News: Technology News

TikTok beats Google to become the most popular website of 2021

Mon, 27 Dec 2021 08:26:56 +0000

The internet has seen a surge of users during the pandemic and we are looking at some trends that are a little different from all the previous years. According to Cloudflare, TikTok.com was the most popular website in 2021 stealing the #1 spot from Google.com.

TikTok first got the top spot for a day for the first time on February 17, 2021. It got a few more days in March and May as well. However, after August 10, 2021, the platform took the lead on most days. Although Google did manage to take the lead for a few days, TikTok dominated important holidays like Thanksgiving that happened on November 25 and also on Black Friday that was on November 26.

Here's a list of the most popular domains in late 2021:

TikTok.com
Google.com
Facebook.com
Microsoft.com
Apple.com
Amazon.com
Netflix.com
YouTube.com
Twitter.com
WhatsApp.com

For comparison, here's a list of the most popular domains of late 2020:

Google.com
Facebook.com
Microsoft.com
Apple.com
Netflix.com
Amazon.com
TikTok.com
YouTube.com
Instagram.com
Twitter.com

Other than the big tech domains, social media domains continued to dominate. TikTok not only surpassed Google as the most popular domain but also dethroned Facebook to become the most popular social media website. Facebook still continues to be the platform with more users worldwide.

If you wish to look at how various websites ranked in their respective categories in the year 2021, you can check out Cloudflare's blog.

TikTok beats Google to become the most popular website of 2021

Microsoft Weekly: AD woes, acquisitions galore, and Bingo was her name-o

Sat, 25 Dec 2021 21:27:57 +0000

We are at the end of the week and while it was a relatively slow due to the holiday season, there is still some stuff that is worthwhile to recap in case you haven't been keeping up with our daily coverage. This week, we learned some more about Active Directory (AD) troubles, one of Microsoft's name considerations when christening Cortana, and some interesting stuff about Windows 11 too. Find out more in our recap for December 18 - December 24.

Active Directory woes

Earlier this week, Microsoft issued an advisory about some vulnerabilities reported in AD a few weeks ago. Although the company released patches back in November, it is once again asking customers to immediately apply the fix on domain controllers because a proof-of-concept tool that exploits the issues has now been publicly released and can be used by malicious actors. Threat actors can now fairly easily gain Domain Admin privileges in AD as long as they can compromise a regular user account, which means that its essential that organizations update their domain controllers as soon as possible.

Acquisitions galore

There are two notable acquisitions to talk about in this week's digest. The first is Microsoft's purchase of Nuance, that has finally been approved by the European Union (EU). Nuance is a company that develops transcription software, and the EU has provided unconditional approval for the deal, reportedly valued at $16 billion. The EU's blessing is a major hurdle overcome by Microsoft in terms of finalizing the transaction since the United States and Australia have already deemed it to pose no competition concerns and given it the go-ahead.

The second acquisition is in a completely different domain altogether. Microsoft has entered a contract to acquire Xandr, which is AT&T's global programmatic advertising marketplace. With support from Xandr, Microsoft will be capable of expediting the provision of digital advertising solutions for the open web by bringing together Xandr's data-driven platforms for advertising and Microsoft's technology and global advertising customer base.

Bing-o was (almost) her name-o

It turns out that former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wanted the company's virtual assistant to be named "Bingo" instead of Cortana. For those unaware, Cortana is the name of the virtual AI companion for Halo's chief protagonist Master Chief, whereas Bingo... well, that likely stems from the word "Bing", which is Microsoft's search engine. While the latter may have made sense to Ballmer from a functionality and branding perspective, the name Cortana received overwhelming support from the Windows and Windows Phone user base.

Talking about Windows, a third-party developer has released a Dark Mode for Paint on Windows 11. While the capability to officially enable this has been promised by Microsoft already, we are yet to see that happen. If you simply can't wait and are on the Windows 11 Dev Channel, you should probably check out the workaround, while owning the risk that comes with installing third-party packages.

Finally, fans of Microsoft's Edge browser will be pleased to know that the Web Capture tool now works with PDF files in the Canary channel. It's unclear when the feature will make its way to the Stable channel, but it should be sooner rather than later, in light of the current development.

Dev channel

Diablo-like Grim Dawn now runs at 60fps on Xbox Series X
January 2022 Games with Gold include Aground, Radiant Silvergun, and more
DayZ and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided have received major discounts in this week's Deals with Gold

Under the spotlight

This week, I talked about how I miss the News and Interests integration with the Taskbar when using Windows 11. Widgets in the OS just don't feel the same since they essentially behave like a separate app rather than providing information and utility in the Taskbar, which should be the core purpose of Widgets, and something that Windows 10 provides to some extent, in my opinion.

I also discussed how Microsoft needs to fix the upvote counts in its Feedback Hub. Currently, we noticed drops of up to 40% in the metric for popular pieces of feedback, and it's clear that something is wrong. Given that there is no way to downvote feedback in the tool, this has led to speculation about whether this is a malicious bug or intentionally malicious behavior from Microsoft, but it's clear that action needs to be taken.

Logging off

Our most interesting news item of the week came from our new reporter Dean Howell, who noted that 80% of Steam's top 100 games now work on Linux. This includes titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator, No Man’s Sky, Back 4 Blood, Cookie Clicker, Dark Souls III, and more. You can expect these games to run on Linux exactly like they do on Windows. Check out Dean's analysis here.

Microsoft Weekly: AD woes, acquisitions galore, and Bingo was her name-o

Steam has reportedly been banned in China

Sat, 25 Dec 2021 21:24:30 +0000

Valve's presence in China has been an interesting topic, especially in the past few months. Although the global version of its Steam storefront has been available for quite some time, it wasn't "approved" by the government per se, which meant that it could be yanked at any time. Just earlier this year, Valve released a government-approved version of the Steam in the country. The client offers a handful of games as it only contains titles that are approved by the Chinese government and adhere to its strict regulations, for example, regarding the display of blood and gambling.

However, there are now widespread reports that the global version of Steam has been added to a blacklist in China and cannot be accessed anymore. This applies both to the Steam client and the Steam Community page, as reported by thousands of users across Reddit, Twitter, and other social media platforms. Meanwhile, the Chinese version seems to be up and running for everyone.

While we don't have our own sources based in China to validate these claims, the China Firewall Test website is reporting both the Steam pages as "blocked" for us too.

That said, it's unclear what the actual root cause for the issue is. While the vast majority seems to agree that China has blocked the global version of the storefront, there are other reports of people being able to use it without any problems too. Meanwhile, some have also claimed it to be a DNS Cache Poisoning attack.

For its part, the Chinese government has not commented on the topic at all yet. Although if it has banned the global storefront, there could be widespread ramifications for its citizens who have invested their money in purchashing games from the storefront and won't be able to access them without tricky and unstable workarounds potentially involving the use of VPNs.

Steam has reportedly been banned in China

CES 2022 seemingly falling apart: Lenovo joins T-Mobile, Amazon, AT&T and others in bailing out

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 04:12:38 +0000

The world’s biggest technology show may not be

CES, the world’s largest technology show, appears to be in jeopardy due to rising COVID-19 cases in the United States. On Wednesday evening, exhibitor Lenovo announced that it would “suspend all on-site activity in Las Vegas,” following announcements from T-Mobile, Amazon, Meta, and others that they’d be ditching as well, and despite CES organizers’ statements today that the show would go on.

So far, T-Mobile has been the most prominent exhibitor to bail. CEO Mike Sievert, one of the Consumer Electronics Show’s featured speakers, publicly announced on Tuesday that he would no longer be doing a keynote and would “significantly limit our in-person participation.”

Amazon decided not to attend the show in-person entirely, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, and AT&T also dropped out on Wednesday, according to Axios’ Ina Fried. Intel also appears to be reconsidering as of Wednesday.

Meta, Twitter, Pinterest, and iHeartRadio also all announced this week that they won’t attend this version of the annual Las Vegas expo in light of a new wave of COVID-19 cases in the US, as have major tech publications including The Verge, CNET, Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, TechRadar and Tom’s Guide. But T-Mobile was the first major attendee to bail, with companies like Twitter and even Meta having a far more muted presence at the show in general.

“T-Mobile will continue to serve as a CES sponsor and title sponsor of the DRL Championship Race but the vast majority of our team will not be traveling to Las Vegas,” reads the company’s press release. “Additionally, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert will no longer be offering a keynote in-person or virtually.”

Lenovo typically has a medium-sized presence at CES, typically making an array of announcements, though most of its activity generally happens on the Las Vegas Strip and in private meeting rooms, rather than a public booth on the show floor.

AT&T, by comparison, had a seemingly tiny presence at this year’s show. While the company’s “AT&T Business” division is listed as a featured exhibitor, the company was not expected to have a keynote. AT&T Business also only appears to have one very small booth in the Health and Wellness section of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s North Hall, with no booths for AT&T in general.

Other companies that might make a sizable impact if they ditched CES 2022 include Samsung and GM, which have featured keynotes like T-Mobile, and companies that generally rent a lot of prominent space on the show floor, like LG, Panasonic and Sony. Intel typically rents a lot of prominent space as well, but this year their huge booth appears to be MIA, replaced by Canon, Razer, and other smaller companies. “We are currently revisiting our plans for CES and will provide an update as soon as possible,” an Intel rep tells The Verge.

We’ve asked some key companies if they’re still committed; a Sony rep suggested to us that the company still plans to attend as of Tuesday, and LG said Tuesday that “Unless CTA says otherwise,” it’s “still on board.” CES maps show that LG has a very large booth at CES, but the company’s said it’s taking a hybrid approach, making use of QR codes and AR to show off its wares.

Bloomberg reports that AMD and Samsung are still planning a limited presence, Nvidia will have a virtual-only keynote, and that Qualcomm, OnePlus and HTC still plan to attend. Sony, Samsung and Google are all listed as “monitoring local conditions,” which could be read as a meaningless platitude but also gives those companies an easy out if they decide the conditions have changed.

On Tuesday morning, the Consumer Technology Association, which runs CES, stated that it still plans to host an in-person show. “At this point, we’re very much focused on having this show and doing it safely and putting the right protocols in place to ensure that people feel comfortable with it,” a CTA exec told Adweek.

As of Wednesday, the CTA says it’s received 42 exhibitor cancellations, but has also added 60 new exhibitors in that time.

Here is the CTA’s full statement to The Verge from Jean Foster, head of marketing and communications:

CES will be in person on January 5-8 in Las Vegas with strong safety measures in place, and our digital access is also available for people that don’t wish to, or can’t travel to Las Vegas. Our mission remains to convene the industry and give those who cannot attend in person the ability to experience the magic of CES digitally.

While we recently received 42 exhibitor cancellations (less than 7% of our exhibit floor), since last Thursday, we’ve added 60 new exhibitors for our in person event. Registrations for both our digital access and our Las Vegas event are continuing to show strong momentum, with thousands more registrations in the last few days.

CES 2022 will go forward as important innovation for world health and safety, mobility and solving problems will be exhibited. Furthermore, thousands of smaller and medium sized companies rely on CES for their business. We have increased our official count to over 2200 exhibitors and as announced yesterday many of our top elected officials from both political parties will be at CES.

Given CES’ comprehensive health measures — vaccination requirement, masking and availability of COVID-19 tests — coupled with lower attendance and social distancing measures, we are confident that attendees and exhibitors can have a socially distanced but worthwhile and productive event in Las Vegas, as well as a rewarding experience on our digital access.

In the recent past, we’ve seen the question of “will they or won’t they cancel due to COVID” take a while to resolve. Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the first big tech show to go on after the COVID-19 pandemic initially hit, held out for quite some time even as partners continued to cancel. Eventually, organizers did have to cancel MWC 2020. Major tech companies ditched the in-person version of MWC 2021 as well. CES 2021, on the other hand, was all virtual.

Update, 8:41 PM ET: Added additional company replies via Bloomberg.

Update, 10:09 PM ET: Added information about Amazon and LG.

Update December 22nd, 4:05PM ET: Added new information about AT&T, Intel, and a statement from the CTA, which organizes CES each year.

Update December 22nd, 9:57PM ET: Added information about Lenovo.

CES 2022 seemingly falling apart: Lenovo joins T-Mobile, Amazon, AT&T and others in bailing out

Vivaldi browser is coming to your car, for some reason

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 15:32:05 +0000

The privacy-focused Vivaldi browser is coming to your car and we aren't sure why

Picture this: You're driving along and your passenger asks a question you don't know the answer to. Now, most people would pull out a smartphone and Google it, but not Vivaldi: the privacy-focused browser company is putting its software in cars.

Through a partnership with Swedish electric carmaker Polestar, Vivaldi will become the first browser available on Android Automotive OS, starting now in Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific, beating even Chrome to the punch.

"We have listened to our owner community, and it’s great that we could answer their desire for a browser with Vivaldi as a nice Christmas present," says Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO. "Now there is basically no limit to the web content you can explore in Polestar 2 – even some of your favourite streaming platforms."

Has science gone too far?

This is all well and good until you consider the fundamental strangeness of having a fully capable web browser in your car, a vehicle that is mostly meant to get you from A to B. Vivaldi says the browser can only be used when parked, but it seems like it could be a temptation too far.

According to Vivaldi CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, the partnership came about due to the synergies between Vivaldi and Polestar making sense.

"We are really proud to introduce our browser to a car for the first time and specifically with a brand like Polestar. Our technological and sustainability ambitions are well aligned," he said.

"We value transparency, privacy, and responsible innovation – including the fact that we have our servers in Iceland, one of Polestar’s newest markets. Like Polestar, we are a challenger brand, and we take a Scandinavian approach to design, that is based on trust and listening to our users."

Source

Also: Vivaldi launches its browser for the Polestar 2.

Stove gate: Intel's new cooler looks like a gas burner and you can't unsee it

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 04:14:57 +0000

In 2015, Intel was the uncontested leader in PC performance. Offerings from AMD, like the infamous FX-8350, were competitive only because they were equipped to handle multi-core tasks in professional workflows better than their Intel counterparts. In the lead up to the first-generation Ryzen CPUs, AMD did something unheard of. They started shipping their FX-8370 line with a massive, high performing cooler called the Wraith.

AMD continues the Wraith line to this day, offering that and other high-performing coolers to match their entire lineup. Meanwhile, Intel continued the ship the same boring, loud, low-performance cooler for over a decade. Well, that's all changed. Earlier this month images for Alder-Lake S CPUs began to leak, but now thanks to VideoCardz, we finally get to see them action and it looks like the burner on a gas stove. You can't unsee it. Brace yourselves.

Will this new look be any indication of thermal performance?

Source: VideoCardz

Stove gate: Intel's new cooler looks like a gas burner and you can't unsee it

Four years after launch, Ubisoft is updating Assassin’s Creed Origins

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 21:54:14 +0000

In celebration of #ACDay, Ubisoft has announced that they will be updating Assassin’s Creed Origins with new features, despite it not being the latest game in the franchise.

Even after turning four years old back in October, Ubisoft appears to not have forgotten about Assassin’s Creed Origins, as the studio, which is currently haemorrhaging staff, is “looking into adding 60FPS support for Assassin’s Creed Origins, so stay tuned!”

It’s currently unclear just when 60FPS might arrive in Assassin’s Creed Origins, as Ubisoft didn’t give any sort of timeline for the update, but it’s nice to know that they’re thinking about the game nevertheless.

Ubisoft has previously added 60FPS support to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey earlier this year in August, however, it’s unclear if this trend may continue any further than these two games.

If you are looking for the latest game in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, then you’ll need to look towards Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which, in our review, we said was a new highlight of the long-running series, and as a downright good game on its own merit, as it’s a satisfying open-world romp that’s well worth your time.

Alongside additional content for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Ubisoft is also hard at work on Assassin’s Creed Infinity, which is rumoured to be a live service continuation of the platform which will evolve over time.

Four years after launch, Ubisoft is updating Assassin’s Creed Origins

Alleged packaging for the upcoming mighty RTX 3090 Ti leaks, purportedly launching at CES

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 21:12:32 +0000

The packaging for the alleged upcoming GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, Nvidia's flagship card for the Ampere generation has leaked. The image below apparently shows an ASUS TUF GeForce RTX 3090 Ti retail package which seems to be housing a triple-fan 3090 Ti graphics card.

Rumors for this behemoth started flying around back in August, though, at that time, it was rumored that the GPU will be called the RTX 3090 SUPER. The card will reportedly feature the full GA102 die and that means it will pack 10,752 CUDA cores, whereas the RTX 3090 comes with 10,496. The new 3090 Ti is rumored to have the device ID "GA102-350".

In terms of VRAM, the 3090 Ti will also feature 24GB of GDDR6X VRAM, just like the RTX 3090, however, the memory speed will purportedly be higher at 21Gbps compared to the 3090's 19.5Gbps.

If it does turn out to be true that the RTX 3090 Ti does indeed come with 21Gbps memory, the additional bandwidth could help the upcoming flagship in gaining some ground ahead of the RTX 3090, at least at very high resolutions.

That's because the CUDA core count difference between the 3090 Ti and 3090 is too little (<3%). However, the additional ~7.7% bandwidth could help at 4K or higher since the bandwidth is generally helpful at high pixel counts.

The RTX 3090 Ti is expected to be shown off at the CES 2022 on the 5th of January.

Source and image: IT Home

Alleged packaging for the upcoming mighty RTX 3090 Ti leaks, purportedly launching at CES

Microsoft Weekly: Edge shenanigans, Windows Terminal supremacy, and Control Panel migration

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

Although we are heading closer to the holiday season in many countries, that does not mean that news has slowed down. Far from it, in fact. This week, we'll be recapping Microsoft's continued efforts to make Edge your default browser, some changes to Windows, and a new Windows 11 Dev Channel build, among many other things. Find out about all of this in our weekly digest for December 11 - December 17.

Microsoft Edge shenanigans

Vivaldi CEO Jon von Tetzchner slammed Microsoft's practices with its Edge browser over the week. He stated that the company its back to its old tricks again, calling the activity "blatantly anti-competitive", "openly abusing", and "desperate". If you're wondering what all the fuss is about, we've been talking about this in detail here at Neowin, about how Microsoft is showing notifications on the download pages of competing browsers, calling Edge more trustworthy. Clearly, moves like this haven't gone over well with the competition.

Speaking of stifling the competition, Microsoft has essentially disabled EdgeDeflector via the latest Patch Tuesday update on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. The software forced Windows to deflect your default browser preferences in all use-cases, including Windows Search. That said, there is a workaround using another open-source software called MSEdgeRedirect, but it remains to be seen how long it will work as intended, given that Microsoft seems to be hellbent on preventing the switching of default browsers in some use-cases.

Not all news on the browser front is negative, though. It seems that Google likes the download UI in Microsoft Edge, and is looking to implement the same in Chrome. This means that the download progress and information usually shown in the bottom shelf of Chrome will instead be moved to the toolbar with a ring progress bar, similar to Microsoft Edge.

It also seems like Microsoft is testing a new feature in Bing that enables users to issue queries via their local language. For example, if you search for "bike repair" with your language set as German, Bing may suggest you to search "fahrrad reparatur" instead, which is the German translation for the same.

One of the selling points of the feature could be to get more relevant search results in your queries that are related to your region.

The death of the Control Panel

Windows Insiders received their final flight of the year via Windows 11 build 22523 in the Dev Channel. The update introduces major changes including efforts to migrate the classic Control Panel to Windows Settings. Programs and Features now redirects to Settings > Apps > Installed Apps, and the Uninstall Updates option has been migrated to Settings > Windows Update > Update History. Other changes include fixes to the Taskbar, File Explorer, and more. Find out about all the changes in our coverage here.

In related news, Patch Tuesday also happened this week. There were security and quality updates all across the board, read more about them in our dedicated pieces below:

Windows Terminal supremacy

Microsoft announced that in 2022, it will be changing the default Terminal emulator in Windows 11 from Windows Console Host to Windows Terminal. Although the company claims that the former has been the default option since the "dawn of Windows", there's a debate going on in our comments sections about the accuracy of this claim. The jury is still out. Regardless, Windows Terminal will become the default option in 2022 and you will also have the ability to make a third-party Terminal as your default command line experience.

In other news, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2022 for Mac Preview 4 with new layout options, improvements to the search functionality, and other fixes. The company also fixed a bug that prevented phones with Teams installed from dialing 911 during emergencies. The issue was apparently due to flaws in how Android and Teams operated together. Finally, Linux 5.16 is coming soon, and Surface owners who utilize the OS will be pleased to know that it packs some improvements specific to their hardware as well.

Dev Channel

Halo Infinite features a giant sandwich Easter egg
The U.S. government revealed why Microsoft challenged the JEDI contract going to Amazon on "technical" grounds
Some testing has indicated that AMD Radeon doesn't differentiate much between Windows 10 and Windows 11, in terms of the output gaming performance
Over 1,000 games and add-ons including Halo series go on sale in Xbox's Countdown Sale 2021

Under the spotlight

If you're craving a nostalgia trip, Neowin's Dean Howell written about an interesting project called the defrag simulator which takes you back to the old days where you would defragment your hard drive to essentially convert it into a solid block of data. It's an interesting simulation and you can find out more about it here.

Logging off

Our most interesting news item of the week isn't related to Microsoft directly, but has the potential to be if other organizations follow suit. Essentially, Google has informed employees that they should submit their proof of vaccination or apply for medical or religious exemption by certain deadlines, in line with U.S. President Joe Biden's Executive Order. If they don't abide by these rules, they will be put on "paid administrative leave" for up to 30 days, followed by up to six months of unpaid leave, and eventually, termination of employment. The move has sparked quite a debate in our comments section, feel free to dive in here.

Microsoft Weekly: Edge shenanigans, Windows Terminal supremacy, and Control Panel migration

Rigetti announces 80 qubit processor, experiments with “qutrits”

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 21:50:29 +0000

An 80-qubit processor made by linking two 40-qubit ones.

The Aspen-M 40-qubit chip and its housing.

Rigetti

On Wednesday, quantum computing startup Rigetti announced a number of interesting hardware developments. To begin with, its users now have access to its next-generation chip, called Aspen-11, which provides 40 qubits and improved performance. While that's well below the qubit count achieved by IBM, the company has hinted at a way it can stay competitive: private testers will now have access to an 80 qubit version achieved by linking two of these chips together.

Separately, the company says that it is now experimenting with allowing testers to access a third energy state in its superconducting hardware, converting its qubits into "qutrits." If these qutrits show consistent behavior, they will allow for the manipulation of significantly more data in existing hardware.

New and improved

For traditional processors, advances are typically measured in clock speed, core count, and energy use. For quantum computers, one of the most critical measures is error rate, since the qubits lose track of their state in a way that digital hardware doesn't. With Aspen-11, Rigetti is claiming that a specific type of error—the readout of the state of the qubit—has been cut in half.

The analog to clock speed is how quickly you can transfer signals that induce qubits to perform operations. Here, the company says there's a 2.5x speedup. This is critical because qubits also tend to lose their state over time. The more operations you can squeeze into a given amount of time, the more likely you are to get a complex set of manipulations done before the processor loses its state.

All that, plus the increased qubit count, show the sorts of evolutionary improvements that have been typical of developments to date. The 80-qubit Aspen-M may represent a more significant advance, since Rigetti describes it as "assembled from two 40-qubit chips."

Although they are quite tiny, qubits are large compared to the features on traditional processing hardware. The signals that control and read and write data from the qubits also require larger connections to the processor. All of that means there is likely a limit to how many qubits we can stuff onto a single piece of hardware. Similar problems show up with alternative technologies like trapped ion qubits. For these reasons, a number of companies have already started talking about the need to bridge more than one individual chip in order to raise qubit counts.

If Rigetti has really solved this problem already, it has cleared an important technical hurdle pretty early in development. And if its solution could scale to more than two chips, it could provide an obvious roadmap for getting qubit counts up rapidly.

Qutrits, anyone?

The company also published a blog post in which it said that it was providing experimental access to a new way of configuring its hardware. All the commercial hardware available at present is built on qubits; the hardware can adopt values including two states and a superposition of all possibilities in between. Obviously, a three-state system provides significantly more information content.

Why isn't anyone using that kind of system? For transmons—the hardware used by Rigetti, IBM, and Google—the problem is that the energy levels of the states available beyond the first two are separated by ever-shrinking amounts of energy. So while there's a big difference between 0 and 1, there's a smaller difference between 1 and 2, and matters get worse from there. For hardware that is already plagued by noise issues, it's hard to exert the kind of control needed to get higher levels to work.

But Rigetti has now modified its control software to allow programmable access to one of the higher-energy states. We'll have to wait for users to actually try out this system to determine whether it's useful given the state of both our algorithms and the hardware.

Rigetti announces 80 qubit processor, experiments with “qutrits”

IBM and Samsung say their new chip design could lead to week-long battery life on phones

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 03:41:07 +0000

The next big advance in chips is looking up

IBM and Samsung have announced their latest advance in semiconductor design: a new way to stack transistors vertically on a chip (instead of lying flat on the surface of the semiconductor).

The new Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors (VTFET) design is meant to succeed the current FinFET technology that’s used for some of today’s most advanced chips and could allow for chips that are even more densely packed with transistors than today. In essence, the new design would stack transistors vertically, allowing for current to flow up and down the stack of transistors instead of the side-to-side horizontal layout that’s currently used on most chips.

Vertical designs for semiconductors have been a trend for a while (FinFET already offers some of those benefits); Intel’s future roadmap also looks to move in that direction, too, although its initial work focused on stacking chip components rather than individual transistors. It makes sense, after all: when you’ve run out of ways to add more chips in one plane, the only real direction (other than physically shrinking transistor technology) is to go up.

While we’re still a ways away from VTFET designs being used in actual consumer chips, the two companies are making some big claims, noting that VTFET chips could offer a “two times improvement in performance or an 85 percent reduction in energy use” compared to FinFET designs. And by packing more transistors into chips, IBM and Samsung claim that VTFET technology could help keep Moore’s law’s goal of steadily increasing transistor count moving forward.

IBM and Samsung are also citing some ambitious possible use cases for the new technology, raising the idea of “cell phone batteries that could go over a week without being charged, instead of days,” less energy-intensive cryptocurrency mining or data encryption, and even more powerful IoT devices or even spacecraft.

IBM has previously shown off its first 2nm chip earlier this year, which takes a different route toward cramming more transistors by scaling up the amount that can be fit onto a chip using the existing FinFET design. VTFET would aim to take things further, however, although it’ll likely be even longer before we see chips based on IBM and Samsung’s latest technology out in the world.

It’s not the only company looking to the future of production, either. Intel previewed its upcoming RibbonFET (Intel’s first gate-all-around transistor) design over the summer, its own successor to FinFET production technology, which is set to be part of the Intel 20A generation of semiconductor products scheduled to start ramping production in 2024. The company also recently announced its own plan for stacked transistor technology as a potential successor for RibbonFET in the future, too.

IBM and Samsung say their new chip design could lead to week-long battery life on phones

Mark your calendars, AMD to share new info on upcoming Zen and RDNA products at CES 2022

Mon, 13 Dec 2021 21:39:06 +0000

CES 2022, which is scheduled to be held from January 3 to January 8, 2022, is almost upon us and AMD has announced its plans for the event.

The company has said that it will reveal more information on its upcoming CPUs and GPUs during its 2022 Product Premiere Livestream Event which will be held on January 4, and the live stream will be available at 10 a.m. EST on the same day at AMD.com on this page.

Last year, AMD promised that its next-gen Zen 4-based Ryzen processors and RDNA 3-based Radeon graphics cards are "on-track" for 2022 and it looks like the company could be keeping its promise.

However, there are also rumors of the company announcing a Zen 3+ architecture as a stop-gap between Zen 3 and Zen 4 which will be featuring the new 3D V-cache technology. The company claims that the addition of V-cache enables an extra 15% average gaming performance over the current Zen 3 architecture.

We are not sure if Zen 3+ is actually on AMD's roadmap since the company didn't really ever state anything relating to it.

On the other hand, most credible rumors do point towards AMD debuting Land Grid Array (LGA) for its next-gen mainstream Socket AM5 that is set to debut this year. It will also bring DDR5 DRAM support.

Mark your calendars, AMD to share new info on upcoming Zen and RDNA products at CES 2022

Microsoft Weekly: Love from Google, crippled SSDs, and a new Dev Channel build

Sat, 11 Dec 2021 22:08:08 +0000

We are the close of yet another week, and it's time to recap everything that went on in the Microsoft-verse. This was an exciting week due to some surprise announcements, Halo Infinite's campaign release, and a significant Windows 11 Dev Channel build. Let's dive into all that and more in our weekly digest for December 4 - December 10.

Google loves Windows

In a surprise announcement, Google took to the stage at The Game Awards to reveal that Google Play games are coming to Windows 10 and Windows 11 next year. The company was keen to emphasize that this is an independent endeavor, and that it did not partner with Microsoft or any other entity in this undertaking.

It is equally interesting to know that given the fact that this feature is coming to Windows 10 as well, we now know that Google won't be utilizing Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA), a technology that is exclusive to Windows 11. The company has touted that its solution will be available sometime in 2022 and will allow users to seamlessly switch between games on different devices. Although the availability of Android apps on Windows via Google Play has not been confirmed as of yet, the chances of that happening have significantly increased in light of the recent announcement too.

We also got to know of Microsoft's failed attempt to bring AAA Xbox games to iPhone as individual apps that could be streamed through Xbox Cloud Gaming. Due to Apple's App Store policies, the company had requested that Microsoft release every game individually as opposed to offering one app acting as a library of the numerous games available for streaming. Based on the email exchanges, it appears that Microsoft did consider conceding to Apple's demands before settling on releasing the capability through the web.

SSD Woes

Over the week, we brought attention to an issue that is causing SSD slowdowns on Windows 11. This was observed in our own testing and reported by others as well. Although Microsoft did say that it addressed these issues in an update, we did not notice significant performance gains on our test configuration.

Performance actually appeared to be a key concern for Microsoft this week. The company released a new tool called Microsoft-Performance-Tools for Linux-Android to measure browser performance across Linux and Android. Through the toolset, you can analyze tracing, record traces, enable programmatic access to them, and even integrate it with Windows Performance Analyzer so that you have a GUI for easier analysis.

In the same vein, it rolled out a new capability called Detached Elements in DevTools with Edge 97, empowering developers to detect memory leaks in real-world applications. This can help debug and investigate performance degradation due to Document Object Model (DOM) leaks.

In fact, Microsoft also announced native support for the OneDrive sync client on Mac and Windows on ARM, which will hopefully result in some performance gains too.

Oh, and remember the Alder Lake DRM bug on Windows 10 and 11? All games have now been patched except Assassin's Creed: Valhalla and Fernbus Simulator.

Some love for Windows 11 too

Despite the upcoming holiday season, it's almost impossible to get by without hearing about Windows 11 during the course of the week. We actually got two builds this week, although only one of them is worth talking about.

Starting with build 22518 for the Windows 11 Dev Channel, we got a whole bunch of features and UI changes. Microsoft is exploring a new entry point for Widgets on the left side of the taskbar rather than the right, there's a new Voice Accessibility capability, and also some changes to the context menu in the File Explorer. The update includes a host of other improvements and bug fixes too, so do check out the complete list here. Interestingly, the build is not available to ARM64 PCs because of a bug.

Microsoft also rolled out Windows 11 build 22518.1012 (KB5009380), but it's just a minor update to test the servicing pipeline in the Dev Channel. It does not bring any new capabilities. That said, the Dev Channel did receive a revamped Notepad that contains rounded UI elements, dark mode, and the Mica material theme.

The Surface Laptop Go received the December firmware update too. It is supposed to bring improved battery life as well, if you're on Windows 11. And if you're a Windows 11 user, you might want to know that third-party tool ThisIsWin11 has been updated to enable users to uninstall broken Windows updates.

Dev Channel

Microsoft Edge will tackle Typosquatting and stop users from heading to a malicious website
Microsoft renames Xbox Game Pass for PC, making it PC Game Pass
Palm NFT Studio raised $27 million in Series B funding through assistance from Microsoft's M12 venture fund
Pantone and Microsoft collaborated to christen "Very Peri", a color for UX elements
Video Encode API has been released for DirectX 12 and is native in Windows 11
Microsoft has released new guidance and tools for responsible AI development
Microsoft is changing the way it bundles Python in Visual Studio
Microsoft's Azure Quantum will provide Rigetti quantum computers in the cloud next year

Under the spotlight

Neowin's News Editor Pulasthi Ariyasinghe published his review of the Halo Infinite Campaign and heaped praises on it for offering enjoyable combat, an intriguing storyline, and interesting sandbox element. Do check out his review here.

News Reporter Asher Madan took a look at Deep Silver's Chorus on Xbox Series X, calling it "one of the biggest surprises of 2021". He also praised the dynamic gameplay, mentioning that he is addicted to it. If that sounds interesting, take a gander at his piece here.

Unfortunately, Asher didn't have a similarly positive experience with Serious Sam 4 on Xbox Series X, which he calls a poor port. This primarily due to performance issues when a lot of enemies appear on the screen simultaneously, an occurrence that is quite common in the game. Check out more of his thoughts here.

Finally, I published a guide about how to enable Windows Sandbox in select configurations of Windows 10 and Windows 11. It is an extremely useful capability that enables you to check out suspicious files in a sandbox environment. If that sounds right up your alley, read Neowin's brief guide here.

Logging off

Our most interesting story of the week isn't directly related to Microsoft, but is worth knowing about in this ever-changing world of technology. It seems that car thieves are getting more sophisticated and are using Apple AirTags in their heists. The Canadian police has reported a handful of instances where thieves have hid Apple AirTags in some obscure location on the car, and then used it to track their potential victims, allowing them to commit grand theft auto under the most conducive environment. If you're privacy and security-conscious, check out our coverage on the topic here.

Microsoft Weekly: Love from Google, crippled SSDs, and a new Dev Channel build

Alexa.com is going to shut down.

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 00:57:56 +0000

Alexa Internet

Alexa was founded as an independent company in 1996 and acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stock. Alexa provides web traffic data, global rankings, and other information on over 30 million websites.[3] Alexa estimates website traffic based on a sample of millions of Internet users using browser extensions, as well as from sites that have chosen to install an Alexa script.[4] As of 2020, its website is visited by over 400 million people every month. Occasional disputes over its claims occur, but it is overall very comprehensive [citation needed]. Alexa Internet, Inc. is an American web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.

We will be retiring Alexa.com on May 1, 2022

Twenty-five years ago, we founded Alexa Internet. After two decades of helping you find, reach, and convert your digital audience, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire Alexa.com on May 1, 2022. Thank you for making us your go-to resource for content research, competitive analysis, keyword research, and so much more.

We have been proud to serve you as customers.

Thank you sincerely,

The Alexa.com Team

Source

Microsoft Weekly: Browser Wars, Office revamp, and Windows Ugly Sweater

Sat, 04 Dec 2021 22:45:55 +0000

We are at the end of yet another week, which means that it is time to recap what happened in the world of Microsoft in the past few days. This week was quite eventful, especially if you're interested in news related to Microsoft Edge, Windows 11 builds, and a festive Windows Ugly Sweater. Read on to to check out the weekly digest for the week of November 28 - December 3.

Browser Wars

If you were wondering if you had traveled back to the early 2000s this week particularly when it came to your browser choice, that'd be understandable. Microsoft went a bit on the offensive this week by showing native prompts to consumer when they attempt to download Google Chrome via Microsoft Edge.

These prompts refer to Chrome as a "so 2008" browser, and say that users should stick with Edge because it is apparently more trustworthy. While the messages shown by Microsoft are very casual and tonally light, it's got many of our readers as well as other people on social media forums wondering if the company is being too desperate.

When it comes to allowing people to change the default browser in Windows 11 itself, Microsoft seems to be testing an easier process with build 22509 in the Dev Channel.

Users can now utilize a single button to change the default browser for some extensions simultaneously. This is in stark contrast to the current generally available method in which you have to painstakingly change the default browser for each extension. It's not a massive improvement, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. That said, we don't know when, or if, this change will be made available to the general public.

In related news, Edge Canary got a couple of decent features this week too. Tab search is now enabled by default, and those who utilize Xbox Cloud Gaming will be pleased to know that they can test a new capability called Clarity Boost during their streaming sessions. As the name suggests, this visually upgrades some aspects of the game-streaming experience and is only available on Edge Canary for now.

Teams is Essential(s)

Microsoft rolled out a new offer for small businesses who utilize Teams for online collaboration and communication. Dubbed Teams Essentials, this enables the target audience to use a variant of Teams that is more feature-rich than the free version with capabilities like meeting timings going up to 30 hours, 10GB of cloud storage, and the ability to host 300 people in a group called. Priced at $4 per user per month, Microsoft is calling Teams Essentials the "most affordable all-in-one solution", but on paper, it does sound like a difficult sell against Microsoft 365 Business Basic that offers even more advanced capabilities and software at the cost of $5 per user per month.

That's not all in the world of Microsoft's Office-based offerings though. The company has started rolling out the Office visual revamp to more users. As it stands, the redesign is available for 50% of Current Channel users on Windows 10 and for everyone on Windows 11. It brings in some minor UI changes like Fluent Design and Dark Mode, but Microsoft plans on enabling other elements like the Mica background effect soon. You can trigger this revamp by clicking on the megaphone icon on the top-right corner of the title bar of your Office app and then switching on the toggle in the Coming Soon pane. The same toggle can also be used to return to the existing UI.

Finally, if you use OneDrive on the web to manage photos, you'll be happy to know that the ability to add filters is now available. Another capability that will be coming later this month is the ability to annotate and markup photos.

Windows Ugly Sweater and Windows 11 enhancements

If you're a fan of Microsoft-branded merchandise, you should probably check out this year's Windows Ugly Sweater. The apparel is based on Minesweeper and retails for $74.99, excluding shipping costs. As a part of this holiday celebration, Microsoft is also pledging $100,000 to AbleGamers - a charity aimed at combating social isolation, foster inclusive communities, and improve the quality of life for people with disabilities.

In other news, Windows 11 Insiders on the Dev Channel were treated to build 22509. This is a relatively major update that addresses some issues related to the Start menu and the Taskbar. New layout options have been added to the former while the ability to display the date and time on secondary monitors has been added to the latter. Other changes also include the migration of more Control Panel capabilities to the Settings app and tons of other bug fixes. Check out the complete change log here.

Paint on the Windows 11 Dev Channel received an update too. It brings some UI elements more in line with the OS' design language and also fixed issues related to text boxes, languages, and more.

In news related to Windows 11, AdDuplex survey data shows that the OS is now on 9% of PCs. This is a significant increase over the 5.1% figure reported back in October. That said, if you're utilizing Windows 11 and are not happy with some of the changes, do check out ThisIsWin11 which features a bunch of utilities for customization.

Dev Channel

PowerToys introduced a presentation mode utility in version 0.51.0, which was then followed by a stability update version 0.51.1
Halo Infinite campaign, Aliens: Fireteam Elite, and much more are coming to Xbox Game Pass this month
Sea of Thieves Season Five is now live with loot burying, cannon rowboats, and much more

Under the spotlight

This week, I argued that Windows Update should show more information about patches by default. As it stands, users are forced to find Microsoft's KB articles and change logs, or rely on third-party news outlets like Neowin to find out what's new in each update. This information should be natively integrated - but still optional to view - into Windows. Check out my thoughts on the topic here.

We also discussed the top 10 changes that people are requesting for Windows 11 on the Feedback Hub. Most are related to the Taskbar and the Start menu, but one demands to remove the TPM requirement too. We have also outlined Microsoft's responses to all the feedback items. It's definitely an interesting list and you should check it out here.

Logging off

Our most interesting news item of the week is not related to Microsoft but is definitely worth highlighting. Eccentric entrepreneur Elon Musk has seemingly taken a leaf out of Apple's book and announced a $50 "Cyberwhistle". The collectible item is made of stainless steel and its design is inspired by Tesla's Cybertruck. The Cyberwhistle went out of stock hours after Musk's Twitter reveal but you can still check out the dedicated product page here.

Microsoft Weekly: Browser Wars, Office revamp, and Windows Ugly Sweater

FTC sues Nvidia to preserve Arm’s status as “Switzerland” of semiconductors

Sat, 04 Dec 2021 22:42:09 +0000

Regulator's lawsuit threatens to scuttle the largest chip merger in history.

The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block Nvidia’s acquisition of Arm, the semiconductor design firm, saying that the blockbuster deal would unfairly stifle competition.

“The FTC is 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. “Tomorrow’s technologies depend on preserving today’s competitive, cutting-edge chip markets. This proposed deal would distort Arm’s incentives in chip markets and allow the combined firm to unfairly undermine Nvidia’s rivals.”

Nvidia first announced its intention to acquire Arm in September 2020. At the time, the deal was worth $40 billion, but since then, Arm’s stock price has soared, and the cost of the cash and stock transaction has risen to $75 billion. The FTC lawsuit threatens to scuttle the deal entirely.

“As we move into this next step in the FTC process, we will continue to work to demonstrate that this transaction will benefit the industry and promote competition,” an Nvidia spokesperson told Ars. “Nvidia is committed to preserving Arm’s open licensing model and ensuring that its IP is available to all interested licensees, current and future.”

Global pressure

The FTC isn’t the first government regulator to scrutinize the deal. In October, the European Union announced that it was investigating the acquisition, and last month UK officials said they were concerned that the merger would threaten both competition and national security. China’s regulators are also looking into the deal, Nvidia said.

Much of the angst surrounding the acquisition stems from the fact that, for most of its history, Arm has been a relatively neutral player in the semiconductor world, offering access to its intellectual property to nearly anyone willing to pay the licensing fee. In the complaint, the FTC called Arm the “Switzerland” of the semiconductor industry. Customers fear that an Nvidia-controlled Arm would place them at the mercy of a competitor, while regulators are concerned that the acquisition would threaten to topple a massive, thriving ecosystem that depends on the architecture.

Arm began as a niche semiconductor designer, offering low-power chips for embedded systems and for portable devices like the Apple Newton and Palm Pilot. Over the years, as the performance of ARM chips improved and the importance of energy efficiency grew, the semiconductors found their way into a wider range of devices.

Today, Arm’s designs and instruction sets are widely used, appearing in everything from mobile phones to servers, automotive airbag controllers, and supercomputers. Recently, ARM chips have started making inroads in the PC world, ramping up pressure on incumbents Intel and AMD. Apple’s M1 chips showed just how competitive the architecture could be with x86 designs, and others have begun to follow suit. Earlier this week, Qualcomm announced a new Snapdragon processor, the awkwardly named 8cx Gen 3, which would run an ARM-specific version of Windows.

ARM eats the world

Because the ARM architecture is low-power and available to so many different companies, the chips have taken over the industry. Last year, companies sold 25 billion ARM chips, an increase of more than four-fold since 2010.

Nvidia has also become an increasingly powerful player in the semiconductor world. Its graphics cards became key tools in machine learning and other artificial intelligence applications, and soon the company started selling chips tailored to high-performance computing. Its mobile Tegra chips, which license Arm’s designs, powered a series of smartphones and Tesla infotainment systems in the mid-2010s, and today they run inside Nintendo’s Switch.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, has been clear that he hopes to push into more corners of the computing market. “Starting from computer graphics, the reach of our architecture has reached deep into the world’s largest industries,” he said at a company keynote last month. “We start with amazing chips, but for each field of science, industry and application, we create a full stack.”

Those ambitions have stumbled amid a shifting antitrust landscape, though. Since Lina Khan was appointed as chair of the FTC, the agency has taken a more forceful stance toward mergers and acquisitions. The full complaint is not yet available, but an administrative trial has been scheduled for May 10, 2022.

FTC sues Nvidia to preserve Arm’s status as “Switzerland” of semiconductors

This New Ultra-Compact Camera Is The Size of a Grain of Salt And Takes Stunning Photos

Sat, 04 Dec 2021 17:53:35 +0000

Scientific ingenuity means cameras keep on getting smaller and smaller, and the latest to appear is not only incredibly tiny – the same size as a grain of salt – it's also able to produce images of much better quality than a lot of other ultra-compact cameras.

Using a technology known as a metasurface, which is covered with 1.6 million cylindrical posts, the camera is able to capture full-color photos that are as good as images snapped by conventional lenses some half a million times bigger than this particular camera.

And the super-small contraption has the potential to be helpful in a whole range of scenarios, from helping miniature soft robots explore the world, to giving experts a better idea of what's going on deep inside the human body.

Existing micro-sized camera (left) versus the new model (right). (Princeton University)

"It's been a challenge to design and configure these little microstructures to do what you want," says computer scientist Ethan Tseng from Princeton University in New Jersey.

"For this specific task of capturing large field of view RGB images, it was previously unclear how to co-design the millions of nano-structures together with post-processing algorithms."

One of the camera's special tricks is the way it combines hardware with computational processing to improve the captured image: Signal processing algorithms use machine learning techniques to reduce blur and other distortions that otherwise occur with cameras this size. The camera effectively uses software to improve its vision.

Further down the line, those algorithms could be used for more than just image enhancement. They could be deployed to automatically detect particular objects that the camera is looking for, like signs of disease inside the human body.

That processing is added to the metasurface construction that replaces the usual curved glass or plastic lenses with a material a mere half a millimeter wide. Each of the 1.6 million cylindrical posts was individually designed to best capture what's in front of the camera, with computational modeling used to work out the optimal configuration.

An illustration of the tiny camera's surface with its many cylinders. (Princeton University)

"The significance of the published work is completing the Herculean task to jointly design the size, shape, and location of the metasurface's million features and the parameters of the post-detection processing to achieve the desired imaging performance," says computer imaging consultant Joseph Mait from Mait-Optik, who wasn't involved in the research.

The glass-like silicon nitride that the metasurface is made from is a material that fits in with conventional electronics manufacturing processes, which means that it shouldn't be too difficult to scale up production of these super-tiny cameras using procedures and equipment that's already in place.

So while there's still plenty of work to do to get this from the lab to a commercial production line, the signs are good that it's possible. Once that's done, we'll have access to super-small cameras that can actually take a decent picture, too.

There is another potential use for miniature cameras such as this: Using them as a covering layer to turn entire surfaces into cameras, removing the need for a conventional camera above a laptop screen or on the back of a smartphone.

"We could turn individual surfaces into cameras that have ultra-high resolution, so you wouldn't need three cameras on the back of your phone anymore, but the whole back of your phone would become one giant camera," says computer scientist Felix Heide from Princeton University.

"We can think of completely different ways to build devices in the future."

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

Source

TSMC reportedly working on the Apple M3 chip with 3nm technology

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 23:15:07 +0000

Apple is reportedly already working on the Apple M3 chip, according to a report by Digitimes.

Taiwanese publication Digitimes reports that TSMC has kicked off pilot production of Apple M3 chips using 3nm technology at its Fab 18 in southern Taiwan, and are looking at moving the process to volume production by the fourth quarter of 2022.

The chip may arrive too late to make it to Apple’s iPhone 14, but will likely end up in 2023 Mac laptops.

The 3nm technology should mean improved performance and better power efficiency which should translate into even thinner and lighter laptops.

Qualcomm has just announced its own 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips built by Samsung on 4nm technology, and Intel is reportedly also targeting 3nm technology for 2023.

Given that the M3 chip may only arrive in 2023, Apple is expected to deliver M2 and A16 Bionic silicon for 2022 built on 4nm technology, unless Apple and TSMC manage to pull one more thing out of a hat before this, of course.

via Pocketnow.

TSMC reportedly working on the Apple M3 chip with 3nm technology

Nvidia’s new RTX 2060 12GB graphics card is coming to quell shortages

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 22:09:47 +0000

Available starting December 7th

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiling the RTX 2060 graphics card in 2019. Photo by Nvidia

In February 2021, Nvidia committed to reissuing some of its older GPUs — namely the RTX 2060 and GTX 1050 Ti — to give gamers a couple of low-cost options that scalpers or crypto miners (hopefully) won’t see much use for during the chip shortage. The company is following through on at least part of that promise by releasing a new variant of the RTX 2060 that has 12GB of video RAM, doubling the memory of the standard configuration originally released in 2019.

Nvidia says that various models should become available starting Tuesday, December 7th. The specs for revised Founders Edition GPU are available right here. Note the slightly higher base clock speed and the slightly increased CUDA cores (2,176 versus 1,920 in the standard RTX 2060). Its specs looks similar to the RTX 2060 Super in some ways.

Nvidia didn’t share a starting cost for the 12GB RTX 2060 Founders Edition, though it told The Verge that “it is a premium version of the RTX 2060 6GB and we expect the price to reflect that.” The RTX 2060 6GB launched in 2019 for $349. It also shared that OEMs will be making their own custom versions of the 12GB RTX 2060. We’ll update this post once we hear back about pricing info for various models.

Having this card is great for people who’ve felt the burn of GPU restocks not going their way and who don’t want to give in to paying ridiculously high prices in the secondary market for cards that shouldn’t cost that much in the first place. The RTX 2060 won’t be great for running games with ray-traced graphics (despite it being capable of the feature), but with its power, most games should run well on medium graphical settings at 1080p resolution.

The PC market is one of many areas that has felt the sting of the chip shortage, spurred by the global pandemic. Things like graphics cards and consoles are still in high demand, despite no longer being new to market. And with many of the RTX 30-series GPUs already costing a premium at retail, it has become tough to buy what you want, and to do so at a normal price. Many retailers are zeroed out of stock completely, and bots and eagle-eyed shoppers (most of whom hope to flip the products for a profit) will likely beat you to it.

I’m skeptical that Nvidia releasing one entry-level (at this point) GPU can help to reverse the tide of the price-surged secondary market. But I’m definitely happy that it’s trying.

Nvidia’s new RTX 2060 12GB graphics card is coming to quell shortages

Jack Dorsey resigns as CEO of Twitter

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 22:24:33 +0000

Parag Agrawal, who had been chief technical officer, named as new CEO.

Twitter cofounder and CEO Jack Dorsey at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), on November 12, 2018, in New Delhi, India.

Amal KS | Hindustan Times | Getty Images

Jack Dorsey announced today that he’s stepping down as CEO of Twitter, the social network he helped found in 2006. The change is effective immediately.

Dorsey did not say what spurred the sudden move, though in his resignation letter, which he also shared on Twitter, he said, “There has been a lot of talk about the importance of a company being ‘founder-led.’ Ultimately, I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure. I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.”

Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief technical officer, has been named the new CEO. “The board ran a rigorous process considering all options and unanimously appointed Parag," Dorsey wrote. "He’s been my choice for some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs.”

Agrawal has been at Twitter since October 2011 and was promoted to CTO in 2017. He has worked on the company’s artificial intelligence efforts, and he also led Bluesky, the decentralized social networking project that Twitter launched in 2019. At the time, Dorsey said he intended for Twitter to eventually become a client of an open source Bluesky protocol. Currently, the project remains in the research phase.

In his resignation letter, Dorsey also said that he will be stepping down from Twitter’s board of directors when his term ends in mid-2022. The current chair, Patrick Pichette, will also be stepping down, though he will remain on the board. Bret Taylor, Salesforce’s president and chief operating officer, will join the board as the new chair.

Since Twitter was founded, Dorsey has served as CEO twice. His first term began with the company’s founding and lasted just over two years. Later, he returned to Twitter in 2015, first as interim CEO, then more permanently a few months later.

Since Dorsey’s return, Twitter has experimented with new features and products, from the doubling of its famous 140-character limit to a new subscription option that allows people to undo tweets.

Dorsey also serves as the CEO of Square, the financial payments company.

Jack Dorsey resigns as CEO of Twitter

AMD, Intel, Nvidia seeing eye to eye on when the global chip shortage could finally end

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 22:30:53 +0000

In a recent interview with The Hindu BusinessLine, AMD CTO and EVP, Mark Papermaster, made some pretty interesting revelations regarding the chip shortage crisis that has currently encompassed the globe, much like COVID-19 has in terms of health.

According to Papermaster, the silicon industry could finally be at a supply-demand equilibrium in 2023 which implies prices should also return to their normal suggested MSRP levels during this period.

The process however will already be underway in a year's time from now in the second half (2H) 2022 when supply levels will start improving, believes Papermaster. This potentially means we could finally start seeing some more affordable graphics cards starting in 2H 2022. Here's his statement to The Hindu BusinessLine:

In our markets, we see an easing of supply in the second half of 2022 through 2023. That is when we are projecting the normalcy of supply and demand balance.

Earlier this year, Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, stated "it could still take a couple of years" for the shortage to ease which is pretty much in line with what Mark Papermaster has said. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also echoed similar sentiments and provided the following statement to Yahoo Finance Live recently:

I think that through the next year, demand is going to far exceed supply. We don’t have any magic bullets in navigating the supply chain

Overall, it does look like 2023 is when this global chip shortage could finally end seeing how the big three PC companies all seem to see eye to eye on the matter and also because there is no hint of that happening any time soon even though Goldman Sachs had suggested otherwise.

Source: The Hindu BusinessLine

AMD, Intel, Nvidia seeing eye to eye on when the global chip shortage could finally end

Microsoft Weekly: Defender for the win, trouble with Nextcloud, and ARM exclusivity

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 23:59:53 +0000

As we approach the end of the week, now is the time to catch up on all the Microsoft news you may missed in the past few days. Although it's been a relatively slow week due to the holidays in the United States, there are still significant news stories you might want to read up on. Let's dive into our weekly digest for the week of November 21 - November 26.

Microsoft Defender for the win

German IT Security research institute AV-TEST released its ratings for the best anti-virus software for Windows 10 Home users, ranking them based on metrics like performance, usability, and protection. Microsoft Defender secured all 18 of the available points to join the ranks of other solutions such as Avira, AVAST, AVG, Bitdefender, ESET, and received the "AV-TEST TOP PRODUCT" certification. You can check out more details about the results here.

In related news, a bunch of anti-virus solutions including Microsoft Defender have started flagging UserBenchmark, a freeware benchmarking tool as malware. It's not exactly clear yet whether this is a false positive or something else, but do keep an eye out in case you utilize it.

While we are on this topic, Microsoft is receiving backlash from the security community for apparently lowering its bug bounty rewards, even for high criticality issues. In some cases, this has led to security researchers publicly exposing zero-days out of sheer frustration. This is definitely something that the Redmond tech giant will want to keep an eye out considering public exposure without coordination with the software vendor can cause problems for potentially millions of users.

Trouble with Nextcloud in the EU

Microsoft seems to have found itself in a bit of bother at the European Union (EU). This is due to a Nextcloud-led coalition that has filed a complaint against the Redmond tech firm for anti-competitive behavior. Other notable members of the coalition include Tutanota, OnlyOffice, Free Software Foundation Europe, The Document Foundation, and European Digital SME Alliance.

Together, these parties claim that Microsoft is bundling its 365 services such as OneDrive and Teams natively into Windows and is shipping the OS with them installed by default. According to the group, this pushes users to Microsoft's bundled software rather than third-party alternatives. As of now, the challenging party's demands include Microsoft unbundling its software from Windows and adopting open standards that makes it easier for users to switch software. The issue is still evolving so do keep an eye out on our coverage.

In related news, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein has announced that it is shifting 25,000 government machines running Windows to open-source alternatives like Linux by the end of 2026. This will be a multi-step process initially involving migrating to LibreOffice from Microsoft Office, and then switching to Linux entirely. One of the reasons being cited for this massive transition is licensing costs. It is important to note that Munich city attempted the same a few years ago but the experiment eventually failed, with the government going back to Windows in 2015.

ARM exclusivity and Windows updates

If you were wondering why Qualcomm is the only company making chipsets for Windows on ARM PCs, wonder no further. It appears that Microsoft has an exclusivity deal in place regarding Windows on ARM with Qualcomm, which is why we have not seen hardware from other competing firms yet. That said, it has been reported that this deal is set to expire soon and MediaTek has already shown interest in developing processors for the Windows SKU.

In other news, it's been a relatively quiet week in the world of Windows updates too, mostly due to the aforementioned holidays in the U.S. Windows 10 did receive an optional KB5007253 update that fixes a bunch of issues related to remote printers, a 32-bit Excel bug, and more. Meanwhile, Windows 11 also received an optional 22000.348 November Update release. The most notable front-facing change here is the inclusion of new Fluent 2D emoji and a bunch of other behind-the-scenes updates that you can check out here.

We also heard back from the creator of APK sideloading app WSATools, who shared that his app was removed from the Microsoft Store for Windows 11 because it did not clearly note the requirements and it also contains the name "WSA" which is seemingly an official branding that Microsoft is using for Windows Subsystem on Android. You can check out more details on this topic here.

Dev Channel

Microsoft Flight Simulator players can now buy the PMDG DC-6
Microsoft has announced plans to create a new datacenter region in Belgium
A virtual machine running an evaluation copy of Windows 11 Enterprise can now be downloaded by developers, courtesy of Microsoft
Some Halo Infinite cutscenes have leaked online (spoilers alert), so do browse safely

Under the spotlight

After talking about the top five features I love about Windows 11 the week before, this time I went in the opposite direction and discussed the five features I absolutely hate. That said, it is important to note that both the lists are based completely on personal preferences and user experience. So if there's nothing that you hate about Windows 11 or nothing that you love about it, that's fine too!

I also wrote a brief guide about how to enable Super Duper Secure Mode (SDSM) in Microsoft Edge that will offer you enhanced security at the cost of potentially and slightly degraded performance. If that sounds fine to you, do give it a read here.

Logging off

Image via Mr. Tempter | Shutterstock

This week's most interesting news item isn't related to Microsoft but it's still worth noting in our weekly catchup. Russia has demanded 13 foreign tech companies - mostly belonging to the U.S. - to open offices on its soil by the end of this year. Right now, these demands are being enforced upon social media and tech firms that average more than half a million daily users and includes Google, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Apple, Zoom, Spotify, Viber, and others. The Kremlin has warned that companies that do not comply with its legislation may face data collection, money transfer limitations, and bans within Russia.

Microsoft Weekly: Defender for the win, trouble with Nextcloud, and ARM exclusivity

Microsoft Weekly: Windows builds, Halo from the other side, and living on the Edge

Sat, 20 Nov 2021 23:11:48 +0000

We are at the end of yet another week, which has been an extremely busy one in the world of Microsoft due to tons of announcements and the release of several Windows builds. Find out more about this and more in our weekly digest for November 14 - November 19.

It's raining Windows builds!

The highlight of this week is the start of the rollout of the Windows 10 November 2021 Update, more simply known as version 21H2. It's quite a minor update as it's essentially just an enablement package that lights up a couple of Windows features that have been dormant by default previously. These include support for WPA3 H2E standards for increased Wi-Fi security and GPU compute support in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Azure IoT Edge for Linux on Windows (EFLOW) deployments. You can find out more about both of these capabilities in our detailed piece here.

Changes are being made to the overall rollout strategy as well. Due to "positive" feedback, Microsoft is increasing the pace of Windows 11's rollout, so if you're on a supported machine, expect a notification in Windows Update soon. Furthermore, Windows 10 will now also follow an annual release cadence similar to Windows 11. This means that feature updates will be released once a year rather than twice. The Windows 10 on ARM variant of the OS won't be getting x64 emulation support either, and Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 11 on ARM if you want to take advantage of this capability.

On the Windows Insider Preview front, Microsoft released Windows 10 Build 19044.1379 (21H2) / Build 19044.1379 (21H1) (KB5007253) to the Release Preview ring. There is a long list of fixes and improvements that you can see here, but it does not bring any new features, as expected. Shortly after, Microsoft also released Windows 10 Insider build 19044.1381 / 19043.1381 to the same channel, fixing an issue related to devices joined to Azure Active Directory (AAD) and using Windows Hello for Business.

Windows 11 received some love too. The Dev Channel received a brand-new Media Player app intended to replace Groove Music eventually. Microsoft touts that it features design elements associated with Windows 11 as well as "rich artist imagery" when you're listening to music. The Dev Channel was also treated to build 22504 which contains a bundle of new features including a redesigned Your Phone app, an enhanced Touch Keyboard, and fixes for lots of items including a crashing File Explorer. It was also confirmed that the build 22000.346 that was rolled out to the Beta and Release Preview rings has reverted the color of the BSOD to blue instead of the previous black.

Later, Microsoft also rolled out build 22000.348 (KB5007262) to the Beta and Release Preview rings to patch a Kaspersky compatibility bug, followed by build 22504.1010 (KB5008697) to the Dev Channel to test the servicing pipeline. The company has also promised to improve Windows 11's performance in 2022.

Halo from the other side

Microsoft celebrated the 20th anniversary of the original Xbox with some major announcements. The Xbox Backward Compatibility program has returned one last time with 76 games being added. These include Max Payne, F.E.A.R games, and some old Star Wars titles along with tons of other games.

That said, the highlight of the event was undoubtedly the surprise release of Halo Infinite Multiplayer with a beta tag. This is weeks ahead of the launch of the Halo Infinite Campaign which just went gold in time for its December 8 release. We did learn some more things about the Campaign though. It will feature an Easter Egg for our favorite character Craig the Brute, but the co-op campaign experience is still six months away, at the very least.

For those who would rather play games other than Halo, the developers behind Age of Empires IV revealed a roadmap detailing balance updates, modding support, and more. Meanwhile, those who would rather explore a blocky sandbox world have the Minecraft Caves & Cliffs Part II update to look forward to on November 30.

Forza Horizon 5 has been an immensely successful launch for Microsoft with over 10 million players in its launch week. Meanwhile, those who prefer the aerial route will be happy to know that the Reno Air Race: Expansion Pack and Reno Air Race: Full Collection have become available for purchase on the Microsoft Flight Simulator Marketplace today for $19.99 and $59.99 respectively. Microsoft Flight Simulator: Game of the Year Edition has become available too. Fans of Xbox Cloud Gaming will also be pleased to know that the feature has launched on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.

Living on the Edge

We had lots of news regarding Microsoft Edge this week. Starting off with the most controversial one, Microsoft essentially admitted that it is purposely making it difficult to change the default browser in Windows, especially in the Search experience. The company indicated highlighted that:

Windows openly enables applications and services on its platform, including various web browsers. At the same time, Windows also offers certain end-to-end customer experiences in both Windows 10 and Windows 11, the search experience from the taskbar is one such example of an end-to-end experience that is not designed to be redirected. When we become aware of improper redirection, we issue a fix.

This does not bode well for people who want to avoid Edge at all costs. It also means that the Redmond tech giant will be blocking further workarounds from third-party developers designed to circumvent its restrictions.

In some slightly more positive news, we learned that Microsoft is experimenting with an enhanced CTRL+F toggle and a Citations tool in Edge. The former can now find related words for you while the latter enables you to grab information from a website and assign it a citation format like APA or MLA.

The browser is also getting a bunch of shopping-related features in the coming days, including information on ethically sourced products, price drops, an "efficiency mode" to conserve system resources, and an "easy update" capability to quickly change your compromised passwords. The Android variant of the browser will also give you the ability to authenticate before autofilling fields.

Dev Channel

Microsoft has restored WSATools to the Microsoft Store - the app allows you to easily sideload APKs on Windows 11
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) Preview version 0.50.2 is now live with a logo featuring an familiar mascot and an updated Linux kernel
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice has received ray tracing, DLSS, FSR, and more on PC
Microsoft has noted that Intel's Smart Sound Technology (SST) is causing BSODs on some Windows 11 PCs, a compatibility hold will be applied until you update your drivers
Following backlash from the community, the new Whiteboard app will be replaced by the older UWP one
Microsoft will launch Teams Phone with Calling Plan for businesses in 2022

Under the spotlight

We have effectively wrapped up our Closer Look series for Windows 11 until Microsoft releases some new features worth covering in more detail. While the OS isn't a home run, there is still a lot to love about it. You can read more about the top five features of Windows 11 that I really like. And be on the look out for five features I hate tomorrow!

This week, Asher had a look at the Xbox Series X version of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy, and as you probably know by now, the game's not a home run either, quite the opposite actually. There are a bunch of issues plaguing this release but on the brighter side, Rockstar Games has issued an apology, pledged to fix its latest release with updates, and promised to restore the classic versions of all three games.

Finally, if you have updated to Chrome 96 and want to enjoy Windows 11-style menus with rounded corners in the browser on Windows 10 or 11, check out Neowin's handy and brief guide here.

Logging off

This week's most interesting item deals with Xbox chief Phil Spencer sharing his thoughts on the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in gaming. Simply stated, he's not a fan and thinks that their use seems to be exploitative rather than something that can boost entertainment value. That said, the executive has not completely closed the door on incorporating NFTs in gaming, he just doesn't like it in its current state of infancy.

Microsoft Weekly: Windows builds, Halo from the other side, and living on the Edge

Microsoft now has one of the world's fastest supercomputers (and no, it doesn't run on Windows)

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

Microsoft makes it into the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world.

A Microsoft Azure supercomputer dubbed 'Voyager-EUS2' has made it into the rankings of the world's 10 fastest machines.

Microsoft's supercomputer, with a benchmark speed of 30 Petaflops per second (Pflop/s) is still well behind China's Tianhe-2A and the US Department of Energy's IBM-based Summit supercomputer, but it's the only major cloud provider with a supercomputer ranked in the top 10 in the high performance computing (HPC) Top500 list.

Voyager-EUS2 was the only new entrant in the Top500's top 10 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, which was led by Japan's Fugaku with 7.63 million cores and a Linpack benchmark score of 442 Pflop/s.

'Flops' refers to floating point operations per second, indicating the performance of supercomputers that are often used in science – to simulate weather patterns, for example – that often run on programming languages like Fortran.

Fugaku's benchmark puts it three times ahead of the US Department of Energy-sponsored Summit supercomputer, which is the US's fastest high performance computer (HPC) with a Linpack score of 148.8 Pflop/s. It's based on IBM's Power9 CPUs and features 4,356 nodes with 22 cores each backed by six Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs.

The fourth running is Sierra, a supercomputer at the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It's also powered by Power9 CPUs and Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs, scoring 94.6 Pflop/s.

While ranked 10th, Microsoft's Azure supercomputer is the standout in this ranking of the world's fastest supercomputers as the only new entrant in the top 10 list and is the only public cloud provider to attain this ranking.

Microsoft's Voyager-EUS2, which runs from its Azure East US 2 region, is notable for several reasons. First, but not surprisingly, it's running a Linux distribution, namely the Ubuntu 18.04 long term servicing (LTS) edition. It's got 253,440 cores on AMD EPYC CPUs.

"Voyager-EUS2, a Microsoft Azure system installed at Microsoft in the U.S., is the only new system in the TOP10," says Top500.org.

"It achieved 30.05 Pflop/s and is listed at No. 10. This architecture is based on an AMD EPYC processor with 48 cores and 2.45GHz working together with an NVIDIA A100 GPU with 80 G.B. memory and utilizing a Mellanox HDR Infiniband for data transfer."

Microsoft boasted this week that its Azure cloud now has five supercomputers in the Top500 list. Microsoft is using supercomputers for artificial intelligence (AI) and selling its Azure HPCs as a service.

It also announced general availability of the Azure virtual machine (VM) called the "NDm A100 v4 Series", which features NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core 80 GB GPUs – double the NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs.

Source

Ubuntu Maker Canonical Planning To Vastly Improve Its Documentation

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 15:13:58 +0000

Back in the day Ubuntu's Wiki was a great resource for Linux documentation but less so these days while the Arch Linux Wiki is often viewed as a gold standard for open-source documentation. Canonical though is now hoping to radically improve the documentation for Ubuntu and its other software offerings.

Daniele Procida as the Director of Engineering at Canonical since this summer laid out plans for how they plan to dramatically improve their documentation efforts moving forward. Procida commented on their documentation ambitions, "We have embarked on a comprehensive, long-term project to transform documentation. Our aim is to create and maintain technical documentation and documentation practice that will represent a standard of excellence in the industry. We want it to be the best it possibly can be. By “best” we mean documentation that above all else understands, respects, reflects and serves its users’ needs. These are the values that we stand for, that we will express in our work. They are values that we want to become known for."

Ubuntu's current official documentation is at help.ubuntu.com.

This documentation effort is said to be changing fundamentally how everyone works at Canonical and holding documentation to a higher standard. Among their pillars for documentation moving forward are around direction, care, execution and equipment.

Ubuntu's documentation has varied over the years...

See this blog post for their outline of how they are planning for their documentation-focused future.

Source