Month: March 2021

• 

  The Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold, which looks a lot like Samsung's foldables. [credit: Xiaomi ]

Xiaomi is resurrecting the Mi Mix model line with the Mi Mix Fold. The first Mi Mix was a futuristic-looking smartphone that kicked off the slim-bezel smartphone race. This new Mi Mix Fold is Xiaomi's first commercial foldable, and, like Huawei's efforts, represents the company doing its best to just copy the Samsung Galaxy Fold design.

Just like Huawei's clone, the Xiaomi Fold is a bit bigger than Samsung's 7.6-inch device and sports a 60 Hz, 2480x1860, 8.01-inch internal flexible OLED display. The outside display on Xiaomi's Fold is a 90 Hz, 2520x840, 6.5-inch OLED display, which is bigger than Samsung's 6.2-inch display and Huawei's 6.45-inch outer display. Interestingly, Xiaomi is taking the opposite approach to screen refresh rates that Samsung is taking. On the Z Fold 2, a fast 120 Hz display is the interior tablet screen on the device, while the phone-style screen is 60 Hz. Xiaomi made the big inside screen slow and the outside screen fast.

Xiaomi has settled on an iPad-like 4:3 aspect ratio for the inside screen, while Samsung switched from nearly 4:3 in the first generation (4.2:3) to a taller 5:4 aspect ratio in its second-generation foldable. Huawei landed around this 5:4 aspect ratio for its foldable, too. It's hard to know what the right screen dimensions are for an Android foldable, since Android tablets have been dead for so long that there's really no app support anymore. Today, most Android apps are phone apps, and they really struggle to adapt to bigger displays. Samsung's and Huawei's ~5:4 displays are nearly two regular 21:9 Android phones placed next to each other, so they can sidestep this issue by just running in split-screen most of the time. The 4:3 aspect ratio of the Galaxy Fold 1 was a bit too cramped for split-screen.

Enlarge / President Joe Biden speaks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, on Monday, March 29, 2021. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

President Biden's plan to connect all Americans with high-speed broadband includes proposals to boost competition, build more publicly owned networks, lower prices, and prioritize "future-proof" networks instead of ones that would quickly become outdated. In other words, the plan includes some of the broadband industry's least-favorite ideas and is sure to meet fierce resistance from cable and telecom lobby groups and Republicans.

Biden's $100 billion broadband proposal is part of the American Jobs Plan described by the White House in a fact sheet released today. The broadband details released so far are a bit vague, and the plan could be changed in Congress, but there's a lot to like for Internet users.

"The president believes we can bring affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to every American through a historic investment of $100 billion," the fact sheet said. The $100 billion in broadband funding would be spread out over a number of years, as the entire jobs plan is slated to "invest about $2 trillion this decade." (We published another story today on how the Biden plan would also eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.)

• 

  Mercedes-AMG has been developing this Project One hypercar—which uses the same powertrain as its all-conquering F1 cars—for a few years now. It's not quite ready yet, but the hybrid system is about to appear on some other Mercedes-AMG road cars. [credit: Mercedes-AMG ]

This week should have seen the start of the New York International Auto Show, but despite its postponement, many of the automakers who would have attended are still showing off their latest new-and-shiny projects online instead. Most of Mercedes-Benz's headlines have come from its new electric EQS sedan and the humongous 56-inch-wide screen embedded in its dash. I don't know about you, but I'm fast approaching burnout when it comes to huge screens in cars, so I'm far more interested in the details that Mercedes-AMG shared about its new performance hybrid system.

In 2014, Formula 1 racing adopted a new set of technical regulations as the sport moved from naturally aspirated 2.4 L V8 engines to hybrid powertrains that combine a 1.6 L V6 with a pair of hybrid systems to recover energy from waste heat as well as under braking. The Mercedes-AMG team came out of the starting blocks with a better hybrid powertrain than anyone else and dominated the sport from then on, racking up both the driver's and constructor's world championships that season and every year since.

I've repeatedly said that F1 technology almost never shows up in street cars, and endurance racing is the venue for real racetrack-to-road technology transfer. But in this case, Mercedes-AMG really is translating its F1 hybrid know-how into the brand's street cars.

Enlarge / Bad news if you've been hoping to shoot sword-wielding laser-beam punks controlled by other humans, rather than AI...

A planned standalone multiplayer version of Cyberpunk 2077 is being "reconsidered," developer CD Projekt Red says, as the company reconfigures itself for a new development structure going forward.

In a "strategy update" video posted Tuesday, CDPR joint CEO Adam Kicinski mentioned that the team had previously "hinted that our next AAA would be a multiplayer Cyberpunk game, but we have decided to reconsider this plan given our new more systematic and agile approach [to development]."

Instead, CDPR will be focusing on "building an online technology that can be seamlessly integrated into all of our future games," Kicinski said. That means developing technologies that can "power online components we choose to add to our games without any technological delay."

Enlarge (credit: Jose Luis Stephens | Getty Images)

Today, President Joe Biden will unveil a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that promises to overhaul the nation’s highways, airports, electrical grid, and more. It will be partly paid for by repealing subsidies for the fossil fuel industry.

Currently, the United States gives the $180 billion fossil fuel industry between $5 billion to $62 billion per year in direct subsidies, depending on the estimate. When accounting for indirect subsidies, including public health impacts and climate change, the handout could be as high as $649 billion. The Biden administration hasn’t specified which tax credits or subsidies it would eliminate, and certain subsidies probably will be subject to horse trading in Congress. That makes it difficult to get an accurate number at this point, but the number would certainly be in the range of billions of dollars. 

If the Biden administration is successful, the US would be following through on a promise made at the 2009 G20 summit, which stated that signatories should “phase out and rationalize over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”