Monthly Archives: January 2023

A Drug Company Made $114 Billion Gaming America's Patent System

Posted on by

The New York Times looks at the AbbVie’s anti-inflammatory drug Humira and their “savvy but legal exploitation of the U.S. patent system.” Though AbbVie’s patent was supposed to expire in 2016, since then it’s maintained a monopoly that generated $114 billion in revenue by using “a formidable wall of intellectual property protection and suing would-be competitors before settling with them to delay their product launches until this year.”

AbbVie did not invent these patent-prolonging strategies; companies like Bristol Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca have deployed similar tactics to maximize profits on drugs for the treatment of cancer, anxiety and heartburn. But AbbVie’s success with Humira stands out even in an industry adept at manipulating the U.S. intellectual-property regime…. AbbVie and its affiliates have applied for 311 patents, of which 165 have been granted, related to Humira, according to the Initiative for Medicines, Access and Knowledge, which tracks drug patents. A vast majority were filed after Humira was on the market.

Some of Humira’s patents covered innovations that benefited patients, like a formulation of the drug that reduced the pain from injections. But many of them simply elaborated on previous patents. For example, an early Humira patent, which expired in 2016, claimed that the drug could treat a condition known as ankylosing spondylitis, a type of arthritis that causes inflammation in the joints, among other diseases. In 2014, AbbVie applied for another patent for a method of treating ankylosing spondylitis with a specific dosing of 40 milligrams of Humira. The application was approved, adding 11 years of patent protection beyond 2016.

AbbVie has been aggressive about suing rivals that have tried to introduce biosimilar versions of Humira. In 2016, with Amgen’s copycat product on the verge of winning regulatory approval, AbbVie sued Amgen, alleging that it was violating 10 of its patents. Amgen argued that most of AbbVie’s patents were invalid, but the two sides reached a settlement in which Amgen agreed not to begin selling its drug until 2023.

Over the next five years, AbbVie reached similar settlements with nine other manufacturers seeking to launch their own versions of Humira. All of them agreed to delay their market entry until 2023.

A drug pricing expert at Washington University in St. Louis tells the New York Times that AbbVie and its strategy with Humira “showed other companies what it was possible to do.”

But the article concludes that last year such tactics “became a rallying cry” for U.S. lawmakers “as they successfully pushed for Medicare to have greater control over the price of widely used drugs that, like Humira, have been on the market for many years but still lack competition.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – A Drug Company Made 4 Billion Gaming America’s Patent System

The Morning After: What to expect from Samsung's Unpacked event this week

Posted on by

It’s almost time for Samsung to unveil another generation of its flagship Galaxy S smartphones. Fortunately for us, leaks have revealed a lot of the major beats ahead of the February 1st event. It seems all the show-stopping features will come to the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Rumors have long pointed to the highest-end S23 model sporting a 200-megapixel main camera – and then Samsung revealed a new camera sensor that pretty much fits that specification. You may not see other sweeping changes, design-wise, but according to leaked images, the camera array on the S23 and S23+ may drop the cut-out look of last-gen, making it look more like the Ultra.

TMA
Nieuwe Mobiel

Across the whole S23 family, which will probably include the S23, S23+ and Ultra, well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims Samsung will use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, rather than its in-house Exynos chips. Exynos-based Galaxy phones have a reputation for worse performance and battery life, so this could be a good thing.

Alongside the phones, we expect Samsung to launch a new ultra laptop, the Galaxy Book 3 Ultra. The company’s mobile president TM Roh even mentioned in a blog post that there will be Ultra products in “more device categories,” so this must be it. Samsung Display said the high-end Galaxy Book line will feature OLED screens with built-in touch, much like smartphones. The Ultra is also expected to arrive in tandem with more conventional Galaxy Book 3 PCs.

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Watch the latest ‘Super Mario Bros. Movie’ trailer

It pits Cat Mario against Donkey Kong.

TMA
Nintendo

Nintendo shared a surprise trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The 30-second clip shows additional footage from a scene first featured in the trailer Nintendo released last November. More importantly, it marks our first chance to hear Seth Rogen’s take on Donkey Kong.

Continue reading.

Mac mini review (M2 Pro, 2023)

A Mac mini Pro, in all but name.

TMA
Engadget

The M2 Pro-equipped Mac Mini is a powerhouse in a small-form-factor disguise. The $1,299 model offers tremendous performance for creators who don’t want to shell out $1,999 for a Mac Studio. But, as is often the case, beware of Apple’s exorbitant upgrade costs for RAM and storage. Check out Devindra Hardawar’s full review.

Continue reading.

Microsoft will continue to ‘support and grow’ Halo, amid layoffs

That’s from Xbox head, Phil Spencer.

Xbox CEO Phil Spencer says Microsoft remains committed to the Halo franchise and its developer, 343 Industries. In an interview following this week’s Xbox and Bethesda Developer Direct showcase, Spencer told IGN “the heart and soul of Halo is with 343, and I have the utmost confidence in the team that’s there.” The Halo studio was reportedly “hit hard” by Microsoft’s recently announced company-wide layoffs. The number of employees Microsoft let go at the studio is unknown, but according to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Halo Infinite’s campaign team saw significant cuts.

Continue reading.

Meta’s pricey Quest Pro VR headset is $400 off right now

It’s a hefty first-time discount.

Meta’s pricey Quest Pro headset is on sale for the first time. After a hefty 27 percent discount, the headset is currently $1,100 – that’s $400 off – through Amazon and other retailers. Thanks to its Snapdragon XR2+ chipset and 12GB of RAM, the Quest Pro is 50 percent more powerful than the Quest 2. It also features solid built-in speakers with support for spatial audio. That said, the Quest Pro isn’t for everyone. There are still few apps and games that take advantage of all this advanced hardware.

Continue reading.



Source: Engadget – The Morning After: What to expect from Samsung’s Unpacked event this week

Linux Will Now Better Handle AMD SEV-SNP To Avoid Undefined Behavior For Old VMs

Posted on by

Merged on Sunday prior to tagging Linux 6.2-rc6 is a late “fix” for the AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) code to avoid possible situations of undefined behavior with difficult to debug issues where a modern Linux host with SEV-SNP may try booting a Linux virtual machine with an outdated kernel…

Source: Phoronix – Linux Will Now Better Handle AMD SEV-SNP To Avoid Undefined Behavior For Old VMs

The generative AI revolution has begun—how did we get here?

Posted on by

Read 69 remaining paragraphs | Comments



Source: Ars Technica – The generative AI revolution has begun—how did we get here?

HBO’s The Last of Us tries a little tenderness in a surprising episode 3

Posted on by
Paranoid survivalist is the part Nick Offerman was born to play.

Enlarge / Paranoid survivalist is the part Nick Offerman was born to play.

New episodes of The Last of Us are premiering on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars’ Kyle Orland (who has played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn’t) will be talking about them here every Monday morning. While these recaps don’t delve into every single plot point of the episodes, there are obviously heavy spoilers contained within, so go watch the episode first if you want to go in fresh.

Kyle: OK, I know I spent a lot of time last week complaining about flashbacks, but I have many fewer complaints about this week’s extended flashback. This is the kind of important, character-driven backstory that was only hinted at in the games and which a prestige TV show feels particularly well-suited to fill in, and this episode did a beautiful job of it.

Andrew: Yes, this week’s episode is genuinely lovely and unexpected—essentially an episode of a The Last of Us-themed anthology show that is bookended with 10 or 15 minutes of Joel and Ellie on either side. It’s also a tonal break from what I am sure will be a whole lot of fighting, running, and chasing later on in the season.

And it’s also an antidote for the show’s earlier reliance on tropes. “Loner conspiracy theorist captures the love of his life in one of his bunker traps” is not a story beat you see repeated in most apocalypse stories.

You mentioned that this was hinted at in the games. Is there a source for these characters (or similar ones) in the games at all, or are the showrunners just branching out?

Kyle: So this is where things get interesting from an “authentic to the game” perspective. Bill is a relatively major character in the first Last of Us, but his relationship with Frank is barely mentioned directly. And without spoiling the game too much, I’ll say that the way Bill (and Frank, in a much less direct way) see their story develop and conclude in the games is very different from what we saw in this episode.

From the moment Bill got shot in the show, it started me wondering—how much are they really playing with the expectations set by the game here? How much are they willing to change the narrative we’re supposed to “know”? Could Bill really just die here?

It’s a big contributor to my feelings of doubt that the apparent double suicide is the last we’re gonna see of this character. Not to mention it’d be a criminal waste of a perfectly cast Nick Offerman.

*Ron Swanson voice* "I am uncomfortable with this situation."

*Ron Swanson voice* “I am uncomfortable with this situation.”

Andrew: As a non-game-player with no particular expectations or attachments, I kind of hope the story is a one-off, something that gives the world texture and does fill in Joel’s and Tess’ histories a bit but isn’t continually revisited. To bring up another video game-adjacent show, it reminds me a little of the once-per-season flashback episodes in Mythic Quest. They’re usually far removed from the main action (and most of the main characters) of the story but give the show a chance to demonstrate its range and give viewers something special.

But it’s hard to say! Flashbacks seem to be a tool the show is willing to deploy frequently, and any character can come back to life in a flashback (as Tess does, here). Do the games do much flashing back and forward like this? It’s hard to imagine playing the game version of this episode, unless The Last of Us has a farm sim game embedded in it, Gwent-style.

Kyle: No, the first game is quite linear, timeline-wise.

I’m trying really hard not to be one of those “they changed something from the source material! Sacrilege!”-type people. But one quibble I do have is with how changing Bill’s story arc also changes the entire tone of his character.

There’s one important Bill quote from the game that I remembered the gist of and looked up to make sure I had it right, because it’s so opposed to the Bill we get in the show: “Once upon a time, I had somebody that I cared about. It was a partner. Somebody I had to look after. And in this world, that sort of shit’s good for one thing: gettin’ you killed.”

Not exactly the sentiment we get here! I don’t think either one is necessarily “better” or “worse” (especially before I see the rest of the show), but it is pretty jarring…

Andrew: So game-Bill essentially ends up where show-Bill starts, emotionally? That’s a bummer.

Which is maybe why they changed it. I find apocalypse fiction with a shot of hope much more compelling than, say, a non-stop bleak-o-rama where we’re continually finding out that humans are the real monsters (looking at you, The Walking Dead).

Or maybe they haven’t changed it, and they’ll get back around to that version of Bill in another episode. That’s the fun of these show-by-show recaps: something could always happen next week that either makes us look like geniuses or morons!

If you've played the games, get ready to see a different side of Bill, here...

If you’ve played the games, get ready to see a different side of Bill, here…

Kyle: OK, so I may be seeing things that aren’t there, but did you think anything of the pretty prominent front-door-shutting moment when Joel was searching through Bill’s house?
Andrew: Yeah, you may well have something there. We are told that Bill took the same wine-poison as Frank; we are specifically and pointedly never shown it.
Kyle: I half expected to see Bill looking out the window during that last shot…
Andrew: But even if he were still alive there would still be some conflict between the tone of his note to Joel and that quote from the game.
Kyle: Yeah, and Bill giving away his guns and stuff doesn’t necessarily fit, either.
Oh yeah, Ellie is in this episode too, I guess...

Oh yeah, Ellie is in this episode too, I guess…

Andrew: It would be a weird fake-out. For whose benefit is Bill faking his own death? For whose benefit is he leaving all his wine glasses out to get all dusty?? I guess he’s… doing it and then waiting weeks or months for “whoever finds this, but probably Joel” to show up?
Kyle: The meat was not all that rotten, so it probably had only been a few days. Bill could have still been mourning for that time, then he runs off when Joel shows up to preserve his solitude?
Andrew: If he ain’t dead, there’s some ‘splaining to do, is all I’m saying.
Kyle: Yeah, I don’t know how much of this is just wishful thinking on my part and how much is actually there. But as much as I like Ellie-from-the-games, I think I might like Bill-from-the-show even more. And part of me doesn’t want this episode to be all we get of him.
Andrew: Offerman is criminally charismatic here. And most places.
Kyle: Anyway, the comic book rules apply. No body, no death.

Andrew: One other thing that always piques my interest in any kind of “alternate history” story like this: how much of the “real world” is the world we know? According to this episode, 9/11 happened and 9/11 truthers exist. Which suggests that George W. Bush existed and was president. Which implies that pretty much anything that happened before September of 2003 is theoretically real in this world, too?

Which means we’re living in a world where Joel may have seen Shrek (2001), but not Shrek 2 (2004). Something to think about.

No room in the QZ, sorry folks!

No room in the QZ, sorry folks!

Kyle: Do you think Linda Ronstadt survived the outbreak in the show? Here in the real world she won a Grammy for Best Music Film in 2021!

Andrew: It’s entirely possible. Though, if the show wanted to stunt-cast some real-world celebrities as infected, she could be a contender.

Also, if we’re talking about period-appropriateness, there’s a whole weird cul-de-sac my brain got stuck in about where opinion about gay people in America would have been if it was frozen in 2003. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy had only started in July! Brokeback Mountain never came out! Modern Family never happened!

Kyle: Makes the marriage at the end much more meaningful. It wasn’t legalized in Massachusetts until 2004!

Andrew: Cue zombie Antonin Scalia coming in and telling them they can’t do it.

Regardless of the ultimate fate of Bill, or whether Joel has seen Shrek (I’m just saying, he had a kid who would have been the right age!), I thought this episode was a cut above the ones we’ve seen so far. Not that either of them was bad, but this one has raised the show’s average rating from “competent but predictable” to “maybe this could actually be really great?”

That said, I feel like I have seen three episodes of this, and each one has given me a different show: apocalypse-by-the-numbers, then video game tutorial level, then a one-act play about love in the time of cordyceps. I can’t help but wonder which show The Last of Us is going to be next week.

Kyle: Agreed. It feels like some people who would really like this episode might struggle to get through the first two, which are so different. But slowing down the world-building and just focusing on two characters really let the emotions shine through.

That also happened a lot in the game, just not with those two characters. So I’m still looking forward to diving deep into the Joel/Ellie dynamic, which we started to get some real hints of this episode.

Read on Ars Technica | Comments



Source: Ars Technica – HBO’s The Last of Us tries a little tenderness in a surprising episode 3

Unvanquished 0.54 Brings More Renderer Improvements, ARM Binaries

Posted on by

Unvanquished 0.54 was released overnight as the latest update across the array of many releases going back a decade for this open-source first person shooter game. With Unvanquished 0.54 there continues to be enhancements to its renderer, the project is now providing ARM binaries on Linux to complement their x86/x86_64 builds, user-interface improvements, and gameplay enhancements…

Source: Phoronix – Unvanquished 0.54 Brings More Renderer Improvements, ARM Binaries

China's biggest search engine is to set launch a ChatGPT rival in March

Posted on by

Chinese search giant Baidu aims to introduce a ChatGPT-like AI service that gives users conversational results, Bloomberg has reported. It’ll be based on the company’s Ernie system, a large-scale machine-learning model trained over several years that “excels at natural language understanding and generation,” Baidu said in 2021. 

Open AI’s ChatGPT has taken the tech world by storm of late, thanks to its ability to answer fact-based questions, write in a human-like way and even create code. Microsoft invested $1 billion in Open AI back in 2019, and reportedly plans to incorporate aspects of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. 

Google, meanwhile, likely sees the technology as a threat to its search business and plans to accelerate development of its own conversational AI technology. CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly declared a “code red” over ChatGPT and may be preparing to show off 20 or more AI-products and a chatbot for its search engine at its I/O conference in May. 

Baidu has reportedly seen lagging growth in search and sees ChatGPT-like apps as a potential way to leapfrog rivals. “I’m so glad that the technology we are pondering every day can attract so many people’s attention. That’s not easy,” he said during a talk in December, according to a transcript seen by Bloomberg.

ChatGPT has largely drawn positive attention, but the downsides have come into focus as well. Technology news site CNET was forced to correct AI-written articles due to errors and concerns about plagiarism. And New York City public schools recently banned ChatGPT over cheating concerns, because it can create articles and essays that can be difficult to distinguish from student-created content. 



Source: Engadget – China’s biggest search engine is to set launch a ChatGPT rival in March

Ex-Google Employees Are Vlogging Their Layoffs on TikTok

Posted on by

When Google told 12,000 employees they were out of a job last week, there were a lot of feels, understandably. Some workers were confused about why they had been laid off. Others were frustrated. Some ex-Googlers were grateful to have even had the opportunity at all.

Read more…



Source: Gizmodo – Ex-Google Employees Are Vlogging Their Layoffs on TikTok

Everything We Know About the Facial Recognition Scandal at Madison Square Garden

Posted on by

The future of facial recognition use by private companies in the United States could boil down to who emerges victorious in an ongoing dispute between a collection of lawyers and a petty, authoritarian New York billionaire. The place: one of America’s most famous venues, Madison Square Garden. The owner: James Dolan.

Read more…



Source: Gizmodo – Everything We Know About the Facial Recognition Scandal at Madison Square Garden

Computing curriculum fundamentals | Hello World #20

Posted on by

Why are computing systems at the heart of our computing curriculum design? Senior Learning Manager Sway Grantham from the Foundation team explains in her article from the brand-new issue of Hello World, our free magazine for computing educators, out today.

Cover of Hello World issue 20.

Whether you plan lessons on a Computing topic, develop curriculum content, or even write curriculum policy, you have to make choices. What are you going to include and what is less of a priority? You have to consider time constraints and access to resources, prior learning and maybe even pupil interests. You probably also have to consider the wider curriculum context. Well, here is my first principle to help you: computing systems should be the foundation of your Computing curriculum.

A computing systems epiphany

As a primary teacher, when I first began writing Computing lesson plans for children aged 9 to 10, I started with programming. This was a very visual entry into Computing, and children were excited to create projects that were familiar to them, such as games and animations. However, as my understanding of Computing grew, I realised that something was missing.

Two learners do physical computing in the primary school classroom.

My learners could explain what an algorithm is, as well as explaining that a program is ‘a set of instructions that runs on a computer to tell it what to do’. Both of these met the curriculum needs, but I wasn’t convinced that they could link these two concepts together. Could they connect what they were doing on a floor robot to the computing systems around them? Did they understand what a computer was? Well… I asked them to see what they’d say!

According to my class, a computer was:

  • A piece of technology
  • A keyboard and a screen
  • A search engine
  • A machine used for work
  • A metal brain
  • A machine with a keyboard
  • An information device
  • Electric

This very simple question highlighted a wealth of alternate conceptions about programming and computing systems. The other commonality of my learners’ definitions was that they described the computer’s function, as if, in order to define what a computer is, we just need to know what it does. This view of a definition greatly limits learners’ ability to understand what potential computers have beyond personal use.

My learners had two discrete chunks of knowledge: how to program a floor robot, and that laptops were computers. However, without a bridge to connect them, this learning was disjointed. Learners needed to have a concrete, conceptual understanding of ‘what a computer is’ before they could start to comprehend the more abstract role of a program in that system.

Knowledge of computing systems empowers people to take control of technology and not just consume it.

Beyond the experiences of my young learners, we see examples of a lack of understanding about computing systems all the time in society. Many competent users of software are able to regularly complete the tasks that they need, but if one day something doesn’t work, they do not know how to find a solution. Equally, many people enjoy exploring digital making projects, yet if they want to personalise the project, they don’t know what they can or can’t change to do this. Knowledge of computing systems empowers people to take control of technology and not just consume it.

Planning computing content today

Both of these examples highlight the importance of introducing computing systems as both life skills and as support for developing other areas of computing. More recently, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has been creating 100 hours of curriculum content in partnership with non-profit organisation Amala Education. Through this content we aim to give refugee learners who may never have used technology enough understanding to build a website that encourages social change.

Whilst we know that the material needs to include some foundational knowledge of computing systems, we must first consider the core content that learners must understand to achieve the end goal, such as:

  • Webpage creation 
  • HTML/CSS/JavaScript
  • Project management 
  • Project development

These areas of learning are a great place to start as, undeniably, learners aren’t going to be able to build a website without knowing the process of creating a website, the languages used to create web pages, or the project management skills to see a project from start to finish.

This could be the entirety of the content, but instead, I encourage you to think back to those children who could program but didn’t know on what devices programs could run. We need to connect the core content to that foundational content: how is building a website related to computing systems?

Prior knowledge

All learning is built on prior knowledge, even if that prior knowledge has been gained through life experience and not formal education. To build a website, we need to know how to type and use a mouse. We need to know what a website is, why people use websites, and what sort of media is found on them. Beyond that, we need to know how the files that we are creating are being shared with other people. We need to understand that a computer can communicate with another computer and what the process is to make that happen. None of this learning is the core content of building a website, but if you tried to build a website without understanding these things, it would be difficult to do.

All learning is built on prior knowledge, even if that prior knowledge has been gained through life experience and not formal education.

As the learners we support together with Amala Education might have no prior experience of using technology, we needed to ensure that enough foundational computing systems content was built into the learning sequence — things such as:

  • Recognising digital devices
  • Decomposing computing systems
  • Digital painting (mouse skills)
  • Combining text and images (desktop publishing)
  • Networks and the internet
  • Internet searching

By incorporating this content into the learning sequence, we ensure that learners do not just learn a process for creating a website. They understand the impact of the choices they make when building a website, they have the skills to implement their ideas, and they can connect their understanding to solve any unexpected challenges they find along the way. This more holistic approach should support learners’ knowledge transfer and offer them a much broader range of opportunities. 

This more holistic approach should support learners’ knowledge transfer and offer them a much broader range of opportunities.

Whatever your curriculum requires, you will have the core content you need to teach. This could be the requirements of your standardised curriculum, it could be the specific project you’re trying to build, or it could be the aspirations that you have for your students. However, rather than stopping at that part of your learning sequence, take a step back and consider the prior knowledge you’re connecting to. I expect you will find that computing systems is what you need to ensure learners’ new knowledge has a solid foundation.

Read the new Hello World issue today

Computing systems and networks is one of those computer science topics in which misconceptions abound. Hello World issue 20 focuses on how you can support your learners to grasp even the tricky ideas within this topic, giving you practical ideas, activities, and insights from practicing educators. Download your free PDF copy now, and subscribe to never miss an issue.

The post Computing curriculum fundamentals | Hello World #20 appeared first on Raspberry Pi.



Source: Raspberry Pi – Computing curriculum fundamentals | Hello World #20

San Francisco asks California regulators to halt or slow the rollout of driverless taxis

Posted on by

San Francisco city officials have sent letters to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) asking to slow or halt the expansion of Cruise and Waymo robotaxi services in the city, NBC News has reported. San Francisco Transportation Authority (SFTA) officials wrote that unlimited expansion would be “unreasonable” in light of recent safety incidents in which vehicles blocked traffic and interfered with emergency vehicles. 

Alphabet’s Waymo and Cruise, owned by GM, both operate fully driverless services (without backup drivers) in the city. Last June, Cruise gained permission to charge for rides in set areas of the city between the hours of 10PM and 6AM. Waymo is allowed to give driverless vehicle rides but is waiting for another permit before it can charge for them. 

“A series of limited deployments with incremental expansions — rather than unlimited authorizations — offer the best path toward public confidence in driving automation and industry success in San Francisco and beyond,” the letter reads.

The services have had their challenges. A small fleet of Cruise robotaxis in San Francisco suddenly stopped operating on a street in the city’s Fillmore district, blocking traffic for several hours. Another Cruise vehicle was pulled over by confused cops and then promptly went on the lam. The NTSA recently opened a probe into Cruise’s self-driving vehicles over hard braking, traffic blocking and other issues. 

In one as yet unreported incident, Cruise vehicles also reportedly interfered with emergency responders. Firefighters had to smash the window one of the company’s robotaxis to prevent it from running over a firehose, according to the letter. 

However, Cruise pointed out that the service has been safe so far. “Cruise’s safety record is publicly reported and includes having driven millions of miles in an extremely complex urban environment with zero life-threatening injuries or fatalities,” a spokesperson told NBC News.

The letters may have been prompted by Cruise’s stated plans to operate its robotaxi service 24 hours a day rather than just at night. It’s been approved for that by the California DMV, but is waiting on permission from the CPUC. (Both companies also operate driverless ride services in Phoenix, and Cruise’s self-driving taxis are available in Austin, Texas as well.)

The SFTA isn’t against the 24/7 expansion, but has requested more data like how often and for how long Cruise’s vehicles block traffic. It also wants robotaxis to stay off primary routes during rush hour until they prove they can operate “without significant interruption of street operations and transit services.”



Source: Engadget – San Francisco asks California regulators to halt or slow the rollout of driverless taxis

Can Stack Overflow's Survey Predict Next Year's Most Loved Programming Language?

Posted on by

What happens when Stack Overflow’s senior research analyst delves more deeply into results from their annual Developer Survey?

Rust, Elixir, Clojure, Typescript, and Julia are at the top of the list of Most Loved Programming Languages. However, in looking at the last three years, we see a bit of movement. [While Rust has remained #1 since 2020, Elixir has risen to #2, while Clojure and TypeScript have dropped.]

In 2022, we added a drill-down to specifically show popularity amongst those learning to code. Because Stack Overflow is a learning resource, I would expect that popularity amongst those specifically learning would be a good indicator of current and future programming language popularity. There is an interesting pattern in comparing Most Loved and Learning to Code Popularity: people learning to code aren’t using the most loved languages….

Less than 1% of those learning responded they were using either Clojure or Elixir.
1.2% are using Julia
7.1% are using Rust
and 15.1% are using Typescript.

The article still tries to tease out ways to predict future popular programming languages (by, for example, the number of questions being asked about languages, especially by new programmers learning to code). But along the way, they uncover other surprising statistical truths about the limits of their data:
“Stack Overflow questions are more susceptible to the preferences of those using the site as a learning tool rather than those of more advanced developers.”
“[B]eing loved (via the Developer Survey) is not related to generating more questions on Stack Overflow. And this makes sense: posting questions most likely speaks to friction with coding, a friction that may lead to loving a programming language less.”
“Our latest Developer Survey showed us that ~32% of programmers have been professionally coding for four years or less, a significant amount of people who are most likely involved in learning programming languages. That is, beginner-friendly languages get the most questions and popularity, but the Most Loved languages make veteran developers happy.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Can Stack Overflow’s Survey Predict Next Year’s Most Loved Programming Language?

Amazon is Selling Its 29-Acre Bay Area Property as Return to Office Stalls

Posted on by

Amazon is “selling a vacant Bay Area office complex purchased about 16 months ago,” reports Bloomberg, “the company’s latest effort to unwind a pandemic-era expansion that left it with a surfeit of warehouses and employees.”
Amazon in October 2021 paid $123 million for the 29-acre property in Milpitas, California, part of a strategy to lock up real estate near big cities that could be used for new warehouses and facilitate future growth…. Amazon is expected to take a loss on the sale of the Metro Corporate Center, according to one person familiar with the terms of the deal, who spoke on condition of anonymity….

Amazon last year began its biggest-ever round of job cuts that will ultimately affect 18,000 workers around the globe. The world’s largest e-commerce company, which is scheduled to report earnings on Feb. 2, warned investors that fourth-quarter sales growth would be the slowest in its history.

SFGate writes that the possible sale “is indicative of broader trends in Bay Area corporate real estate, which has struggled with remote work, tech layoffs and broader economic shifts.”

“According to a report by commercial real estate firm Kidder Mathews, direct office vacancies in San Francisco rose to more than 18.4% in the fourth quarter of 2022, while a Kastle Systems report found that office occupancy rates rose to 41.8%, just 1% higher than the rates in September 2022.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Amazon is Selling Its 29-Acre Bay Area Property as Return to Office Stalls

Toyota Transformation Doubtful

Posted on by

Akihabara News (Tokyo) — The leadership shuffle at the top of Toyota Motor Corporation came as a surprise, at least in terms of its timing, but there’s yet little reason to expect any dramatic transformation in the giant Japanese automaker, which is in increasing danger of becoming roadkill in the shift toward zero-carbon transportation.

President and CEO Akio Toyoda will be stepping away from the day-to-day management of the firm in April and handing the reins to 53-year-old Koji Sato, who is currently in charge of the Lexus brand.

However, Toyoda isn’t going very far. He will become chairman of the board and possibly has his eye on becoming chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) as well. That reality, plus the fact that many of Toyoda’s older henchmen will still be senior executives in the company, suggests that Sato’s scope for making any major changes will be extremely limited.

At least for the time being, he won’t be his own man, and he might have been selected precisely because his is not interested in any major alteration of direction.

While Toyota Motor’s resources remain enormous at this juncture, Akio Toyoda’s enduring skepticism that electric vehicles (EVs) are the primary technology of the future may have put the company on the path to obsolescence. Tesla, rising Chinese automakers, and even some of the traditional Western automakers have embraced EV technology and are already poised to offer low-cost models to the market that Toyota may be hard-pressed to compete with.

Additionally, it’s not clear that the Japanese automaker has fully grasped the degree to which software will be integral to future transportation systems.

Certainly, Toyota’s first mass-market EV, the bZ4X stumbled out of the gates last year, subject to a recall and stop-sale order. While sales have now resumed, the firm is only planning to try to sell 10,000 units in the US market this year, and its global sales network very much prioritizes older hybrid technologies.

Specifically in the US market, Toyota is also grappling with the fact that under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, buyers of EVs will not receive the US$7,500 federal tax credit if they purchase one of the Toyota models.

This bearish picture stands in sharp contrast to Tesla, which even now earns roughly seven times as much profit per vehicle as Toyota does.

Indeed, in last week’s earnings call for the final quarter of last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made clear that he doesn’t even consider Toyota to be a serious competitor in the EV market. Rather, he stated, “the Chinese market is the most competitive. They work the hardest and they work the smartest. So a lot of respect for the China car companies that we are competing against. And so, if I were to guess, there is probably some company out of China as is most likely to be second to Tesla.”

Recent Electric Vehicle Related Articles

High-Tech Cars Will Afeela Good

Clarifying Electric Vehicle Terminology

Mini EVs Prove Good Fit for Japan

JTB Goes Big Into EV Charging

Software Hinders Japan Electric Cars

The post Toyota Transformation Doubtful appeared first on Akihabara News.



Source: Akihabara News – Toyota Transformation Doubtful