“Thrill me.” This simple phrase, uttered numerous times in Fred Dekker’s 1986 sci-fi horror film Night of the Creeps, is both a command and a challenge. The characters want to be thrilled and so does the audience. Luckily, we both get our wish, as Night of the Creeps still delivers thrills almost 35 years since its…
Source: io9 – Night of the Creeps Still Thrills Us With Its Mashup of ’80s Sci-Fi and Comedy Tropes
Brooke Holden had all but given up on breaking into the video game business.
Source: Kotaku – How Over 25 People Got Scammed Into Working At A Nonexistent Game Company
Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook. (credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Today, Apple reported its Q3 2019 earnings to investors. Overall revenue is up 1% over the same quarter last year, reaching $53.8 billion. Apple CEO Tim Cook framed the report to investors as “a blowout quarter” for wearables, citing strong demand for the Apple Watch and AirPods as well as growth in services as counterbalances to a slight dip in iPhone sales.
iPhone revenue declined year-over-year (YOY) from $26.5 billion to $26 billion, and iPhones now make up less than half of Apple’s revenue. Cook attempted to smooth over reactions to the drop, saying, “While this is down 12% from last year’s June quarter, it is a significant improvement to the 17% year-over-year decline in Q2.” That previous-quarter decline sparked a plethora of hot takes from press and investors surmising the demise of Apple, despite the fact that the iPhone business alone would still be a Fortune 50 company on its own, even accounting for the decline.
Net sales for the iPad were just over $5 billion, and the Mac saw $5.82 billion on strong sales of the recently revised MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Wearables reached $5.52 billion, while services hit $11.45 billion. Services grew 13% YOY, remaining Apple’s biggest positive business story for yet another quarter. Apple claimed 420 million paid subscribers across its various services, indicated that services grew in all the regions the company tracks, and reiterated that it is on track to hit its goal to double services revenue by 2020.
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Source: Ars Technica – Virtually every Apple business grew in every region this quarter—except the iPhone
An anonymous reader shares a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Chrome 76 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The release includes Adobe Flash blocked by default, Incognito mode detection disabled, multiple PWA improvements, and more developer features. You can update to the latest version now using Chrome’s built-in updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome. Google has been taking baby steps to kill off Flash for years. In 2015, Chrome started automatically pausing less important Flash content. In 2016, Chrome started blocking “behind the scenes” Flash content and using HTML5 by default. In July 2017, however, Adobe said it would kill Flash by 2020. With Chrome 76, Flash is now blocked by default. Users can still turn it on in settings, but next year, Flash will be removed from Chrome entirely.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Chrome 76 Arrives With Flash Blocked By Default
This is the final call for proposals for the containers
and checkpoint/restore track at the Linux Plumbers Conference; the
deadline is Friday, August 2. LPC will take place September 9-11 in Lisbon,
Portugal.
Source: LWN.net – Final call for proposals for the containers and checkpoint/restore track at LPC 2019
According to a recent financial report from Sony, the PlayStation 4 has become the fastest home console to reach 100 million sales. Geek.com reports: The 100 million mark is an impressive milestone for any console no matter how long it takes to reach it. Sony previous hit it with the original PlayStation and set the total sales record with the PlayStation 2’s 155 million sales. Meanwhile, Nintendo also achieved this with the original Wii, the Game Boy line of handhelds, and the 154 million sales of the Nintendo DS. But after failing to hit the target with the beleaguered (albeit still successful) PlayStation 3, Sony has bounced back with the PlayStation 4. And since the PS4 has only been on the market for five years and seven months, it beat the record two months earlier than the previous fastest seller the PS2.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – PlayStation 4 Becomes Fastest Console To Sell 100 Million
Enlarge / Samsung teased two new devices to debut ahead of its Unpacked conference. (credit: Samsung)
Samsung has opted to release some new hardware ahead of its Unpacked conference next week. A shadowy teaser video gives launch dates for two new products: a tablet and a smartwatch.
The tablet is likely a full-featured Galaxy Tab S6. The most recent entry in the tech company’s tablet lineage was the midrange Galaxy Tab S5e, which combined a selection of high-end offerings and lightweight design at a $399 price point. The video shows that the new Tab will once again come with an S Pen stylus, and a keyboard cover will at least be an optional upgrade if not the default. More details will drop from Samsung tomorrow, with July 31 set as the tablet’s unveiling date.
The smartwatch will get its official introduction on August 5. Samsung’s February Unpacked event included a refresh of its wearables products, and the teased smartwatch is likely the follow-up to the Galaxy Watch Active. Expect to see only minor tweaks to the design and specs with the Galaxy Watch Active 2, since the original version only just hit the market a few months ago.
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Source: Ars Technica – Samsung to unpack new Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Watch over the next week
Google today promoted their Chrome 76 web-browser to stable for all supported platforms, including Linux…
Source: Phoronix – Chrome 76 Released With Flash Blocked By Default
“Access to computers and the Internet has become a basic need for education in our society.”?U.S. Senator Kent Conrad, 2004I spent seventeen years working in higher education, both as a campus technology leader and as an adjunct professor. Today, I continue as an adjunct professor. I know firsthand that educational technology is invaluable to the teaching and learning mission of universities—and that it changes at a rapid pace.read more
Source: LXer – From e-learning to m-learning: Open education’s next move
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: DoorDash’s years-long scheme to use customer tips to subsidize its workers’ wages is finally catching up to the company. And hot on the heels of renewed outrage about its tip-shaving scheme, a new class-action lawsuit is taking aim at the company for misleading its customers about how their tips were used. The suit, filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on behalf of Brooklyn resident Alan Arkin and “others similarly situated,” claims that that DoorDash failed to make clear to its customers that tips they gave through its app to couriers were not being allocated as they were intended to be, and that had customers known this, they would not have tipped through the app.
The suit defines a member of the class as someone who has “used DoorDash and paid a tip through the Door Dash app within the statutory period.” “DoorDash has engaged in unlawful and deceptive acts, practices and misconduct by misleading Plaintiff and the consuming public to believe that the tip amount entered on the DoorDash app would be received as a tip by the DoorDash delivery workers for their service,” the filing states. “DoorDash knew, and failed to disclose, that the tip amount entered by Plaintiff and other consumers on the app was received by DoorDash, in whole or in part, and used to subsidize its cost of doing business.” Gizmodo explains the tipping policy that got DoorDash in hot water: “Through a system introduced in 2017, DoorDash can pay as little as $1 per delivery to a worker depending on the amount that a customer tips on the order. This system promises a guaranteed earning, for example, $8, that the dasher will make on a delivery. If a customer does not tip, DoorDash will pay out $1 plus the remaining $7 it takes to make up that promised wage. However, if a customer does tip, their money will be used to subsidize the worker’s guaranteed pay. In other words, customers are essentially paying DoorDash — not the delivery worker — with their tip.”
DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said last week that the company would change its policy, but didn’t get into specifics.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – DoorDash Tip-Skimming Scheme Prompts Class-Action Lawsuit Seeking All Those Tips That Didn’t Go To Drivers
As promised, Google is ready to make websites respect Incognito mode whether they like it or not. The company has released Chrome 76 for Linux, Mac and Windows, closing a loophole that let sites detect private browsing by looking for the presence of…
Source: Engadget – Chrome now prevents sites from checking for private browsing mode
The GNOME Desktop Environment is among the most loved Linux Desktop Environments and with the right Linux tools you can turn it into the perfect one for you.
Source: Linux Today – The 12 Best Gnome Shell Extensions
In part one of our film industry kvetch sesh with Bruce Campbell, we covered the banality of superheroes, how Evil Dead changed over the years, and why Game of Thrones actress Emilia Clarke must be sick of greenscreens by now. This time around, we got to talk about his newest venture.
Source: io9 – Bruce Campbell on Keeping It Real With Ripley’s Believe It or Not
Following news this week that a mammoth data breach affected the personal information of millions of Capital One users, and with an individual now arrested in connection to the incident, Attorney General Letitia James of New York has announced her office is launching an “immediate” probe into the breach.
Source: Gizmodo – New York Attorney General Launches Probe Into Capital One Data Breach That Affects 100 Million People
The Solstice of Heroes has just begun in Destiny 2. It’s the return of last year’s in-game event where you think back on how swell your time playing Destiny 2 has been as you play more Destiny 2. Much like the first Solstice of Heroes, which was held around this time last year, this one serves as a last hurrah before…
Source: Kotaku – Destiny 2’s Solstice Event Is Back And Better Than Last Year’s Grind
TSMC has quietly introduced a performance-enhanced version of its 7 nm DUV (N7) and 5 nm EUV (N5) manufacturing process. The company’s N7P and N5P technologies are designed for customers that need to make then 7 nm designs run faster, or consume slightly lower amount of power.
TSMC’s N7P uses the same design rules as the company’s N7, but features front-end-of-line (FEOL) and middle-end-of-line (MOL) optimizations that enable to either boost performance by 7% at the same power, or lower power consumption by 10% at the same clocks. The process technology is already available to TSMC customers, the contract maker of chips revealed at the 2019 VLSI Symposium in Japan, yet the company does not seem to advertise it broadly.
N7P uses proven deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography and does not offer any transistor density improvements over N7. Those TSMC clients that need a ~ 18~20% higher transistor density are expected to use N7+ and N6 process technologies that use extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for several layers.
While both N7 and N6 will be ‘long’ nodes that will be used for years to come, TSMC’s next major node with substantial density, power, and performance improvements is N5 (5 nm). The latter will also be offered in a performance-enhanced version called N5P. This technology will also feature FEOL and MOL optimizations in order to make the chips run 7% faster at the same power, or reduce consumption by 15% at the same clocks.
Related Reading:
Source: WikiChip.Org
Source: AnandTech – TSMC Announces Performance-Enhanced 7nm & 5nm Process Technologies
Amazon’s home security company Ring has garnered enormous control over the ways in which its law enforcement partners are allowed to portray its products, going as far as to review and even author statements attributed to police in the press, according to emails and documents obtained by Gizmodo.
Source: Gizmodo – Everything Cops Say About Amazon’s Ring Is Scripted or Approved by Ring
The rumors of an imminent Apple Card launch were on the mark. As part of Apple’s latest earnings call, CEO Tim Cook confirmed that the iPhone-centric credit card will be available in the US sometime in August. He didn’t provide a specific date or o…
Source: Engadget – Apple Card rolls out in the US this August
The newer Fire Emblem games have placed an emphasis on romance and dating, though the series has been slow to make same-sex romance a viable option. Fire Emblem: Three Houses does allow you to experience same-sex romance—and it is explicitly romantic, and accessible for both male and female main characters. However,…
Source: Kotaku – Fire Emblem Is Slowly Improving Its Same-Sex Romance Options
In news that will shock absolutely nobody, LG and Sony continue to struggle when it comes to selling smartphones. An anonymous reader shares a report: Despite posting record second-quarter and first-half revenues and operating profit totaling $559.4 million — largely due to strong home appliance sales — LG’s Mobile Communications division continues to underperform. Sales of $1.38 billion equate to a 21.3% drop compared with the same period last year, although it is an increase of 6.8% over the previous quarter. The company blames the usual factors for these results: stagnant demand across the whole sector and “continued aggressive pricing by Chinese brands.” Further improvement is expected in Q3 with new products coming to market and greater demand for 5G products, apparently. It’s a similar story over at Sony, whose sales in the Electronics Products & Solutions division that smartphones are now a part of reached $776 million, marking a 15% decrease year-on-year. The Japanese company attributes the poor performance to a drop shipments of not just smartphones, but also televisions and digital cameras, two areas that Sony usually does better in.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Sony and LG Continue To Struggle To Sell Smartphones
