News: Technology News

Google reportedly trying to salvage Stadia, consumer version deprioritized

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 05:05:48 +0000

Google Stadia is a cloud game streaming service that costs $9.99 a month. The subscription allows you to play games at up to 4K resolution and 60 frames per second, and gives you access to a handful of titles. There's also a free version that allows you to purchase games outright, but restricts the image quality to 1080p.

Stadia launched a few years ago, but has since dwindled in popularity. This is mostly due to the fact that the image quality isn't even on par with the PlayStation 4 Pro or Xbox One X. There's also the issue of increased input lag that is part of all streaming services from Amazon Luna to PlayStation Now. Lastly, Stadia has no compelling exclusive games.

On February 1, 2021, Google surprised its customers — and even Stadia staff — by announcing that it was shutting down first-party studios. Since then, we haven't heard much about the platform until now. According to a new report by Business Insider, the company is trying to "salvage its failing Stadia game service with a new focus on striking deals with Peloton, Bungie, and others". Business Insider has a proven track record when it comes to stories like this, so it's most likely accurate.

This new service is being branded as Google Stream, and alleged insiders say that the consumer version of Stadia has been "deprioritized". It's unclear what this means at the moment, but let's hope that existing customers don't lose their expensive game purchases if Google decides to shutter the service like some of its past endeavors. Hopefully, they'll all get refunds for their digital purchases if it comes to that. What's clear is that the focus on bringing major new third-party games to the service has diminished.

Google reportedly trying to salvage Stadia, consumer version deprioritized

PCIe 5.0 SSDs promising up to 14GB/s of bandwidth will be ready in 2024

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 20:57:44 +0000

Silicon Motion's PCIe 5.0 controller will show up in plenty of drives.

Most companies still haven't shifted their entire NVMe SSD lineups to use PCI Express 4.0, but PCIe 5.0 SSDs for PCs are already on the horizon.

Storage company Silicon Motion said in a recent earnings call that it expects its PCIe 5.0-capable SSD controllers for consumer SSDs will be available sometime in 2024, opening the door to a wide variety of high-performance drives from different manufacturers. SSD manufacturer ADATA teased some PCIe 5.0 SSDs at CES last month (albeit without an expected release date), boasting of read speeds up to 14GB/s and write speeds of up to 12GB/s using a Silicon Motion SM2508 controller. Current high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs like Samsung's 980 Pro top out at roughly half those speeds.

Other reports have suggested that these PCIe 5.0 consumer SSDs are coming later in 2022, but according to the call transcript, that only applies to the latest version of Silicon Motion's PCIe 5.0 controller for enterprise SSDs—the products that end up in servers and data centers, not what typically ends up in the PC on your desk or lap. Early PCIe 4.0 SSDs for consumer PCs were also demonstrated at CES a couple of years before they became products that you could actually buy.

For 2022 and 2023, Silicon Motion will continue to focus on those PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Budget SSDs like Western Digital's WD Black SN770 SE are only beginning to transition to PCIe 4.0, and according to reviews like this one from Tom's Hardware, their controllers and flash memory aren't yet fast enough to benefit much from the extra bandwidth. Silicon Motion also says that PCIe 4.0 SSDs have only become common in pre-built PCs within the last year because of "extensive verification and testing" requirements.

If you'd like to future-proof your PC for PCIe 5.0 SSDs when they do arrive, Intel's 12th-generation "Alder Lake" processors and AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7000-series Zen 4 CPUs both support PCIe 5.0.

PCIe 5.0 SSDs promising up to 14GB/s of bandwidth will be ready in 2024

Satya Nadella: Microsoft has “permission to build the next Internet” [Interview]

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 20:55:53 +0000

$75B deal for Activision Blizzard is central to shaping online interactions in the metaverse.

Not long after being promoted to the role of chief executive at Microsoft, in 2014, Satya Nadella had faced calls to ditch the tech group’s Xbox games division and concentrate its resources on cloud computing—to compete with rivals, such as Amazon. But instead, Nadella saw an opportunity to build new customer bases through online gaming communities. His first deal as chief executive was buying Minecraft, the three-dimensional world-building game.

At the same time, he further developed Microsoft’s dominant position in personal and business software and expanded its cloud and server offerings. Shares in the group have risen eightfold under Nadella’s tenure, and it remains the world’s largest software group.

However, last month’s $75 billion deal to buy video game maker Activision Blizzard will also make Microsoft the world’s third-biggest gaming company by revenue, behind only China’s Tencent and Japan’s Sony.

Not only does it extend Microsoft’s vertical integration in gaming, giving it yet more content for its Xbox console and PC games distribution systems, it also shows how Nadella sees the future of online interactions—at work, in education, and in the home. He indicated that the Activision purchase would also power the company’s move into the metaverse—the immersive, virtual, interactive worlds the Big Tech companies are racing to build.

Here, in his first interview since the deal was announced, Nadella tells the FT’s West Coast editor, Richard Waters, how gaming will shape the next computing platform.

Richard Waters: When you came in, most of Microsoft’s business was in business technology, helping millions of workers do their jobs. And in the years you’ve been there, the company’s been through this amazing change with the move to the cloud. Now, you’re buying a big gaming company, and I guess people are wondering, does this fit together? Is it all part of one story?

Satya Nadella: [In] the Microsoft I grew up in, I always think about three things—and we added a fourth. The three things that we always had are: we built tools for people to write software; we built tools for people to drive their personal and organizational productivity; and we built games. That’s the three things that Microsoft has done from time immemorial. The first game, I think, was built before Windows was there. existed on DOS. And so, to me, gaming, coding, productivity, or knowledge worker tools are at the core.

The thing that we added pretty successfully—that most people thought we would never be able to do—is become an enterprise company... actually really build enterprise infrastructure... and business applications. And guess what? We now do that as well.

I feel those are the new things that we have added, whereas [the other] three things have been there all my life... And gaming, interestingly enough, is more integrated.

Even when Xbox came out 20 years ago, it was sort of a thing on the side, whereas now... the future of gaming is [subscription service] Game Pass and xCloud and the console, of course, [and] a PC. One of my coolest features is I can play the game instantly because I don’t even need to wait for it to download. I can just start playing on the cloud and then have it slowly stream down and use the local CPU.

So, to me... it’s much more integrated than, “oh, it’s a side bet.”

RW: How does helping people play games link to the relationships with your customers and communities that you’re building? How are you helping them live their lives?

SN: Take what’s happening with the metaverse. What is the metaverse? Metaverse is essentially about creating games. It is about being able to put people, places, things [in] a physics engine and then having all the people, places, things in the physics engine relate to each other.

You and I will be sitting on a conference room table soon with either our avatars or our holograms or even 2D surfaces with surround audio. Guess what? The place where we have been doing that forever... is gaming.

And so, the way we will even approach the system side of what we’re going to build for the metaverse is, essentially, democratize the game building... and bring it to anybody who wants to build any space and have essentially, people, places, [and] things digitized and relating to each other with their body presence.

RW: But the people who are playing those games, at the moment they’re playing first-person shooter games... It’s pretty clear why they’re getting into them and it has nothing to do with metaverse—it’s simply that they want a bit of fun. What do you see in the future? What are people going to be doing inside this intellectual property that Microsoft is paying so much for?

SN: First of all, if you think about it, the genres we’re in are much broader than first-person shooter. I mean, we love Flight Simulator. We love Minecraft. We love first-person shooters or [car-racing game] Forza. Think about how we’re able to tell even the story of car racing through a cultural lens. This entire new game that we produced [Forza Horizon 5] is all about Mexico, and the Mexican setting and car racing... You think “my avatar in Forza is my car” and how I decorate it.

To me, just being great at game building gives us the permission to build this next platform, which is essentially the next Internet: the embodied presence. Today, I play a game, but I’m not in the game. Now, we can start dreaming [that] through these metaverses: I can literally be in the game, just like I can be in a conference room with you in a meeting. That metaphor and the technology... will manifest itself in different contexts.

Another one would be in the context of a very different business process. If you look at retail or construction, that’s also like when you create a digital twin: you have a factory and you are trying to visualize how to simulate its operation. That’s also a game-playing exercise, except you’re not game playing. You’re trying to simulate how a factory functions.

RW: As you think about the metaverse in the future, is there any overlap between how people behave in games and how they behave elsewhere, like in work settings? A younger generation that grew up on games is now in the workforce. How do they look at these technologies and what they’re doing at work?

SN: The beauty of games is, on a secular basis, you’re seeing younger people [play them] every year, every day, and it teaches you what their expectations are of a computer-mediated interface.

And so, as that generation approaches some work-related aspect, you can say what their expectation of an immersive environment is. Take some of the research we’re doing on how should people relate to avatars. You and [I] may have a particular understanding of what an avatar is versus somebody who is a young kid who has already built their avatar in Minecraft or in Forza. [They would say] Oh yeah, I want to use an avatar, because having... multiple identities for different contexts is a much more expected thing if you’re going from gaming world to a gaming world.

Being mindful of that as we introduce new tools and new features in what may be considered more work-related products... is absolutely something we want to learn.

RW: It seems that getting used to being represented by an avatar is a key step here, and it’s something you’re already doing with [collaboration software] Teams. It seems to be a very big shift to me: that I’m going to join a meeting as some kind of cartoon character.

SN: Today, you enter websites and you see a bunch of text, video, and images... and you interact with it. [But] what is a more immersive way for you to interact with [digital] content? It’s still about people, and it’s about places and it’s about things, but you put it in spatial form... You can see X, Y, and Z coordinates as opposed to just X and Y. And, then, the most interesting thing is you can be in the space, so you can look around and things will change—that embodied presence in a place. That’s really what our vision is.

We are building, quite frankly, metaverse applications, if I could call them that. Or experiences in business applications, in productivity tools, and meetings and games—all three on a common platform. And avatars, 2D avatars... are showing up in our Teams [application]... people just want to be able to have an avatar that is taking signals from both your face and your audio. And it’s a very comfortable way for somebody to participate in a meeting.

One of the features we have is the Together mode in Teams... You can put people, for example, in an amphitheater setting. You and I could be sitting there, but with just essentially our video.

RW: So are you thinking this would apply to any company with workers and customers? Are they going to have to rethink how these digital interactions work?

SN: When you talk to anyone who is in our trade—digital tech—we’ll always say that everything has to be rethought. But the reality is it is going to be just an evolution. In fact, I am very grounded on the best known collaboration tool ever built for work. It’s called a workplace!

It’s been refined for over 200 years and we’re not going to just suddenly trade off the workplace. We’ve learned how we use it effectively to drive collaboration, teaming, productivity. Except we’ve also learned that we can’t take [the fact] that we will always have the workplace for granted.

In some sense, the silver lining from this pandemic is we’ve learned that we can still continue to team [up], still continue to collaborate, still continue to upskill ourselves while taking care of the overall wellbeing of our people with these digital connections.

When the constraints are removed, we’re not going to say: “Oh, let’s go back to 2019.” Nor are we going to be like 2020 or 2021. We’re going to find what we describe as this hybrid workplace... Any meeting at Microsoft will have at least some people, maybe 10, 20, 15 percent of people calling from remote. There will always be people in the conference room and there will be remote participants.

The remote participants’ expectation has changed forever. They’re not going to be second class. They want a first-class experience. You now need to accommodate for that with cameras in the conference room, the segmentation of each person in the conference room showing up as their own box, the ability to use chat. We really have some new invention to do—in such a way that the people who are together and people who are remote can come together and team [up] effectively.

RW: One thing you raised was that the metaverse is—like the Internet—a platform. It’s a series of connected technologies. People have talked about metaverses that link [so] we aren’t going to end up with a lot of standalone walled gardens. But how can you assure us that isn’t going to happen? Because at this point, just like separate games, the metaverse is a standalone thing created by a company like yours. What’s going to happen in the future to link these things?

SN: At some level, that’s the unfinished business of the Internet. If [I] could not go from website to website and have my identity traverse, [or] my content relationships really traverse. Then, in the middle, came the mobile Internet which... because of the way app stores work... truly, truly disintermediated even the linkage that was there on the open web.

So, now... let’s, at least, get back even to the basics of, OK, even if I’m going from one game to another game, or I’m going from one website to another website, I can actually go without being disintermediated by somebody else in the middle of it, from a discovery plane or search plane, or what have you.

RW: Microsoft has a de facto identity standard that’s widely used. But what are you doing to promote industry standards around identity?

SN: I think the first thing that we would want is just to allow for what I would call the syndication of identity, which is how do we really allow you, as a user—whether it’s an organization or an individual—to be able to take your identity... and use it across different properties.

How do we really allow for the syndication of identity? You see a little bit of it... with things like single sign-on today, which is essentially: “I can use my identity with multiple products just on the authentication side.” The thing that we are also talking about is on the authorization side. Can there even be more of the sharing? If I transact with one store and I buy things, those things are not in your identity, they’re in the store.

The first place [to start], perhaps, is what we’re doing with the Windows Store, allowing for different payment instruments, allowing for the flexibility of having even in multiple stores... [it] is a way to start allowing for multiple identities and multiple store relationships, for example.

RW: Coming back to hybrid work, although working from home was a crisis for many companies and many people individually, nonetheless there was a clear technology solution, which was group video meetings or collaboration software, and everyone was on the same page. With hybrid, all of that changes because people want to be back together, working together, and [not] tied to their screens when sitting in an office—but people out of the office don’t want to miss out on what’s going on. So is this a harder problem to crack than the one you faced two years ago?

SN: There’s no question it’s a harder problem. And not because of technology complexity. It starts with the expectations of employees, of people... all of the survey data points to that paradox which is 70 percent of the people want to be together and 70 percent want flexibility. Therein lies the hybrid paradox.

[On] the technology plane, I feel we’re pretty good. There are things we have to do, right? For example, the smart cameras that are AI driven that can segment the conference room and give everybody a box, and so on. They’re all solvable problems... they’re all in our labs, so I would say, even by the end of the year, the technology stuff is done. But some of the team norms... the social side... how do I set my agenda, how do I hold meetings, some of the classic leadership, managerial working soft skills have to be re-founded.

We need to essentially take our 180,000 people to a reorientation on how to do work. How do you conduct that meeting is probably the biggest change—so that everybody has a voice, everybody can contribute. The chat has to be lit up. The documents have to be shared. That soft skill is probably one of the things that will be as important as the technology.

RW: How do companies convince their workers that they aren’t just getting the worst of both worlds—whether they’re at home or in the office—because neither of them are getting quite the experience that they would ideally like?

SN: I think this is where leadership matters... the frustration is when I feel I’m not being heard; or I’m not able to make progress on my career or my work product; or I’m not able to collaborate as effectively, I’m not able to team as effectively. So, I think what you need is people around you. It’s not like workplace frustration didn’t exist in the past. It will exist in the future. But what you need, given the change in your expectations, is people to be in touch who can change how you participate, how do you get things done.

For example, at Microsoft, we’re putting a lot of emphasis on managerial training—not traditionally something we were that good at or focused on whereas, in the last year I would say thank God we were doing this because it helped us a lot during the pandemic.

Coming out of the pandemic, with this framework we called ‘model, coach, care’, the modeling and coaching is perhaps more intuitive, but the last part about caring and understanding where your people are [and enabling] those people to feel very connected and not frustrated is probably the entire ballgame.

RW: Coming back to Activision, one thing it’s made people realize is you are a big company now. You can buy this thing with pocket change. So do you have a job now to convince people that you aren’t just like these other technology platforms that we’ve all grown to be more wary of? Or at least regulators have grown to be wary of? Have you put yourself in the regulatory firing line?

SN: At the end of the day, all the analysis here has to be done through a lens of what’s the category we’re talking about, and what about the market structure? Even post-this acquisition, we will be No. 3 with sort of low teens [market] share, where even the highest player is also [in the] teens [for market] share. It shows how fragmented content creation platforms are. And so, that’s the fundamental category. Yes, we will be a big player in what is a highly fragmented place.

Also, the analysis will have to extend to say: why are these content companies trying to become bigger? It’s because the place where the constraints really are is distribution. The only open distribution platform for any gaming content—guess what?—is Windows... the biggest store on Windows is Steam [the digital distributor of PC games]. It’s not ours. People can do any payment instrument, whereas all the other gaming distribution platforms are closed.

To some degree, that’s why we are very hopeful that, by becoming stronger, even with low share, we can create more distribution for many small players... using things like xCloud.

RW: Should the regulators be looking ahead to the next platform?

SN: In some sense, the regulatory framework needs to both look forwards and look backwards... Take some of the principles that we’re using for the open web or open store policies. We’ll be happy to say... we’re already operating that way [so]... all I care about is having equal rules of the road for all participants... When it comes through legislation, or through regulation, or regulatory enforcement—whatever form—we will be all very open to it, and engaging.

The above transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Satya Nadella: Microsoft has “permission to build the next Internet”

Facebook loses users for first time ever, market cap drops by $200 billion

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 20:50:36 +0000

Meta's earnings call revealed bad news buried within bad news.

If last year was bad for Meta, this year might be worse.

The company’s earnings call last night painted a dismal picture. Its flagship Facebook platform lost about a million daily active users last quarter, the first time that has happened. Instagram and WhatsApp may still be growing but not by much—last quarter, the company added just 10 million users across all its apps. Meta lost $10 billion on its Reality Labs division, which handles VR and AR, the stuff it has been betting its future on. And the company said that it expects Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature to slash the coming year’s revenue by $10 billion, or about 10 percent.

The market did not react kindly to the news. Meta’s stock has taken a massive hit and is currently trading down around 24 percent below yesterday’s close, wiping around $200 billion off its market cap.

App Tracking Transparency

There was even bad news buried in the bad news. CFO Dave Wehner said that the hit from iOS’s App Tracking Transparency feature was a best guess. “We’re just estimating what we think is the overall impact of the cumulative iOS changes to where the 2022 revenue forecast is,” he said. “If you aggregate the changes that we’re seeing on iOS, that’s the order of magnitude. We can’t be precise on this. It’s an estimate.”

In other words, Meta, a company built on gathering and analyzing user data, doesn’t have a good handle on how many of its iOS users have enabled ATT.

What’s more, because of ATT, COO Sheryl Sandberg said that Meta is having to increase the cost of certain types of ad buys, like those where the advertiser only pays if someone installs an app or makes a purchase.

Stiff competition

CEO Mark Zuckerberg also acknowledged that Meta was taking a beating from TikTok. “People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly.”

In the past, when faced with a tenacious new competitor, Facebook might have tried to buy it out. This time is different, though. For one, TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. It’s highly unlikely that Chinese regulators would approve such a takeover. And even if TikTok weren’t owned by a Chinese company, it’s doubtful that the US Federal Trade Commission or Department of Justice would sign off. After all, the FTC is currently suing Meta on antitrust grounds over its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

As a result of the TikTok threat, Zuckerberg said the company was pivoting to video, again. “We’re in the middle of a transition on our own services towards short-form video like Reels,” he said. “It’s clear short-form video will be an increasing part of how people consume content.” Sounds familiar.

Poor timing

Meta (née Facebook) has overcome similar challenges before. But that was before a year’s worth of damaging revelations that tarnished the company’s brand across a broad spectrum of demographics. If Meta can’t rehab its reputation, or if it can’t out-copy TikTok, or if the FTC antitrust suit forces it to divest Instagram, future earnings calls could be even bleaker.

Meta is still incredibly profitable, having generated over $10 billion in profit last quarter alone. But the company is running into some very strong headwinds, with Apple’s stance on privacy undermining its ad-tracking advantage and its flagship platforms nearing the saturation point among users.

Taken together, Meta is in a tight spot. It’s placing a very expensive, very uncertain, and very long-range bet on becoming the “metaverse” company at the same time its cornerstone apps are at risk of becoming legacy businesses.

Facebook loses users for first time ever, market cap drops by $200 billion

Department of Homeland Security Is Using Robot Dogs to Patrol US Border

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 17:12:22 +0000

The bots come from Ghost Robotics, which recently made headlines for outfitting its robot dog with a sniper rifle.

US border control agents are starting to work side-by-side with robot dogs.

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security revealed it’s been supplying US Customs and Border Protection with quadruped robots at the southern border. The goal is to use the dog-like bots to help US personnel cover more ground out on the field.

However, the news is setting off alarms because the robots come from Ghost Robotics, a company in Philadelphia that’s been working to deploy the same robots for military purposes. Recently, one of the company’s robot dogs was even outfitted with a sniper rifle at a convention.

DHS described the 100-pound bots as “Automated Ground Surveillance Vehicles.” The aim is to use them as “force multipliers” to increase US Customs and Border Protection’s presence. The same machines can also cover rough terrain that would be dangerous for a human.

(Photo: Ghost Robotics)

“The southern border can be an inhospitable place for man and beast, and that is exactly why a machine may excel there,” said DHS Science and Technology Directorate program manager Brenda Long.

DHS has been working with Ghost Robotics on the project for 2.5 years. The resulting robot dogs can be controlled over a laptop or a handheld remote. In addition, they can be outfitted with sensors and video cameras, which can beam back data to human operators.

Field tests also showed the robot dogs can operate in a variety of harsh conditions. “To ensure that the AGSVs could deliver as promised, they were tested by walking up hills, down ravines, and over rocks, all while carrying 20 pounds worth of payload,” DHS said.

No mention was made of the robot dogs carrying weapons. However, DHS did note that they were tested for a “simulated sentry duty,” turning them into guard dogs that can patrol an area. Another test involved human personnel operating them to scout out and evade “potentially hostile individuals" in a residential building.

Those tests confirmed the machine’s real-world capabilities. “So, don’t be surprised if in the future we see robot ‘Fido’ out in the field, walking side-by-side with CBP personnel,” DHS said.

Source

Dying Light 2 patch to include 1,000 fixes for game-breaking issues

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 20:52:19 +0000

Today, reviews for Dying Light 2: Stay Human went live and the game is getting a mixed reception. While outlets are praising the open world and traversal, the main drawback right now seems to be the game-breaking bugs that are part of the experience. In some cases, entire save files were corrupted on PlayStation 5 (PS5). There are also countless videos on YouTube where players fell through the map.

Techland said that it was aware of these problems and is working on solutions. According to a new report by IGN, the Day One Patch of the title will include more than 1,000 bug fixes. The team has already made another 1,000 fixes since the game went gold a few weeks ago. IGN said the following in its report.

Dying Light 2's Day One Patch will include more than 1,000 bug fixes on top of the thousand made since the game went gold. Bugs present in the pre-release version of the game included dialogues that blocked story progression, regular crashing, and missing sound and voice-over audio.

Hopefully, Dying Light 2 will be a more stable experience come February 4, 2022. The title starts at $59.99, and it'll cost you even more if you want the special editions of the game. You can pre-order the game on the Microsoft Store or the platform of your choice.

Dying Light 2 runs at 1944p on Xbox Series X and 1800p on PS5. However, the best experience is on PC where there are no restrictions when it comes to resolution and frame rate. You'll need a pretty powerful rig though.

Dying Light 2 patch to include 1,000 fixes for game-breaking issues

Windows PCs prioritized over Chromebooks in components shortage

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 20:50:01 +0000

Chromebooks are getting increasingly popular, though.

In a tech world still hindered by component shortages, choices have to be made. And in the world of laptops, it seems that choice is Windows-based devices over those running Chrome OS.

IDC on Monday released early data from its latest Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. It pointed to a sharp 63.6 percent decline in Chromebook shipments, which the IDC defines as "shipments to distribution channels or end users, in Q4 2021 (4.8 million shipments) compared to Q4 2020 with (13.1 million shipments)."

In addition to market saturation, supply issues also hurt Chromebook shipments, as the industry still struggles with a deficit of PC components, from CPUs to integrated circuits for Wi-Fi modules and power management.

"Supply has also been unusually tight for Chromebooks as component shortages have led vendors to prioritize Windows machines due to their higher price tags, further suppressing Chromebook shipments on a global scale," Jitesh Ubrani, research manager with IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said in a statement accompanying Monday's announcement.

Ubrani told Ars Technica that IDC doesn't know for sure if it's specifically Windows 10 or Windows 11-based machines getting priority over Chrome OS devices. Windows 11 debuted in 2021, giving PC makers excuse to refresh lines with "Windows 11-ready" systems.

IDC

But with PC availability still scant, it's likely that Windows 11 has had a smaller impact on PC sales.

"Generally, the launch of a new OS has driven demand, though this time around the demand is already quite high and supply is low, so buyers aren't making their purchase decision based on the version of the OS," Ubrani told Ars Technica. "As a result, we don't believe Windows 11 specifically has had an impact on [Chrome OS device shipments] or the PC market in general."

Ubrani also pointed to market saturation in the US and Europe, which were extra hungry for Chromebooks as remote learning and work grew, as slowing global growth. According to Ubrani, "Chromebook demand in emerging markets has seen continued growth in the past year."

But Chromebooks were actually more popular in 2021 than in 2020, with 4.4 million more machines sold. Lenovo saw the biggest growth, moving from 6.7 million Chromebook sales in 2020 to 8.3 million in 2021.

IDC

At 10.2 million devices, HP sold more Chromebooks last year than any other vendor.

Windows PCs prioritized over Chromebooks in components shortage

Microsoft releases "largest update" for Flight Simulator with World Update VII: Australia

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 19:06:17 +0000

Microsoft has announced the arrival of World Update VII: Australia in Microsoft Flight Simulator. With the latest update, Microsoft Flight Simulator players will be able to "soar over the renowned Great Barrier Reef, visit the vast regions of Western Australia and marvel at the natural beauty of Mount Wellington."

Talking about the graphical improvements, Microsoft stated:

From the dusty red outback to shimmering coastlines and sugar white sand beaches, explore the country’s most spectacular sights. A country known for being as diverse as it is beautiful, this great Southern land presents a bucket list of jaw-dropping natural formations and modern man-made wonders – now enhanced with exceptional graphic improvements.

Based in Melbourne, Australia, Orbx Simulation Systems has developed four airports along with offering high-resolution detail to 100 others. The update now also features 94 custom-crafted points of interest (POIs), and 16 new activities that include five landing challenges, six discovery flights, and five bush trips that will "take Microsoft Flight Simulator pilots Down Under in our largest update yet."

World Update VII: Australia is available for free for all Microsoft Flight Simulator players. You can enjoy the latest experience of flight throughout Australia by updating your game. Microsoft Flight Simulator is available for Xbox Series X|S and PC with Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, Windows 10 and 11, and Steam.

Microsoft releases "largest update" for Flight Simulator with World Update VII: Australia

Linux Gaming Gets A Big Boost From A 12-Year-Old Ubuntu Developer

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 15:46:30 +0000

Late last year, young developer Rudra Saraswat gifted Ubuntu gamers with a great GUI tool. The cleverly-named "Gamebuntu" utility was effectively a bash script that automatically installed a veritable kitchen sink of gaming tools and then used a convenient overlay for finding and launching things like Steam, VLC, OBS, Twitch, Lutris, Discord, and others. Now, he has announced a completely new version that takes Gamebuntu in a different, and more elegant, direction.

“I’ve completely rewritten Gamebuntu so that people have the freedom to choose what they want to install," Rudra says. "You can choose from 4 launchers, 2 kernels, 7 tools and 1 streaming app."

The new approach for Gamebuntu is refreshingly reminiscent of what Ubuntu Budgie is adding to its welcome app for version 22.04. Instead of a large install routine that sets up a predetermined gaming environment, Gamebuntu 1.0 lets the user choose exactdly which software to install.

Here's what Gamebuntu 1.0 offers up via its current AppImage on GitLab, broken down by category:

Launchers:

Steam
Heroic/Epic
Minigalaxy (GOG)
Lutris

Kernels:

Lowlatency kernel
Xanmod kernel
Social:
Discord

Tools:

Gamemode
GOverlay
MangoHud
NoiseTorch
OpenRGB
Piper
Polychromatic (Razer)
Protonup-Qt
VLC
Wine (with wine-binfmt to run Windows executables directly)

Streaming Apps:

OBS Studio

It's a solid selection of important gaming tools and clients. I suggested adding the excellent Protonup-QT, a GUI tool letting you update and manage custom Steam Proton variants like Proton-GE. Rudra included it within a few hours!

He encourages you to add your own suggestions to this Ubuntu Discourse thread.

Rudra has a very promising future. Before he even turned 12, he had already created two unique Linux distributions: Ubuntu Unity Remix and Ubuntu Education Edition.

Source

Sony is acquiring Bungie for $3.6 billion, studio will remain multiplatform

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 20:47:19 +0000

Acqusition wars continue in the gaming space. Sony today announced a massive studio acquisition which has it bringing Bungie into its PlayStation Studios fold. Bungie was responsible for the Halo franchise until 2010, after which it split off from Microsoft and has since developed Destiny and Destiny 2. The announcement comes only a couple of weeks after Microsoft revealed a $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard.

"We’ve had a strong partnership with Bungie since the inception of the Destiny franchise, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to officially welcome the studio to the PlayStation family,” said SIE CEO Jim Ryan. "This is an important step in our strategy to expand the reach of PlayStation to a much wider audience."

Following the acquisition, Bungie will be an independent subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) headed by the studio's CEO and chairman Pete Parsons and current management team.

In a separate blog post, Parsons committed to the studio continuing to put out multiplatform experiences, adding that Bungie maintains full creative control and publishing independence of the Destiny universe. A FAQ for fans with burning questions regarding the future of Destiny across all platforms can be found here. To summarize, support will continue regardless of what platform players are using.

"We remain in charge of our destiny. We will continue to independently publish and creatively develop our games," Parsons added. "We will continue to drive one, unified Bungie community. Our games will continue to be where our community is, wherever they choose to play."

The studio also confirmed it has other games in development internally, and that these will come to other platforms without being PlayStation exclusive. Although, this could be a situation where these upcoming titles will hit PlayStation and PC and avoid the Xbox as a platform, much like how Microsoft does things with its first party games.

Sony is acquiring Bungie for $3.6 billion, studio will remain multiplatform

Microsoft Weekly: Windows 11 update on the horizon, Teams enhancements, and regulators

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 21:04:40 +0000

Although it's difficult to top last week's roundup containing news about Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard in terms of scale, there was a lot to cover this week in the world of Microsoft. Join us as we recap news about a bunch of Teams enhancements, a new Windows 11 update on the horizon, and some interesting stuff related to Microsoft in the UK, for our weekly digest of January 22 - January 28.

New Windows 11 experiences coming soon

Microsoft has announced that Friday will see the release of "new experiences" for Window 11 with an update that will introduce a public preview of Android apps, plus Taskbar enhancements, the return of the weather widget, and redesigned Windows 11-style apps for Notepad and Media Player. Essentially, everything that Insiders have been testing the past few months will now be seeded to the general public. Since support for Android apps on Windows 11 was touted as a headlining feature when the OS was announced back in June, this is a pretty significant update. Microsoft also highlighted some engagement metrics to indicate that people spend more time on its latest OS compared to Windows 11 and its upcoming efforts in 2022 and beyond will also focus on developing the "metaverse".

In related news, it seems that Microsoft's internal cut-off for completion of development for Windows 11 version 22H2 is pretty close too, with a leaked script showing dates of March and April.

Windows 11 Dev Channel received build 22543 which included a bunch of enhancements for Narrator with more natural "Jenny" and "Aria" voices, as well as some fixes. Microsoft also released optional KB5009596 and KB5008353 for Windows 10 and Windows 11, respectively. These contain some fixes related to Taskbar and some other minor things that you can check out here.

Windows 11 is now reportedly installed on 16.1% of PCs as Microsoft continues to accelerate the pace of rollout with the OS reaching its final stages of availability for compatible hardware. The company has also started testing the waters for Windows 11-style Overlay Scrollbars in Chromium, which means that they could come to Chrome's Stable release soon too.

Finally, if you're wondering why your PC is not receiving Windows updates, you should know that Microsoft checks for pre-update and post-update internet connectivity data to ensure that you have a stable internet connection before it seeds an update to you. To us, this reads more as the company does not have a robust enough system to download and install even minor updates gracefully.

Microsoft Teams for everyone

Microsoft Teams seemed to be a major area of focus for the company this week. The Redmond tech giant announced that its machine-learning based noise suppression system for Teams is now enabled by default for everyone. Automatic music detection will also leverage this feature to inform users when it identifies music that a user may want to listen to. For example, the sound of a guitar during an online music lesson is useful so you can choose not to suppress that sound. Other ambient and background noises will be suppressed automatically. This capability will be rolling out in the coming months.

Yet another significant feature comes in the form of Teams work users now being able to interact with external and personal accounts and vice versa. The idea is to facilitate communication between large enterprises with Teams work accounts and small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) using personal accounts. Naturally, there is potential for misuse so Microsoft has also introduced a bunch of administrative features for IT admins and users around this area.

Finally, for organizations looking to ditch their traditional communication hardware like desktop phones and transitioning to Teams instead, Microsoft is offering a device trade-in program. It has partnered with Network-Value for this endeavor. Businesses all around the world can get in touch with Network-Value through Microsoft, get competitive prices for their aging hardware and have the option to responsibly dispose off it. You can find out all the details here.

Dealings with regulators

Some interesting events transpired in the regulatory space too. UK regulator Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has reached an understanding with Microsoft to make the management of Xbox subscriptions more flexible. Moving forward, the company will offer pro-rata refunds for canceled subscriptions, cancel inactive accounts, and be more transparent about auto-renewals. The changes have been made in light of CMA receiving complaints around this topic from Xbox gamers.

Representatives from Microsoft, IBM, Google, Mastercard, and other respectable institutions also met with the UK government this week at the inaugural meeting of the International Data Transfer Expert Council. They provided advice to the UK government about how it can unlock the "benefits of free and secure cross-border data flows", considering that the country has left the European Union (EU). The idea is to make the UK "a global leader in removing barriers to cross-border data flows" under the government's National Data Strategy.

Lastly, there have been reports that there are very low chances of the Nvidia-Arm acquisition happening due to pressure and scrutiny from regulators. Valued at $40 billion, this was poised to be the biggest semiconductor deal in history. While nothing is official yet, insiders claim that Arm owner SoftBank is now considering an initial public offering (IPO) to get rid of Arm, whereas Nvidia has privately started informing some partners that it will not go through with the deal.

And if you're wondering how Microsoft is related to this, the report claims that a group of firms including the Redmond tech giant, Qualcomm, Google, Intel, and Amazon are providing ammunition to regulators to halt the deal. Their purported reasoning is that the acquisition will make it difficult for Arm to remain independent and continue providing services to everyone as-is, especially considering that Nvidia is an Arm customer too. It is important to note that Microsoft utilizes Arm chips in its Azure cloud infrastructure too.

Dev Channel

Microsoft has canceled the release of Azure Sphere OS version 22.01, version 22.02 will roll out in February
Zerodium, a security exploit vendor has increased the payout for Microsoft Outlook zero-click remote code executions (RCEs) to $400,000
Microsoft set a new record by mitigating a 3.47 Tbps DDoS attack on Azure servers
Microsoft Pluton security chips won't be enabled by default on 2022 Lenovo ThinkPads
Microsoft generated $51.7 billion in revenue and $18.8 billion in net income in FY Q2 2022
The Surface Duo has finally started receiving the Android 11 update, and it seems like it could go to Android 12L next
Halo Infinite was Xbox's best-selling game in December 2021, it also crossed 20 million players making it the biggest launch in the franchise's history - and for those waiting for the Halo TV show, know that it is set in an alternate timeline
Rare has announced that it will be delivering monthly narrative content to Sea of Thieves in 2022
A new report claims that Microsoft is working with Certain Affinity on a Monster Hunter-esque game

Under the spotlight

This week, Neowin founder Steven Parker published a guide on how you can enable the new Task Manager in Windows 11 build 22538. Although we did receive build 22543 later, the same process should apply on that build too. If this is something that tickles your fancy, check out the detailed guide with screenshots here.

Logging off

Our most interesting news item of the week came from a Ubisoft executive antagonizing gamers not supportive of the company's blockchain-focused direction, saying that NFTs are actually really good for gaming and that gamers just don't get it yet. The statement obviously led to a lot of backlash. Although this doesn't impact Microsoft directly at this point, Ubisoft's continued persistence in making NFTs a thing in games does have implications for gamers and developers at large. For his part, CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer has already voiced his distaste for NFTs and sees them as exploitative in its current state.

Microsoft Weekly: Windows 11 update on the horizon, Teams enhancements, and regulators

Raja Koduri aims to deliver millions of Intel Arc GPUs, but for now here are some wallpapers

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Raja Koduri, Intel GPU division chief, is well aware of the situation PC gamers currently find themselves in. The amount of GPUs being produced is far lower than the demand which is leading to high prices across the board. As such, in a response to a PC Gamer article regarding the GPU shortage, Koduri replied via his Twitter handle that Intel is planning to deliver millions of Arc graphics cards to gamers every year.

I am with you, @pcgamer.This is a huge issue for PC gamers and the industry at large. @IntelGraphics is working hard to find a path towards the mission - getting millions of Arc GPUs into the hands of PC gamers every year.

Although the statement is such that it shouldn't be taken entirely at its face value, the empathetic response does show that Intel is probably somewhat concerned about the situation.

The company however already confirmed that it's not going to limit the mining performance of cards like those on Nvidia Lite Hash Rate (LHR) GPUs. It is, in fact, working on a dedicated ASIC miner itself dubbed "Bonanza Mine". So perhaps the company wants to entice large miners away from its upcoming Arc GPUs towards the new Bonanza ASICs.

Intel Arc architecture was announced back at its Architecture Day 2021 event. The first-gen Arc "Alchemist" GPUs will be based on the Xe HPG architecture and built on TSMC's N6 or 6nm FinFET process. This is the same lithography that is currently utilized by the recently launched but rather underwhelming Radeon RX 6500 XT.

In related Arc news, Intel unveiled some gorgeous wallpapers for Arc GPUs:

Head over to the Imgur link in the tweet above to view or download the Intel Arc wallpapers.

Source: Raja Koduri (Twitter)

Raja Koduri aims to deliver millions of Intel Arc GPUs, but for now here are some wallpapers

US-China tech war: chip maker Micron to close DRAM design operations in Shanghai, move key engineers to US, India

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 01:13:20 +0000

US memory chip giant Micron Technology has confirmed it will close its DRAM design operations in Shanghai by the end of this year, with industry sources saying some of the 150 Chinese engineers will be asked to relocate to the US or India.

Micron said in a statement on Wednesday that its DRAM engineering team “will vacate from the Shanghai Design Centre”, with the process expected to be completed before December 2022, adding that the rest of its operations in the city would not be affected.

The company, which employs about 43,000 people globally, said on Thursday that it is making the move to focus on its “industry-leading NAND technology at the Shanghai Design Centre”. DRAM, short for dynamic random-access memories, is a common type of memory used in computers, while NAND is used for flash storage.

However, employees and industry analysts have also indicated that the move could be a precaution to prevent talent loss and technology leaks to competitors in China.

A current Micron employee, who requested anonymity, said the plan was announced internally last month and that the decision was made because of a “historic loss of technical know-how as some former employees and management were poached by big tech firms in China”.

The growing technology rivalry between China and the US also played a role, the employee said.

Micron denied this was the case, saying it is committed to the Shanghai Design Centre, where it will continue to make its solid-state drive (SSD) memory.

“China remains an important market for Micron and the semiconductor industry in general, and we continue to invest in our talent and strengthen operations across our sites in China,” Micron said.

Some of the 150 members of the Shanghai DRAM team can apply to be relocated, according to the employee, and successful applicants would be granted immigration packages to the US or India.

Zheng Hua, the former senior director of Micron’s Shanghai Engineering Centre, announced on LinkedIn last week that he would relocate to Micron’s Atlanta operation as site leader. Micron has research and development centres in the US, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Italy, China, India and Germany.

Wang Lifu, a Shanghai-based analyst at semiconductor consultancy ICWise, said the closure of the design centre in Shanghai “could be a preventive measure” against technology leaks.

“Many US memory chip design companies opted to put their design teams outside China in the first place, and Micron is moving in that direction,” Wang said.

Chen Rang, a long-time investor and entrepreneur in China’s semiconductor industry, said Micron’s Shanghai team has lost more than a third of its 300 members. With other chip design companies in China poaching its employees with high salaries and stock options, Micron’s move to relocate was “unsurprising”, he added.

It is increasingly common for chip companies to become aggressive in recruitment amid a surge in demand for top talent, according to Chen.

Micron has previously cited its concern over the government-backed competition in China. In its 2021 annual financial report, the company warned investors that Beijing’s support for domestic DRAM makers could restrict Micron’s growth in the market.

“We face the threat of increasing competition as a result of significant investment in the semiconductor industry by the Chinese government and various state-owned or affiliated entities that are intended to advance China’s stated national policy objectives,” Micron said in the report released last September.

Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC), a Micron rival in China, manufactured this NAND flash memory chip. Photo: Handout

“In addition, the Chinese government may restrict us from participating in the China market or may prevent us from competing effectively with Chinese companies,” it said.

Along with other foreign DRAM suppliers, Micron was the target of a 2018 investigation by regulators into potential collusion and other anticompetitive conduct, and it has also been sued in Chinese courts for alleged patent infringement.

In 2018, the US Justice Department filed an indictment against Chinese DRAM start-up Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit, alleging it stole trade secrets from Micron. The Chinese company was subsequently blacklisted by Washington, and went bankrupt because it could no longer acquire chip making tools from foreign suppliers.

Micron currently manufactures DRAMs in Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, the US, Malaysia, and China. It is uncertain whether the closure of the Shanghai design operation would affect its DRAM assembly and test facility in the northern city of Xian.

After a temporary lockdown in December due to a Covid-19 outbreak in Xian, capital of northwestern Shaanxi province, the facility reached full capacity again as of last Friday, the company said in a statement.

US-China tech war: chip maker Micron to close DRAM design operations in Shanghai, move key engineers to US, India

Ubisoft insist their failing NFTs is our problem somehow

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 21:21:18 +0000

Ubisoft’s head NFT peddler, Nicolas Pouard, has spoken out once more about the company’s failing NFTs once more, claiming we just “don’t get it.”

In an interview with Finder, Ubisoft’s strategic innovations lab VP Nicolas Pouard has stated that their pointless Quartz NFTs, which are basically just a ledger of ownership for digital skins, is “not an easy concept to grasp,” which must surely be the reason for why they’ve dramatically underperformed, right? Right?!

In spite of their underperforming Quartz NFTs, which Ubisoft still insists on calling “Digits,” the company will continue to peddle the massively energy-intensive blockchain bullsh*t, with Pouard even promising to make things worse in the future. “Quartz is really just a first step that should lead to something bigger,” he told Finder. “Something that will be more easily understood by our players.”

In the past, even Ubisoft’s employees have shown scepticism for their NFTs, however, Pouard seems undeterred, even despite the understandable backlash that they’ve received. “We so strongly believe that what we are doing [with Quartz and Digits] goes in the right direction. So, we will keep integrating.”

Continuing on like a petulant child not getting their way, Pouard went on to blame Ubisoft’s players, claiming that “they don’t get it for now,” as according to Pouard “it’s really beneficial,” and you can totally trust him, it’s not like he’s trying to sell you overpriced cosmetic skins or anything.

Unfortunately, Ubisoft isn’t the only major games publisher who have jumped aboard the NFT bandwagon, as Atari and Konami have both recently released digital collections in celebration of anniversaries.

While we still vomit in our mouths a little when seeing these gaming adjacent NFTs, they’re at least not being needlessly implemented into games themselves, allowing players to enjoy their games without having the blockchain shoved down their throats.

Thankfully S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl’s developer, GSC Game World, understood that players don’t want NFTs being crammed into their games. Shortly after the announcement of their ‘metahuman’ NFT, which allowed the NFT purchaser to become an NPC in their upcoming game, the publisher announced that actually, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 won’t have anything NFT related in it at all, as they’re “making this game for you to enjoy – whatever the cost is.”

Ubisoft insist their failing NFTs is our problem somehow

MediaTek Kompanio 1380 SoC, with an octa-core CPU, to power premium Chromebooks

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 02:54:42 +0000

MediaTek has unveiled its newest chipset that will power mid-range or premium Chromebooks. The MediaTek Kompanio 1380 SoC packs an octa-core CPU reaching 3.0 GHz, supports 2133 MHz LPDDR4X RAM, and can drive a 1440p display at 120 Hz.

Acer Chromebook Spin 513 will be the first laptop that will feature the new MediaTek Kompanio 1380 chipset. The Chromebook’s pricing starts at $599, which suggests the chipset is a premium one. Besides Chromebooks, this chipset could be also seen in tablets running on Chrome OS.

The MediaTek Kompanio 1380 is built on TSMC’s 6nm process node. It packs an octa-core CPU with four high-performance and four energy-efficient cores. The performance cores are ARM Cortex A-78, and they are clocked at 3 GHz. Meanwhile, ARM Cortex-A55, cores running at 2 GHz, will handle the mundane tasks. The chipset has the latest Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support but reportedly lacks 5G connectivity.

The new chipset has a five-core Mali-G57 GPU. It is a first-generation Valhall-based GPU that was supposed to be an integrated mid-range graphics card for ARM-based SoCs, mainly developed for Android devices. This is certainly not a top-tier GPU. However, MediaTek assures this GPU can drive up to two 4K UHD displays at 60 Hz, three 4K displays at 30 Hz, or a single 1440p display at 120 Hz.

MediaTek has been in the limelight with its Dimensity lineup of high-end mobile chipsets. Although the company still hasn’t been able to incorporate impressive GPUs, its chipsets are now competing with Qualcomm’s flagship SoC in terms of raw speed, and even Apple’s ARM-based chipsets in terms of performance.

MediaTek Kompanio 1380 SoC, with an octa-core CPU, to power premium Chromebooks

Apple made more money than ever, even with the supply chain crunch

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 02:38:38 +0000

The iPhone had a monster quarter, and Apple’s services business kept growing

Apple has made a regular trend of announcing record-breaking quarterly earnings, especially in the company’s fiscal Q1, which includes the holiday shopping season. And Q1 2022 has managed to top them all: Apple just reported the biggest revenue for any quarter in its history. Driven by sales of the iPhone 13 lineup and a continued rise of its services business, Apple posted $123.9 billion in revenue with earnings per share of $2.10, handily beating Wall Street expectations of $118.66 billion and $1.89, respectively. Apple recorded a profit of $34.6 billion — also a record.

The iPhone enjoyed a supercharged sales quarter, no surprise given that it was a holiday period and the first full quarter of availability for the iPhone 13, 13 mini, 13 Pro, and 13 Pro Max. The iPhone unit took in $71.63 billion, up 9 percent over the year-ago quarter.

All of Apple’s other divisions were also up year over year, with the exception of the iPad, which was down by 14 percent and impacted by supply constraints. The Mac was up by 25 percent, services up by 24 percent, and wearables were up by 13 percent.

2022 is expected to be very busy for Apple in terms of new product releases. The company is rumored to be readying a new 5G-capable iPhone SE for as soon as next month. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, an updated iPad Air and potentially a revamped product in the Mac lineup — like a Mac mini or iMac running the M1 Pro chip that debuted in the 2021 MacBook Pro — could also be coming in the front half of the year. Just yesterday, Bloomberg revealed that Apple could soon launch a Square-like service that allows iPhone owners to accept contactless payments without any need for additional hardware.

Looking further into 2022, the company is also rumored to be working on a new Mac Pro powered by its own silicon. And following up on the third-generation AirPods released last year, next-generation AirPod Pro earbuds are also expected in the coming months alongside a redesigned iPad Pro and the usual iPhone refresh when fall rolls around.

An upgraded iPhone SE with 5G is expected to be Apple’s first product launch of 2022.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

But uncertainty surrounds the company’s long-awaited mixed reality headset, which will be Apple’s first major product in a new category since the Apple Watch in 2015. The latest reports suggest the VR / AR device might not launch until sometime in 2023.

Even as it marches on with product plans, Apple continues to struggle with the ongoing supply chain crunch. In the previous quarter, Apple estimated that it lost out on $6 billion in revenue due to supply chain issues and the semiconductor shortage. Shipping times for the 16-inch and 14-inch MacBook Pros have been hit particularly hard and remain lengthy, with delivery estimates of March and April for many configurations. It’s almost impossible to find the higher-end SKUs in stock at Apple’s retail stores — and that’s been the case since the laptops went on sale back in October.

Coinciding with today’s earnings, Apple CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal that he expects the situation to improve soon. “We saw supply constraints across most of our products,” he said. “We’re forecasting that we will be less [constrained] in March than we were in the December quarter.”

Outside of hardware, the company is facing greater and more frequent challenges to its strong grip over the iOS App Store; Apple has begrudgingly agreed to allow third-party payment options in South Korea and for dating apps in the Netherlands but has pushed back against similar pressures in Russia. In the United States, CEO Tim Cook is said to have personally lobbied against antitrust legislation under consideration in Congress that Apple claims could force it to allow software sideloading and compromise device security.

Speaking of software, before it released earnings on Thursday, Apple rolled out new betas of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. iOS 15.4 will allow people to unlock their iPhone with Face ID while wearing a mask, while the delayed Universal Control feature is coming to iPadOS 15.4 and macOS Monterey 12.3.

Apple made more money than ever, even with the supply chain crunch

Major Discord outage caused by API and database issues

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 03:35:37 +0000

Discord suffered what they classified as a 'massive outage' that prevented users from logging into the service or using voice chats.

The outage started at 2:49 PM EST and was initially caused by an issue with the application programming interface (API) outage, preventing various services from communicating with each other.

However, after resolving the API issue, Discord discovered a secondary issue with a database cluster, causing further problems.

"We have identified the underlying issue with the API outage but are dealing with a secondary issue on one of our database clusters. We have our entire on-call response team online and responding to the issue," Discord explained on their status page.

When users attempted to log into Discord during the outage, they were shown a spinning logo, which ultimately displayed a message about the API outage.

Discord error message when trying to log into service

Discord states that they began rate limiting logins to prevent an overload of their operational servers while they fixed the problematic database cluster. During this rate-limiting period, users had to wait long before they were fully logged into the service.

At around 5:12 PM EST, Discord removed the rate-limiting but warned that users might continue seeing issues interacting with bots using the slash commands. Over time, these issues will be resolved.

The full status updates provided by Discord during this outage can be found below:

Monitoring - We have fully removed all rate limits and Discord is almost back to normal.

Over the next hour, some Discord servers may continue to see some issues interacting with bots using slash commands. As part of resolving the incident, we needed to reduce load on our databases and we turned down some parts of our slash command system.

We are going to complete our internal postmortem process to really dig in and understand exactly what happened here, but we really apologize for the inconvenience if you were unable to login today or had other issues.
Jan 26, 14:12 PST

Update - We are down to the last set of offline users and we anticipate everybody being fully online within the next 10 minutes.
Jan 26, 13:50 PST

Update - More than half of Discord users are back online and working normally. We continue to work to bring the rest of the users back online.
Jan 26, 13:07 PST

Update - We are continuing to work on a fix for this issue.
Jan 26, 13:06 PST

Update - The database is healthy again and our internal error rate has fallen to nominal levels. We are beginning to raise the login rate limit to allow users to reconnect.
Jan 26, 12:29 PST

Update - We are continuing to work through some issues with one of our database clusters. We are still rate limiting login traffic. Next update in 15 minutes.
Jan 26, 12:21 PST

Update - We have instituted a rate limit on logins to manage the traffic load. Users who are logged in are successfully using Discord at this point, and we will be slowly raising the limits here to allow more users in as we can. We expect this to be resolved in the next 15 minutes.
Jan 26, 12:07 PST

Identified - We have identified the underlying issue with the API outage but are dealing with a secondary issue on one of our database clusters. We have our entire on-call response team online and responding to the issue.
Jan 26, 12:03 PST

Investigating - We are currently investigating a widespread API outage.
Jan 26, 11:49 PST

Update 1/26/22 5:48 PM EST: Article is rewritten to explain the outage.

Major Discord outage caused by API and database issues

Crysis 4 officially announced

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 21:24:27 +0000

Today, developer Crytek confirmed the long-rumored Crysis 4. Crysis is a first-person shooter (FPS) franchise that pits you and your nanosuit against a terrifying alien force. Crysis 3 ended the story rather conclusively so it'll be interesting to see where the journey leads us in Crysis 4.

Crytek didn't provide any further details about the game, but we know that it's being developed. Recently, the team released remastered versions of Crysis, Crysis 2, and Crysis 3 on various platforms, but they're plagued with visual and performance issues, especially when it comes to Xbox Series X. Hopefully, Crytek will address these problems with patches now that it's 2022 and gamers have provided a considerable amount of feedback.

Crytek China posted a confirmation of Crysis 4 this morning, though it's unclear if the regional office meant to do that. Soon afterward, Crytek officially released a trailer and confirmed the existence of the game. This may have been a leak that led to the project's announcement.

Crytek head Avni Yerli said the following on the franchise's website a few hours later, confirming that it's in the early stages of development.

A new Crysis game is happening ... We are so pleased and excited to bring this news to you, and we really can't wait to reveal more details about what lies ahead. Right now the game is in the early stages of development so it will be a while yet ... As development progresses we will release more details when we can.

Hopefully, Crysis 4 will be a polished experience whenever it releases. The FPS genre has evolved quite a bit over the past decade — it's been almost that long since the last Crysis game hit the market — and expectations have changed. Halo Infinite adopted an open-world approach to revitalize the franchise. Maybe Crysis 4 will too.

Crysis 4 officially announced

Fabs stretched thin as chip shortage shrinks inventories to just 5 days

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 20:58:47 +0000

Relief appears to be months, if not years, away.

US chip supplies are close to the breaking point as a new survey reveals diminished inventories and overstretched fabs.

The numbers put the chip shortage in stark relief. In 2021, companies that purchase semiconductors had less than five days of inventory on hand as opposed to the 40 days of inventory they had in 2019, according to a survey of more than 150 companies conducted by the US Department of Commerce. At the same time, demand was up 17 percent. Many of the companies surveyed said that demand exceeded their internal forecasts.

“We aren’t even close to being out of the woods as it relates to the supply problems with semiconductors,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a press call Tuesday. “The semiconductor supply chain is very fragile, and it’s going to remain that way until we can increase chip production in the United States.”

Raimondo urged Congress to pass legislation that would authorize $52 billion in grants and incentives to shore up US semiconductor manufacturing capacity.

There was some good news in the report. Fabs, which typically run at about 80 percent of capacity, are operating well above 90 percent. The additional fab utilization has helped meet some of the increase in demand.

But addressing the remainder of the shortfall won’t be easy. The “primary bottleneck across the board appears to be wafer production capacity,” Raimondo wrote. In other words, to truly address the chip shortage, the world needs more fabs. Fabs take years to build and bring online. Intel, for example, broke ground on its newest fabs in Arizona in September, and the company says the fabs won’t be operational until 2024.

That jibes with another finding in the report—that most companies surveyed said they didn’t see the chip shortage abating for at least another six months.

Early in the pandemic, semiconductor firms were hesitant to commit billions of dollars toward building new fabs. No one knew whether the disruptions would be fleeting or if they would sort themselves out once the market adjusted to new patterns of demand. For example, when automotive companies canceled their orders early on, tech companies took their place as demand for their products and services surged. But consumers returned to dealer lots sooner than expected, catching carmakers flat-footed. Eventually, the thinking went, the disruptions would work their way through the system, using some of that extra fab capacity before returning to more normal patterns.

That didn’t happen, of course.

The new demand has proven more durable, and as a result, semiconductor manufacturers have changed their tune, pledging to spend big on new fabs and equipment. TSMC has said it will spend $100 billion over three years to increase capacity, while Intel is building four new fabs in the US alone, two in Arizona and two in Ohio. In both 2021 and 2022, the entire semiconductor industry is expected to spend around $150 billion on capital expenditures, far outpacing previous years.

Fabs stretched thin as chip shortage shrinks inventories to just 5 days

The Prisoner Who Revolutionized Language With a Teacup

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 15:46:03 +0000

While imprisoned for being a “reactionary,” physicist and engineer Zhi Bingyi began devising a system to help computing machines read Chinese characters.

This story is adapted from Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern, by Jing Tsu.

It was 1968, two years into the Cultural Revolution. Shanghai was in the middle of an unseasonal heat wave, and its people cursed the “autumn tiger.” Zhi Bingyi had more to worry about than the heat. He had been branded a “reactionary academic authority,” one of the many damning allegations that sent millions of people to their deaths or to labor camps during the Cultural Revolution. Was it still appropriate for Zhi to think of himself as one of the people? Hadn’t he betrayed them, as he’d been told?

Just four years earlier, Zhi had gone to work every day as director of the newly established Shanghai Municipal Electric Instrument and Research Office under the government’s First Ministry of Machinery Industry. It was one of the most secure jobs one could have. First Ministry was in charge of building heavy industrial machines in the early period of New China, and later split off a Fourth Ministry to oversee electronic communications technology. Zhi’s specialty was electric metering—focusing on precision meters and electronic modeling by enhancing the performance of a device’s various parts.

Quiet, cautious, and insistent, Zhi was also highly qualified. He earned a PhD in physics from Leipzig University but declined a job offer in the United States in order to return to China. He taught at two Chinese universities and later helped to devise China’s landmark 12-year Plan for the Development of Science and Technology of 1956. It was a hopeful time for scientists and technicians who were deemed useful for their contributing roles in a state-guided socialist economy.

Since his arrest in July 1968 for being a “reactionary academic authority,” Zhi had been cut off from his research, the news, and his devoted German wife. He was used to working on equations and engineering problems with teams of colleagues. No longer. His only company was the eight characters on the wall of his cell reminding him that prisoners faced two options from their minders: “Leniency to those who confess, severity to those who refuse.”

The purge of the intellectual class had just begun, and anyone who was educated had to bow to the tenets of class struggle and the will of the Gang of Four—the radical contingent of the Chinese Communist Party. Many were sent to the countryside to be reformed through backbreaking labor, picking through manure and tilling fallow fields in the heat and rain with little to eat. They were held to the strictest military discipline in camps that doubled as “reeducation” centers. So successful was Mao’s anti-intellectual campaign that it inspired Pol Pot to launch a similar crusade in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, killing anyone who wore eyeglasses—incriminating evidence of bourgeois intellectualism.

In the cowshed, Zhi stared at the eight characters on the wall. One day, he no longer saw the ominous message but instead the strokes and characters of which it was composed. He began to notice where the ink thickened, blotched, or trailed off at the ends of each character. Every stroke appeared to him anew, each an enigma with a fresh riddle. Though they were created by a human hand, he realized, each character was essentially repeating combinations of the same abstract strokes and dots.

How would one translate and turn these human-made brushstrokes into a coded language that could be entered into computing machines? It was not the first time someone had thought of rendering Chinese characters systematically into codes, of course. The same question had crossed Count d’Escayrac’s mind more than a century earlier in another prison—the urine-soaked cell of imperial Beijing. And coded language was fiercely defended as a question of national sovereignty in the marble halls of Paris in 1925 and attempted as telegraphic encryption.

But it never would have occurred to any of them to come up with a solution for a machine. Every solution of theirs had been oriented toward the human user—how to organize characters so they are easier for people to write and to learn, less taxing and time-consuming to memorize or look up.

The question in Zhi’s mind burned to a different purpose: How could one render Chinese in a language that computers can read—in the zeros and ones of binary code? Having been used to building computer models of his electrical devices, he would have come across the problem many times.

To bridge to the state of technology in the advanced world in the 1970s, China had begun to build machines that could handle mass-scale calculations, sieve through huge amounts of information, and coordinate complex operations. The data for calculating and controlling flight paths, military targets, and geographical positioning, or tracking agricultural and industrial output, had to be collected first. Yet all the existing records, documents, and reports were in Chinese. It became clear that in order to be part of the computing age at all, the Chinese script would have to be rendered digitally. Western computing technology was also moving in the direction of text processing and communication, not just running large-scale calculations. Converting human language scripts into digital form was the next frontier. The arms race during the Cold War was advancing the state of computing technology in both the Soviet Union and the United States. Getting Chinese inside the machine was critical to ensuring that China was not left out.

Requiring precise inputs, computing machines are unforgiving of inconsistencies and exceptions. All the characteristics of Chinese that stymied earlier innovators—the unwieldy size of its character inventory; its complex strokes, tones, and homophones; the difficulty of segmentation—created new challenges in the digitization of the script. Executable commands could only be in the form of a yes or a no, an on-or-off switch of an electric current running through the circuitry of a computer control board. No partial solutions or patches would help China get by, this time. During Zhi’s incarceration, China was in the throes of its biggest social and political upheaval yet and hardly had the resources to make such a bid for the future.

But for a country so far behind the Western world, science and technology were not just a barrier. They were viewed as essential for helping China leapfrog out of backwardness and speed up the process of modernization. The challenge was multifaceted: to devise a code for Chinese that is easy for humans to remember and use and that can be entered into a machine via punched tape or keyboard; to find a way for the machine to store the massive amount of information required to identify and reproduce Chinese characters; and to be able to retrieve and restore the script with pinpoint precision, on paper or on a screen.

Zhi knew he could tackle the first, critical step: how best to input Chinese into the machine. That meant figuring out a way to represent each character in a language that the human operator and the machine could both understand: as a finite set of zeros and ones entered directly into the machine, or in the alphabetic letters on which computer programming languages were already built. The latter seemed more promising. Mapping characters onto the alphabet immediately led to other questions, however: How many alphabet letters would it take to uniquely encode a single character? Should the spelling of characters be abbreviated like acronyms? And what should serve as the basis of the acronyms— characters, components, or strokes?

Zhi needed a pen and paper to test each hypothesis, but the guards did not even give him toilet paper, let alone something to write on. He looked around and saw the only viable object in the room—a teacup. With that modest vessel of worship, Zhi began his own personal pilgrimage. Each day, with a stolen pen, he inscribed as many characters as he could onto the matte ceramic teacup’s lid, testing out each character with a set of possible Roman letters, then wiped it clean. He squeezed dozens of characters at a time onto the curved surface, relying on memory to keep track of his incremental efforts.

He aimed for every character to have some kind of intuitive but unique relationship to the alphabetic code representing it. There were two known ways of doing so, by sound or shape. Zhi’s predecessors preferred shape-based analysis, taking strokes and components and rearranging them into classifiable categories, but the adoption of the Romanization system of pinyin had made the phonetic approach the national and international language standardization policy. While pinyin solved the problem of phonetic standardization, it did not make the old problems go away. For one thing, it made the issue of homophones worse because so many characters were now spelled identically in alphabetic form. There were only so many ways to spell the pronunciations of different characters with the alphabet’s 26 letters, and they ran out more quickly than the thousands of individually distinct characters. Zhi decided to utilize the best of phonetic Romanization and shape-based cues to make his own encoding process as predictable and logical as possible. The idea was not destined to rot in jail.

In September 1969, Zhi was released after 14 months. Upon release, Zhi was assigned to lowly positions as part of his rehabilitation: sweeping floors, shaping tools in a factory, standing guard at a warehouse. He found it a blessing to be a nobody and went right back to his encoding scheme. He used the warehouse as his study to stash the foreign journal articles and newspapers he had scavenged. He was excited to learn that Japan had been making progress on resolving the problem. Much like what had been done with Chinese typewriters, they were using radical parts of characters to locate, retrieve, and print them on the computer screen. But the Japanese keyboard included more than 3,600 characters, each taking up one key, which was impractical. A company in Australia was also using the radical system to retrieve characters. Using a more modest keyboard of 33 keys, they were able to access close to 200 characters at any time with the stroke of one key, which was an improvement over the Japanese, but still not enough characters for the Chinese. Then there was the United States, where experimental models were using 44 keys, and—as Zhi would later learn—an even more ambitious project was underway to computerize Chinese printing at the Graphic Arts Research Foundation in Massachusetts. Scholars in Taiwan, meanwhile, were developing their own input systems for traditional characters.

Zhi felt greatly encouraged. His solitary work was running parallel to these larger efforts. Most of them, though, still had not been able to free themselves from clunky keyboards. While breaking down characters into components had worked well enough for specific character retrieval indexes and typewriter keyboard designs, it did not translate directly into programming such a process for a computing machine.

Zhi remembered the advantage of the shape-based approach, where character parts helped to identify the whole character directly. To integrate that useful principle into his encoding scheme, Zhi decided to index characters by their components—the simpler characters within each ideograph—using the first letter of each component’s pinyin spelling.

The idea took another two years to flesh out. On average, characters can be broken into two to four components, and there are 300 to 400 components in total. The majority of characters can be divided into two halves—vertical or horizontal—along with other possible geometries. This yielded a two-to-four-letter alphabetic code for each character, which meant each character required at most four keystrokes on a conventional English keyboard. The average English word length, by comparison, is close to 4.8 letters. Zhi thus made the alphabet work more efficiently for individual ideographs than it did for English. The system also cleverly worked around the problem of dialect difference and homophones. Because the code took only the first letter, rather than the complete sound of the character, most regional speech variations did not matter. The four-letter code worked like an acronym of the different parts of the character. Zhi essentially used the alphabet as a proxy to spell by components rather than words.

He sequenced each character’s components in the order they would have been written by hand. Coding by components gave context and important cues that reduced ambiguity and the risk of duplicated codes. The chances of having the same components—or even components starting with the same letter—occur in the exact same order in two different characters are low.

Zhi’s way of indexing the Chinese character by its alphabetized components made it easier for humans to input Chinese—as long as you knew how to write the language—and created a more systematic human-machine interface. For instance, in his system, the character for “road,” 路 (lu), which has 13 strokes by hand, can be broken up into a mere four components: 口 (kou) , 止 (zhi), 攵 (pu), and 口 (kou). Isolating the first letter of each component gives the character code of KZPK. Or take the character 吴 (wu), a common last name, which can be quickly decomposed into two parts, 口 (kou) and 天 (tian), yielding a character code of KT.

Alphabetic spelling, once mediated by Chinese in this way, is no longer a phonetic but a semantic spelling system, where each letter actually stands for a character rather than a sound. This method of indexing can also be extended to represent groups of characters. Take, for instance, “socialism,” or shehui zhuyi: 社会主义. By tagging the first letter of each of the four characters in the phrase, the phrase can be coded in a four-letter sequence, SHZY. Or consider another frequently invoked phrase, the seven characters that make up “People’s Republic of China”—Zhonghua renmin gongheguo: 中华人民共和国. It can simply be typed in as ZHRMGHG.

Zhi’s coding system could also include properties that are not strictly phonetic. Additional letters could add the pronunciation of the whole character or its shape pattern to the basic four-letter component-based code. The character 路 has the phonetic pronunciation of “lu” and, because it can be divided into two vertical halves, has a zuo you (left-right) structure. Both features can be indicated in the extended code KZPKLZ. The more precise you can be about encoding the information of a character, the more useful that code can be. These extensions of Zhi’s system would be important for Chinese-language applications in machine translation and retrieving information from stored data.

Zhi formally introduced his “On-Sight” encoding system in the Chinese science journal Nature Magazine in 1978. He described his system as topological—extrapolated from the geometry of parts. With four-letter codes using all 26 letters of the alphabet, there were enough combinations to generate 456,976 possible unique codes. Zhi claimed for his system an efficiency similar to that of Morse code— quick, intuitive, and transparent.

News of Zhi’s feat spread, galvanized by the political fervor for science and technology that broke out after Mao’s death in 1976. On the front page of Shanghai’s Wenhui Daily, on July 19, 1978, the editor euphorically announced, “The Chinese Script Has Entered the Computing Machine.”

Computers could finally “understand” square-shape characters. After more than a decade of isolation, China could at last have a shot at communicating with the world and managing its own flow of information digitally.

From Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern by Jing Tsu, published by Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2022 by Jing Tsu.

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Microsoft generated $51.7 billion revenue, $18.8 billion net income in Q2 2022

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 02:44:27 +0000

Today, Microsoft announced that the company generated $51.7 billion in revenue for the Q2 2022 fiscal quarter. Out of the $51.7 billion, $18.8 billion was net income. Revenue is up 20%, and net income increased by 21%. According to a report by The Verge, cloud services, Office, and Windows boosted the company's earnings over the past few months.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for computers at home grew. This contributed to more revenue. At the moment, Windows 10 and Windows 11 are being used by 1.4 billion monthly active devices.

The Xbox division also saw an increase in hardware revenue by 4%. Overall revenue is also up by 8%, mostly driven by content and services. Halo Infinite was the star of the show at the earnings call because it has already been played by 20 million gamers. Forza Horizon 5 has also been played by 18 million people.

As mentioned above, services like cloud hosting, LinkedIn, Office, and search grew. The increase in revenue was in the double digits. It seems like almost all Microsoft divisions are doing well despite the challenging COVID-19 times.

Microsoft is working on a massive acquisition of publisher Activision Blizzard at the moment. The deal is expected to go through in late 2022 to early 2023. When that happens, the company will control franchise like Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft.

Microsoft generated $51.7 billion revenue, $18.8 billion net income in Q2 2022

Nvidia ready to abandon Arm acquisition, report says

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 21:29:35 +0000

Nvidia remains hopeful, but report paints different picture behind the scenes.

Nvidia may be walking away from its acquisition of Arm Ltd., the British chip designer, according to a report from Bloomberg.

The blockbuster deal faced global scrutiny, and Nvidia apparently feels that it hasn’t made sufficient progress in convincing regulators that the acquisition won’t harm competition or national security. “Nvidia has told partners that it doesn’t expect the transaction to close, according to one person who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private,” Bloomberg reported.

In a further sign that the deal is likely to be abandoned, SoftBank is also working to take Arm public, according to the report.

Nvidia isn’t publicly confirming the report, though. “We continue to hold the views expressed in detail in our latest regulatory filings—that this transaction provides an opportunity to accelerate Arm and boost competition and innovation,” an Nvidia spokesperson told Ars.

Battle over “Switzerland”

When Nvidia first announced its intention to purchase Arm in September 2020, the deal was valued at $40 billion. Since then, the chip shortage and rising popularity of ARM designs has driven the cost as high as $75 billion. Nvidia initially expected the deal to close in March 2022. If the deal falls through, Arm and Softbank will receive a $2 billion breakup fee.

For Nvidia, the acquisition had obvious upsides. ARM designs are used in everything from smartphones and servers to TVs and antilock braking systems. ARM chips use little power given their performance, which has given the company a broad footprint across a variety of industries. Those qualities were appealing to Nvidia, which has transformed itself from GPU manufacturer to chip designer and, in the process, has become one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies.

But competitors, including Qualcomm, Intel, and Google, were concerned that an Arm takeover—let alone one mounted by one of the sector’s largest firms—would limit their access to ARM designs. Nvidia has insisted that it will offer ARM licenses to anyone who is interested and willing to pay, but it has faced an uphill battle convincing competitors and regulators that those promises will be kept.

Many regulators have either announced investigations into the acquisition or come out against it. Last October, the European Union said it was looking into the deal, and in November, after an earlier probe found “serious competition concerns,” the British government said it was investigating the takeover on antitrust and national security grounds.

Finally, in December, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it was suing “to block the largest semiconductor chip merger in history to prevent a chip conglomerate from stifling the innovation pipeline for next-generation technologies,” Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s competition bureau, said in a statement at the time. The agency said the lawsuit aims to maintain Arm’s status as the “Switzerland” of the semiconductor industry, a neutral player that offers its designs to anyone.

Chinese concerns

Chinese regulators, worried about a key technology falling into the hands of a US company, are also questioning the deal. China has grown increasingly concerned that it lacks control over key technologies, particularly those related to semiconductors. The country spends more money importing semiconductors than importing oil, and ARM chips are as ubiquitous in China as they are elsewhere.

The Chinese Communist Party is undoubtedly frustrated by recent US attempts to limit the country’s competitiveness in the semiconductor market. In 2019, the Trump administration pressured the Dutch government to prevent a Chinese company from buying extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines made by Netherlands-based ASML. The machines are all but required to make chips under 7 nm. A year later, US officials imposed sanctions on Huawei, preventing the Chinese tech company from buying leading-edge chips made by TSMC.

Because of this history, Chinese officials almost certainly would have nixed the Nvidia-Arm transaction. Though, given the scrutiny the deal has faced elsewhere, it’s unlikely it would have gotten that far.

Nvidia ready to abandon Arm acquisition, report says

Dying Light 2 post-launch roadmap revealed, promises free and paid content for years

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 21:27:12 +0000

Today, developer Techland revealed the post-launch roadmap for Dying Light 2: Stay Human. Dying Light 2 is a first-person action game that takes place after a zombie apocalypse. You have the ability to shape the city according to your actions. It's expected to launch on February 4, 2022, but that hasn't stopped the team from discussing the future of the game.

According to the image posted on Twitter, Dying Light 2 will receive free faction-specific skins right after launch. Then in March, new challenges will be introduced to the game, but April has the biggest drop of them all. A new series of events focused on Mutated Infected enemies will take place.

May sees the drop of another set of challenges, while the first story expansion should land in June. Keep in mind that these release windows may shift because the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way games are developed.

Techland said that it's going to support Dying Light 2 for a minimum of 5 years. We'll see new weapons, enemies, stories, and much more during that time. Hopefully, all of that content will be compelling and will keep players immersed in the world of the game.

Dying Light 2 post-launch roadmap revealed, promises free and paid content for years

Happy Birthday, Macintosh, you weren't a sure thing

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 03:33:26 +0000

Apple's portable desktop was quite a surprise and departure from all that came before

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

I don't remember the day the Macintosh launched.

On January 24, 1984, I was still in college, consumed with papers, tests, grades, finding a way to speak to that girl in Tower B, and missed one of the most monumental launches in tech history.

To be fair, personal computers weren't all that interesting or sexy back then. My Commodore 128 was the ultimate utility device, where I wrote every single college paper and then tried to forget about it.

At school, we had computer labs where we learned BASIC or Fortran, painfully aware of the chasm that existed between these quotidian efforts and Star Trek's responsive and effortless "Computer."

Today, we remember the Macintosh with the hagiography of hindsight. It was earth-shattering (or at least screen-shattering if you believed the Super Bowl commercial) and set the stage for all personal computing to follow.

Not so compatible

Apple's Lisa Computer (Image credit: Shutterstock)

At the time, though, the media was consumed with compatibility. A few years into the personal computer revolution, most of which was still happening in offices and, to a lesser extent, academia, unveiling a computer that offered zero interoperability with the IBM PC was at least shocking.

Yes, Apple and Steve Jobs bet the farm on the Macintosh launch, but what's been lost to memory is how Apple hedged is bets a bit with the Lisa 2, 2/5 and 2/10, 32-bit updates to 1983's Apple Lisa computer. Despite a graphical desktop, no one remembers the Lisa as a ground-breaking system that made the Macintosh possible, though it clearly was.

The Mac's desktop (early reports still put "desktop" in quotes as if it was so proprietary and esoteric that it might not outlast the Mac) was even described as similar to Lisa's, though tech journalists took pains to describe in detail the act of, for instance, dragging an icon on top of an ever-present trashcan icon to delete it. Functions we take for granted are described in terms now reserved for explaining "Bitcoin" to aging parents: "The entry-level personal computer also supports a cut-and-paste feature that allows data from one display window to be electronically transferred to another.”

Despite its ability to open multiple "windows," the first Macintosh did not even support multi-tasking (the Lisa did).

The big risk

Steve Jobs (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Apple and Jobs has big dreams for the Macintosh but also recognized the enormous risks of so much investment (a reported $50 million alone on advertising) and attempting things like a just-in-time supply chain (maintaining just weeks of inventory to build and deliver new Macs), something that had never been tried before in computer (or most) American manufacturing.

"Our whole premise for the Macintosh is based on the fact that current technology is not sufficient to reach the tens of millions of people who need personal computers," Jobs told ComputerWorld on in January 1984, adding, "If the people in this industry do not require radical technical innovation, then this company will not be here in two years' time."

Apple's controversial decision not to support IBM compatible systems directly (there was software that allowed Macs and Lisa computers to act as sort of dummy DOS terminals) did raise some eyebrows. Still, among the Macintosh computer's earliest supporters was Microsoft.

The company was making a sizeable investment in productivity software for young platform, which ran on an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 CPU. It clearly saw a fresh market opportunity, especially in places where the DOS-running IBM PC had yet to break through (the home, school).

"To create a new standard takes something that's not just a bit different. It takes something that's really new and captures people's imaginations. Macintosh meets that standard," said, yes, Bill Gates at the time.

Don't have much

Apple's classic logo on the back of the original, portable Macintosh. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

With a proprietary OS, almost no software ready at launch (it did have MacWrite and MacPaint, which was described as "a clever graphics package that uses the Mac's high-resolution screen to the fullest"), and no clear path between it and more established computing options, Macintosh was anything but a sure thing.

In those early days, though, Apple moved quickly. The 256K Macintosh was followed in short order by the Macintosh 512K, then the Macintosh SE, and by 1989, the Macintosh SE30.

I met my first Mac, a 512K model, I think, in 1986. By then there were already some black and white, GUI-based applications including Aldus PageMaker, an excellent desktop publishing application ("no one called anything "apps" in 1986) that let you build entire layouts and print them out, one half at a time, on an Apple LaserWriter printer (the two halves never lined up perfectly).

Having spent college on that old Commodore, the Macintosh was the revelation Jobs promised and Gates foresaw. I was inspired because it was inspiring.

As for the Lisa computer, it was already forgotten, discontinued in 1986.

An icon's bumpy ride

The Macintosh didn't sail on through the 21st Century. Apple's Macintosh II was a failure and the company's personal computers wouldn't regain their footing until company founder Steve Jobs, who was ousted from Apple in 1985, returned more than a decade later and relaunched Macintosh as an iconic, cotton-candy colored iMac.

No Mac, however, has quite caught the magic or sparked the zeitgeist like that first portable box. By today's standards, it's charmingly underpowered. I loved how tech press at the time described the 512 × 342 pixel resolution 9-inch screen as "high resolution" (your Apple Watch has 448 x 368 pixels). Still for 1984, it was the equivalent of the door between Dorothy's black and white world and Oz's colorful wonderland. So many new possibilities. That's worth remembering and celebrating.

Happy Birthday, Macintosh, you weren't a sure thing

Intel might have a plan to keep up with Moore's Law

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 03:28:43 +0000

Intel patent shows plan for stacking transistors for better performance

Intel is a company in a spot of bother: TSMC, Apple, and other rivals are outpacing its chip technology and Moore's Law – literally created by Intel's founder – is starting to cause the chipmaker some headaches.

However a patent unearthed by Twitter user @Underfox3 has found that the company could well be developing a plan: stacking transistors on top of each other for better performance in less space. Now, of course, this is only a patent – companies patent weird and whacky things all the time for a variety of reasons, most likely to prevent competitors from getting the jump on them.

But there is something interesting about Intel thinking its way around the problem of how to squeeze more power into ever-smaller spaces - namely, if this design comes to fruition, Intel could be looking at sub-2 nanometer (nm) processes.

Intel calls the design "stacked forksheet transistors" and you can see why: the transitions would be stacked on top of each other.

As Intel explains: "A first transistor device includes a first vertical stack of semiconductor channels adjacent to an edge of the backbone. A second transistor device includes a second vertical stack of semiconductor channels adjacent to the edge of the backbone. The second transistor device is stacked on the first transistor device."

(Image credit: Intel)

The end result from this extremely nerdy patent application is that Intel could create a 3D vertically-stacked CMOS architecture, allowing for increased transistor counts over today's current architectures – a huge boost for the company. The company does note however that, as it stands, the constraints are "overwhelming".

It's impossible to tell exactly what kind of performance uplift could be achieved by Intel's design, and the company conspicuously doesn't speculate, but TSMC moving from a 5nm process to a 3nm process resulted in 10% to 15% performance gains while using up to 30% less power.

(Image credit: Intel)

Whether this patent ever makes it into production or not, it's interesting to see Intel working through the problem of how to squeeze more power out of less, especially as the company begins its transition under new CEO Pat Gelsinger. A sub-2nm process would be game changing, putting Intel in-line with Apple's incredibly impressive M1 series processors.

Via Tom's Hardware

Intel might have a plan to keep up with Moore's Law