Month: May 2020

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  The Mk8 Volkswagen Golf GTI is a subtle evolution of the current Mk7 GTI. It will go on sale in the US toward the end of 2021. [credit: Volkswagen ]

Now that COVID-19 has put paid to traveling anywhere for all but the most essential reasons, driving impressions of Volkswagen's new Golf GTI will remain an indeterminate while away. But VW's engineers and designers are just as capable of conducting a product briefing remotely as they are in person, so we can bring you plenty of technical info on what is now the eighth generation of the archetypal hot hatchback.

It all began in 1975, when some enterprising soul at VW thought to shoehorn a more powerful engine and some uprated suspension bits at the company's then-new Golf hatchback. Front-engined and front-wheel drive, the hatchback Golf itself was considered a risky move inside a company that was known for air-cooled rear-engined machinery. So the GTI was planned as a limited-run variant to give the new car a bit of a halo. Instead, it became a massive sales hit, earning it a permanent place in VW's lineup. And while you (or rather I) might think of Europe as the home of the GTI, apparently the United States and Canada now account for 45 percent of all GTI sales. (Thus, we'll be getting the GTI and the next Golf R but none of the more basic Golfs.)

Yes, there will still be a six-speed manual

The Mk8 GTI is a gentle evolution of the outgoing model, and it uses the same Modularer Querbaukasten, or Modular Transverse Toolkit architecture, as most of the rest of VW's internal combustion-powered range. The styling changes between Mks 7 and 8 are subtle enough that non-car people will probably miss them, but if you're staring at a Golf and you see a lower grille full of hexagons, some of which turn out to be LED foglights, you're looking at a Mk8.

Enlarge / Nursing professionals light candles to honor the 84 nurse victims of coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country amidst the coronavirus pandemic on May 12, 2020 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (credit: Getty | Miguel Schincariol)

As deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic begin to plateau and slowly decline in some parts of Europe and the United States, the devastation is reaching a fever pitch in Latin America.

Death tolls in cities and areas of Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador are reaching alarming levels—in some places five-times higher than normal death rates—according to an analysis by The New York Times.

While some of the official death tolls from the pandemic remain low, a review of mortality data by the Times reveals significant increases. The death counts include those directly from COVID-19 and also those from other causes—which in some cases may be due in part to people not being able to receive a standard level of care while health systems are overwhelmed during the pandemic.

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  The Pixel 4 XL. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

A report from The Information (subscription required) details a big shakeup at Google's Pixel team, lead by former Motorola executive Rick Osterloh. Following the poor reception of the Pixel 4 and "rare internal criticism" of the phone, two top executives left the Pixel team.

Pixel general manager Mario Queiroz and "the mastermind behind Google's Pixel camera," Marc Levoy, have both left the Pixel team in the past year. Both Queiroz and Levoy have been visible members of the Pixel team at launch events, where they usually give lengthy presentations about the new features. Levoy, in particular, is cause for concern, since the Pixel's camera has been one of the major bright spots of the phone line.

The Pixel 4 has not been a huge success. It has sold less than the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a in its first two quarters. Osterloh was not confident about the device in the leadup to launch, either. The report says that "ahead of the [Pixel 4] October launch in New York," Osterloh called an all-hands meeting and shared his misgivings about the phone. He reportedly "did not agree with some of the decisions made about the phone" and that "in particular, he was disappointed in its battery power." Osterloh runs the Pixel team, so this reporting gives some insight into his management style. For a Steve Jobs type, approving these kinds of broad directions would be a big part of his day-to-day decision making. Osterloh, apparently, is more of a hands-off delegator.

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  These are Apple's AirPods Pro, the first Apple-branded headphones to offer noise cancellation. The new over-ear headphones would as well. [credit: Jeff Dunn ]

Among other things, Apple's AirPods are known for the ability to detect when an individual earbud is or isn't in your ear and start or stop playback accordingly. A new report from 9to5Mac claims that a similar feature will be offered in Apple's upcoming over-ear headphones, but the headphones will instead detect whether they are placed on our head or lowered around your neck.

The publication cites "people familiar with the matter" who have detailed some of Apple's plans. The report also refers to the headphones as "AirPods Studio."

This product was previously described in some detail in a report in Bloomberg. That story said Apple is testing two versions of its over-ear headphones: one intended for sports and fitness use, and the other with a more "premium" feel with leather-like fabrics. Further, Bloomberg's sources said that Apple will make some components of the headphones modular—so, for example, wearers could replace the ear pads as they wear over time.

Earlier today, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dropped a video on YouTube titled "What's Jensen been cooking?"

Luckily, this doesn't appear to be a Breaking Bad situation—Huang opens his oven to reveal a large motherboard with 14 massive heatsinks on it, and with noticeable effort, he lifts it out of the oven and places it on the kitchen counter.

The teaser is presented without comment—apart from "the world's largest graphics card, fresh out of the oven"—but the device looks like a successor to 2018's Volta-based DGX-2 deep-learning system, packing eight of whatever GPUs are to succeed the Tesla v100, a few Xeon CPUs, and an Nvidia Nvswitch scalable interconnect to tie the whole thing together.

Enlarge / Content moderators work at a Facebook office in Austin, Texas. (credit: Ilana Panich-Linsman | The Washington Post | Getty Images)

Many jobs can cause employee burnout, but the effect of having to deal with the absolute worst cruelty humanity has to offer for 40 hours a week can go well beyond burnout and leave employees with serious mental health traumas. Facebook has now settled with a group of content moderators who sued the tech behemoth, alleging their jobs left them with severe post-traumatic stress disorder the company did nothing to mitigate or prevent.

The company will pay $52 million to settle the suit, first filed in 2018 by a content moderator named Selena Scola. Scola's suit alleged that she developed "debilitating" PTSD after having to watch "thousands of acts of extreme and graphic violence."

The conditions under which Facebook moderators often work have been extensively reported out by The Guardian, The Verge (more than once), The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed News, among others. Moderators, who mostly work for third-party contract firms, described to reporters hours spent looking at graphic murders, animal cruelty, sexual abuse, child abuse, and other horrifying footage, while being provided with little to no managerial or mental health support and hard-to-meet quotas under shifting guidelines.