Month: May 2021

Enlarge / Pharmaceutical bottles on a conveyor belt in South Africa. (credit: Westend61 / Getty Images)

The Biden administration has thrown its weight behind an international effort to loosen patent and other legal protections for COVID vaccines.

"The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines," wrote US Trade Representative Katherine Tai in a Wednesday statement.

If successful, that effort might open up the vaccine market to independent drug makers, speeding production and distribution and ending the pandemic more quickly. Or it might not.

The monkey wrench of the legal system. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Microsoft Vice President of Xbox Business Development Lori Wright took center stage at the Epic versus Apple trial today. The executive's testimony served up some interesting comparisons and contrasts with Epic's complaints and addressed questions about the Xbox consoles' closed, iOS-style app market and the difficulties Microsoft faced getting xCloud streaming on iOS devices.

Open vs. closed

In defending Microsoft's iOS-style 30 percent commission on apps sold on the Xbox store, Wright pointed out that the company has never made a profit on the sale of an Xbox console. That's in contrast to the profit-generating iPhone and iPad hardware and to a company like Nintendo, which doesn't take a loss on Switch hardware sales.

"The business model is set out to be an end-to-end gaming experience," Wright said. "Hardware is critical to delivering that experience. We need gamers to be able to have a console. We make money back in the long run on game sales and gaming subscriptions."

Enlarge / The 2020 iPhone lineup. From left to right: iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12, iPhone SE, and iPhone 12 mini. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Researchers at Brigham Young University conducted a study to see how much blue-light-reducing features like Apple's Night Shift improve sleep quality. Their conclusion? Night Shift doesn't help at all.

In the study, which was published in Sleep Health, the BYU researchers assessed the sleep quality of 167 young adults, asking each to wear a wrist accelerometer before sleep. Participants were randomly assigned three conditions regarding iPhone use before bed: one group didn't use their iPhones at all, one group used their iPhones without Night Shift enabled, and another group used their iPhones with Night Shift enabled.

"There were no significant differences in sleep outcomes across the three experimental groups," the researchers concluded.

Enlarge (credit: Peloton)

Peloton is having a rough day. First, the company recalled two treadmill models following the death of a 6-year-old child who was pulled under one of the devices. Now comes word Peloton exposed sensitive user data, even after the company knew about the leak. No wonder the company’s stock price closed down 15 percent on Wednesday.

Peloton provides a line of network-connected stationary bikes and treadmills. The company also offers an online service that allows users to join classes, work with trainers, or do workouts with other users. In October, Peloton told investors it had a community of 3 million members. Members can set accounts to be public so friends can view details such as classes attended and workout stats, or users can choose for profiles to be private.

I know where you worked out last summer

Researchers at security consultancy Pen Test Partners on Wednesday reported that a flaw in Peloton’s online service was making data for all of its users available to anyone anywhere in the world, even when a profile was set to private. All that was required was a little knowledge of the faulty programming interfaces that Peloton uses to transmit data between devices and the company’s servers.

Enlarge (credit: Peter Dazeley / Getty Images)

A California federal appeals court has denied legal immunity to Snap for the 2017 death of two teens and a 20-year-old when their car crashed into a tree at 113 miles per hour (180 km/h). Parents of two of the boys sued Snap, arguing that Snapchat's "Speed Filter" encouraged the boys to accelerate their car to more than 100 miles per hour.

Last year, Snap convinced a federal trial judge that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shielded Snap from liability in the case. The once-obscure 1996 law has become a frequent source of controversy as technology giants have used it to disclaim responsibility for harmful content on their platforms.

Snap, maker of the popular Snapchat messaging app, argued that the law gave it immunity in the boys' death. Snapchat pioneered the concept of image filters that has been widely copied by other apps. In 2017, Snapchat's offerings included a Speed Filter that displayed a user's current speed—either on its own or superimposed on the user's photo. Users could use this filter to show their friends how fast they were moving.

Enlarge / RDNA 3 is expected to run on TSMC's 5 nm process and become available in late 2022 or early 2023. (credit: AMD)

According to wccftech and well-known hardware leaker @KittyYYuko, AMD's next-generation Radeon graphics cards should be a massive upgrade—as much as three times faster than AMD's current flagship graphics cards.

In the above reply to RedGamingTech's Paul Eccleston, @KittyYYuko claims a 3x performance increase when upgrading from AMD's flagship Navi 21 (as found in current-gen RX 6800XT and RX 6900 XT cards) to Navi 31.

RDNA3—the architecture beneath the new GPUs—will shift process-node size from 7 nm down to 5 nm, which tends to result in major performance gains and even larger performance-per-watt gains. The downshift in process node isn't enough to account for the claimed performance uplift by itself, though—that comes from making the GPU itself significantly bigger and meaner.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

The worldwide semiconductor shortage continues to affect the automotive industry. One by one, automakers have warned that the silicon chip shortage will negatively impact production output and revenues in the coming months.

Renault identified the chip shortage as a major problem when reporting its Q1 results in April. A week later, Ford said it expects to lose half of its Q2 production, up from 17 percent in Q1. And on Wednesday, Stellantis Chief Financial Officer Richard Palmer added to the chorus, warning that "it would be imprudent to assume that the issue is just going to go away."

The shortage has its roots in the pandemic as carmakers canceled pending semiconductor orders in the face of heavily reduced demand for new vehicles. Since then, a drought in Taiwan and a fire at a Japanese chipmaker have compounded the problem, as has strong demand for consumer electronics.

Enlarge / Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle is a capsule with a view. (credit: Blue Origin)

On Wednesday, Blue Origin officially announced that its first crewed flight to space is targeted for July 20, suggesting that its extended period of test flights is finally coming to an end. Rather than simply placing a seat on sale, however, the company announced it will auction one off, with the proceeds going to the company's charity.

New Shepard flights will take passengers above much of the atmosphere and into space, then allow them an extended period of apparent weightlessness as the capsule free-falls back to Earth. The capsule itself is relatively spacious and is equipped with large windows and cushy-looking seats, which are clearly meant to make flight a pleasant experience. The free fall is followed by a parachute-assisted landing, with the booster performing a powered landing separately.

If that sounds like a compelling experience to you, your first chance to get in on it is via an auction for a single seat on its first crewed flight. You can get the process started now by submitting a bid at the Blue Origin website. On May 19, the highest bids will be unsealed, and any further online bidding will have to exceed an existing bid. On June 12, the auction will wrap up with live online bidding.