Latest News - Page 1130

Sabrent must be working with CERN and the Large Hadron Collider in the multiverse, making products in alternate realities with thousands of staff working in tandem... because the company has released so many new products and we're barely 5 months into 2022.

The company has just unveiled its new high-performance, low-latency DDR5 UDIMM memory modules: available in 16GB and 32GB single sticks at DDR5-4800 speeds. Sabrent explains: "It seems like DDR4 has ruled the roost forever. Finally, new motherboards and architectures have allowed memory to grow wings with the advent of DDR5. Improved clock speeds promise up to twice the bandwidth of DDR4, all with lower voltage for better efficiency".

"To further help with that last bit, DDR5 has on-board power management to reduce motherboard cost and complexity. Sabrent's new DDR5 kits simply plug and play, install your memory kits of choice, enter the BIOS and hit AUTO, and reboot. For those that want to OC these kits, there is plenty of headroom to advance speeds if you want".

Europe's largest floating solar farm will be stationed in Portugal and will begin producing power in July of this year.

The array houses 12,000 solar panels and covers an area the size of four soccer pitches. It was built by Energias de Portugal (EDP) and towed by two tugboats to its mooring on Western Europe's largest artificial lake, the Alqueva reservoir in Portugal. The development is part of Portugal's plan to shift away from imported fossil fuels, particularly those from Russia, the price of which has surged since Russia invaded Ukraine.

According to Miguel Patena, the EDP group director in charge of the solar project, electricity from the panels will cost a third of that from gas-fired plants. The panels will be used to generate hydropower, producing 7.5 gigawatt/hours (GWh) of electricity a year, and will be accompanied by lithium batteries with the capacity to store 2 GWh.

A new image published by the European Space Agency (ESA) has showcased, once again, the capabilities of a famous NASA telescope.

The image published to the European Space Agency (ESA) website details spiral galaxy M99, which is located approximately 43 million light-years from Earth within the constellation Coma Berenices. The galaxy is described as a "grand design" spiral galaxy, which speaks to M99's "well-defined, prominent spiral arms". Notably, the above image was snapped by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on two separate occasions.

Furthermore, only 10% of spiral galaxies are "grand design" spiral galaxies, and the first set of observations conducted by Hubble concentrated on stellar explosions called novas. The second set of observations focused on establishing a connection between young stars and clouds of cold gas where they form. Researchers aim to develop a deeper understanding of star formation through taking photographs of spiral galaxies such as M99.

The drone deliveries mark the first of its kind to deliver food and beverage at a sporting event.

Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, hosted a baseball series at Alexander Field recently where attendees could order food and drink items that were then delivered to a locker at the venue. The pilot program was designed to "pressure-test the delivery experience for higher fan volume at future events," and you can see footage of the drone in action here.

The program was run by a collaboration between Purdue's concessionaire, Levy, Levy's DBK Studio, Valqari, which utilized its patented six-locker Drone Delivery Station, and the Unmanned Systems Operation Group (USOG). Valqari worked with USOG to map out the flight path, which carried orders prepared and fulfilled at the Folk Field to Alexander Field, roughly half a mile away.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has released a new climate update with a warning regarding the world's current trajectory.

Currently, the WMO says there is a 50:50 chance that the annual average global temperature will reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for at least one year out of the next five. In 2015, the chance of temporarily exceeding a 1.5°C increase was near zero percent, rising to 10% between 2017 and 2021, and which now sits at almost 50% for the 2022 to 2026 period.

There is a 93% likelihood that one of the years from 2022 through 2026 will become the warmest on record, surpassing the current record holder, 2016. The five-year average temperatures for 2022-2026 is also projected to have a 93% chance of being higher than those from the previous five-year period of 2017-2021.

Ketamine has been the subject of research in recent years, highlighting its potential to treat and cure depression.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Kernel, a neurotech company that makes brain-scanning helmets, to work with Cybin, a startup investigating psychedelic-based therapeutics, on a ketamine pilot study in October 2021. As part of the tests, Bryan Johnson, the founder of Kernel, wore one of its devices after being administered ketamine.

Johnson received 57.75 milligrams of ketamine via intramuscular injection and wore the helmet to collect brain scans during his "trip." He also wore the helmet during the days leading up to and following his trip for comparison.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking proposals for nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) engines.

The proposals are for the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, covering the design, development, fabrication, and assembly of the engines. The program's goal is to execute a flight demonstration using nuclear thermal propulsion in space in the fiscal year 2026.

Phase 1 of the program focused on preliminary designs for the rocket engine reactor and a conceptual in-orbit demonstration system, and proposals are being sought for Phases 2 and 3. Phase 2 will see the completion of designs for a demonstration system and the validation of an NTR flight engine, while Phase 3 will see the demonstration system built to handle a full-power, on-orbit flight test and the execution of that test.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to announce that Russia is attempting to bring down Starlink satellites providing internet connection over Ukraine.

The news of Russia launching a cyberwar against Starlink satellites comes with little surprise as it follows Musk revealing a letter written by Russia's space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin that said Musk would be "held accountable like an adult" for his role in "supplying the fascist forces in Ukraine with military communication equipment". Musk revealed that letter and shortly after posted another tweet that stated, "If I die under mysterious circumstances, it's been nice knowin ya."

Reports indicate that Russia was behind a large-scale cyberattack that was carried out in later February following the nation's invasion of Ukraine. Russian hackers targeted Viasat's network and caused tens of thousands of modems across the US, UK, Canada, Estonia, and the European Union to be switched offline. Notably, many of the affected modems had to be sent back to the factory to be replaced.

The European Southern Observatory has taken to its website and social channels to share a new image snapped by the Very Large Telescope.

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) located in Chile has pointed its very impressive instruments at the spiral galaxy called NGC 3627, which is also called Messier 66. The spiral galaxy is located approximately 31 million light years from Earth and resides within the constellation Leo. Notably, the above image was taken using the VLT's Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE), and is a result of multiple observations in different wavelengths of light.

Furthermore, the European Southern Observatory explains that instead of the typical stars that are seen in numerous spiral galaxy images, the above image of Messier 66 instead shows gas ionized by newly-born stars. Additionally, the ESO points out that hydrogen can be seen in red, oxygen in blue, and sulfur in orange. If you are interested in learning more about this image or more like it, check out the European Space Observatory website here.

Apple's return of office pilot program is being met with ultimatums created by some employees who are threatening to leave or have already done so.

Apple's return to work policy forces employees to be at the office for at least three days per week, and many of the employees who have signed the open letter under the group name Apple Together, are pushing for staffers to have more flexibility in the workplace. Notably, the open letter calls out Apple's own marketing for its product, saying that the company's products are marketed toward people who wish to "work from anywhere".

"How can we understand what problems of remote work need solving in our products, if we don't live it?", reads the letter. Furthermore, the letter explains that the group isn't requesting that every employee be forced to work from home but instead giving staffers the option. Additionally, the letter asks that employees should be given work arrangements that work best for "each one of us, be that in an office, work from home, or a hybrid approach."

Apple has taken to its Newsroom to announce that it will be discontinuing the device that sparked mainstream portable music listening - the iPod.

Original iPod, released October 23, 2001.

The first version of the iPod was released on October 23, 2001, which was only eight and a half months after iTunes was released. In the first fiscal year of the release of the first iPod, Apple sold 376,000 units, which was followed by a steady increase to 937,000 in 2003, then 4.4 million in 2004, and finally 22.4 million units in 2005. The progression of the iPod's unit sales represents the true impact the product had on the market and culture.

The former Facebook moderator Daniel Motaung is suing Meta and its African subcontractor Sama. The lawsuit alleges that Sama "subjected current and former content moderators to forced labor and human trafficking for labor."

The lawsuit claims that Meta's African subcontractor engaged in a "deceptive recruiting process" that involved displaying job listing under descriptions that didn't correctly represent the position at the company. Motaung's lawyers declared in the suit that Sama would display descriptions such as call center agents, and agent for the actual role of a Facebook Content Moderator.

Individuals who took up the position unknowingly became Facebook Content Moderators, as Motaung's lawyers claim that the company attempted to trick applicants. Notably, the employees that were recruited came from locations distant from the workplace located in Nairobi, as applicants traveled from Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia, and South Africa for their positions.

Netflix officials have sent out a note to employees that has leaked to The New York Times. The note states the streaming platform is looking to fast-track its plans on account sharing and an ad-supported tier.

According to a report from The New York Times, two anonymous sources told the publication that a note was issued to employees that stated Netflix is planning on rolling out an ad-supported tier to the streaming platform during the fourth quarter of 2022. The note also stated that it will be addressing the large problem of account sharing across households, which follows an abysmal earning report released last month that revealed Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers.

Co-chief executive Reed Hastings said around the time of the earnings report release that the company would address the issue "over the next year or two". However, the notes sent to employees seem to show Netflix has changed its tune, with the sources saying the note indicated Netflix's plan is "faster and ambitious, and it will require some trade-offs".

A flight has been grounded right before taking off following several passengers receiving disturbing images sent to them via Apple's AirDrop.

A photo from a passenger observing security checks.

The flight that was grounded on Tuesday was a plane scheduled to take off from Tel Aviv to Instanbul, and as the plane was preparing for take off several passengers received AirDrop requests. Some passengers accepted the requests and were shocked at the images they received as they were of airline disasters such as the 2009 Turkish Airlines crash in Amsterdam and the 2013 disaster of the Asiana Airlines flight in San Francisco.

Intel has detailed its Arctic Sound M data center GPU, announcing that it will be available in Q3 2022 -- but no one in their right mind would be trusting their GPU shipment dates after all their Arc GPU delays -- still, let's get this Arctic Sound M GPU show on the road.

There are two different designs of the Arctic Sound M, the first is the flagship based on a single ACM-G10 GPU and a 150W design. The second card is packing not one but two ACM-G11 GPUs and has a smaller 75W TDP, but it's aimed at high-density multi-purpose workloads. Intel's new Arctic Sound M are "super flexible data center GPUs aimed at cloud gaming, media processing and delivery, virtual desktop infrastructure, and inference.

Arctic Sound GPUs can reportedly handle 30+ 1080p streams, 40+ game streams, up to 62 Virtualized Functions, and up to 150 AI TOPs. Intel says its new Arctic Sound M GPUs will have the latest technologies like AV1 HW Encode/Decode, and XMX AI-Accelerators built-in.

AMD has released its new Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.5.1 drivers, which have built-in support for the just-released Radeon RX 6950 XT, Radeon RX 6750 XT, and Radeon RX 6650 XT graphics cards.

If you've just picked up a new RDNA 2 refresh GPU then you'll want to download the new v22.5.1 drivers obviously. AMD has also fixed issues with some Radeon GPU owners using Windows 10 noticing the "absence of the windows transparency aero effect".

There's still a list of known issues, ranging from performance drops when playing Fortnite with Multithreaded Rendering and DX11 on some Radeon GPUs, including the Radeon RX 6900 XT. GPU utilization being stuck at 100% in Radeon performance metrics after closing games on some Radeon GPUs with AMD noting the Radeon RX 570.

Intel has made its new 12th Gen Core HX mobile processors official, with a family of new CPUs for next-gen laptops that tap desktop-level silicon... awesome to see.

The new flagship chip is the Core i9-12950HX processor which rocks 16 cores and 24 threads at up to 5.0GHz, and a maximum power draw of 157W. Under that, we have the Intel Core i7-12850HX (16C/24T at up to 4.8GHz), the Core i7-12650HX (14C/20T at up to 4.7GHz), the Core i5-12600HX (12C/16T at up to 4.6GHz) and finally, the Core i5-12450HX (8C/12T at up to 4.4GHz).

The 12th Gen Intel Core HX processor family delivers real-world productivity, collaboration, content creation, gaming and entertainment in innovative mobile designs:

AMD has officially launched its new Radeon RX 6950 XT graphics card, and with it we have a slew of custom cards from AIB partners... ASRock is the latest to announce its new Radeon RX 6950 XT OC Formula 16G graphics card.

The new ASRock Radeon RX 6950 XT OC Formula graphics card has a GPU Boost CLock of up to 2495MHz, but we'll see it breach 2800MHz and I'm sure 3000MHz+ with professional overclockers and LN2 cooling. ASRock says that its newly designed Striped Ring Fan "further enhances the airflow performance with its striped fan blades and ring structure".

Underneath we have AMD's latest Navi 21 KXTX GPU, upgraded 16GB of GDDR6 memory that's clocked at 18Gbps (up from 16Gbps) while ASRock is including some built-in ARGB LED lighting that syncs with ASRock motherboards through Polychrome SYNC support.

Lenovo has just unveiled its new ultra-high-end gaming laptop, which features both AMD's best CPU and GPU silicon. Introducing the new Lenovo Legion 7 gaming laptop, check it out:

The new Lenovo Legion 7 gaming notebook goes by the model "16ARH7A" and packs a 16-inch display with a native 2560 x 1660 resolution and up to 240Hz refresh rate. Inside, you can configure the Legion 7 notebook with either AMD's new Ryzen 9 6900HX or Ryzen 7 6800H "Rembrandt" APUs.

Both of these CPUs offer 8 cores and 16 threads, and are based on AMD's latest Zen3+ architecture and made on TSMC's latest 6nm process node. Lenovo actually offers two different GPU options as well, with the Radeon RX 6850M XT which has 12GB of GDDR6 and has up to 2275MHz Game Clock, as well as the Radeon RX 6700M with 10GB of GDDR6 and up to 2300MHz Game Clock.

The US House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee will be holding an open hearing on UFOs... or the politically correct term "unidentified aerial phenomena".

US House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee chairmen Congressman Andre Carson (D-Ind) will be an open hearing at first, before turning to a "closed, classified briefing". Chairman Carson explained: "The American people expect and deserve their leaders in government and intelligence to seriously evaluate and respond to any potential national security risks -- especially those we do not fully understand".

Chairman Carson continued: "Since coming to Congress, I've been focused on the issue of unidentified aerial phenomena as both a national security threat and an interest of great importance to the American people. And I'm pleased to chair the first open Intelligence Committee hearing on these events. It will give the American people an opportunity to learn what there is to know about these incidents. And I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on this critical matter".