Mr.Shehbaz

Business Intelligence (BI) systems are among the fastest growing sub-segments of enterprise software in recent months, and with its new version 2020.4, the Tableau analytics solution makes them even more functional. “The system significantly expands the capabilities for working directly in the browser and adds new tools for geographic analysis and for creating more accurate forecasts. Tableau has been one of the fastest growing BI software until now, and with its new functionalities it will help organizations extract even more value from their data ”- shares Daniela Dimova, Marketing Specialist from the Bulgarian software company Tim VISION Bulgaria, who is a partner of the analytical software in our country. Even richer analyzes of geographical data Geographic information is becoming increasingly important for a number of businesses and organizations. Over the last few years, Tableau has been dynamically developing this area of analysis, and with its new version 2020.4, the system enriches it even more. Users can now create an unlimited number of geographic data layers from the same source that overlap in a single preview. This is done with just a few clicks via the drag-and-drop function. This way, analytics software can quickly and easily visualize many different types of data on a single map. Other innovations in geographic analysis include a direct link to Redshift geo-data tables and their visualization in Tableau, keeping maps published in Tableau Server offline so that they are accessible to all users even in situations where they are not connected to internet, as well as work with geodata in Tableau Prep - an application that serves for preliminary preparation of data for analysis. New forecasting opportunities The new version of the analysis software adds two new statistical models that users can use to create accurate forecasts - Regularized linear regression and Gaussian process regression. This improves the capabilities of BI software in the field of forecasting - an area of increasing importance in times of market fluctuations and dynamic changes. In addition, the time range of the forecasts can now be defined extremely easily with just a few mouse clicks. Tableau Prep is now available directly in the browser With the new version of the BI system, one of its most useful tools - Tableau Prep - is now available directly in the browser. This saves users extra time because they no longer need to process the data in the desktop version of the solution before uploading it to Tableau Online or Server, and from there use it for real analysis. Everything happens in one place even faster and intuitively. Easier administration The innovation will save a lot of time and effort for the IT teams that administer the work with information and analytical solutions. From now on, they will be able to manage everything related to the installation, licensing and updating of versions of Tableau Prep centrally from one place. This will put an end to the work with different versions in one organization and the need to update the solution individually for each user. In addition to saving time, the new version will provide administrators with greater transparency and new opportunities in the overall management and verification of data sources in the company.

Chinese specialist Gunnir, for reasons that are difficult to parse, has decided to deploy a full line of Intel DG1 desktop graphics cards. Intel's DG1 was originally developed as an integrated graphics solution and distributed as a way for developers to start tinkering and programming for Intel's new graphics architecture. It was also available as the Intel DG1 SDV (software development vehicle), and eventually released in a limited fashion for pre-built desktop PCs. But where there's a will, there's a way. Customers can now install one of three Intel DG1 cards in their desktop PCs. The product is not without its caveats, however, and seems like it will mostly be interesting to collectors. (Hat tip to VideoCardz for surfacing the story.) Distributed as two SKUs (the DG1 Iris Xe and Iris Xe Max), Gunnir elected to package these graphics solutions in a PCIe form-factor, carving three products from Intel's test silicon. The lower-performance Iris Xe is available in both low-profile and standard profile solutions, packing a total of 80 EUs (Execution Units) for a total of 640 graphics cores, operating at 1.2 GHz base and 1.5 GHz boost clocks. These are basically the same as the DG1 we've previously tested. The more interesting card uses Iris Xe Max, marketed as the Gunnir Iris Xe MAX Index V2. It follows the same general design as the Index V2 but features the full core configuration, packing a total of 96 EUs and 768 cores at an operating frequency of 1.2 GHz base and increased 1.65 GHz boost clocks. It also includes some blue accents that are missing from the 80 EU variant. All SKUs offer the same display outputs (1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort, and 1x DVI-D) and single-fan active cooling. Since DG1 was intended more as an integrated graphics solution meant to be distributed in mobile form-factors, performance of these Intel graphics cards isn't the best. When we benchmarked Intel's DG1, we described it as the "little engine that couldn't" due to its low performance capabilities. The benchmarks were enough to put in on-par (or slightly behind) the performance of AMD's RX 550 4 GB... from 2017. Part of the reason for this performance difference lies in the graphics memory subsystem. The DG1 operates with a 4GB LPDDR4x memory pool, owing to its integrated graphics roots. Another element of note relates to power consumption: while AMD's RX 550 is rated for a 50W TDP, the Intel DG1 products launched by Gunnir are all rated for 21W PL1 (Power Limit 1) or 41W PL2. And like AMD's latest RX 6500 XT graphics card, the DG1 cards are only capable of interfacing at PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds. Beyond these performance and efficiency considerations, actual system compatibility of Intel's DG1 (and Gunnir's solution) is the elephant in the room that will put off most users who might want an Intel discrete graphics card in their system, at least until the actual high-performance Intel Arc Alchemist family of GPUs is launched in the coming months. The DG1 can only be made to operate when paired with 9th Gen (Coffee Lake-S) and 10th Gen (Comet Lake-S) Intel Core desktop processors, as well as Intel B460, H410, B365, and H310C chipset-based motherboards. And even if you do possess a system that ticks all of those boxes, these motherboards require a special BIOS that supports Intel Iris Xe. That means you can't use the Gunnir DG1 cards with any AMD-based system, or with any Intel system using a Z-series chipset, or the more recent Rocket Lake and Alder Lake CPUs — not that you'd want to use a DG1 card with a higher end setup. If none of these caveats put a dent in your determination to have an Intel-powered discrete card feeding your monitor's pixels, Gunnir is selling its DG1-based products at relatively adequate pricing according to their performance profile. The low-profile Gunnir DG1 with Iris Xe is available for $90, the standard profile Iris Xe DG1 ups the price tag to $101, and the highest-performing Gunnir Iris Xe MAX Index V2 is priced at $110. Given Intel will likely have DG2 (Arc Alchemist) discrete products available in the next few months with much better compatibility and performance, we'd suggest waiting for those rather than investing in these particular solutions.

Microsoft is working on an update for Outlook that will bring email-based communication closer in line with interactions over instant messaging and social media apps. As per an entry in the company’s product roadmap, Outlook users will soon be given a range of options for reacting to an email, beyond simply replying with a message of their own. “Outlook on the web is expanding the existing ability to like email messages with a thumbs up icon. In addition to likes, users will be able to add sentiment for love, laughter, celebration, thanks or show sadness,” explained Microsoft. The feature is currently under development, but is expected to land at some point in March, initially for the Outlook web app only. Microsoft Outlook update The informalization of email communication is reasonable in some respects, because email is used in personal and professional contexts alike, and business users can always just ignore the feature. However, with the rise of instant messaging and social media, email has become much more of a business-first medium, especially for younger generations now entering the workplace. With remote working already driving a wedge between co-workers, making communication more challenging and misunderstandings more likely, yet another way to distil meaning into a simplified format is surely the last thing we need. The problem with the inability to communicate with someone face-to-face is that nuances related to tone, body language and facial expression are lost. Encouraging email users to use icons as a proxy for words will only add fuel to this fire. It’s not that social media-style interactions have no place in business; they have become a defining feature of platforms such as Slack. But one of the main reasons collaboration tools haven’t killed off email, as some predicted they would, is that the inbox is the last bastion of purely functional and transactional communication. TechRadar Pro put these thoughts to Microsoft over email, but the company has not yet returned a response. Some users will feel more strongly about the new Outlook reactions feature than others; perhaps it will be entirely harmless. However, the feature might also serve as a timely reminder of the unique selling point of email: it’s boring.

As city centres start to kick out fossil-fuel burning vehicles to reduce air pollution, electric bikes increasingly look like the best commuter option for those of us who don’t want to slip into some Lycra. Plus, would you look at this bike! The DAB Concept-E is the electric equivalent of a 125cc motorbike, which you can ride after a few hours of training and a thorough read of the Highway Code. The bike is reported to have a range of about 112km (70 miles) and it tops out at 104km/h (65mph). Sadly, it’s just a concept right now, with no price, but this is one of a new wave of very cool looking e-bikes on the way. £TBC, Click for buy

CD Project Red this week released Patch 1.5 for Cyberpunk 2077, which enables advanced visual effects on the latest game consoles — and also includes a few enhancements for PCs. In a rather unprecedented move, the game developer also offers owners of the latest consoles the opportunity to try its game for free before buying, for five hours. The key improvements of Cyberpunk 2077 with patch version 1.5 are enhanced visuals. On PCs, you can now get ray traced local shadows (i.e., from lights as opposed to the sun), along with improved antialiasing. On the latest-generation game consoles (PS5, XBX), the developer promises a stable framerate of 60 fps at 4K, with framerate-dependent resolution scaling, but that's without ray tracing. If you want the RT effects and other eye candy, you can get a stable 30 fps. Other improvements include new weapons, a rebalanced economy, improved crowd reactions, new character customization options, new interactions for relations, new NPC behaviors, an updated map, UI improvements, some free content, various gameplay changes, and multiple fixes. All of these upgrades are also available in the PC version. When CD Project Red released its highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 game in late 2020, it was touted as a next-generation title for next-generation platforms. While it looked very good on the latest PC hardware (and looked much better with various third-party mods installed), it did not exactly take advantage of the latest PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles. The company promised to issue a patch that would bring the game's image quality up to par with the capabilities of the latest consoles, and with the release of the patch 1.5 it has finally fulfilled its promise. The interesting part about the new patch is its size. The PC patch is 47.12 GB, which is about 75% of the game's previous install size. The Xbox Series X patch meanwhile is 62.9 GB, significantly more than the size of the original game.. Our recent graphics card reviews, like the RTX 3050 and RX 6500 XT, have used Cyberpunk 2077 as one of the ray tracing benchmarks. In our limited testing, it looks like performance has dropped slightly (~10%) when compared to the previous 1.31 version of the game. That's to be expected, with the addition of local ray traced shadows. The update also adds a built-in benchmark for PCs, which uses a different test sequence and appears to perform within a few percent of our manual benchmark, so the above chart should be relatively close to what you can experience with the 1.5 patch.

ZTE unveiled a new Blade V40 series with four new models, all four will be available on the global market in April. We don’t have pricing info yet, but these will be affordable (as all Blade phones are) and there is a 5G model if you want to try something new. That said, the ZTE Blade V40 Pro is the top model in its family. It features a 6.67” AMOLED display (1,080 x 2,400 px) with full coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut. The phone is powered by a Unisoc T618 chipset (12 nm, 2x Cortex-A75 @ 2.0 GHz, Mali G52 MP2) with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB storage, running Android 11 with MyOS 11 on top. This one has a 64 MP camera on its back. The large 5,100 mAh battery boasts fast 65W charging, the fastest on a Blade phone yet. The ZTE Blade V40 also has a 6.67” display with 1,080 x 2,400 px resolution (20:9). The Unisoc T618 chipset on this one is paired with 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB storage and runs MyOS 11 (Android 11). The main camera on the back has a 48 MP sensor and it is joined by a macro camera and a depth sensor. On the front is an 8 MP selfie camera. The phone's 5,000 mAh battery isn't quite as fast as the Pro, but still pretty quick to charge at 22.5W. The ZTE Blade V40 5G features a Dimensity 700 (7 nm, 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.2 GHz, Mali G57 MC2) and a 360° antenna for stable connectivity. The chip’s modem offers up to 2.77 Gbps downlink speeds. This one also has a 6.67” display (1,080 x 2,400 px). The phone runs MyOS 11 (Android 11) with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB storage. There is a 48 MP camera on the back and a large 6,000 mAh battery inside (though it will be 5,130 mAh in some regions) with 22.5W fast charging. Finally, there is the ZTE Blade V40 Vita surprises with a large 6.75” display with 90 Hz refresh rate, though it only has 720 x 1,600 px resolution (20:9). Like its siblings, it runs MyOS 11. A 48 MP main camera is also on board. The Vita has a large battery, just like the 5G model – 6,000 mAh (5,130 mAh in some regions), complete with 22.5W fast charging. This model is powered by another Unisoc chipset (octa-core CPU). RAM capacity is only 3 GB, but the 128 GB storage is relatively fast (UFS 2.2), plus there is a triple card slot (two SIMs and a microSD). We will try to get more info out of ZTE about the Blade V40 quartet and will report back with what we learn.

Revealed at CES 2022, the Withings Body Scan is what you would get if you crossed a scale with a doctor that never leaves you alone. On top of the obvious function of informing you of your weight, the Withings Body Scan will also tell you the fat mass of your whole body (including separated percentages for arms, legs, torso etc) and inform you of your vascular age. On top of that, it is also able to give you a neuropathy score. All of this is done through a bar that comes up out of the scale. This bar sends low-voltage electrical currents through the body via electrodes and measures the resistance of tissue to the current. If you don’t mind your scale being somewhat intrusive to the point of sending electrical currents through your body, there won’t be many more intelligent than this one.

Trend Micro has made the decision to remove the Privacy Browser from its Dr Safety Android security suite after a reoccurring flaw was discovered in its software. As reported by The Register, the vulnerability, which could be abused to trick users into believing that malicious web pages were legitimate, was first discovered by security consultant Dhiraj Mishra who responsibly reported it to the company back in April. If exploited by an attacker, the bug could be used to alter the address bar on pages viewed in Trend Micro's Privacy Browser. For example, a phishing page designed to steal users' banking credentials could rewrite the URL bar to show the bank's real domain name as opposed to the URL used by the attackers.

The intensifying competition among the leading Silicon Valley-based companies in the recent years lead to poaching well-known specialists as well as high-profile hires. But poaching happens not only in the U.S. Biren Technology, a developer of AI GPUs from China, has hired Yang Chaoyuan, who previously led Nvidia's R&D operations in Shanghai, China. Biren was established in 2019 in a bid to develop a GPU tailored specifically for AI workloads, such as training and inference. Designing a general-purpose GPU to address artificial intelligence and other emerging workloads is easier than developing an actual graphics processor for gamers since it doesn't require a very efficient memory subsystem or complex drivers, so there are multiple startups working on various AI accelerators these days. Biren reportedly planned to tape out its first chip using a 7nm process technology last year, though we do not know whether it actually taped out the processor. In order to significantly boost its future research and developing capabilities, Biren this week hired Yang Chaoyuan, the former general manager of Nvidia Shanghai, who has vast experience in GPU development. Yang Chaoyuan graduated from the University of California and brings Biren over 35 years of experience at companies like Nvidia and TSMC. Among his achievements is establishing Nvidia's first R&D center outside of the USA as well as his work in TSMC's R&D arm. At Biren, Yang Chaoyuan will serve as vice president as well as special assistant to the chairman, which looks like an important position. While he's not going to lead R&D at Biren, as an assistant to the chairman he might have an influence on strategic development of the company. Yang Chaoyuan is an important hire for Biren, but Biren's major challenge today might not be the absence of high-profile managers of engineers, but rather sufficient funding. Modern chips are notoriously expensive to design and these costs are only going to increase in the coming years. Biren Technology received $170 million in Series A funding in 2020, which is a lot of money. However, the development and implementation of a moderately complex FinFET-based 7nm chip costs around $300 million. Whether Biren can manage to create a competitive product remains the question.

Just a few days ago Oppo unveiled the Find X5 flagship duo, which supports the new 80W SuperVOOC. Today at its MWC presentation the company announced what comes next – an upgraded system that will nearly double the power. In a laboratory test, the upcoming 150W SuperVOOC system charged a prototype phone with a 4,500 mAh battery from 1% to 50% in just 5 minutes and got all the way to 100% in a total of 15 minutes (this was with the device powered on, but inactive and in airplane mode). For comparison, the older 65W charger needs around 40 minutes to get to 100 The new system introduces a 150W SuperVOOC charger. Thanks to its GaN technology, the charger measures 58 x 57 x 30 mm and weighs 172g. This isn’t much larger than Oppo’s old 65W SuperVOOC adapter. This also means that the adapter has a power density of 1.51W/cm³, much higher than a typical charge While VOOC tech is proprietary (with 1,786 patents granted and 1,604 still pending), the new charger supports the standard USB Power Delivery and PPS protocols that are used by phones, laptops and other gadget Anyway, the charger outputs 7.5A at 20V. Inside the phone are two battery cells, each with its own charge pump, which converts the incoming electricity to 5V/15A and feeds that into the batter Oppo addressed concerns about battery life in two ways. The first is the Battery Health Engine, which employs a custom chip to manage the battery. In lab testing a battery retained 80% of its capacity after 1,600 complete charge cycles (double the industry average of 800 cycles This is in part thanks to the Smart Battery Health algorithm, which constantly monitors the negative electrode to minimize the occurrence of dead lithium – lithium ions that become trapped and are unable to carry charge (losing lithium that way is what reduces the battery’s capacity). The Oppo Find X5 series already features the Battery Health Engin The Battery Healing technology tackles another issue. The battery design that Oppo uses includes a Solid Electrolyte Interface (SEI), a durable film on the battery’s electrodes that protects them from degradation. Battery Healing here refers to a special formula for the electrolyte that continuously repairs the SEI layer while the battery is charging and discharging. This keeps the electrodes in good condition, which improves the battery’s performance and extends its lifespa The first phone to make use of the 150W charging system will actually be a OnePlus device, coming in the April-June quarter. The company revealed that it is working on improving SuperVOOC to support 200W and above charge speeds. By the way, Realme also announced 150W charging tech earlier todn.e.).y.s.r.%.earlier today.

https://youtu.be/wuyCdAz9b4w

Samsung's MWC announcement bought us new laptops as expected. Samsung unveiled four new portable PCs - all with 1080p AMOLED displays, Intel 12th gen processors, S Pen support, and with size and weight well under control. The Galaxy Book2 Pro and Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 come in two sizes each - 13.3-inch and 15.6-inch, with the main difference being that the 360, like its predecessor, has a hinge that lets it fold all the way back into tablet mode. Samsung went with 16:9 traditional 13.3-inch and 15.6-inch panels. Let's take a look at the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360. The 13.3-inch model weighs just 1.04kg, while the 15.6-inch is the heaviest in the quad lineup at 1.41kg, which is still quite light, especially for a 15-incher. The two AMOLED displays have 1920x1080px resolution and Samsung says they're brighter than before at 400 nits in regular viewing. HDR content goes up to 500 nits. There's S Pen support, though this pen lacks Bluetooth. Samsung has reduced the latency over previous Galaxy Book Pros for a better drawing and writing experience. Samsung Notes has gotten improved handwriting recognition, hyperlink support, and can instantly sync notes from the panel The Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 comes with a choice of 12th gen Intel Core i7 or i5 processors with Intel Iris X graphics. THere's LPDDR5 RAM that starts from 8GB and goes through 16GB all the way to 32GB. The 13.3-inch Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 gets a 63Wh battery, while the 15.6-inch model steps it up to 68Wh. Both models have 1 Thunderbolt 4 and 2 USB-C ports, a headphone and mic combo jack, and a microSD port. Charging goes up to 65W through the USB-C port. Samsung promises up to 21 hours of battery life from the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360. Ports are also a bit different. The 13.3-inch Galaxy Book2 Pro has 1 Thunderbolt 4, 1 USB-C, 1 full sized USB 3.2 port, 3.5mm combo jack, and a microSD slot. The 15.6-inch model brings a full-sized HDMI, as well as a SIM slot for the optional 5G connectivity. The Galaxy Book2 Pro comes in just two colors - Silver and Graphite. It will be available in April starting at $1,050 with i7 CPU, 8GB RAM and 256GB storage.

Let’s face it, we give our ears a tough time. Loud concerts (remember those?), cotton buds, illnesses and even our own DNA works against our hearing health. It’s thought that 6.7 million people in the UK could benefit from a hearing aid, but only two million are wearing one. Signia hopes to change that. With Bluetooth connectivity, an accompanying mobile app, a rechargeable battery and a sleek earbud-style design, the Signia Active hearing aids bring assistive technology on-trend. Designed for those with mild to moderate hearing loss, the aids pack in intelligent software that boosts voices over background noise and come with a virtual assistant to boot. Price -- £999

Bug hunter Alex Birsan last year managed to compromise the software supply chain of 35 companies by exploiting packaging mechanisms used by JavaScript, Python, and Ruby developers. In a write up posted on Tuesday, Birsan recounts how he managed to distribute proof-of-concept malicious code through the npm Registry, PyPI (Python Package Index), and RubyGems, which are used by developers to install software libraries that add functionality to their applications. Integrating third-party software libraries from public registries requires a high degree of trust in those creating and uploading software packages, trust has frequently been abused through techniques like typosquatting or compromising a library maintainer's account. These packaging systems are public in that any developer can add specific package names to their code and load those libraries from a remote repository into the environment where the app that contains the modules will run. But they also allow for private dependencies – code libraries used internally at an organization that aren't available to the general public. Birsan set out to see whether he could identify the names of private packages used inside companies and create malicious packages using those library names to place in the public package registries – the indexes that keep track of available software modules. The names of private packages turned out to be rather easy to find, particularly in the Node.js/JavaScript ecosystem because private package.json files show up rather often in public software repositories. So Biran crafted identically named libraries that he designed to sneak system configuration data through corporate firewalls. His exfiltration scheme relied on hex-encoding the info and making it a part of a DNS query to a custom DNS server that he controlled. Polluting the coding stream The challenge then became getting applications that require private libraries to look for those file names in a polluted public source. As it turns out, it's common for corporate software developers to rely on a hybrid configuration for their applications, one that references private internal packages but also supports fetching dependencies from a public registry, in order to ensure packages are up-to-date. "Internal developers publish their packages to this private feed, and consumers check both private and public feeds for the best available versions of the required packages," Microsoft explains in a paper published in conjunction with Birsan's disclosure. "This configuration presents a supply chain risk: the substitution attack." The substitution attack – having apps look for dependencies and fetch identically named malicious versions from a poorly secured public source instead of a company-controlled source – ended up working rather well for Birsan. "From one-off mistakes made by developers on their own machines, to misconfigured internal or cloud-based build servers, to systemically vulnerable development pipelines, one thing was clear: squatting valid internal package names was a nearly sure-fire method to get into the networks of some of the biggest tech companies out there, gaining remote code execution, and possibly allowing attackers to add backdoors during builds," he explained. The companies that Birsan managed to attack with this technique include Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, PayPal,Shopify, Tesla, Uber, and Yelp. And for his efforts, he has been awarded at least $130,000 from bug bounty programs involving these firmset. Birsan's success in carrying out such attacks should set off alarm bells. Software supply chain attacks present a higher degree of risk than many threat scenarios because they have the potential to affect so many downstream victims. Recall that the compromise of the SolarWinds build system, among the most significant software security incidents in recent memory, was a supply chain attack. Birsan's malicious proof-of-concept files were detected by security biz Sonatype's automated detection systems, but the firm allowed the experiment to go forward after conferring with him and discussing the disclosure timeline. Sonatype, whose CTO raised concerns about lack of proper namespace management in open source ecosystems years ago, yesterday released a script to help companies check whether their internal package names can be found in public package registries. According to the company, there's been a 430 per cent increase in upstream software supply chain attacks. ®

February hasn't exactly been a bed of roses for Nvidia, as the company was forced to abandon its $40 billion bid to acquire Arm (which resulted in a $1.25 billion breakup fee). Today, we've learned that Nvidia is a potential victim of a ruthless cyber attack. According to reporting by The Telegraph, Nvidia's email systems and developer tools have been inaccessible for the past two days. At this time, it is unclear whether the attack itself forced these internal systems offline or if Nvidia proactively terminated access to quell the threat. According to its sources within the company, Nvidia's internal systems were "completely compromised." Unfortunately, there are no additional concrete details on the extent of the cyber attack or whether Nvidia was the victim of ransomware. We also don't know if confidential information stored on Nvidia's servers was accessed during the reported intrusion. For its part, an Nvidia spokesperson issued a brief statement confirming the report. "We are investigating an incident. We don't have any additional information to share at this time." The timing of the Nvidia cyber attack has raised a few eyebrows considering the military action carried about by Russia in Ukraine. There are suspicions that Russian entities could be targeting U.S. and Western companies for sanctions imposed by their respective countries. In a somewhat interesting turn of events, hacking group Anonymous has apparently declared [cyber] war against the Russian government. Nvidia is a massive American chip company that currently has a market cap of nearly $600 billion compared to $200 billion and $192 billion for rivals AMD and Intel, respectively. Last week, the company announced its fiscal Q4 2022 earnings and reported record revenue of $7.64 billion (a 53 percent increase). In addition, its full-year revenue came in at $26 billion, a 61 percent increase. The company is well-diversified, with products covering PC gaming, data center, artificial intelligence, supercomputing and general consumer markets (i.e., Shield TV). Nvidia also has contracts with the U.S. Military, aerospace, and automotive industries, broadening its reach within the United States and across the globe.

Our sources had earlier reported that Intel's 11th Generation Rocket Lake-S Desktop CPUs will be compatible on the Z490 motherboard platform but MSI has further confirmed that even lower-tier 400-series motherboards will support Intel's next-generation processors. Intel 11th Gen Rocket Lake Desktop CPUs To Be Supported By Entry-Level 400-Series Boards Too The support is mentioned within documents from MSI which have been spotted by Momomo_US (via Videocardz). According to those, MSI plans to bring Rocket Lake CPU support all the way down to its H410 tier of motherboards. There's no doubt that other board manufacturers will also follow MSI and offer similar support on their own entry-level products. The document further lists down that Rocket Lake-S CPUs with 65W TDPs to be supported by entry-level motherboards. This makes sense since the entry-level boards won't be able to provide any overclocking capabilities that one gets on higher-end motherboards along with unlocked CPUs. It would also be a wise decision to support Rocket Lake on the entire 400-series platform and not just the higher-end ones since they all feature the LGA 1200 socket. At the same time, Intel will be releasing its 500-series chipset based motherboards with the LGA 1200 socket. The new boards are expected to hit retail shelves alongside the Rocket Lake lineup. A restriction of any sorts for users upgrading to Rocket Lake CPUs on their existing 400-series motherboards would be a major blow for the 400-series platform itself since that would mean it only offered longevity for a single CPU generation despite featuring the same socket. I believe that Intel and their partners don't want to go that route considering the blue team is going to be facing a heated battle with AMD's Ryzen 4000 'Vermeer' Desktop CPUs which will be based on the Zen 3 core architecture and supported by AM4 motherboards all the way back to the 400-series lineup (X470/B450). Intel Rocket Lake CPU Power & Current Ratings Detailed, Not All 400-Series Boards May Be Able To Support 11th Gen Chips While MSI documents say that H410 series motherboards will be able to support Rocket Lake-S CPUs, Techbang has posted what seems to be the first details of Rocket Lake-S power & current delivery design. According to the report, Rocket Lake-S will ship with the same VCC (Core) current rated at 245 Amps (Max) but will increase the current rating in every other department. It is said that motherboards have to comply with the 'Advanced Deployment' design to properly support Rocket Lake-S desktop CPUs. Other than VCC (Core), the VCCGT (Graphics) current is increased from 35A to 55A, the VCCSA (System Agent) is increased from 11.1A to 22.1A, VCCIO (I/O) is increased from 6.4A & split into three sub-tiers. It's 8.3A for the primary PCIe I/O, 3.4A for DDR, and 6.2A for the secondary PCIe controller which runs the single Gen 4 NVMe slot. The VDDQ (Memory I/O buffer or the DRAM voltage) has increased from 3.7A to 4.3Q while VCCPLL_OC is set to 0.25A from 1.17A on 10th Generation Comet Lake-S Desktop CPUs. Lastly, the power gate current ratings have also been increased to 2.3A and 0.9A respectively. You can see the power supply configuration for Intel's Rocket Lake CPUs in the following diagram more clearly.

Cybersickness, or motion sickness during the use of virtual reality, can be a major roadblock to the development and adoption of augmented and virtual reality technology. Now researchers at UTSA have built GingerVR, the first open-source Unity software tool kit that allows developers to use proven techniques and innovative solutions against cybersickness in future extended reality environments. "GingerVR can be applied to any Unity application, be it a game, enterprise application or job training," said John Quarles, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science who along with Ph.D. student Samuel Ang developed the tool kit. XR is a catchall phrase for the next-level digital content that tech companies like Microsoft, Samsung, Apple, Google and Facebook deploy in smart phones and, in some cases, directly onto users' faces. Within the gaming industry, extended reality is seen as the third pillar of entertainment. Although Unity leads in the AR and VR game development sector, it has shifted toward business-to-business applications. Companies such as Unity plan to move beyond gaming to develop applications for architecture, engineering and construction use. A survey by the firm Forrester Consulting has shown that one in two of companies in these industries plan to incorporate extended reality within the next two years. It's an accelerated transition from the currently reported 19% adoption rate among firms. This means that the future workforce will have to learn quickly how to navigate these XR environments, where the virtual seamlessly blends with the real and vice versa. "Cybersickness is a threat to the overall user acceptance of VR, which has a potentially huge impact on the VR industry. The negative symptoms experienced by a user can decrease human performance, limit learning and hinder decision making," said Quarles. "It has been a problem in VR since the creation of the technology and is still not totally understood as to why it occurs and in whom." The percentage of individuals who suffer from cybersickeness side effects is hard to pinpoint. According to Quarles, the research literature indicates that more than half of users experience symptoms but with a wide range of severity. "Some users can habituate over time, while others could just put on a headset and have to pull it off. They just can't handle it," said Quarles. "We just don't know why there are those individual differences. Our goal is to make the technology available to the widest possible audience," he added. Ginger VR, was named after the plant which is known to be an antidote for nausea—one of the classic symptoms of cybersickness. Other negative effects of these new environments include disorientation or fatigue. Recently the AR/VR industry led by Unity, Google, Microsoft and other major players in the space created a consortium known as OpenXR. The foundation focuses on making AR/VR software to agree on a general framework and integrate any headset without having to write new code across platforms. Yet, according to Quarles, OpenXR doesn't necessarily address the cybersickness gap, which GingerVR does meet. The software tool kit implements eight cybersickness reduction techniques in Unity. These solutions are packaged in an open-source repository along with tutorials for ease of integration. As a result, these techniques are now simple to add and don't depend on other software packages outside of what already comes with a default Unity project. Researchers from around the world are often creating new reduction techniques, which can easily be integrated into GingerVR. Quarles along with Ang is currently working on releasing an integrated automated, real-time cybersickness detection, prediction and reduction framework on the GingerVR toolkit. "We hope that this package will serve as a shortcut to researchers looking to utilize these techniques and develop a better understanding of why they are effective," said Quarles. "In the future we hope to update this Unity package with additional cybersickness reduction techniques as they appear in the literature and improve existing assets based on user feedback." Professor Quarles' previous work on cybersickness has been supported by Intel. The Ginger VR software tool kit was funded by the National Science Foundation and presented at the 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3-D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops.

Revealed at CES 2022, the Withings Body Scan is what you would get if you crossed a scale with a doctor that never leaves you alone. On top of the obvious function of informing you of your weight, the Withings Body Scan will also tell you the fat mass of your whole body (including separated percentages for arms, legs, torso etc) and inform you of your vascular age. On top of that, it is also able to give you a neuropathy score. All of this is done through a bar that comes up out of the scale. This bar sends low-voltage electrical currents through the body via electrodes and measures the resistance of tissue to the current. If you don’t mind your scale being somewhat intrusive to the point of sending electrical currents through your body, there won’t be many more intelligent than this one.

A new patent has been published by the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) that was filed by Apple back In August 2020. The patent is for an Apple keyboard device that is essentially a portable Mac computer. The patent explains this is a “computer in an input device”, that’s essentially a Mac mini if it was crammed into a Magic Keyboard housing. “A strong demand for portable computing devices which also deliver high performance has driven miniaturization and redu koction in size of the once bulky computing components used to power and drive the devices,” reads the patent. The keyboard housing would contain all the components like “processors, batteries, memory, integrated circuits” so that the user would only need to hook it up to a monitor. In addition to mentions using heat-conductive materials to dissipate heat generated by such a device, the patent says that a portable computer in a keyboard could even be folded to make it even more compact. There may even be a Trackpad built-into the keyboard so that the user doesn’t even need to bring a pointing device. The patent doesn’t really show one kind of device, but rather many possible hardware configurations and methods for a portable keyboard/computer to make sense. This patent doesn’t confirm that Apple will ever make such a product, but it’s fun to imagine what if.

Posted February 1, 2021Sopra Steria has won a £42m contract from Highways England to upgrade the National Traffic Information Service to help keep travellers on the move throughout the country's 4,300 miles (6,920km) of strategic road networkd Originally mooted at £50m in the prior information notice from last March, the price of the total contract climbed to a potential £62m in May when the contract notice said the duration of the work could be extended from five to seven years. Now at the award phase, the transport agency has shaved £8.2m off the expected price of £50m, although the duration still stands at five years, plus options to extend by two years. The Register has asked Highways England to explain the change in the contract price. Sat-nav firms are big users of traffic data but others include third-party road data aggregators, traffic information service providers, road industry representatives, other government and local authority agencies, freight sector representatives, and operators. Dating back to 2011, the service is intended to offer a continuous data feed to help drivers plan their journeys and avoid delays. The data also helps agency teams handle planned and unplanned "traffic events" on the strategic road network. Over time data is used to help measure network performance and plan for future changes. In addition, the new system will collect "traffic event information from multiple data sources including third party in-vehicle data and over 10,000 roadside sensors," according to the contract notice. The idea is to publish traffic information and travel advice to Highways England's roadside LED signs, the service's website and mobile phone apps and data feed APIs, it said. After a two-year transition period, the new service is expected to offer "improved availability and reliability of traffic data and information for Highways England's customers and internal business functions." It is also expected to provide "an adaptable and scalable IT system that will enable Highways England to meet its evolving traffic information needs and make best use of automation to streamline the need for manual intervention." Meanwhile, Sopra Steria should remove "under-used traffic data sources, including automatic number-plate recognition" and "under-used output channels such as event emails," the contract notice said. The prior information notice specifies a "flexible and scalable cloud-based IT system," although the contract award makes no mention of the fluffy hyperscale computing infrastructure. Earlier this year, a Highway England spokeswoman told The Register the new system would continue to support for DATEX II, the European Union standard for traffic data, which feeds the agencies data into Google Maps.

AMD has released new Radeon drivers, Adrenalin 2020 Edition 21.1.1, which promise to deliver a significant performance boost in IO Interactive's latest videogame, Hitman 3. By our reckoning that's enough of an improvement for the AMD RX 6800 XT to take the lead over rival Nvidia's RTX 3080, where it had been lagging behind on older driver versions. A hop to our test bench and the intensive Dartmoor benchmark scene and the latest drivers have beefed up our RX 6800 XT's performance by 18 percent at 4K. From 93fps to 110fps—no small improvement, then. At 1440p, that drops to a more modest but very welcome six percent boost. And down at 1080p we're getting anything from a positive percent or two to a few frames lower. so we suspect performance may not change all that much at lower resolutions for some. That boost is enough to see the RX 6800 XT lead the RTX 3080 by 9 percent at 4K, which is a tentative win for AMD in the two companies' constant back and forth for gaming domination. But there is a possible catch: Nvidia is yet to release its own graphics driver, which could see Nvidia gain a little once it's 'Game Ready'. It's a little odd we've not seen an Nvidia Game Ready driver for the game's launch, it must be said. We've reached out to Nvidia to find out whether there are plans to release a bespoke driver for Hitman 3 in the pipes and will update if we hear anything back. Certainly wouldn't be all that surprising to find Nvidia drops a driver in the near future. And if you weren't already looking to update on good PC housekeeping alone, AMD's new 21.1.1 drivers also offer up official support for Quake II RTX and a heap of bug fixes. Quake II RTX was functional on RX 6000-series GPUs with the necessary Ray Accelerators beforehand, but now it's got the official green light from AMD. Quote

OLED display tech has been around for a while now, but it’s generally been expensive to manufacture and buy. That said, I’m a big fan of the tech because OLED panels provide life-like picture quality thanks to the way they work. In a traditional LED display, a light is shone through coloured crystals to create a picture. This backlight as a source of illuminations means that dark areas can never truly be black in and LED display. In an OLED display, the coloured crystals themselves light up as electricity passes through them which removes the need for a backlight, meaning the display can recreate inky blacks and generate an accurate picture full of contrast. LG’s new 49-inch is one of the most affordable OLEDs we’ve seen, and it doesn’t scrimp on features or specs either. From £1,499, buy now from Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/OLED48CX5LC-48-Ultra-OLED-Smart/dp/B086DPVQ9D?tag=bbcsciencefoc-21&ascsubtag=sciencefocus-44261