New York unter Wasser
Extreme Niederschläge setzen in New York Flughäfen, U-Bahnen und Straßen unter Wasser
Extreme Niederschläge setzen in New York Flughäfen, U-Bahnen und Straßen unter Wasser
Month: September 2021
Next-Gen Cyberpunk 2077 and Witcher 3 still coming 2021… CDPR thinks
But will there be bugs?
Enlarge (credit: CD Projekt RED)
CD Projekt Red is still pushing to release next-gen versions of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 in 2021—or so the developer hopes.
As CDPR mothership CD Projekt Group held its H1 2021 financial earnings presentation with investors this week, it put its ongoing support for Cyberpunk front and center. The company's public report highlights the high number of patches and hotfix additions added to the game since launch, improved performance across platforms, and Cyberpunk's recent re-addition to the PlayStation Store after Sony pulled the title from its digital storefronts in December. The incremental experience fans have been getting, the report suggests, is slowly making progress.
Joint CEO Adam Kiciński even reiterated during the presentation that continued improvements to Cyberpunk will be the company's top-priority for "as long as it takes." (He also noted that, despite its myriad issues, the game was the leading revenue driver for CDPR in the first half of 2021.)
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Fairphone 3 is no longer available for purchase (but spare parts are)
Fairphone, a company that makes smartphones using sustainable and ethically-sourced materials, has announced it’s ending sales of the Fairphone 3, a phone with a modular, repairable design that was launched in 2019. But the Fairphone 3 comes wit…
Fairphone, a company that makes smartphones using sustainable and ethically-sourced materials, has announced it’s ending sales of the Fairphone 3, a phone with a modular, repairable design that was launched in 2019. But the Fairphone 3 comes with five years of hardware and software support, so while it’s no longer available for purchase, folks who […]
The post Fairphone 3 is no longer available for purchase (but spare parts are) appeared first on Liliputing.
A brief overview of IBM’s new 7 nm Telum mainframe CPU
A typical Telum-powered mainframe offers 256 cores at a base clock of 5+GHz.
Enlarge / Each Telum package consists of two 7nm, eight-core / sixteen-thread processors running at a base clock speed above 5GHz. A typical system will have sixteen of these chips in total, arranged in four-socket "drawers." (credit: IBM)
From the perspective of a traditional x86 computing enthusiast—or professional—mainframes are strange, archaic beasts. They're physically enormous, power-hungry, and expensive by comparison to more traditional data-center gear, generally offering less compute per rack at a higher cost.
This raises the question, "Why keep using mainframes, then?" Once you hand-wave the cynical answers that boil down to "because that's how we've always done it," the practical answers largely come down to reliability and consistency. As AnandTech's Ian Cutress points out in a speculative piece focused on the Telum's redesigned cache, "downtime of these [IBM Z] systems is measured in milliseconds per year." (If true, that's at least seven nines.)
IBM's own announcement of the Telum hints at just how different mainframe and commodity computing's priorities are. It casually describes Telum's memory interface as "capable of tolerating complete channel or DIMM failures, and designed to transparently recover data without impact to response time."
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Ist Fleisch das neue Gemüse?
Wie gesund darf Ernährung sein, ohne dass die Freude am Essen verloren geht? Wie wirkt sich eine fleischarme Ernährung auf Gesundheit und Klima aus?
Wie gesund darf Ernährung sein, ohne dass die Freude am Essen verloren geht? Wie wirkt sich eine fleischarme Ernährung auf Gesundheit und Klima aus?
Apple’s AR headset will leave a lot of the hard work to the iPhone
A reliance on external processing won’t surprise anyone who’s been following AR.
Enlarge / Apple offices in northern California. (credit: Apple)
Apple's long-rumored mixed reality headset will require an iPhone within wireless range to function for at least some apps and experiences, according to a new report in The Information.
The Information's sources say that Apple completed work on the system-on-a-chip (SoC) for the headset "last year" and that the physical designs for that and two other chips intended for the device have been completed. Apple has also finishing designing the device's display driver and image sensor.
The SoC will be based on TSMC's five-nanometer manufacturing process, which is current now but may not be when the headset releases in 2022 or later.
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"Das neue Wettrüsten hat bereits begonnen."
Zu den Lehren aus dem Scheitern in Afghanistan, der westlichen Hybris und der neuen Weltordnung. Und warum Klimapolitik auch immer Friedenspolitik ist. Eine Rede
Zu den Lehren aus dem Scheitern in Afghanistan, der westlichen Hybris und der neuen Weltordnung. Und warum Klimapolitik auch immer Friedenspolitik ist. Eine Rede
The FAA grounds Virgin Galactic’s spaceship after flight deviation
“The most misleading statement today was Virgin Galactic’s.”
Enlarge / VSS Unity burns its rocket motor on July 11, 2021. (credit: Virgin Galactic)
The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday said it has grounded Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo vehicle until the agency completes an investigation into the vehicle's flight outside its designated air space.
"Virgin Galactic may not return the SpaceShipTwo vehicle to flight until the FAA approves the final mishap investigation report or determines the issues related to the mishap do not affect public safety," the aviation agency said in a statement.
The statement follows a report on Wednesday that the spacecraft, carrying Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson and three other passengers, flew outside of its designated airspace over New Mexico for 1 minute and 42 seconds on July 11.
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Cosmic indigestion: Swallowing a neutron star can cause a star to explode
Researchers argue that new observations are best explained by a theorized merger.
Enlarge / A model of the supernova exploding inside a torus of gas ejected years earlier. (credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF)
One of the stranger features of our Universe is the existence of what you might call "dual-core stars." Many stars exist as part of a multistar system, and in some cases, their orbits are extremely close. Couple that with the fact that stars can expand as they age, and you get a situation in which the outer edges of one star may engulf a second. Friction can then draw the stars' orbits closer, resulting in the core of both stars orbiting within a large, shared envelope of plasma.
Things can get more complicated still when you consider that the stars won't necessarily have life cycles that line up well—one of them could easily explode before the other, leaving behind a black hole or a neutron star. That can lead to some bizarre situations, like a star that replaces its core with a neutron star.
Now, researchers say they have probably found a more violent alternative to that merger. In this case, the neutron star didn't settle neatly into the core of its companion star. Instead, the companion star lost its outer layers to space and then saw its core disrupted in a way that caused it to explode.
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Software Piracy Triggers Innovation, Research Finds
A study published in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s working paper series shows that online software piracy increases innovation. The authors conclude that piracy motivates software companies to spend more resources on research and development, to stay ahead of the piracy threat and protect their revenue streams.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Piracy presents a major challenge for companies across different sectors, including the software industry.
Many copyright holders stress that piracy hurts their bottom line. This could lead to less output and innovation. However, research has shown that this isn’t always the case.
Previously, studies have found that piracy doesn’t reduce the number of new films being made. Similarly, piracy doesn’t slow down music output or innovation either. In fact, it may actually encourage innovation.
Piracy Shock and Innovation
This idea is supported by a new working paper published by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The research was carried out by Wendy Bradley, Assistant Professor at SMU Cox School, and USPTO economist Julian Kolev.
The research looks at the effect of the “piracy shock” that was introduced when BitTorrent was first launched 20 years ago. The then-new file-sharing technology made it much easier to pirate software and was swiftly embraced by millions of people.
This ‘natural experiment’ is used to measure how large software companies changed their research and development (R&D) budgets in the following years. By comparing companies that face more piracy risks to those with a lower risk profile, the overall piracy effect is estimated.
According to the researchers, the launch of BitTorrent is ideally suited to measure the effect of piracy. Its introduction in 2001 was sudden, the technology is ideally suited for software piracy, and it wasn’t notably interrupted during the sample period which ends in 2007.
BitTorrent Piracy Triggered Innovation
The overall results suggest that companies that are more at risk from piracy appear to innovate more following the launch of BitTorrent.
“We find that rising piracy increases subsequent R&D spending, copyrights, trademarks, and patents for large, incumbent software firms,” the researchers write, suggesting that the piracy shock pushed firms to innovate more.
“Firms in our sample exhibited a strong rise in innovative activity following the piracy shock, but they also shifted their IP strategies to pursue a more diversified portfolio through increased filings of copyrights and trademarks.”
Translating these findings to hard figures would suggest that a 10% increase in piracy leads to a 2.8% increase in R&D spending.
Subscriptions
The research doesn’t look into specific types of innovation. However, it mentions that in more recent years the subscription model has been embraced by an increasing number of software companies.
This includes software giants such as Microsoft and Adobe, whose software has been pirated millions of times in the past.
Interestingly, this subscription model has its own drawbacks. The paper mentions “subscription fatigue” as a risk, one that also applies to movie streaming platforms. Too many subscriptions could eventually drive people back to pirate sites
What About Revenue
Today, more than twenty years after BitTorrent was invented, piracy levels remain high. However, initial data suggest that software companies have been able to increase revenues through new products and other innovations.
“While firm performance is outside the scope of this study, initial estimates show firms in our sample experienced significant increases in both revenue and profit after the piracy shock,” the paper reads.
“Our findings suggest that strategies encouraging new product development and a continuous commitment to innovation may offset the negative effects of digital piracy in certain industries.”
Finally, the researchers stress that while BitTorrent’s launch is described as a piracy shock, the technology itself is not to blame. It’s a file-sharing technology that can and is used for legal purposes as well.
A copy of the working paper is available through the USPTO website and SSRN. It should be noted, however, that the views expressed in the paper do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Office of the Chief Economist or the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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