Chuwi LarkBook is a 2.2 pound budget laptop

The next low-cost laptop from Chinese PC maker Chuwi is a model with a 13.3 inch full HD display, an aluminum chassis, and a slim design: the Chuwi LarkBook measures less than half an inch thick and weighs about 2.2 pounds. With a 6-watt, quad-core In…

The next low-cost laptop from Chinese PC maker Chuwi is a model with a 13.3 inch full HD display, an aluminum chassis, and a slim design: the Chuwi LarkBook measures less than half an inch thick and weighs about 2.2 pounds. With a 6-watt, quad-core Intel Celeron N4120 processor, it’s not exactly going to be […]

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Bundesregierung hält an ihrem Präsidenten in Venezuela fest

Hardliner um selbsternannten Interimspräsidenten Guaidó nach Wahl eines neuen Parlaments geschwächt. Historisch niedrige Beteiligung. Deutliche Risse in der EU

Hardliner um selbsternannten Interimspräsidenten Guaidó nach Wahl eines neuen Parlaments geschwächt. Historisch niedrige Beteiligung. Deutliche Risse in der EU

US-Geheimdienstchef: China will Supersoldaten mit CRISPR-Gentechnik erzeugen

US-Sicherheitsapparat baut China als den Hauptfeind der USA auf. Joe Biden, der sowieso in der Spur ist, soll den Trumpschen Konflikt mit China fortsetzen, wofür der oberste Geheimdienstchef und der Kongress Vorsorge leisten

US-Sicherheitsapparat baut China als den Hauptfeind der USA auf. Joe Biden, der sowieso in der Spur ist, soll den Trumpschen Konflikt mit China fortsetzen, wofür der oberste Geheimdienstchef und der Kongress Vorsorge leisten

Google promises “spectacular” city GPS improvement with 3D building data

Android GPS will work better in cities thanks to Google Maps’ 3D building data.

It's pretty hard getting line-of-sight to several GPS satellites down there.

Enlarge / It's pretty hard getting line-of-sight to several GPS satellites down there. (credit: Google Maps)

Getting a solid GPS location in a city can be tough thanks to all the tall buildings. Skyscrapers reflect the GPS signal and can make your location data go crazy, but now, Google says it can correct for this and give users a much more accurate location. Google is working on an update that will leverage Google Maps' 3D building data to calculate how buildings interfere with GPS, and it says Android's new "3D mapping aided corrections module" can correct for GPS bounces.

A quick refresher on how GPS works: your position is triangulated by satellites in space. Your phone receives a signal from a GPS satellite, consisting of the position of the satellite and a very precise timestamp. The GPS time stamp tells the phone how long the signal took to reach you from space, and then you just multiply that by the speed of light to get your distance from the satellite. If you get a signal like this from multiple satellites, you can narrow down your position on Earth to a few feet.

All of these fancy space calculations work great, provided you have an open view of the sky. GPS triangulation assumes your signals are taking a straight shot from the satellite to your phone, but that's not always the case. In a city, giant glass-and-metal skyscrapers can reflect the GPS signal on its way down from space. If your GPS signal includes a ricochet, your "time x speed-of-light" equation suddenly doesn't equal your distance from the satellite, a leg of your triangulation triangle is longer than it should be, and your GPS coordinates aren't accurate anymore. This can mean your location is suddenly on the wrong side of the street—or the wrong block.

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$340,000 of Nvidia RTX 3090 graphics cards were stolen in China

Make a list: ✔ Check it twice: ✔ Don’t really care who’s naughty or nice: ✔

A photo of a box truck has been photoshopped to include The Grinch stealing a computer component from it.

Enlarge / The GPU Grinch doesn't care about your lists or whether you've been naughty or nice. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Dr. Seuss / GettyImages)

Some time last week, thieves stole a large number of Nvidia-based RTX 3090 graphics cards from MSI's factory in mainland China. The news comes from twitter user @GoFlying8, who posted what appears to be an official MSI internal document around the theft this morning, along with commentary from a Chinese language website.

Roughly translated—in other words, OCR scanned, run through Google Translate, and with the nastiest edges sawn off by yours truly—the MSI document reads something like this:

Ensmai Electronics (Deep) Co., Ltd.
Announcement
Memo No. 1-20-12-4-000074
Subject: Regarding the report theft of the graphics card, it is appropriate to reward

Explanation:

  1. Recently, high unit price display cards produced by the company have been stolen by criminals. The case has now been reported to the police. At the same time, I also hope that all employees of the company will actively and truthfully report this case.
  2. Anyone providing information which solves this case will receive a reward of 100,000 yuan. The company promises to keep the identity of the whistleblower strictly confidential.
  3. If any person is involved in the case, from the date of the public announcement, report to the company's audit department or the head of the conflicting department. If the report is truthful and and assists in the recovery of the missing items, the company will report to the police, but request leniency. The law should be dealt with seriously.
  4. With this announcement, I urge my colleagues to be professional and ethical, and to be disciplined, learn from cases, and be warned.
  5. Reporting Tel: [elided]

Reporting mailbox of the Audit Office: [elided]
December 4, 2020

There has been some confusion surrounding the theft in English speaking tech media; the MSI document itself dates to last Friday, and does not detail how many cards were stolen or what the total value was. The surrounding commentary—from what seems to be a Chinese news app—claims that the theft was about 40 containers of RTX 3090 cards, at a total value of about 2.2 million renminbi ($336K in US dollars).

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Uber abandons dreams of self-driving domination, sells self-driving unit

Uber is pumping $400 million into a startup led by a Google self-driving veteran.

A casually dressed man stands in front of a large automobile.

Enlarge / Aurora CEO Chris Urmson in front of an Aurora semi truck. (credit: Aurora)

Aurora, one of the nation's leading self-driving startups, will become the new owner of Uber's self-driving division, Aurora announced on Monday. In addition to turning over Uber's self-driving division, known as the Uber Advanced Technology Group (ATG), Uber will also pump $400 million into Aurora.

In exchange, Uber will get a minority stake in Aurora and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will get a seat on Aurora's board.

The deal allows Uber to unload a self-driving division that has struggled to regain its footing ever since an Uber ATG vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in March 2018. Uber shut down its on-road testing for several months after that incident, and the program has faced lingering public skepticism ever since. It's not clear if the deal will lead to layoffs at Uber ATG.

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Ultimatum an Polen und Ungarn

Die EU will vor allem den “Wiederaufbaufonds” freibekommen und zur Not ohne beide Staaten mit Fondsgeldern loslegen

Die EU will vor allem den "Wiederaufbaufonds" freibekommen und zur Not ohne beide Staaten mit Fondsgeldern loslegen

Quantum device performs 2.6 billion years of computation in 4 minutes

Photons explore quantum maze faster than possible for any classical computer.

Green lights illuminate what appears to be a glass box.

Enlarge / One beam enters, two beams leave. (credit: Melissa Meister / Flickr)

I am a great believer in solving problems with lasers. Are you suffering from a severely polarized society and a fast-growing population living below the poverty line? Well, I have the laser to solve all your problems.

OK, maybe not. But when it comes to quantum computing, I am of the belief that lasers are the future. I suspect that the current architectures are akin to the Colossus or the ENIAC: they are breakthroughs in their own right, but they are not the future. My admittedly biased opinion is that the future is optical. A new paper provides my opinion some support, demonstrating solutions to a mind-boggling 1030 problem space using a quantum optical system. Unfortunately, the support is a little more limited than I'd like, as it is a rather limited breakthrough.

Photons flipping coins

The researchers have demonstrated something called a Gaussian boson sampling system. This is essentially a device designed to solve a single type of problem. It's based on devices called "beam splitters," so let's start with a closer look at how those work.

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