Month: April 2023

Enlarge / Model F Labs' Classic Style F104 Model F keyboard starts at $420. (credit: Model F Keyboards)

IBM’s Model F keyboards are prized among keyboard enthusiasts. Introducing buckling spring switches over a capacitive printed circuit board (PCB) in the early 80s, they’re considered the grandfather of mechanical switches. Despite their prestige, Model F keyboards were no more by the following decade and, due to outdated technologies, have become very rare and can be tough to use with a modern computer. Targeting retro keyboard fans who don't want to deal with long searches, repairs, or mods, Model F Labs recreates IBM's Model F keyboards with modern OS support, and it recently introduced the iconic buckling spring switches in a classic full-sized keyboard, as well as some unique form factors.

Buckling springs

With the tactile buckling of the internal spring and the click of the flipper against the capacitive PCB, the keys in IBM's Model F keyboards inspired today's mechanical switches. Popular in banks, they replaced IBM's beam spring keyboards with a lower-cost design that was also less bulky. Early Model F keyboards had keycaps that were the same size, and keycaps were also removable for customization.

By 1985, IBM was making Model M keyboards, also popular among keyboard collectors today, with keys featuring a buckling spring over membrane and lower manufacturing costs.

Enlarge / A building at Apple Park, the company's Cupertino, California, HQ. (credit: Apple)

Apple, which has thus far avoided the sweeping layoffs that have taken place at rival companies like Microsoft and Google, is eliminating some roles after all, according to a report in Bloomberg.

The number of heads eliminated is believed to be relatively small, and they are all within the company's "corporate retail teams," with a focus on workers who are responsible for the "construction and upkeep" of Apple's retail locations and other physical facilities.

In a note to employees, the company said the move was actually intended to improve store upkeep. Additionally, Apple told the affected employees that they can reapply for other roles within the company. Those who aren't accepted for new roles will receive four months of severance.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | MicroStockHub)

China's antitrust regulator "is holding back its required green light for mergers that involve American companies as a technology war with Washington intensifies," according to a Wall Street Journal report today. China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has asked companies seeking merger approvals to "make available in China products they sell in other countries—an attempt to counter the US's increased export controls targeting China," the report said.

"Chinese regulators recently have slowed down their merger reviews of a number of proposed acquisitions by US companies, including Intel Corp.'s $5.2 billion takeover of Israel-based Tower Semiconductor Ltd. and chip maker MaxLinear Inc.'s $3.8 billion purchase of Silicon Motion Technology of Taiwan, according to people close to the process," the WSJ wrote.

Microsoft's $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard is "subject to Beijing's lengthy merger scrutiny" because China last year "declined the companies' request to file the deal under a simplified and expedited procedure," the WSJ report said. The Microsoft/Activision deal also faces antitrust scrutiny in the UK and EU.

Enlarge / Galaxies that appear to be similar in age to the ones described here. (credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Tommaso Treu, Zolt G. Levay)

One of the goals of the Webb Space Telescope was imaging the earliest galaxies, giving us a new window into how our Universe evolved between the dense, hot material from the Big Bang and its star- and structure-filled present. And, almost as soon as the data started pouring in, things have looked very promising, with strong indications that we were picking up galaxies as they appeared only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

But a few uncertainties remained, as unusual conditions could potentially cause a much more recent galaxy to have features that make it look much older. That may be the case with a galaxy that would otherwise be the oldest ever detected.

On Tuesday, two papers were released that put the issue to rest, providing a full spectrum of four early galaxies and showing that they all clearly date from just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Imaging of the same galaxies shows that they're full of young stars that lack most of the heavier elements seen in today's Universe.

Enlarge / The new Thunderbolt 4 version of Microsoft's Surface Dock. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Microsoft is introducing a new version of its Surface Dock, the first to rely on Thunderbolt 4 instead of Microsoft's proprietary Surface Connect port. The Microsoft Surface Thunderbolt 4 Dock costs $300 ($40 more than the regular price of the previous-generation Surface Dock 2) and is available starting today.

The new dock measures 5.91×2.95×0.84 inches—a bit flatter, wider, and deeper than the Dock 2—and includes a total of three USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports, three 5Gbps USB-A ports, a 2.5Gbps Ethernet port, and a headphone jack. The dock can provide up to 96 W of power to a connected laptop, which should be sufficient to power most laptops that charge over USB-C.

Microsoft only advertises compatibility with its own products, but because it uses Thunderbolt 4, the dock should work with most devices that include USB-C or Thunderbolt ports, including most PC laptops and MacBooks (though we don't know whether macOS includes drivers for its built-in Ethernet port, and the number of external displays supported may depend on how many your MacBook natively supports). Microsoft says laptops with plain USB-C ports can drive a single 4K display at 60 Hz, whereas driving two 4K displays at 60 Hz requires Thunderbolt.