Month: January 2024

Enlarge / It's coded for designers, quite literally, but the Figma Creator Micro is just a rebranded version of the stock Creator Micro from Work Louder. It is quite colorful, though. (credit: Figma)

A number of my friends, friends who aren’t streamers, have picked up Elgato’s Stream Decks. I can understand the impulse to have shortcuts, automation triggers, and fiddly little knobs within arm’s reach, without expanding the keyboard itself. But the Stream Deck’s customizable icons, upright nature, and streaming-focused app support make it a non-starter for my physical desktop. I’m a clicky keyboard person, even if I can see some intriguing non-QWERTY possibilities.

I hadn’t considered looking further into a secondary keyboard until I noticed that the makers of interface design tool Figma had collaborated with Work Louder on a custom tiny keyboard, the Figma Creator Micro. It’s a version of Work Louder’s standard Creator Micro, done up with a Figma-style color scheme and set up with four layers of shortcuts most useful inside that app, for a total of 48. It’s mechanical, it’s colorful, and it—or its more standardized cousin—might do a good bit toward improving your workflow.

Figma sent me a sample of its Creator Micro to test it out. I do not design interfaces, nor use Figma, but for all purposes, you could consider this to also be a test run of the standard Creator Micro. The two are functionally identical, minus the looks, and the pre-programming and custom shortcut keycaps included with the Figma version. Mine came with the “Clicky” (Kailh White) keys, though “Silent” (Kailh Brown) is an option.

Enlarge / US President Joe Biden speaks during a "First Tool-In" ceremony at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. facility under construction in Phoenix, Arizona, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022. TSMC today announced plans to boost its investment in the state to $40 billion and construct a second production facility, following major customers urging the Taiwanese chipmaker to build more advanced semiconductors in the US. (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

President Joe Biden's plan to expand America's command of the global chips market hit another setback Thursday when Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) Chairman Mark Liu announced that he anticipates significant delays at the company's second chips plant in Arizona.

This news follows previous delays announced last year at TSMC's first chips plant, which Liu partly blamed on US workers lacking specialized skills. At Thursday's news conference, Liu "reiterated" those complaints, Bloomberg reported, claiming that TSMC is still struggling to hire skilled workers in Arizona.

According to Liu, TSMC's second Arizona plant—which is supposed to become the most advanced facility in the US—likely won't start volume production of advanced chips until 2027 or 2028. That's potentially two years longer than initial projections suggesting that production would start in 2026.

Enlarge / The Apple Watch Ultra 2. (credit: Apple)

Starting today, if you buy an Apple Watch Series 9 or Watch Ultra 2 it won’t be able to tell you your blood oxygen levels, a feature that Apple heavily touted when first introducing the capability in 2020. Although the watches will be less capable than watches of the same model sold before today, Apple is selling the pared-down watches at the same prices as before.

On Wednesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied [PDF] Apple’s request that an import ban on the smartwatches be lifted for the duration of Apple’s appeal of the ruling that blocked the watches. Apple expects its appeal to take at least a year to be resolved.

In its ruling, the court said:

Enlarge / I normally prefer my performance cars on race circuits, but the Lightning Switchgear impressed this off-road racing novice. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

CONCORD, NC—The venerable pickup truck can play a multitude of roles these days. For some, it's nothing more than a work vehicle, something to carry around lumber or tools or tow a trailer full of equipment. For others, it's the new American family car. But some truck owners like to leave the tarmac behind to have a little fun in the wilderness. Mostly, that involves low-speed rock crawling, perhaps up the side of a steep mountain. But it doesn't have to be slow—vehicles like Ford's range of Raptors are designed to do highway speeds across expanses of desert wilderness, largely thanks to very clever dampers and plenty of suspension travel to munch up those bumps and bounces.

Ford is yet to make a Raptor version of its F-150 Lightning electric pickup, but we got an idea of what one could be capable of this week thanks to a ride in the Blue Oval's latest electric demonstrator, the F-150 Lightning Switchgear. It's the result of a collaboration between Ford Performance and RTR Vehicles, a tuning company founded and run by drifting champion and off-road racer Vaughn Gittin Jr., and while it's just a one-off for now, the Lightning Switchgear is a testbed for pushing the boundaries of what we can expect from electric trucks, Ford says. (You may remember RTR previously worked with Ford to create a 1,400-hp Mustang Mach-E in 2020.)

"This is going to focus on chassis and suspension. So to that end, just like you do with any good racing vehicle, you start with the tires," explained Sriram Pakkam, head of F1 and EV demonstrators at Ford.

Enlarge / FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel at a Senate subcommittee hearing on September 19, 2023 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | The Washington Post)

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel defended a low-income discount program against attacks from GOP lawmakers, pointing out that Republicans criticized an aspect of the program that was decided by Congress, not the commission.

In December, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and several other Republican lawmakers blasted the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which gives $30 monthly broadband discounts to people with low incomes. The program is set to be discontinued in a few months because Congress hasn't added funding to continue it, though Democrats are pushing a bill that would keep it going.

The Republican letter to Rosenworcel accused the Federal Communications Commission of being "wasteful," saying that "it appears the vast majority of tax dollars have gone to households that already had broadband prior to the subsidy." Rosenworcel has since responded in a letter reminding Republicans that the FCC followed Congress' instructions when it implemented the ACP.

Enlarge / Vials of quantum dots with gradually stepping emission from violet to deep red. (credit: Antipoff/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Shortwave infrared light (SWIR) sensors are desirable in a broad range of applications, particularly in the service robotics, automotive, and consumer electronics sectors. Colloidal quantum dots tuned to SWIR show promise for such sensors since they can be easily integrated into CMOS, but their mass market use has been hampered by the fact that most contain toxic heavy metals like lead or mercury. Now a team of scientists has manufactured quantum dots out of non-toxic materials and tested them in a fabricated lab-scale photodetector, according to a recent paper published in the journal Nature Photonics.

"SWIR light for sensing and imaging is of paramount importance owing to its unique characteristics," the authors wrote. "It is eye safe; it can penetrate through fog, haze, and other atmospheric conditions, enabling imaging under adverse weather for automotive applications, environmental, and remote sensing; the presence of night glow under night in the SWIR range enables passive night vision; and visual imaging combined with infrared spectroscopy enables machine vision, bio imaging, and food and process quality inspection," among other applications.

As previously reported, a quantum dot is a small semiconducting bead a few tens of atoms in diameter. Billions could fit on the head of a pin, and the smaller you can make them, the better. At those small scales, quantum effects kick in and give the dots superior electrical and optical properties. They glow brightly when zapped with light, and the color of that light is determined by the size of the quantum dots. Bigger dots emit redder light; smaller dots emit bluer light. So you can tailor quantum dots to specific frequencies of light just by changing their size.

Enlarge (credit: Aunt_Spray / GETTY IMAGES)

A single tusk is all that remains of a mammoth that lived approximately 14,000 years ago. Yet that one tusk has enabled scientists to uncover remarkable details about her life. Using ancient DNA, researchers determined her sex and how she was related to mammoths that left fossils nearby. Using analysis of isotopes found in the tusks, they recreated her approximate movements over two decades, from birth to death, learning that she frequented areas once inhabited by ancient humans.

Combined with Indigenous knowledge and earlier work tracking the movements of a male mammoth, we are beginning to gain unparalleled insight into the lives of specific animals, information that has implications for future understanding of Pleistocene ecology and its extinctions.

Long in the tooth

Mammoth tusks are essentially one long tooth, and their growth captures significant moments throughout the mammoth’s life. "Reading" information contained within tusks, paleontologists can, for example, determine when and if a mammoth starved, when it was pregnant or going through musth, and the season in which it died. It also contains a record of where it likely roamed throughout its life—if you have the right tools.