Companies that sell refrigerators, washers, hairdryers, or TVs in the European Union will need to ensure those appliances can be repaired for up to 10 years, to help reduce the vast mountain of electrical waste that piles up each year on the continent. The “right to repair,” as it is sometimes called, comes into force Read more about EU law requires companies to fix electronic goods for up to 10 years[…]
The demand to store ever-increasing volumes of information has resulted in the widespread implementation of data centers for Big Data. These centers consume massive amounts of energy (about 3% of global electricity supply) and rely on magnetization-based hard disk drives with limited storage capacity (up to 2 TB per disk) and lifespan (three to five Read more about Sub-diffraction optical writing enables data storage at the nanoscale – on disk[…]
Seismologists at Caltech working with optics experts at Google have developed a method to use existing underwater telecommunication cables to detect earthquakes. The technique could lead to improved earthquake and tsunami warning systems around the world. […] evious efforts to use optical fibers to study seismicity have relied on the addition of sophisticated scientific instruments Read more about Using deep-sea fiber optic cables to detect earthquakes[…]
Apple, on its French website, is now publishing repairability scores for its notoriously difficult to repair products, in accordance with a Gallic environmental law enacted a year ago. Cook & Co score themselves on repairability however, and Cupertino kit sometimes fares better under internal interpretation of the criteria [PDF] than it does under ratings awarded Read more about Apple, forced to rate product repair potential in France, gives itself modest marks – still lying, they should be worse[…]
Since late January, most users running a pre-installed Lenovo image of Windows 10 has been bitten by a bug in Lenovo’s System Update Service (SUService.exe) causing it to constantly occupy a CPU thread. This was noticed by many ThinkPad and IdeaPad users as an unexpected increase in fan noise, but many desktop users might not Read more about A Bug in Lenovo System Update Service is Driving Up CPU Usage and Prompting Fan Noise in Laptops and Desktops, Customers Say[…]
Synology has introduced its first-ever list of validated disks and won’t allow other devices into its enterprise-class NAS devices. And in a colossal coincidence, half of the disks allowed into its devices – and the only ones larger than 4TB – are Synology’s very own HAT 5300 disks that it launched last week. Seeing as Read more about Synology to enforce use of validated disks in enterprise NAS boxes. And guess what? Only its own disks exceed 4TB[…]
Microsoft Corp. is working on in-house processor designs for use in server computers that run the company’s cloud services, adding to an industrywide effort to reduce reliance on Intel Corp.’s chip technology. The world’s largest software maker is using Arm Ltd. designs to produce a processor that will be used in its data centers, according Read more about Microsoft (MSFT) Is Designing Its Own Chips in Move Away From Intel (INTC)[…]
Cerebras Systems and the federal Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory today announced that the company’s CS-1 system is more than 10,000 times faster than a graphics processing unit (GPU). On a practical level, this means AI neural networks that previously took months to train can now train in minutes on the Cerebras system. Read more about Cerebras’ wafer-size chip is 10,000 times faster than a GPU[…]
A new way to deposit thin layers of atoms as a coating onto a substrate material at near room temperatures has been invented at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System. UAH postdoctoral research associate Dr. Moonhyung Jang got the idea to use an ultrasonic atomization technology Read more about Researchers develop new atomic layer deposition process[…]
eBay is taking on Amazon Warehouse with a new destination called Certified Refurbished, selling used goods from brands like Lenovo, Microsoft and Makita. The idea is that you can buy second-hand products at significant discounts over new, but still get a two-year warranty (from Allstate), a money-back guarantee and 30-day “hassle-free” returns, along with new Read more about eBay makes a dedicated portal for officially refurbished gear[…]
FreedomFi Gateway is the easiest path towards your open source Private LTE or 5G network. Be it for Fixed Wireless Access, Enterprise Cellular or Mobile Broadband, just plug in any commodity small cell into a FreedomFi Gateway and start managing your private cellular network via a SaaS-hosted portal. Project sponsorship options start at $300. Read more about FreedomFi – open source 5G MAGMA software on a hardware gateway[…]
Tokyo’s Stock Exchange (TSE) went offline for most of Thursday, its longest-ever outage and a very unwelcome one as it is the world’s third-largest bourse, when measured by market capitalisation. The exchange yesterday morning posted news that “a technical glitch occurred to distribution of market data,” and the market therefore stopped all trading. Later in Read more about Tokyo Stock Exchange breaks new record. Sadly, not a good one… its longest ever outage[…]
We are living in a golden age of flight and space simulation, with Flight Simulator, Star Wars Squadrons just out and Elite Dangerous and No Mans Sky fully established and finally Star Citizen playable to some degree. This means you can take out that old flight stick and throttle and TrackIR 5 that have been Read more about Many ways to optimise your HOTAS set up at home: desk and chair mounts[…]
Transistors based on carbon rather than silicon could potentially boost computers’ speed and cut their power consumption more than a thousandfold — think of a mobile phone that holds its charge for months — but the set of tools needed to build working carbon circuits has remained incomplete until now. A team of chemists and Read more about Metal wires of carbon complete toolbox for carbon-based computers[…]
Samsung may have first made an ECG-capable smartwatch with the Galaxy Watch Active2, but it wasn’t until earlier this summer that it actually got clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to enable the medical-grade feature. That announcement came in dramatic fashion at its Unpacked event in August, where the company unveiled yet another Read more about Samsung Is Rolling Out Its ECG App to Its Smartwatches Today – and only for Samsung phone owners[…]
In 2015, German sportswear manufacturer Adidas acquired a plucky Austrian IoT startup called Runtastic, which, among other things, manufactured a $129.99 “smart” scale called Libra. Now that product is being discontinued, preventing owners from synchronising their data or even downloading the app required to use it. In a post published yesterday, Adidas announced the discontinuation Read more about Adidas now stands for All Day I’m Disconnecting All Servers as owners of ‘smart’ Libra scales furious over bricked kit – don’t trust stuff that needs cloud[…]
A rural village in Wales has been suffering through internet outages and slowdowns for 18 months. The situation baffled technicians until they realized that turning off one man’s TV solved everything. On Tuesday, U.K.-based broadband provider Openreach explained in a release that every morning, around 7 a.m., residents of the Aberhosan village found themselves experiencing Read more about Village Traces 18 Months of Internet Outages to Old TV Set[…]
Last week, RTX 3080 scalpers pissed off a lot of Nvidia GPU fans by buying up all the graphics cards and attempting to resell them for hundreds of dollars more than the actual MSRP. Unfortunately, this is a common scalper tactic: Buy up as many items of a single product as possible, create a false Read more about The Nvidia RTX 3080 eBay Debacle Exposed a Scalper Bot Civil War[…]
Scores of websites and services went down Friday afternoon due to problems with Cloudflare’s DNS service, sparking rampant speculation about the cause. After all, a global DDOS attack would totally fit the real-life apocalypse movie that 2020 is increasingly turning into. The outage, which started shortly after 5 p.m. ET, brought down popular sites and Read more about Issue with Cloudflare’s DNS service and crappy router shuts down half the web. Again.[…]
Designers often rely on their smartphones for snapping a quick photo of something that inspires them, but Pantone has found a way to turn their smartphone into a genuine design tool. As part of a new online service, it’s created a small card that can be used to accurately sample real world colors by simply Read more about The Cheap Solution for Pantone Color Picking[…]
This latest device succeeds the previous Librem 13 laptop, which ran for four generations, and includes a slightly bigger display, a hexa-core Ice Lake Intel Core i7 processor, gigabit Ethernet, and USB-C. As the name implies, the Librem 14 packs a 14-inch, 1920×1080 IPS display. Purism said this comes without increasing the laptop’s dimensions thanks Read more about Purism’s quest against Intel’s Management Engine black box CPU now comes in 14 inches[…]
T-Mobile’s network is having an issue with voice and data service. There was a huge spike in outage reports on Down Detector starting at around 1 PM ET today, with many people across the US suggesting on that site and Twitter that they’re having problems. By around 3:30 PM ET, Down Detector had collected more Read more about T-Mobile US outage finally ends after more than twelve hours (updated)[…]
A scientist at the University of Sydney has achieved what one quantum industry insider has described as “something that many researchers thought was impossible”. Dr. Benjamin Brown from the School of Physics has developed a type of error-correcting code for quantum computers that will free up more hardware to do useful calculations. It also provides Read more about A drastic reduction in hardware overhead for quantum computing with new error correcting techniques[…]
Amazon built robot that is designed to kill the novel coronavirus with ultraviolet light. The robot looks a little like a hotel luggage cart, with a tall metal frame attached to a rectangular wheeled bottom. One side of the frame is outfitted with at least 10 ultraviolet tube lights. In a video shared with CBS Read more about Amazon builds UV-light robot to kill coronavirus on surfaces[…]
Oh look, here’s another cautionary tale about buying cloud-based IoT kit. On 29 May, global peripheral giant Belkin will flick the “off” switch on its Wemo NetCam IP cameras, turning the popular security devices into paperweights. It’s not unusual for a manufacturer to call time on physical hardware. Like software, it has a lifespan where, Read more about Three things in life are certain: Death, taxes, and cloud-based IoT gear bricked by vendors. Looking at you, Belkin[…]