your existing thermostat to install a smart model and find no C wire connected to it, look inside the wall to see if there’s one that hasn’t been connected. If there’s no C wire, our advice is to have one installed. Only a couple of the thermostats reviewed here require a C wire, but all the manufacturers highly recommend using one.

Ease of installation A thermostat shouldn’t be difficult to install, even if you’re only moderately handy. The manufacturer should provide comprehensive, yet easy-to-understand instructions with plenty of photographs or illustrations to guide you through the process. The thermostat itself should be clearly indicate which wires go where, and most companies provide labels that you can attach to the wires coming out of the wall as you disconnect and remove your old model. The wires themselves should be color coded, but a good practice is to photograph your old thermostat for reference before you take it down.

Honeywell

Samsung