Posts

In its latest quarterly financial report, published yesterday, Nvidia posted 17 percent growth in revenue – from $2.22 billion to $2.58 billion – over the last fiscal quarter. Across the same period in the previous financial year, the GPU giant posted revenue of $3.12 billion – a figure largely influenced by increased demand from cryptocurrency miners. Speaking on a conference call, Nvidia’s chief financial officer Collette Kress told analysts: “Essentially our business is normalized....

Think going on-demand will drain your budgets? Think again. Evidence shows that when on-demand networks are implemented in a smart way, communities can actually save money compared to their previous fixed-route services, unlocking broader benefits that pay back the initial investment many times over. Providing high-quality services at the minimum possible cost to the taxpayer is generally the name of the game for any public transportation agency. However, when talking about microtransit, opponents often get tied up in measuring the return on investment (ROI) simply in terms of farebox recovery ratios rather than the overall efficiency of the service (and resulting cost savings)....

Anyway, now OnePlus’ new logo has been announced to the world, it’s time for some Serious Analysis. Strap in. So, that logo. Bet you’d like to see it, right? Yeah, I bet you would. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, to see the logo? To filthy it up with your dirty eyes… oh, yeah. The header image. Fine then. Here’s the old logo: And… are you ready? Are heaven’s heralds, descended from on-high, pumping out some sorta religious-sounding trumpet jam?...

The costlier OnePlus 8 Pro dons a new screen with a 120Hz refresh rate and a quad-camera setup on the back. The company has achieved high framerate through MEMC (Motion Estimation, Motion Compensation) chip, often used in TV for a smoother picture. However, unlike the OnePlus 7 Pro and 7T Pro, it loses the pop-up selfie camera in lieu of a punch-hole camera on the front fascia. The company has also added the IP68 rating, meaning it’s waterproof and dustproof....

Trackers are small computer programs used by online advertisers to follow people across the Internet, allowing them to provide targeted targeted adverts based on previous activity, or documented interests. They’re one way the online advertising industry is trying to optimize their offering in the face of increasing AdBlocker usage, as well as their diminishing share of global advertising spending. But they’re also horrible. Trackers are awful from a privacy perspective, but also actively undermine the browsing experience, causing sites to take longer to load....

The report builds on revelations by Greenbone Networks which found over 24 million records that were linked to more than 700 million images, of which 400 million were “actually downloadable” from systems located in 52 countries around the world. “Data from more than 13.7 million medical tests in the US were available online, including more than 400,000 in which X-rays and other images could be downloaded,” the report said. The findings — published by the investigative journalism non-profit and German broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk — found 187 unprotected servers in the US and five in Germany, which were used to host sensitive data such as patient records, their dates of birth, doctors and the procedures undertaken....

Welcome to the latest edition of Pardon The Intrusion, TNW’s bi-weekly newsletter in which we explore the wild world of security. Since COVID-19 began spreading all over the world, governments have embraced a variety of invasive contact-tracing measures via smartphones. Now Apple and Google have teamed up in a rare joint effort to do just that while possibly still preserving the privacy of individuals who use them. A few weeks ago they proposed an opt-in automated system which will use Bluetooth-based identifiers to keep track of whether a smartphone’s owner has come into contact with someone who is later positively diagnosed with coronavirus....

In other words: We live inside a computer that learns. The big idea: Bostrom’s Simulation Argument has been a hot topic in science circles lately. We published “What if you’re living in a simulation, but there’s no computer” recently to posit a different theory, but Microsoft’s pulled a cosmic “hold my beer” with this paper. Dubbed “The Autodidactic Universe,” and published to arXiv today, the paper spans 80 pages and lays out a pretty good surface argument for a novel, nuanced theory of everything....

Naturally Sony had to jerk us around a little bit by opening the show with Grand Theft Auto V, revealing it’d be coming to the PS5. I’m pretty sure that makes it one of very few games to be released across three consecutive console generations — not that this makes it any less jarring to open a show with it. I am not going back to Los Santos, Sony! It took me years to get out!...

In an email to customers and followers yesterday Polestar said it’s begun production of its first fully-electric sedan, the Polestar 2. The P2 is being produced at the Geely-owned Zhejiang Luqiao plant in China, Reuters reports. [Read: EVs are better for the environment than cars — even when charged by coal-generated electricity] The company said that it has taken the necessary measures from the coronavirus outbreak to ensure the safety of its staff....

Google’s reasoning is the potential misuse of the accessibility API, which is utilized by most call recording apps to enable this function. The company noted “The Accessibility API is not designed and cannot be requested for remote call audio recording.” Truecaller, one of the most popular dialer and caller identity apps out there, said it will stop offering its recording feature: Other apps, such as NLL Apps, which brought the issue to attention, will also have to remove their recording features....

Deliberately licking and coughing on things in this way, during a pandemic, spreads fear and disgust, along with the health risks. This is what’s known as “consumer terrorism” where dangerous substances are introduced to food or other consumer products, that put people’s health at risk. Sometimes done just for fun, and sometimes with criminal intent or even extortion, in extreme cases threats of chemical agents and neurotoxins have been used....

Presently, Polestar has just one showroom in mainland China, Channel News Asia reports. However, according to sources close to the matter, Geely is planning to build 19 more in hopes it’ll help the company compete with the Chinese made Tesla Model 3. [Read: China’s Xpeng ‘copies’ Tesla’s website after allegedly ‘stealing’ Autopilot source code] Most of the new showrooms will reportedly open in the third quarter of this year. This might be a little later than the perfect scenario, though....

An NYU researcher who was shut out of Facebook has taken her fight for transparency to the US Congress. During Congressional testimony on Tuesday, Laura Edelson, who investigates online ads and misinformation, called for new data requirements and legal protections for researchers. “We hope that Congress will push for laws that require platforms to be a lot more transparent, and protect researchers engaged in legitimate public interest research from legal threats,” Edelson told TNW after testifying....

Thankfully, hope is on the way. A team of researchers from Germany and Japan have developed a solution to fix this problem by replacing organic electrolytes with aqueous (water-based) ones. Sounds simple, but it isn’t At first thought, the use of water sounds like a very straightforward answer to the problem — water is by default inflammable. But in reality, the integration of aqueous electrolytes into a battery cell has been problematic since 1994, when the idea was first tried out by scientists W....

I’m a beginning player. I started learning last year and I’ll be the first to admit that this particular axe is a bit too much guitar for me. I wasn’t sure what to do with the different voices or, if I’m being honest, exactly who this guitar was supposed to be for. But when I finally plugged it in to an amp and started strumming something akin to the main riff from Bush’s “Glycerine,” it all made sense....

Consumer-friendly VR cameras are a modern marvel. Five years ago most people had never used a VR headset, now I can shoot my family videos in immersive 3D just as easily as recording with my phone. And there’s absolutely nothing else quite like putting on a headset and reliving your memories in total virtual reality. Specifications: Lenses: Dual F/2.2 Video Resolution: 5760 x 2880 30fps / 3840 x 1920 50fps / 3840 x 1920 30fps /3008 x 1504 100fps Photo Resolution: 6080 x 3040 (18 MP) Stabilization: Software / 6 Axis Gyroscopic Battery: 1200 mAh...

It kind of feels like magic. Solar power obviously isn’t anything new, but beyond that cheap calculator you used in high school, most of us aren’t accustomed to devices that we just never have to charge. It’s one of those technologies that feels like the future, despite having been around for ages. Yet the Urbanista Los Angeles represents an opportunity to take one of our most commonly used devices completely off the grid....

Whilst the measurement of pulsations — the basis of astroseismology allowing astronomers to test models of stellar evolution, have been extremely successful on a range of different classes of stars, delta Scuti stars present seemingly random pulsations. This has made it extremely difficult for scientists to interpret the pulsations and gather clues about the internal structures of this class of star. “Previously we were finding too many jumbled up notes to understand these pulsating stars properly,” says Professor Tim Bedding from the University of Sydney, lead author of the paper....

The Menlo Park startup withdrew its entire $200 million credit facility with prominent banks JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, and Citibank during the week of February 24, the outlet’s sources said. A spokesperson told reporters that Robinhood had already repaid the borrowed money, and noted the company has “additional larger credit lines” that it didn’t use at all last week. [Read: Robinhood users are gravitating towards loss-making companies] However, the firm denied the loans were related to its system failures, telling Bloomberg: “Our capital position remains strong....