If your iPhone won’t stop dropping calls, it can be difficult to troubleshoot. After all, you can’t just switch to Cingular Wireless anymore, and without the support of the network with the fewest dropped calls, what are you supposed to do? If your issue is tied to an iPhone 12 or iPhone 13, however, there is a new…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Stop Your iPhone 12 or 13 From Frequently Dropping Calls
Over 10,000 John Deere workers spread out across 14 locations have ended a nearly five-week-long strike after ratifying what the United Auto Workers Union is calling a “landmark agreement.”
Source: Gizmodo – 10,000 John Deere Union Workers Make Historic Gains, Ending Five-Week Strike
Russian hackers are reaching out to Chinese threat actors in an attempt to share tips and collaborate on cyber attacks. This comes at a time where there has been an increase in activity of Mandarin and Chinese-speaking players on RAMP and other communities across the dark web.
RAMP was created last summer by a member of the Babuk ransomware
Source: Hot Hardware – Chinese Hackers Team Up With Russian Ransomware Gang To Launch US Cybersecurity Assault
Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images)
In an effort to combat the ongoing global chip shortage, chipmaker GlobalFoundries and the Ford Motor Company have announced a “strategic collaboration” today, both via press release and coverage in The Wall Street Journal. The “non-binding agreement,” according to the release, “opens the door” for GlobalFoundries to deliver more chips to Ford in the short-term, while promising collaboration on future chips for cars.
“These could include semiconductor solutions for ADAS, battery management systems, and in-vehicle networking for an automated, connected, and electrified future,” the release reads. “GF and Ford also will explore expanded semiconductor manufacturing opportunities to support the automotive industry.”
This all sounds promising, though the press release doesn’t actually commit either company to any specific actions. When contacted for information on more particulars, Ford spokesperson Jennifer Flake reiterated that this was “an agreement to work together on the areas called out in the release,” but had no further information to share.
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Source: Ars Technica – Ford and chipmaker announce noncommittal “partnership” to alleviate shortages
Forget the metaverse, Warner Bros. is looking to make a splash with the MultiVersus, a cleverly titled brawler that wrangles a whole mess of iconic characters into a cooperative, free-to-play and cross-platform game that has the potential to be a mega hit. From what we have seen, it is in the style of Nintendo’s hugely popular Smash Bros.
Source: Hot Hardware – Watch WB MultiVersus Pit Batman, Bugs Bunny And More In Free Smash Bros Like Cross-Platform Brawler
Animal comedy capitalizes on the usual grace of the natural world and the inherent humor of slapstick. Since animals can’t do stand-up routines, we rely on their occasional anthropomorphics and blunders to get a laugh. Here are some of the winners of this year’s Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards, which honor photographers…
Source: Gizmodo – Squished Monkey Balls Win 2021 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards
The artificial intelligence research company OpenAI will eliminate the waiting list for access to the API of its natural language processing program (NLP) GPT-3. From a report: The move will accelerate access to the world’s best-known reading and writing AI model, and is a sign that OpenAI believes the program is safe enough — and can be monitored sufficiently — to be disseminated more widely. Developers from supported countries will be able to sign up to access GPT-3’s API and begin experimenting immediately, OpenAI said in an announcement Thursday morning. Previously developers had to sit on a waiting list as OpenAI reviewed them before they could even get experimental access. “We’ve added a lot of improvements across our API and added a number of safety features,” says Peter Welinder, VP of products and partnerships at OpenAI. “We think a lot of value can come from getting more developers to build solutions to problems that they see in their environments.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – OpenAI’s GPT-3 Gets a Little Bit More Open
As part of its plan to elbow its way into every corner of commerce, Amazon has now partnered with Starbucks to open a new cashierless cafe in New York City. With around 30,000 locations, the coffee franchise represents an opportunity for Amazon’s camera-based payment system to see exponential growth if the pilot’s a…
Source: Gizmodo – Starbucks Has Launched a Cafe in NYC That Uses Amazon’s Cashierless Payment System
Enlarge / Theranos founder and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes, left, walks with her mother, Noel Holmes, as they arrive for Elizabeth Holmes’ trial at the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building on November 17, 2021, in San Jose, California. Holmes is facing charges of conspiracy and wire fraud for allegedly engaging in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud investors. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Before his firm’s investment in Theranos, Brian Grossman acknowledged certain risks. The company may not have its devices approved by the FDA. It might fail to deploy its machines as quickly as hoped. It might not be able to rein-in manufacturing expenses for its proprietary devices. Those gave him pause before his firm invested $96 million, but these were questions of execution, the stuff experienced investors like Grossman know how to assess.
But with Theranos, there were questions beyond execution, questions that even savvy investors didn’t think to ask. “Did you think one of the risks here was that the founder and CEO was not being truthful to you?” assistant US attorney Robert Leach asked Grossman yesterday in the criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos’ founder.
“We did not think that was one of the risks,” Grossman replied.
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Source: Ars Technica – Theranos gave woman false-positive HIV result, then ghosted her
The weird thing about franchise canon is you have to take the good with the bad. This means that Disney/Lucasfilm has spent the better part of the past decade working overtime to fix the parts of the official Star Wars storyline that, uh, don’t really work—retroactively making them at least seem better by retconning…
Source: LifeHacker – What’s New on Disney Plus in December 2021
One of the more curious acquisitions in the last couple of years has been that of Nuvia by Qualcomm. Nuvia was a Silicon Valley start-up founded by the key silicon and design engineers and architects behind both Apple’s and Google’s silicon for the past few years. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon made it crystal clear when Nuvia was acquired that they were going after the high-performance ultraportable laptop market, with both Intel and Apple in the crosshairs.
Nuvia came out of stealth in November 2019, with the three main founders having spent almost a year building the company. Gerard Williams III, John Bruno, and Manu Gulati have collectively driven the silicon design of 20+ chips, have combined over 100 patent, and have been in leadership roles across Google, Apple, Arm, Broadcom, and AMD. Nuvia raised a lot of capital, $300M+ over two rounds of funding and angel investors, and the company hired a lot of impressive staff.
The goal of Nuvia was to build an Arm-based general purpose server chip that would rock the industry. Imagine something similar to what Graviton 2 and Ampere Altra are today, but with a custom microarchitecture on par (or better) with Apple’s current designs. When Nuvia was still on its own in start-up mode, some were heralding the team and the prospect, calling for the downfall of x86 with Nuvia’s approach. However, Qualcomm swept in and acquired the company in March 2021, and repurposed Nuvia’s efforts towards a laptop processor.
It’s been no secret that Qualcomm has been after the laptop and notebook market for some time. Multiple generations of ‘Windows on Snapdragon’ have come to market through Qualcomm’s partners, initially featuring smartphone-class silicon before becoming something more bespoke with the 8cx, 8cx Gen 2, and 7c/7 options in the past couple of years. It has taken several years for Qualcomm to get the silicon and the Windows ecosystem somewhere that makes sense for commercial and consumer use, and with the recent news that Windows 11 on these devices now enabling full x86-64 emulation support, the functional difference between a Qualcomm laptop and an x86 laptop is supposed to be near zero. Qualcomm would argue their proposition is better, allowing for 2 days of use on a single charge, holding charge for weeks, and mobile wireless connectivity with 4G/5G. I’ve tested one of the previous generation S855 Lenovo Yoga devices, and the battery life is insane – but I needed better were functional support (turns out I have an abnormal edge-case work flow…) and more performance. While Qualcomm has been working on the former since my last test, and Nuvia is set to bring the latter.
Image from @anshelsag on Twitter, Used with permission
At Qualcomm’s Investor Day this week, the Qualcomm/Nuvia relationship was mentioned in an update. I had hoped that by the end of this year (and Qualcomm’s Tech Summit in only a couple of weeks) that we might be seeing something regarding details or performance, however Qualcomm is stating that its original schedule is still on track. As announced at the acquisition, the goal is to deliver test silicon into the hands of partners in the second half of 2022.
The goal here is to have laptop silicon that is competitive with Apple’s M-series, but running Windows. This means blowing past Intel and AMD offerings, and coupled with the benefits of better battery life, sustained performance, and mobile connectivity. From the disclosures so far, it’s perhaps no surprise that the Nuvia CPUs will be paired with an Adreno GPU and a Hexagon DSP, although it will be interesting to see if the Nuvia CPU is a single big core paired with regular Arm efficient cores, or everything in the CPU side will be new from the Nuvia team.
I have no doubt that at Qualcomm’s Tech Summit in December 2022 we’ll get a deeper insight into the microarchitecture of the new core. Either that or Qualcomm might surprise us with a Hot Chips presentation in August. With regards to going beyond laptop chips, while Qualcomm is happy to state that Nuvia’s designs will be ‘extended to [other areas] opportunistically’, it’s clear that they’re locking the crosshairs on the laptop market before even considering what else might be in the field of view.
Source: AnandTech – Qualcomm x Nuvia: Silicon Sampling in Late 2022, Products in 2023
Last month, leaked images showing a platform fighting game featuring Warner Bros.-owned fictional properties including Batman and Steven Universe made the rounds. Today, WB Games confirmed the game, titled MultiVersus, in a trailer. And you know what? Unlike the name, it doesn’t look so bad! See for yourself:
Source: Kotaku – See Arya Stark Fight Batman In W.B.’s Bonkers New Fighting Game
Buy now, pay later services aren’t just popular among consumers. They’re also proving to be a hit with criminals. From a report: Fraudulent activity is on the rise at some of the largest buy now, pay later (BNPL) platforms in the industry, which include Klarna, Afterpay and Affirm, according to fraud experts who spoke with CNBC. BNPL products let shoppers split the cost of their purchases over three or four months, often interest-free. They’ve become massively popular in the U.S. and Europe, and generated almost $100 billion in transactions globally in 2020 alone. “Criminals love buy now, pay later,” Martin Rehak, CEO and co-founder of Czech fraud detection start-up Resistant AI, told CNBC. “You can already see crime on multiple levels.” Criminal gangs are exploiting weaknesses in the application process for BNPL loans, experts say, using clever tactics to slip through undetected and steal items ranging from pizza and booze to video game consoles.
One of the vulnerabilities, Rehak says, is BNPL firms’ reliance on data for approving new clients. Many companies in the industry don’ conduct formal credit checks, instead using internal algorithms to determine creditworthiness based on the information they have available to them. Retailers working with BNPL platforms “categorize things differently,” Rehak said, adding that this can lead to inconsistency. “There is always a way to exploit this and basically steal from you using someone else’s mistake.” For example, a partner merchant may run a special promotion event for alcohol but assign a vague category like “special event.” This runs the risk of fraud falling through the cracks if an artificial intelligence system doesn’t recognize the category and gives it a more generic label with low default risk. Rehak said many scammers are stealing people’s identities or taking over their accounts to evade detection, making unsuspecting victims foot the bill. He declined to name any specific companies being targeted, however, saying Resistant AI counts a number of BNPL businesses as clients.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – How Fraudsters Exploit Popular Interest-free Payment Plans
Earlier this year, Snapchat announced Map Layers, features for the Snap Map built around local content. The first two Layers, Memories and Explore, are now available to everyone.
Memories will display old snaps that you captured in certain places, with the idea that it’ll help you relive your favorite moments. Users will only be able to see their own memories in this Layer, which sort of builds on the My Places feature Snapchat added this summer. As for Explore, that’s a reimagined version of the heat map. You’ll be able to check out places though photos and videos that other users have shared publicly. You can access the Map Layers through a menu at the top right of the Snap Map.
Snap is also opening up Layers to third parties. A Ticketmaster layer showing nearby concerts (and providing a way to buy tickets) is coming soon, as is one from The Infatuation that highlights the best restaurants on the map. More Layers are in the pipeline too.
Source: Engadget – Snapchat adds memories and exploration features to the Snap Map
New research aimed to quantify a common and life-altering aftereffect of covid-19: a lingering loss of smell, also known as anosmia. The study estimates that up to 1.6 million people in the U.S. have experienced chronic anosmia lasting at least six months following their coronavirus infection.
Source: Gizmodo – Over a Million Americans May Have Permanently Lost Their Sense of Smell to Covid-19
MultiVersus, Warner Bros.’ forthcoming free-to-play video game, is one of the many attempts that companies have made at recreating the madcap perfection of Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros., a multiplayer fighter built on the premise of mashing up characters from different franchises as part of a wholly new, out-of-canon…
Source: Gizmodo – Warner Bros.’ MultiVersus Looks Like the IP Nightmare Lebron’s Space Jam Warned You About
Stop the rock, can’t stop the rock, we can’t stop the rock. Canonical may be working on introducing systemd to Ubuntu on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), according to a post by Ubuntu Desktop Team Technical Leader Didier Roche.…
Source: LXer – Ubuntu desktop team reports ‘proof of concept’ systemd on Windows Subsystem for Linux
As Earth’s orbit continues to get more and more crowded with space debris, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak looks to answer some of the looming questions that go along with it. Privateer is a startup that looks to study and classify space debris in an attempt to head off the Kessler Syndrome.
Earlier this week a Russian ASAT destroyed one
Source: Hot Hardware – Dangerous Space Debris Litters Earth’s Orbit And Wozniak’s Privateer Will Study Its Impact
Colorful is launching an iGame GeForce RTX Customization series with easily removable backplates, one of which is a blank canvas to imprint your own graphics, and I hope other GPU makers take note. While the execution here doesn’t sound perfect (more on that in a moment) the general idea is a sound one—letting users customize how their graphics
Source: Hot Hardware – Colorful GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Puts You In Charge Of The Magnetic Backplate’s Artwork
The battle between the appetites of European Union Member States’ governments to retain their citizens’ data — for fuzzy, catch-all ‘security’ purposes — and the region’s top court, the CJEU, which continues to defend fundamental rights by reiterating that indiscriminate mass surveillance is incompatible with general principles of EU law (such as proportionality and respect for privacy) — has led to another pointed legal critique of national law on bulk data retention. From a report: This time it’s a German data retention law that’s earned the slap-down — via a CJEU referral which joins a couple of cases, involving ISPs SpaceNet and Telekom Deutschland which are challenging the obligation to store their customers’ telecommunications traffic data. The court’s judgement is still pending but an influential opinion put out today by an advisor to the CJEU takes the view that general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data can only be permitted exceptionally — in relation to a threat to national security — and nor can data be retained permanently. In a press release announcing the opinion of advocate general Manuel Campos Sanchez-Bordona, the court writes that the AG “considers that the answers to all the questions referred are already in the Court’s case-law or can be inferred from them without difficulty”; going on to set out his view that the German law’s “general and indiscriminate storage obligation” — which covers “a very wide range of traffic and location data” — cannot be reconciled with EU law by a time limit imposed on storage as data is being sucked up in bulk, not in a targeted fashion (i.e. for a specific national security purpose).
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Advisor To EU’s Top Court Suggests German Bulk Data Retention Law Isn’t Legal
