Month: January 2019

Enlarge (credit: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Last week, the National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling that could be helpful to several tech companies that rely on contracted labor, like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash, among others.

On January 25, the NLRB ruled in a 3-1 decision that SuperShuttle operators in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are, in fact, properly classified as independent contractors rather than employees. The case overturns an Obama-era NLRB decision in a case known as FedEx Home Delivery.

The NLRB decision finding that these drivers are actually contractors means they are not bound by the National Labor Relations Act, a landmark law that describes the right to unionize, collectively bargain, and strike. By minimizing their number of employees, Lyft, Uber, and many other similar companies save millions annually in costs they would otherwise have to pay out, including health insurance, retirement, unemployment, and more.

Enlarge / Nvidia's RTX 2080Ti launched in September 2018 at an MSRP of $1,199. Nvidia's latest financial estimates indicate that this thing didn't exactly fly off of store shelves. (credit: Nvidia)

On Monday, Nvidia took the unusual step of offering a revised Q4 2019 financial estimate ahead of its scheduled disclosure on February 14. The reason: Nvidia had already predicted low revenue numbers, and the hardware producer is already confident that its low estimate was still too high.

The original quarterly revenue estimate of $2.7 billion has since dropped to $2.2 billion, a change of roughly 19 percent. A few new data points factor into that revision. The biggest consumer-facing issue, according to Nvidia, is "lower than expected" sales of its RTX line of new graphics cards. This series, full of proprietary technologies like a dedicated raytracing processor, kicked off in September 2018 with the $1,199 RTX 2080 Ti and the $799 RTX 2080.

"These products deliver a revolutionary leap in performance and innovation with real-time raytracing and AI, but some customers may have delayed their purchase while waiting for lower price points and further demonstrations of RTX technology in actual games," Nvidia said in a statement. As of press time, only one retail game, Battlefield V, has tapped into the RTX-only raytracing system.

Enlarge / The Jänschwalde lignite-fired power plant of Lausitz Energie Bergbau AG. (credit: Patrick Pleul/dpa-Zentralbild/ZB)

On Saturday, a German commission made up of federal and state leaders as well as industry representatives, environmentalists, and scientists agreed on a proposal to close all of Germany's 84 remaining coal plants by 2038. The proposal is expected to be adopted by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The closures would be compensated with €40 billion ($45.7 billion) in government aid, which would be directed toward communities hardest hit by coal closures. Currently, coal is a major component of Germany's energy sector. Last year, it provided the country with 38 percent of its energy, according to the Fraunhofer Institute. The country is situated near substantial resources of cheap lignite coal.

Germany has been making strides to reduce its carbon footprint, and last year, renewable energy surpassed coal as part of the country's energy mix for the first time. Solar, wind, hydroelectric, and biomass resources together produced 40 percent of Germany's energy.

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  Old Man's Journey, a popular premium mobile game on the iPhone. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Apple's push to focus more on software services may extend to games, according to a report by Cheddar. The report cites five people familiar with the matter who claim that Apple has been talking to game developers about bringing games into a subscription bundle, and it cites two people who say Apple is also exploring the possibility of launching a game-publishing arm.

The sources said that Apple was talking with developers about its plans in the second half of 2018. No details were provided about the nature of the service or what kinds of games would be included. It's difficult to imagine an elegant way of including free-to-play games, which make money through in-app-purchases for game-related services and add-on content, in a paid subscription package.

But while games with that model are prominent on Apple's iOS App Store, there are still several popular and critically acclaimed games with an up-front cost model—Alto's Odyssey, Civilization VI, Galaxy of Pen and Paper, Stardew Valley, Baldur's Gate, Cat Quest, Alien: Blackout, Battleheart 2, and Old Man's Journey, to name just a few.

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  Old Man's Journey, a popular premium mobile game on the iPhone. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Apple's push to focus more on software services may extend to games, according to a report by Cheddar. The report cites five people familiar with the matter who claim that Apple has been talking to game developers about bringing games into a subscription bundle, and it cites two people who say Apple is also exploring the possibility of launching a game-publishing arm.

The sources said that Apple was talking with developers about its plans in the second half of 2018. No details were provided about the nature of the service or what kinds of games would be included. It's difficult to imagine an elegant way of including free-to-play games, which make money through in-app-purchases for game-related services and add-on content, in a paid subscription package.

But while games with that model are prominent on Apple's iOS App Store, there are still several popular and critically acclaimed games with an up-front cost model—Alto's Odyssey, Civilization VI, Galaxy of Pen and Paper, Stardew Valley, Baldur's Gate, Cat Quest, Alien: Blackout, Battleheart 2, and Old Man's Journey, to name just a few.

Enlarge / Not the funky mirror used in this study. (credit: Getty Images)

One of the strange truths of the Universe is that magnets always come with two poles. It doesn’t matter how often you cut a magnet in two, both halves will always have a north and a south pole, even down to the level of the smallest particles. The electron, which appears to be indivisible, still has two poles.

But theory tells us otherwise. Theory says that life would be terribly convenient if nature allowed single-poled magnets, otherwise known as monopoles, to exist. The magnetic monopole would, for instance, explain why the electron has a fixed amount of charge. Yet colliders, telescopes, and other instruments have all looked in vain, but no natural monopoles have been found.

That doesn’t stop us from making them, though. What a team of physicists has created is not a true monopole but a kind of analogue of a monopole. As I’m fond of saying, you don’t learn much from analogies, so its existence isn't necessarily exciting. The technique used to create it, however, was so cool that I couldn’t let that stop me.

Enlarge / Not the funky mirror used in this study. (credit: Getty Images)

One of the strange truths of the Universe is that magnets always come with two poles. It doesn’t matter how often you cut a magnet in two, both halves will always have a north and a south pole, even down to the level of the smallest particles. The electron, which appears to be indivisible, still has two poles.

But theory tells us otherwise. Theory says that life would be terribly convenient if nature allowed single-poled magnets, otherwise known as monopoles, to exist. The magnetic monopole would, for instance, explain why the electron has a fixed amount of charge. Yet colliders, telescopes, and other instruments have all looked in vain, but no natural monopoles have been found.

That doesn’t stop us from making them, though. What a team of physicists has created is not a true monopole but a kind of analogue of a monopole. As I’m fond of saying, you don’t learn much from analogies, so its existence isn't necessarily exciting. The technique used to create it, however, was so cool that I couldn’t let that stop me.