Month: July 2023

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  The Nothing Phone 2 all lit up. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

After spending its first year being limited to Europe, the upstart Android manufacturer Nothing is coming to the US. That means it's possible to buy a Nothing Phone 2 and use it on a GSM carrier, so let's take a quick look at one.

The price starts at $599, which lets it slot into the space that used to be occupied by the now obsolete base-model Pixel 7. At this price, you're getting a device that looks like a flagship on the surface with a big 6.7-inch, 120 Hz display and a last-generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. The lack of water resistance is really crippling, though. Even the $349 Pixel 6a has an IP67 rating, so it's submergible, but this phone can only handle light rain. Nothing is the second major company from OnePlus founder Carl Pei, and OnePlus had a very strange relationship with water resistance, too. If the company would just be normal and competitive in this area, its devices would be a lot more desirable. Water resistance is a feature people are used to now and definitely something you would expect at this price.

But there are some good features here. I'm a big fan of the flat front screen, which bucks the pointless, year-long trend of distorted screens that are curved along both edges. Flat screens are hopefully going to be the trend going forward. The metal bands around the sides are also nice if a little iPhone-reminiscent.

Enlarge (credit: Yuga Kurita)

One of the more threatening aspects of climate change is its potential to unleash feedbacks, or situations where warming induces changes that drive even more warming. Most of those are natural, such as a warmer ocean being able to hold less carbon dioxide, resulting in even more of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. But at least one potential feedback has a very human element: air conditioning.

A lot of the carbon dioxide we emit comes from the production of electricity. The heat those emissions generate causes people to run air conditioning more often, which drives more electricity use, which drives further emissions. It's a feedback that will remain a threat until we manage to green the electrical grid.

A new report released this week takes a look at that feedback from the perspective of our climate goals, examining how much more often air conditioning is likely to be used in a world at our backup goal of 2° C of warming, and comparing it to one where we actually reach our primary goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C. The answer is that it makes a big difference, but the impacts aren't evenly spread between countries.

Enlarge / Portrait of Ramesses II in Nakhtamun tomb, Chief of the Altar in the Ramesseum (possibly 20th Dynasty, circa 1100 BCE). (credit: Martinez et al./CC-BY 4.0)

Researchers have discovered evidence of earlier versions of two ancient Egyptian paintings located in tomb chapels in the Theban Necropolis, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. In one, there is a ghostly third hand partially hidden under a white overprinted layer; the other has adjustments to the crown and other royal items in a portrait of Ramesses II. These discoveries were made with a portable macro-X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) imaging device that enabled the researchers to analyze the paintings on site, with no need for taking physical samples.

X-rays are a well-established tool to help analyze and restore valuable paintings because the rays' higher frequency means they pass right through paintings without harming them. X-ray imaging can reveal anything that has been painted over a canvas or where the artist may have altered his (or her) original vision. For instance, Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window was first subjected to X-ray analysis in 1979 and revealed the image of a Cupid lurking under the overpainting. In 2020, a team of Dutch and French scientists used high-energy X-rays to unlock Rembrandt's secret recipe for his famous impasto technique, believed to be lost to history.

In 2021, scientists used macro-X-ray fluorescence imaging to map out the distribution of elements in the paint pigments of Jean-Louis David's famous portrait of 17th-century chemist Antoine Lavoisier and his wife Marie-Anne—including the paint used below the surface—to create detailed elemental maps for further study. Earlier this year, scientists used X-ray powder diffraction mapping and synchrotron micro X-ray analysis to study Rembrandt van Rijn's 1642 masterpiece The Night Watch, and found rare traces of a compound called lead formate.

Enlarge / A promotional image for the new 83-inch S90C Samsung OLED TV. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung is about to begin selling its first TVs with OLED panels made by rival LG after months of negotiations. Unfortunately, the way the TVs that come out of this deal are branded and marketed could cause confusion for consumers who want the most bang for their buck.

On Tuesday, Samsung published a blog post revealing a new 83-inch TV that lives in the company's existing S90C range of high-end OLEDs. In truth, the set had been leaked weeks earlier, when excellently obsessive and detail-oriented TV expert Vincent Teoh of HDTV Test was quick to observe that Samsung does not currently make 83-inch panels itself—meaning this must be the first TV in Samsung's deal with LG.

The complicated story behind Samsung’s new OLEDs

The Samsung-LG deal was rumored in fits and starts for months. As LG made and shipped OLED TVs and panels and talked up the benefits of OLED compared to good-old LED LCD, Samsung stuck to shipping LCD TVs, introducing new technologies to try to keep the older technology competitive.

Enlarge / AT&T's stand at Mobile World Congress on February 27, 2023, in Barcelona, Spain. (credit: Getty Images | Joan Cros Garcia-Corbis)

Newly raised concerns about lead-covered telephone cables installed across the US many decades ago are putting pressure on companies like AT&T and Verizon to identify the locations of all the cables and account for any health problems potentially caused by the toxic metal.

US Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) wrote a letter to the USTelecom industry trade group this week after a Wall Street Journal investigative report titled, "America Is Wrapped in Miles of Toxic Lead Cables." The WSJ said it found evidence of more than 2,000 lead-covered cables and that there "are likely far more throughout the country."

WSJ reporters had researchers collect samples as part of their investigation. They "found that where lead contamination was present, the amount measured in the soil was highest directly under or next to the cables, and dropped within a few feet—a sign the lead was coming from the cable," the article said.

Enlarge / "I can't believe the quality of this 8K video tutorial! It's like you're really… Ted, could you, yeah, just shift over a little there? You're blocking… thanks." (credit: LiFi.Co)

Light is almost certainly the fastest thing around. So it makes sense that "light-based wireless communications," or LiFi, could blow the theoretical doors off existing radio-wave wireless standards, to the tune of a maximum 224GB per second.

So long as there's nothing blocking the space between your receiver and the lightbulb you've fashioned into a LiFi access point. Or you don't need to turn the bulb off entirely to sleep. And you're willing to add a dongle and keep it pointed the right way, at least for the moment.

But LiFi, or 802.11bb, isn't really meant to replace Wi-Fi, but complement it—a good thing for a technology theoretically nullified by a sheet of printer paper. In an announcement of the standard's certification by IEEE (spotted on PC Gamer) and on LiFiCO's FAQ page, the LED-based wireless standard is pitched as an alternative for certain use cases. LiFi could be useful when radio frequencies are inhibited or banned, when the security of the connection is paramount, or just whenever you want speed-of-light transfer at the cost of line-of-sight alignment.