Some writers would start this post by stating that there are no rules when it comes to which dips you like with which chips. But those writers would be wrong. Of course there are rules.
Source: LifeHacker – The Takeout investigates: Which chip for which dip?
You’d think that smart door locks and home security systems would regularly work in harmony, but that’s not really the case. More likely than not, you’ll have to remember to check the lock after the fact. Not so if you have August’s Smart Lock Pro…
Source: Engadget – August’s smart lock links up with Protect America’s security systems
Ken Bone has logged on, and for a guy who has pounded three beers in under 20 minutes, he’s making some reasonable points.
Source: Gizmodo – Ken Bone Is Getting Drunk and Tweeting Through the State of the Union
Want a way to pick up a bulk of Rockstar Games’ back catalog and help a good cause? Then head over to Humble where donating $1 or more will get you Grand Theft Auto III, GTA: Vice City and the grisly stealth game Manhunt. Bumping up your pledge to $8…
Source: Engadget – Humble is selling Rockstar Games on the cheap to save the rainforest
Join the Splinter staff as we comment live on President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address and the Democrats’ response.
Source: Gizmodo – Our Destiny Is Death: Splinter’s State of the Union 2018 Live Blog
To date, messaging with Alexa has meant sending screeds using Amazon’s in-house system, which doesn’t do you much good if your recipient doesn’t have an Echo speaker. You won’t have to be quite so selective from now on, however, as Amazon has added…
Source: Engadget – Alexa can send SMS messages using your voice
If you haven’t been paying attention for the last 81 years of Western cultural history, New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is one of the biggest, most popular, and respected art museums in the world. It also recently happened to decline a request from Donald Trump to loan Vincent Van Gogh’s 1888 painting …
Source: Gizmodo – MAGA Chuds Try to Take Down the Guggenheim on Facebook and Yelp Over a Golden Toilet
Andres Rodriguez working for Valve as part of their Linux graphics driver team has begun landing his work around OpenGL semaphores for Mesa/Gallium3D and following through with the necessary bits for RadeonSI with the EXT_semaphore work being needed by SteamVR…
Source: Phoronix – RadeonSI Semaphore Begins Hitting Mesa Git, Needed By SteamVR On Linux
On Monday, the California State Senate approved a bill that would impose net neutrality restrictions on internet service providers doing business in the state.
Source: Gizmodo – #NetNeutrality: California State Senate Approves Bill Protecting Open Internet Rules, Despite FCC Order
This afternoon, AMD announced their earnings for the fourth quarter of 2017. AMD ended the 2017 fiscal year on a high note, with earnings that beat their initial estimates. For the quarter, revenues were up 34% from a year ago to $1.48 billion, and AMD was able to maintain the 35% gross margin they achieved last quarter as well, which is right where they need to be for profitability. Operating income for the quarter was $82 million, up from an operating loss of $3 million a year ago. Net income was $61 million, once again compared to a net loss of $51 million a year ago. This resulted in earnings per share of $0.06.
| AMD Q4 2017 Financial Results (GAAP) | |||||
| Q4’2017 | Q3’2017 | Q4’2016 | |||
| Revenue | $1480M | $1643M | $1106M | ||
| Gross Margin | 35% | 35% | 32% | ||
| Operating Income | +$82M | +$126M | -$3M | ||
| Net Income | +$61M | +$71M | -$51M | ||
| Earnings Per Share | +$0.06 | +$0.07 | -$0.06 | ||
AMD also reports non-GAAP results, which are generally there to show the underlying business performance when they have large write downs, but this quarter AMD’s non-GAAP results closely mirror the GAAP performance, but with no wafer restructuring or other large expenses, the non-GAAP results for this quarter are mainly excluding stock-based compensation, which was $21 million for the quarter. In terms of non-GAAP, operating income was $103 million, net income was $88 million, and earnings per share were $0.08.
For the full year, AMD had revenues of $5.53 billion, which was up 25% from 2016, with an overall gross margin of 34%. Operating income for the year was $204 million, compared to an operating loss of $372 million the year before. Net income for the company for the full year was $43 million, compared to a $497 million loss in 2016.
The bulk of the growth from AMD is unsurprisingly from their Computing and Graphics segment, which has seen somewhat of a perfect storm, with the release of the well-received Ryzen CPU lineup this year, along with a cryptocurrency market which is currently absorbing every GPU it can get its hands on. Thanks to new product releases in both the CPU and GPU from AMD, Computing and Graphics had revenue for the quarter of $958 million, which is up 60% from a year ago. This segment had an operating income of $85 million, up from a net loss of $21 million a year ago.
| AMD Q4 2017 Computing and Graphics | |||||
| Q4’2017 | Q3’2017 | Q4’2016 | |||
| Revenue | $958M | $819M | $600M | ||
| Operating Income | +$85M | +$70M | -$21M | ||
Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom had segment revenue for the quarter of $522 million, which is up 3% from a year ago, which AMD attributes to server revenue. The segment had an operating income of $19 million, down from $47 million a year ago.
| AMD Q4 2017 Enterprise, Embedded, and Semi-Custom | |||||
| Q4’2017 | Q3’2017 | Q4’2016 | |||
| Revenue | $522M | $824M | $506M | ||
| Operating Income | $19M | $84M | $47M | ||
All Other had an operating loss of $22 million, which is an improvement from the $29 million loss in Q4 2016.
AMD is expecting revenues of $1.55 billion for Q1 2018, plus or minus $50 million.
2018 looks to be an exciting year for AMD, after their first really successful year in a long time. AMD is expecting to see Ryzen Mobile designs from all the major PC OEMs soon, which should help get it into the hands of more customers (and reviewers!) and the agreement to build a GPU for Intel to integrated on their own CPU is an interesting way to get Radeon into the hands of more people.
Source: AMD Investor Relations
Source: AnandTech – AMD Announces Q4 FY 2017 Results
During last year’s E3, BioWare unveiled its next colossal project: Anthem, a sci-fi shooter that looked to rival Activision’s Destiny 2. But a week ago, sources told Kotaku that the game, originally slated to arrive in 2018, would be pushed back a ye…
Source: Engadget – EA delays ‘Anthem’ until 2019
In an article on TechCruch, sources say that TrackR has laid off 42 of it’s 90 employees. The company, known for making bluetooth tracking-devices for things like wallets, keys, and luggage lists just over 90 emplyees on Linkedin, including investors and board members, while PitchBook notes 35 employees, meaning that this could be more than half of TrackR’s staff. TrackR raised $50 million in August after getting valued at $201 million.
While a great concept, I had honestly forgotten they existed, perhaps some of that $50 million could have went to advertising. And while I see it being a useful product, at $30 each, seems a little much for a gadget like this.
Smith, the co-founder, has also spoken in the past about the company’s ambitions to go beyond its existing tracking of smaller items based on Bluetooth and mapping. One idea, he told me in November last year, was to expand to more enterprise applications, for example measuring and “tracking” how machines are working in factories using diagnostics connected to soundwaves (machines humming differently when they are broken versus when they are working) and other details of this kind.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – TrackR Lays Off 42 Staff Members
T-Mobile said on Monday that it will move to 100 percent renewable electricity by the year 2021. It had also “finalized a contract for wind power from the Solomon Forks Wind Project in Kansas,” reports CNBC. “Power generation there is due to begin at the beginning of 2019, and will supplement the energy T-Mobile receives from the Red Dirt Wind Power Project in Oklahoma.” From the report: John Legere, T-Mobile’s president and CEO, said moving to renewable energy was the right thing to do and smart business. “We expect to cut T-Mobile’s energy costs by around $100 million in the next 15 years thanks to this move,” he added. T-Mobile has also joined the RE100, a group of global businesses committed to renewable power. Other members of the RE100 include Apple, Facebook and Google.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – T-Mobile Commits To 100 Percent Renewable Electricity By 2021
Samsung’s head honcho was found guilty of bribery last year and its vice-chairman stepped down due to “unprecedented crisis,” but that didn’t affect the Korean conglomerate’s cashflow at all. In fact, the company did very well in the fourth quarter o…
Source: Engadget – Samsung sets record Q4 profits ahead of Galaxy S9 launch
Today, Amazon, along with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan, announced a plan to launch an independent company that will offer healthcare services to the companies’ employees at a lower cost. The venture, which will be managed by executives from the firms, will be run more like a non-profit, than a for-profit entity. Even though the plans are vague, the news caused the market value of 10 large, listed health insurance and pharmacy stocks to drop by a combined $30 billion in the first two hours of trading. Quartz reports: “The healthcare system is complex, and we enter into this challenge open-eyed about the degree of difficulty,” said Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in a statement. “Hard as it might be, reducing healthcare’s burden on the economy while improving outcomes for employees and their families would be worth the effort. Success is going to require talented experts, a beginner’s mind, and a long-term orientation.” Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, likened America’s mushrooming healthcare costs to “a hungry tapeworm on the American economy.” How the venture will provide less pricy healthcare to the 1.2 million employees of the participating companies isn’t yet clear. The new company will leverage “technology solutions” that provide “simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost.” Not much else, including the name of the company, is known.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Amazon’s Push Into Healthcare Just Cost the Industry Billion In Market Cap
Paul Nehlen is a Republican candidate for Congress who’s running in the First Congressional District of Wisconsin, also known as the seat currently held by House Speaker Paul Ryan. Over the past few months, he’s gone full fascist, courting support from the alt-right both in Twitter DMs and in public.
Source: Gizmodo – GOP Congressional Candidate Makes List Of Jews
With the RadeonSI NIR back-end continuing to mature with more OpenGL coverage and now supporting GLSL 4.50, I decided to run some tests of Mesa 18.1-dev Git to see the impact when enabling NIR support…
Source: Phoronix – Trying Out RadeonSI NIR With Some OpenGL Linux Games On Mesa 18.1-dev
Navigation systems including those found in commercial flights may be disrupted or jammed completely across the southwest U.S. over the next couple of weeks. That sounds pretty bad but do not be too alarmed, it’s not Red Dawn. It’s just the U.S. Air Force and its massive annual Red Flag war exercises based out of…
Source: Gizmodo – Flights In The Western U.S. May Get Delayed By Massive Military GPS Blackout
What have you done Kodak, what have you done? Earlier this month, the stalwart film company got into bed with the oh-so-tempting blockchain brigade, and its stock price dutifully shot up. With one day to go before its initial coin offering, more details have emerged about this unholy marriage, and it’s easy to believe…
Source: Gizmodo – Oh My God, Kodak Is Going to Die, Isn’t It?
Though Microsoft has been rolling out Edge to more devices, iPad users have been left waiting. But it appears that the browser will finally be making its debut on the iPad sometime soon. As Neowin spotted, Sean Lyndersay, an Edge program manager, twe…
Source: Engadget – Microsoft will preview the Edge browser for iPad next month