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Canon Develops Quantum Dot OLED Materials Without Rare Metals
Canon has developed a material for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels that does not use rare metals, Nikkei reported. From the report: This move comes as the Japanese company aims to reduce its dependence on major rare metal producers such as those in China. Canon plans to commercialize the technology within a few years, paving the way for securing stable production without being affected by geopolitical risks. The new material is quantum dots (QD), tiny semiconductor particles with a diameter of 1 nanometer. When irradiated with light or injected with an electric current, the particles emit vivid colors.
Other quantum dots are already used for high-end OLED televisions. Samsung Electronics mass-produces quantum dots, but it uses the compound indium phosphide. Indium is a rare metal produced in extremely small quantities, with China being the major source. Canon's new material uses lead, which is easily procured from recycled raw materials in "urban mines." Canon aims to commercialize the material in the mid-2020s by establishing technology for mass production. Canon uses lead in some of its compounds as a substitute for indium. Lead usually leads to results that are less durable than with indium, but by leveraging its expertise in compounding materials such as toner and ink for office equipment, the company has devised a compound that is as durable as indium.
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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India's JioCinema Breaks World Record With Free Cricket Streaming
India's JioCinema broke the global record for the most concurrent views to a live streamed event on Monday, eclipsing a long-standing milestone set by Disney's Hotstar, as the Asian tycoon Mukesh Ambani spares no expense in expanding his digital empire. From a report: The Indian streaming app, whose partner includes James Murdoch's Bodhi Tree-backed Viacom18, surpassed the record Monday evening, attracting over 32 million concurrent viewers to the final game of the 16th edition of Indian Premier League cricket tourney between Chennai Super Kings and Gujarat Titans.
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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CD Projekt is Not For Sale, CEO Clarifies
Polish games developer CD Projekt is not for sale, its CEO reiterated on Monday, following weekend rumours that the maker of "Cyberpunk 2077" could be targeted by Sony. From a report: "Nothing has changed on our end. I can repeat what we've been saying throughout the years - CD Projekt is not for sale. We want to remain independent", Adam Kicinski said on a conference call following first-quarter results. "It's very exciting to follow our own path, so it's pure rumour."
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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Intel Says AI is Overwhelming CPUs, GPUs, Even Clouds, So All Meteor Lakes Get a VPU
Intel will use the "VPU" tech it acquired along with Movidius in 2016 to all models of its forthcoming Meteor Lake client CPUs. From a report: Chipzilla already offers VPUs in some 13th-gen Core silicon. Ahead of the Computex conference in Taiwan, the company briefed The Register on their inclusion in Meteor Lake. Curiously, Intel didn't elucidate the acronym, but has previously said it stands for Vision Processing Unit. Chipzilla is, however, clear about what it does and why it's needed -- and it's more than vision. Intel Veep and general manager of Client AI John Rayfield said dedicated AI silicon is needed because AI is now present in many PC workloads. Video conferences, he said, feature lots of AI enhancing video and making participants sounds great -- and users now just expect that PCs do brilliantly when Zooming or WebExing or Teamising. Games use lots of AI. And GPT-like models, and tools like Stable Diffusion, are already popular on the PC and available as local executables.
CPUs and GPUs do the heavy lifting today, but Rayfield said they'll be overwhelmed by the demands of AI workloads. Shifting that work to the cloud is pricey, and also impractical because buyers want PCs to perform. Meteor Lake therefore gets VPUs and emerges as an SoC that uses Intel's Foveros packaging tech to combine the CPU, GPU, and VPU. The VPU gets to handle "sustained AI and AI offload." CPUs will still be asked to do simple inference jobs with low latency, usually when the cost of doing so is less than the overhead of working with a driver to shunt the workload elsewhere. GPUs will get to do jobs involving performance parallelism and throughput. Other AI-related work will be offloaded to VPUs.
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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After Being Wrongfully Accused of Spying for China, Professor Wins Appeal To Sue the Government
Xiaoxing Xi, a Temple University professor who was falsely accused of spying for China, will be able to bring a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation. From a report: A judge at a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Xi on Wednesday, allowing the physicist to move forward with his case against the U.S. government for wrongful prosecution and violating his family's constitutional rights by engaging in unlawful search, seizure and surveillance. The decision comes after FBI agents swarmed Xi's Philadelphia home in 2015, rounded up his family at gunpoint, and arrested him on fraud charges related to economic espionage, before abruptly dropping the charges months afterward.
"I'm very, very glad that we can finally put the government under oath to explain why they decided to do what they did, violating our constitutional rights," Xi said in an exclusive interview with NBC News. "We finally have an opportunity to hold them accountable." The case will now be kicked back to the district court, continuing a long legal battle. Xi, who's represented in part by the American Civil Liberties Union, attempted to bring a suit against the government in 2017, alleging that FBI agents "made knowingly or recklessly false statements" to support their investigation and prosecution. Xi also claimed that his arrest was discriminatory, and that he was targeted due to his ethnicity, much like other scholars of Chinese descent. A district court dismissed his case in 2021, but Xi appealed the decision last year.
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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ASUS Shows Off Concept GeForce RTX 40 Graphics Card Without Power-Connectors, Uses Proprietary Slot
ASUS is extending its connector-less design to graphics cards and has showcased the first GPU, a GeForce RTX 40 design, which features now power plugs. From a report: Spotted during our tour at the ASUS HQ, the ROG team gave us a first look at an upcoming graphics card (currently still in the concept phase) which is part of its GeForce RTX 40 family. The graphics card itself was a GeForce RTX 4070 design but it doesn't fall under any existing VGA product lineup & comes in an interesting design.
So the graphics card itself is a 2.3 slot design that features a triple axial-tech cooling fan system and once again, it isn't part of any interesting GPU lineup from ASUS such as ROG STRIX, TUF Gaming, Dual, etc. The backside of the card features an extended backplate that extends beyond the PCB & there's a cut-out for the air to pass through. The card also comes with a dual-BIOS switch that lets you switch between the "Performance" & "Quiet" modes but while there's a "Megalodon" naming on the backplate, we were told that isn't the final branding for this card.
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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Nvidia, MediaTek Partner on Connected Car Technology
Nvidia and MediaTek on Monday said they will collaborate on technology to power advanced vehicle infotainment systems that can stream video or games or interact with drivers using artificial intelligence. From a report: Under the agreement, announced at the Computex technology trade show in Taipei, MediaTek will integrate an Nvidia graphic processing unit chiplet and Nvidia software into the system-on-chips it supplies to automakers for infotainment displays. MediaTek systems using Nvidia software would be compatible with automated driving systems based on Nvidia technology, the companies said. Dashboard displays could show the environment around the vehicle, while cameras would monitor the driver.
"The automotive industry needs strong companies that can work with the industry for decades at a time," Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang told a news conference in Taipei, pointing to a long product cycle for car makers. "The quality, strength and positions of our two companies could give the automotive industry partners that they can build their companies on," he said, adding the partnership would provide chips that can power "every single segment of a car".
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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Tears of the Kingdom's Bridge Physics Have Game Developers Wowed
Nicole Carpenter, reporting for Polygon: There's a bridge to cross the lava pit in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's Marakuguc Shrine, but it's broken. More than half of the bridge is piled on top of itself on one side of the pit, with one clipped-off segment on the other. The bridge is the obvious choice for crossing the lava, but how to fix it? A clip showing one potential solution went viral on Twitter shortly after Tears of the Kingdom's release: The player uses Link's Ultrahand ability to unfurl the stacked bridge by attaching it to a wheeled platform in the lava. When the wheeled platform -- now attached to the edge of the bridge -- activates and moves forward, it pulls the bridge taut, splashing lava as it goes, until the suspension bridge is actually suspended and can be crossed.
But it wasn't the solution itself that resonated with players; instead, the clip had game developers' jaws on the ground, in awe of how Nintendo's team wrangled the game's physics system to do that. To players, it's simply a bridge, but to game developers, it's a miracle. "The most complicated part of game development is when different systems and features start touching each other," said Shayna Moon, a technical producer who's worked on games like the 2018 God of War reboot and its sequel, God of War: Ragnarok, to Polygon. "It's really impressive. The amount of dynamic objects is why there are so many different kinds of solutions to this puzzle in particular. There are so many ways this could break."
Moon pointed toward the individual segments of the bridge that operate independently. Then there's the lava, the cart, and the fact you can use Link's Ultrahand ability to tie any of these things together -- even the bridge back onto itself. [...] Tears of the Kingdom was seemingly built on top of Breath of the Wild, reportedly with a large portion of the same team working on it. "There is a problem within the games industry where we don't value institutional knowledge," Moon said. "Companies will prioritize bringing someone from outside rather than keeping their junior or mid-level developers and training them up. We are shooting ourselves in the foot by not valuing that institutional knowledge. You can really see it in Tears of the Kingdom. It's an advancement of what made Breath of the Wild special."
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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US 'Won't Tolerate' China's Ban on Micron Chips, Commerce Secretary Says
The United States "won't tolerate" China's effective ban on purchases of Micron Technology memory chips and is working closely with allies to address such "economic coercion," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Saturday. From a report: Raimondo told a news conference after a meeting of trade ministers in the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework talks that the U.S. "firmly opposes" China's actions against Micron. These "target a single U.S. company without any basis in fact, and we see it as plain and simple economic coercion and we won't tolerate it, nor do we think it will be successful." China's cyberspace regulator said on May 21 that Micron, the biggest U.S. memory chip maker, had failed its network security review and that it would block operators of key infrastructure from buying from the company, prompting it to predict a revenue reduction.
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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AI Means Everyone Can Now Be a Programmer, Nvidia Chief Says
Artificial intelligence means everyone can now be a computer programmer as all they need to do is speak to the computer, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Monday, hailing the end of the "digital divide." From a report: Speaking to thousands of people at the Computex forum in Taipei, Huang, who was born in southern Taiwan before his family emigrated to the United States when he was a child, said AI was leading a computing revolution. "There's no question we're in a new computing era," he said in a speech, occasionally dropping in words of Mandarin or Taiwanese to the delight of the crowd. "Every single computing era you could do different things that weren't possible before, and artificial intelligence certainly qualifies," Huang added. "The programming barrier is incredibly low. We have closed the digital divide. Everyone is a programmer now -- you just have to say something to the computer," he said. "The rate of progress, because it's so easy to use, is the reason why it's growing so fast. This is going to touch literally every single industry."
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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Temasek Cuts Salary of Staff Responsible For Its Failed FTX Investment
Temasek, a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund that manages assets worth around $300 billion, has cut the pay of staff involved in its FTX investment that soured after the crypto exchange collapsed. From a report: An independent team conducted an internal review of the investment and found that although there was no misconduct by its investment team, the team and senior management "took collective accountability and had their compensation reduced," Temasek said Monday. It did not detail the amount of compensation cut. Temasek had invested $275 million in FTX and FTX U.S. and wrote off all of its investments to zero after Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto group filed for bankruptcy in November. Temasek had taken a 1% stake in FTX International and a 1.5% stake in FTX U.S. as part of its investments.
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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After 78 Years, Autonomous Underwater Robots Locate Sunken WWII Destroyer
"Over the past 13 years, Tim Taylor and Christine Dennison have scoured the ocean floor using autonomous underwater robots," according to a history writer's commentary on CNN, "to discover and document the wrecks of seven US submarines lost in World War II."
Taylor and Dennison are ensuring that more families of those lost know where their loved ones' deep-water graves reside. They are racing against time as underwater development threatens many of these wrecks... Budget constraints hinder the Navy from devoting resources to undertaking these kinds of searches, according to Taylor, and his team is showing how private groups can fill the gap.
A philanthropic private investment group funds the expeditions, the article points out, adding that Taylor and Dennison "hope to employ the special autonomous underwater technology they created to help others map the ocean floor for environmental and other purposes."
Their latest find was part of the 82-day battle of Okinawa in 1945:
The USS Mannert L. Abele, which the explorers found 4,500 feet under the Pacific Ocean and 81 miles from the nearest landmass, was the first American ship sunk by an unusual type of rocket-powered Japanese kamikaze plane... Though the Abele managed to shoot down two aircraft and damage or fend off others, at six minutes in, a Japanese fighter plunged into the destroyer's engine room and exploded, cutting off all electrical power. Just a minute later, another, much more unusual, plane slammed into the destroyer's hull. The Abele had been struck by a unique rocket-propelled kamikaze plane called the MXY7 Ohka ("Cherry Blossom"), which due to its very short range had to be carried under the belly of a larger bomber until close to US ships, whereupon it was released to soar toward its target at immense speed.
The detonation of this manned missile's 1.3 tons of explosives caused the ship to seemingly break into two and begin sinking. In a matter of minutes, 84 sailors and officers had been killed. Japanese aircraft strafed the surviving crew as they jumped into the oil-slick water, but two smaller landing craft escorting the Abele shot down two more planes and beat off the rest, managing to rescue 255 crew members.
Nearly eight decades later, modern robotics technologies allowed Taylor and Dennison to find the destroyer's submerged hull. In the past, Taylor noted, it would have been practically inconceivable for a small, private team to have undertaken the cumbersome search process that, Taylor estimated, would have taken four to five times as long and cost significantly more money...
It was on their last remaining day of a more-than-month-long search, just before bad weather would force them to conclude the expedition, that they spotted the Abele's wreck.
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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Adventures on Mars: 'Ingenuity' Helicopter Survives a Communications Blackout
The Mars helicopter 'Ingenuity' recently completed its 47th, 48th, and 49th flight, NASA reports on the blog for its Mars rover 'Perseverance'. That rover is making a "long ascent" up the delta in Mars' Jezero crater, "an area where scientists surmise that, billions of years ago, a river once flowed into a lake.
On its 47th flight, Ingenuity attempted "tactical and scientific scouting" for the rover, but "just narrowly missing the main area of interest." But then...
Ingenuity's 48th flight produced a treasure trove of aerial images showing the exact area of interest at a resolution several orders of magnitude better than anything prior. All of these images were downlinked to Earth and provided to rover planners and scientists a full two weeks before the rover would reach this area... [T]he team chose to send the helicopter farther up the delta rather than perform additional scouting flights in the region... The Guidance Navigation and Control team once again managed to push the flight envelope with a 16-meter vertical popup at the end of the flight. At the peak, Ingenuity snapped the highest suborbital picture taken of the Martian surface since landing...
That downlink was the last time the team would hear from the helicopter for an agonizingly long time. Eager to continue up the delta, the team tried and failed to uplink the instructions for Flight 50 several times. Sol after sol, the helicopter remained elusive. Each time, the downlinked telemetry from the Helicopter Base Station (HBS) on the rover would come back showing no radio sign of the helicopter... When the rover emerged from the communications shadow on its way to Foel Drygarn and the helicopter was still nowhere to be found, the situation began to generate some unease... In more than 700 sols operating the helicopter on Mars, not once had we ever experienced a total radio blackout. Even in the worst communications environments, we had always seen some indication of activity...
Finally, on Sol 761, nearly a week after our first missed check-in, our communications team observed a single, lonely radio ACK (radio acknowledgement) at 9:44 LMST (Local Mean Solar Time), exactly the time when we'd expect to see the helicopter wakeup. Another single ACK at the same time on Sol 762 confirmed that the helicopter was indeed alive, which came as a welcome relief for the team. Ultimately, this first-of-its-kind communications blackout was a result of two factors. First, the topology between the rover and the helicopter was very challenging for the radio used by Ingenuity. In addition to the aforementioned communications shadow, a moderate ridge located just to the southeast of the Flight 49 landing site separated the helicopter from the rover's operational area. The impact of this ridge would only abate once the rover had gotten uncomfortably close to the helicopter. Second, the HBS antenna is located on the right side of the rover, low enough to the deck to see significant occlusion effects from various part of the rover...
Relying on the helicopter's onboard preflight checks to ensure vehicle safety and banking on solid communications from the rover's imminent proximity, the team uplinked the flight plan. As commanded, Ingenuity woke up and executed its 50th flight on the red planet, covering over 300 meters and setting a new altitude record of 18 m.
The rover had closed to a mere 80 meters by the time the helicopter lifted off in the Martian afternoon Sun.
And Flight 51 happened 9 days later...
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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App That Lets Homeowners Rent Their Swimming Pools Draws Backlash
Somewhere in Maryland, an app that lets homeowners rent their swimming pools "has sharply divided suburban residents of Montgomery County as the local government considers formally regulating the short-term amenity rentals," reports the Washington Post, "potentially becoming the first in the nation to do so."
Neighbors have spied on neighbors, reporting unwanted outsiders flocking to their quiet residential streets. "Our entire block has been disturbed," Constance Kiggans, a Chevy Chase resident, said in written testimony to the Montgomery County Council. "It is, for all intents and purposes, like having a pool club on the street..." Unlike long-established home rental and ride sharing apps, newer apps that let people rent out their pools, home gyms and backyards have largely been unregulated across the United States so far. In fact, several jurisdictions, from the city of San Jose to towns across New Jersey to the state of Wisconsin, have tried over the past three years to ban the rentals or set up strict rules that require private pools to meet the same standards as a public pool...
Many homeowners are eager to earn easy money by renting out a backyard pool, despite a murky legal landscape that does not offer clear guidance on whether the rentals are legal or not...
Chief among the complaints detailed by pool sharing opponents is the noise... [36 residents who signed a letter of complaint] argued that the rentals turn quiet residential neighborhoods into bustling business districts, without the infrastructure to support commercial activity. They raised dozens of concerns, largely over the added nuisance of strangers pouring into their neighborhoods because of the apps, congested roads, scarce parking, and noise and safety. Their complaints have shut down at least one pool rental in the county.
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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Japan Will Try to Beam Solar Power from Space by 2025
An anonymous reader shared this report from Engadget:
Japan and JAXA, the country's space administration, have spent decades trying to make it possible to beam solar energy from space. In 2015, the nation made a breakthrough when JAXA scientists successfully beamed 1.8 kilowatts of power, enough energy to power an electric kettle, more than 50 meters to a wireless receiver. Now, Japan is poised to bring the technology one step closer to reality.
Nikkei reports a Japanese public-private partnership will attempt to beam solar energy from space as early as 2025. The project, led by Naoki Shinohara, a Kyoto University professor who has been working on space-based solar energy since 2009, will attempt to deploy a series of small satellites in orbit. Those will then try to beam the solar energy the arrays collect to ground-based receiving stations hundreds of miles away.
Orbital solar arrays "represent a potentially unlimited renewable energy supply," the article points out -- running 24 hours a day.
Slashdot
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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NewsBone.com
Suggest a feed to syndicate here, or check out what I'm doing over at freshtao.
~Created Tue May 30 02:27:17 2023
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EU upholds Google’s 4.1B euro fine for bundling search with Android
Google has lost its latest battle with European Union regulators. This morning, the EU General Court upheld Google’s record fine for bundling Google Search and Chrome with Android. The initial ruling was reached in July 2018 with a 4.34 billion euro fine attached, and while that number has been knocked down to 4.125 billion euro ($4.13 billion), it’s still the EU’s biggest fine ever. The EU takes issue with the way Google licenses Android and associated Google apps like the Play Store to manufacturers. The Play Store and Google Play Services are needed to build a competitive smartphone, but getting them from Google requires signing a number of contracts that the EU says stifles competition. Google breakin’ rocks in the hot sun.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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Apple plans to sell ads in new spots in the App Store by year-end
Apple plans to release new ad “placements” as soon as the holiday season, according to a message sent to developers on Tuesday inviting them to an online session to encourage them to buy ads. The new spots represent a significant expansion in Apple’s advertising inventory, which is focused on its App Store. In recent years, Apple’s advertising inventory has been limited to one unit in the Search tab on the App Store and one on the search results page. Let the milking commence.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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Ladybird: a new cross-platform browser project
Since starting the SerenityOS project in 2018, my goal has been “to build a complete desktop operating system to eventually use as my daily driver”. What started as a little therapy project for myself has blossomed into a huge OSS community with hundreds of people working on it all over the world. We’ve gone from nothing to a capable system with its own browser stack in the last 4 years. Throughout this incredible expansion, my own goals have remained the same. Today I’m updating them a little bit: in addition to building a new OS for myself, I’m also going to build a cross-platform web browser. If there is one person who can pull off making a web browser and turning it into a successful-enough open source application, it’s Andreas Kling. His work on SerenityOS is simply stunning and inspirational, attracting hundreds of people to work on a ’90s-inspired alternative desktop operating system. If he can organise the same amount of enthusiasm for Ladybird, it has a real shot at becoming a successful, but niche, browser. For now, it’s very early days, and Kling is open and honest about how much work is still left to do. Since all the code is new – this isn’t a fork or Blink, WebKit, or Gecko – you can imagine this isn’t exactly going to be an easy ride. It’s currently running on Linux, Windows through WSL, macOS, and Android, and Kling states the Linux version if the best tested one. I’m definitely excited for this one.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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We spoke with the last person standing in the floppy disk business
Tom Persky is the self-proclaimed “last man standing in the floppy disk business.” He is the time-honored founder of floppydisk.com, a US-based company dedicated to the selling and recycling of floppy disks. Other services include disk transfers, a recycling program, and selling used and/or broken floppy disks to artists around the world. All of this makes floppydisk.com a key player in the small yet profitable contemporary floppy scene. While putting together the manuscript for our new book, Floppy Disk Fever: The Curious Afterlives of a Flexible Medium, we met with Tom to discuss the current state of the floppy disk industry and the perks and challenges of running a business like his in the 2020s. What has changed in this era, and what remains the same? With the amount of legacy systems still running all over the world, there’s probably decent longevity in this business still.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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Slovenian OS/2 Warp 4
Slovenia being a tiny country with a population of just 2 million, IBM OS/2 Warp 4 was one of the few non-Microsoft operating systems to be localized to Slovenian in the mid-90s and a big deal for the local IT community back then. But nearly 3 decades later, when OS/2 disappeared from the last ATMs in the country, the even rarer Slovenian version was as good as completely gone. Or was it? This is an amazing example of digital archeology, and I hope the other rare OS/2 translations are found as well. It’s difficult for small – but stunningly beautiful! – countries to maintain their digital independence, and properly localised software plays a huge role in that.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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iOS 16 released
iOS 16 brings the biggest update ever to the Lock Screen, the ability to edit and collaborate in Messages, new tools in Mail, and more ways to interact with photos and video with Live Text and Visual Look Up. iOS 16 is available today as a free software update. Unlike in the Android world, every iOS user here on OSNews will most likely be able to install this latest update right away. I’m especially enamoured by the notifications popping in from the bottom instead of the top – this makes a lot more sense, and I hope Android picks it up as well.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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Transcending POSIX: the end of an era?
In this article, we provide a holistic view of the Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) abstractions by a systematic review of their historical evolution. We discuss some of the key factors that drove the evolution and identify the pitfalls that make them infeasible when building modern applications. Some light reading to start the week.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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Digital museum of plugs and sockets
A website containing a vast, vast collection of domestic electrical plugs and sockets from all over the world, including more information and details about them than you knew existed. I’ve been stuck here for hours. Be wary of going in – you’re never coming back out. But you’ll be happier for it, since there’s enough information here to last a lifetime. One of my favourites is this one from Sweden – I was baffled by these at first when emigrating to Sweden a few years ago, but now I appreciate their genius and safety compared to just tying down live wires for ceiling lamps like we do in The Netherlands. Another fun and weird one is the Perilex plug, which is incredibly satisfying to plug into its corresponding socket (I used to work at a hardware store that sold a huge variety of plugs and sockets). I could go on for hours!
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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TinyClock: a tiny true 5-arch universal Mac OS X single-binary GUI application
TinyClock is a tiny true 5-arch universal Mac OS X single-binary GUI application. Single universal binary, that can be natively executed on every hardware platform Mac OS X was made for (32/64 bit, PowerPC/x86/AppleSilicon). Just fun.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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The death of the PCIe expansion card
With the AM5 platform from AMD on the horizon, five major motherboard manufacturers have annonced their flagship motherboards with the X670E chipset. Some of them are having fun with this generation’s multi-faceted step into “five”: AM5, PCIe Gen 5.0, DDR5, 5nm process, boost clocks over 5GHz, you catch the drift. But do you know what every single announced motherboard has fewer than five of? PCI Express (PCIe) slots. Other than a GPU and the occasional WiFi card, I haven’t really had any need for my expansion slots in a long time. I just don’t know of anything useful. I doubt they’ll actually go away any time soon though.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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Userspace FUSE for macOS
FUSE-T is a kext-less implementation of FUSE for macOS that uses NFS v4 local server instead of a kernel extension. The main motivation for this project is to replace macfuse that implements its own kext to make fuse work. With each version of macOS it’s getting harder and harder to load kernel extensions. Apple strongly discourages it and, for this reason, software distributions that include macfuse are very difficult to install. With Apple locking down macOS more and more, developers have to resort to ingenious solutions to maintain the same level of functionality as before. This is an example of that.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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Apple II Desktop updated
Disassembly and enhancements for Apple II DeskTop (a.k.a. Mouse Desk), a “Finder”-like GUI application for 8-bit Apples and clones with 128k of memory, utilizing double hi-res monochrome graphics (560×192), an optional mouse, and the ProDOS 8 operating system. There’s a new version with tons of improvements.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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USB4 v2 will support speeds up to 80 Gbps
The next generation of USB devices might support data transfer speeds as high as 80 Gbps, which would be twice as fast as current-gen Thunderbolt 4 products. The USB Promotor Group says it plans to publish the new USB4 version 2.0 specification ahead of this year’s USB Developer Days events scheduled for November, but it could take a few years before new cables, hubs, PCs, and mobile devices featuring the new technology are available for purchase. USB4 version 2.0. That’s the name they went with.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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Genode OS Framework release 22.08
The overarching theme of Genode 22.08 is the emerging phone variant of Sculpt OS, touching topics as diverse as USB ECM, Mali-400 GPU, SD-card access, telephony, mobile-data connectivity, the Morph web browser, and a custom user interface. Among the further highlights are new tracing tools, improved network performance USB smart-card support, and VirtIO drivers for RISC-V. Genode never fails to impress.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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EU regulators want 5 years of smartphone parts, much better batteries
The most notable proposed fix (listed in Annex II) is for phone makers and sellers to make “professional repairers” available for five years after the date a phone is removed from the market. Those repairers would have access to parts including the battery, display, cameras, charging ports, mechanical buttons, microphones, speakers, and hinge assemblies (including for folding phones and tablets). Phone companies also get a choice: either make replacement batteries and back-covers available to phone owners or design batteries that meet minimum standards. Those include still having 83 percent of its rated capacity after 500 full charging cycles, then 80 percent after 1,000 full charging cycles. Apple, for example, currently claims that its iPhones are designed to retain 80 percent capacity after 500 charge cycles. Good. I’ve been saying it for years: if the automotive industry can be legally obligated to provide spare parts, repair information, and more to third parties, so can the technology industry.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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Android 13 review: plans for the future, but not much to offer today
The Android update treadmill continues with the release of Android 13. It’s one of the smallest Android releases in recent memory, with barely any user-facing features to point to. Keep in mind, though, that this update follows the monster Android 12 release from last year. This is also the second Android OS release this year, the previous one being the tablet-focused Android 12L update that was rushed out the door in March. We would have a bit more meat to work with if Android 12L was part of this release, but as it is, we’re left with a grab bag of features for Android 13. It includes many foundational features for Android tablets and smart displays, but there’s not much here for phones. Even so, there are things to discuss, so let’s dive in. Ars Technica’s usual deep dive into every new Android release, and despite Android 13 being a relatively minor release, there’s still more than enough to cover.
OSnews
~Created Thu Sep 15 06:06:13 2022
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