Virtual Worlds

Energy-efficient, it should help speed up blockchain tasks like bitcoin mining or NFT typing.

Intel does not want to miss out on the potential computing revolution opened up by blockchain. The company unveiled a chip on February 11, described as a “blockchain gas pedal.” The first ones will be delivered during 2022.

The tantalizing energy performance of this new chip

Jack Dorsey’s company, which specializes in blockchain-related technologies, as its name suggests, Block, will be one of the first to get the new chip from Intel.

If the Twitter co-founder jumped at the chance it’s because the promise of this chip, “blockchain gas pedal” promises to remedy one of the most worrying issues of bitcoin mining: its environmental impact.

Raja Koduri, Intel’s senior vice president, expects “our chip innovations to deliver a blockchain gas pedal with more than 1,000 times the performance per watt of consumer GPUs for SHA-256-based mining.”

The SHA-256 hashing algorithm is the one used to generate bitcoin and a number of other cryptocurrencies. Intel’s promise is therefore tantalizing to industry professionals, who are facing the gradual introduction of regulations to oversee mining and the like.

The expected performance of Intel’s chip might be able to reassure lawmakers around the world. Since China banned cryptocurrency mining and trading, officially for environmental reasons, but not only, lawmakers in the United States and the European Union are also considering restrictions.

More information to come, Intel promises

Intel promises to give more information about its new chip at the International Solid State Circuits Conference. It will begin on February 20. The presentation of the American giant will probably be highly anticipated by the participants.

Through the voice of Raja Koduri, Intel demonstrates that it intends to sustainably strengthen its presence in the blockchain sector. The company announced the creation of a segment to support research in the field and others, named Custom Compute Group, within its business unit Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics.

Through the metaverse, Disney plans to connect the virtual and the real, to create a new space in which its users can engage in a different way.

On February 15, Disney CEO Bob Chapek appointed a new director to lead metaverse development at the company. Mike White becomes a senior VP at Disney and heads the department in charge of the metaverse.

Mike White takes over as head of metavers at Disney

Previously, Mike White was in charge of customer experience at Disney. Prior to joining the company in 2011, White worked at large technology companies, including Yahoo. Following in Meta’s footsteps, Disney intends to take the lead on the subject of metavers and influence the development of this new web standard. Bob Chapek did not provide many details on how Disney plans to make money with its metaverse, but said that White’s task will be to “bring the virtual and real worlds together”.

The Disney CEO points out that “for nearly 100 years, our company has defined and redefined entertainment by leveraging technology to bring stories to life in deeper and more impactful ways.” He says the metaverse is the next great frontier in storytelling and the perfect place for Disney to execute its strategy of excellence and innovation.

It’s not hard to imagine how Disney could explore the possibilities of the metaverse. For example, one can imagine a virtual Disneyland, much more advanced than the existing real-world versions, with advanced experiences in each of Disney’s universes.

15 years before seeing a final version of the metaverse?

In his statement, Chapek also clarified that “we have an opportunity today to connect these two worlds and create a completely new paradigm for our users to engage in a different way.” This prospect of a virtual world at Disney, however, seems remote.

Indeed, despite the investment and hype surrounding the metaverse, the technology is not ready. Meta’s leaders estimate that it will take fifteen years for their vision to become a reality.

That’s not stopping many companies from testing new experiments. Warner, for example, is going to create a music theme park in the Sandbox metaverse. The music label has associated a nice bunch of stars to its project.

Among others, Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa and Green Day are expected to perform in Warner’s music theme park. Carrefour has also bought a virtual land in the Sandbox metaverse. There is talk of a possible opening of a virtual supermarket and the sale of certified virtual products in the form of NFT. In short, more and more projects related to the metaverse.

While Nintendo took the floor again last month to reiterate that, no new console is planned besides its brand new Switch OLED, new first-hand information contradicts the video game and platforms manufacturer’s claims.

We’re getting used to this back-and-forth between official Nintendo statements and informants. But this new information from Nate The Hate supports the ones published during the year by Bloomberg about a 4K Switch.

A console doped with DLSS

Generally well-informed, this Nintendo insider has expanded on the company’s hardware future in his latest podcast. He talks about having interviewed several contacts and seeing a bit more clearly the vagueness that surrounds Nintendo’s plans.

“After the Bloomberg article was published (on the availability of devkits for a Switch 4K, editor’s note), I contacted several of my sources to try to get a better idea. And I will no longer call this console the “Switch Pro”. From the conversations I’ve had, it’s clear that this is new hardware for the Nintendo Switch, but I don’t yet know how it will be positioned.”

A revision of the current model? A Nintendo Switch 2?

Nate isn’t sure yet, but he will now rely on the “Switch 4K” designation due to the capabilities of said console. “[The console] can deliver 4K, and that will be possible with DLSS. These facts are tangible, there is clear evidence to support this information, and there is no reason to think this will change in the future.”

Is Nintendo about to segment the market?

So we’re back to where we were before the Switch OLED curtain call. How will Nintendo assume to segment a market as successful as the Switch, which is just over 4 years has sold over 89 million units?

Because offering 4K (sprinkled with DLSS, or another upscaling method) can only be done by opting for the last generation chip. A more powerful model then, which would logically push developers to prefer it to the original Switch and its aging hardware. In other words: if there is a Switch 4K, it will come with exclusive games, which will leave some 89 million faithful on the sidelines.

In addition, the change in graphics architecture would pose huge backwards compatibility concerns. This points to the hypothesis of a next-generation console rather than a “simple” revision that would complicate Nintendo’s lineup.

Continuing his presentation, Nate confirms that the development kits for this new console have been distributed to studios since the end of 2020. And according to his sources, Nintendo could make this console official between the last quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023. That is, for the sixth anniversary of the Nintendo Switch – which exceeds the usual life cycle of a home console of the company.

Competing with the Galaxy S10+ and iPhone XS Max, Huawei’s new high-end smartphone is a complete success. The Chinese manufacturer has become the market reference for the quality of the photos of its cameras.

The P30 Pro was immediately placed at the top of the list of the best cameras right from the start. A very high-end model that can replace an authentic digital camera.

What does it replace?

The Huawei P30 Pro is the logical replacement for the P20 Pro. The difference in performance is not revolutionary, but the P30 Pro has many exciting improvements. At the screen level, we go from a 6.1-inch display to a curved 6.47-inch display. Also, the notch is reduced to a simple drop of water, and the screen directly incorporates fingerprint reader and speakerphone for calls. It now includes the 40-watt fast charge, compared to 22.5 watts for the P20 Pro, and even offers reverse charging so that you can charge your earphones or another smartphone.

It also gains in power, with a Kirin 980 and 8GB of RAM, compared to a Kirin 970 and 6GB. The camera is improved with, in particular, the presence of the ToF camera and the SuperSpectrum sensor, allowing it to obtain a score of 112 points in the DxOMark ranking, compared to 109 for the P20 Pro, which was, however, the first in the ranking at its release.

The Promise: Changing the Rules of Photography

With its slogan for its P30 range “Change the rules of photography,” Huawei is aiming for the top of the podium for smartphone cameras. According to the DxOMark site, which rates devices following extensive testing, the P30 Pro scores 112, making it the number one smartphone on the market. Huawei can also boast about the performance of his cameras in terms of photography since he occupies the top three places.

The camera also offers 5x optical zoom, 10x hybrid zoom, and 50x digital zoom. Huawei achieved this performance by using a periscopic telephoto lens: he increases the focal length by aiming the sensor at the side, and by using a mirror, to obtain a focal length equivalent to 125 mm.

The killer option: the ToF camera

The presence of the ToF camera, or time of flight, adds a new dimension to the picture, and this, in a rather literal way. It is a camera capable of measuring objects in 3D, sending a beam of light invisible to the human eye, and then measuring the time it takes to return to the sensor. It indicates the distance from the object.

Combined with the camera, it allows specific effects, including the portrait mode of the P30 Pro. By measuring the distance from the objects in the image, it can create a more realistic bokeh effect. In augmented reality use, it can measure objects on the screen, or place virtual objects so that they appear with the exact size and correctly positioned over the image of the real world.

Scheduled for October 31 in Beijing, the Honor Magic 2 should be the first high-end smartphone of the Chinese brand.

IFA Berlin news

Honor should also reveal a new connected watch that comes with its new flagship product.

To conclude its conference with an highlight at the IFA Berlin, Honor quickly showed his future Magic 2, a smartphone with a design inspired by the Oppo Find X. The device hides its front cameras in a sliding drawer, allowing it to be entirely from edge to edge and free of any notches.

A week before its official presentation in China, the leaks are multiplying on the Web. Technical specifications, photos, videos… Magic 2 is becoming less and less mysterious regarding their upcoming releases.

A sliding screen… but manual

Unlike the Oppo Find X, the Magic 2 drawer is not motorized. To make it appear, you have to slide the back of your smartphone yourself. An undoubtedly less expensive process, which should allow you to sell the smartphone at a more affordable price than the 999 euros of Find X. Xiaomi will also offer a “manual” drawer with its Mi Mix 3.

Otherwise, Magic 2 presents itself as a high-end smartphone with dreamlike features. 6.39″ OLED screen, 980 GB Kirin, 6 GB or 8 GB RAM… We should even find a 3D facial recognition system (hidden in the drawer) and a fingerprint sensor under the screen.

In other words, Honor Magic 2 has many of the same features as the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, but with a different design.

On the back, the Magic 2 appears to be a carbon copy of the Huawei P20 Pro. The triple camera module is arranged identically and would include three 16, 24 and 16 Mpix sensors.

It is impossible to know if there will be an ultra-wide angle like in the Mate 20 or if Honor will be satisfied with a monochrome lens like in the P20 Pro.

A new honor clock?

On the Chinese social network Weibo, promotional images reveal the existence of a new “Honor Watch.” According to the photograph, the watch would base itself on the design of the Huawei Watch GT. Therefore, we can imagine that it will have the same characteristics.
It remains to be seen whether these new products will reach Europe and the US.

We should remember remembered that Honor first announces its products in China before holding a second international conference a few months later.

Cryptocurrency prices were up Tuesday, with Bitcoin at $3,500, just one year after reaching nearly $20,000.

Bitcoin rose 3.5% to USD 3,539.60 on the Investing.com index at 9:07 am (ET) (2:07 pm GMT).

However, Bitcoin is down by nearly 75% from its highest level in history last year. Cryptocurrencies have dropped considerably in recent weeks, as traders worry about increased regulatory surveillance and volatility.

Cryptocurrencies were on the rise overall, with a total market capitalization of $112 billion at the time of writing, up from $108 billion on Monday. Seems that people are back on the market for bitcoin!

Ethereum, or Ether, increased by 5% to $94.66 and Litecoin is at $29.20, up 3.9%, while XRP jumped from 12% to $0.33607.

Despite the long-term decline in crypto prices, the blockchain seems to be thriving. Employment opportunities in the sector are booming, with 33% more jobs in 2018 than in the previous year, according to LinkedIn’s 2018 Emerging Jobs Report.

“It is not surprising that we are witnessing an explosion of auto-learning roles and a continuous growth of data science roles… It may not shock you that Blockchain Developer is at the top of the list after this year’s renewed interest in blockchain and crypto-currency,” the report says.

In other news, China is creating its own cryptocurrency. The People’s Bank of China has registered 78 crypto-currency patents since 2016, Bloomberg said. The central bank has also recruited developers and economists for its Cryptocurrency Institute, created to issue a blockchain-based coin.

The government also wants not only to track its citizens’ transactions, but also to require banks to share borrower data before authorizing any transaction, according to Bloomberg. The central bank could also prohibit any financial company from dealing with blacklisted companies, according to patents examined by Bloomberg.

Well, we have to admit that we like the sun. On the other hand, our smartphones don’t. Especially if you think you’re going to forget it in the sun. Who hasn’t ever left his phone lying on a terrace table in the sun?
Therefore, it’s better to be cautious and not leave your mobile companion lying around, as the consequences can lead you to repair it or to have to buy another smartphone. Here are two risks your phone incurs.

Battery failure

Batteries hate heat. And the risk is obviously to ruin it completely. Batteries can’t withstand extreme heat. Above 60 °C, the failure of the battery is for sure.

60 °C is fortunately unimaginable in most areas. That’s true, but we didn’t specify that you had to reach 60 °C for the battery to start suffering — the cells contained in the lithium-ion work better in a comfortable environment with temperatures between 20 and 25 °C maximum. Apple, for its part, makes sure that its iPhones are resistant to temperatures ranging from 0 to 35 °C.

Unstable screen

Generally, users (though not all) leave their smartphone somewhere with the screen facing up. Therefore, in case of intense heat, it is this component that will be affected in the first place. Even the best smartphone screens, whether AMOLED or LCD, cannot withstand a good heat wave without blinking.
Then you may see instabilities in the animations or even areas that would not have been able to withstand the high temperatures that would reveal small dots. And of course, the most visible will be an incorrect response to your actions on the touchscreen. It may seem obvious to everyone, but it’s not uncommon for us to put our smartphones in the heat: in the office by a window, in the car, on a table on the terrace, and so on.

Deterioration of the internal components

Again, this is quite logical, but the downside of overheating components is that the damage is not necessarily immediately visible.

If your display shows signs of weakness quickly enough in the event of overexposure to the sun, this may not necessarily be the case for the other components.
Whether it’s the processor, photocells, antenna, or any other internal component, overexposure can significantly weaken them. At extremely high temperatures, some parts of the printed circuit board may even melt (well, you still have to go very hard or live in the middle of the desert). Before you get there, you’ll also notice a general slowdown of your device.
However, micro-welding can suffer a blow and failures can occur several days or weeks later. You should be very careful and avoid wanting to tan smartphone.

The small Franco-German robot has just arrived on the asteroid Ryugu. Its lifetime, after a four-year journey, will be about fifteen hours.

In space, 325 million kilometers from Earth, no one heard the Mascot landing gear, dropped by the Japanese Hayabusa-2 probe, touch the surface of the asteroid Ryugu after a 51-meter freefall in the early hours of Wednesday, October 3.

Even if the small Franco-German machine – which has a mass of 10 kg and the dimensions of a large shoe box – has no system to stop its descent, even if Ryugu’s ground is only pebbles and roughness, everything went smoothly. The force of gravity exerted by this 900-meter diameter asteroid is so low that Mascot’s fall lasted several minutes. At the end of this step, what is a little difficult to name an impact occurred at about 0.5 km/h, just a little faster than the speed of a walking turtle.

“Mystery and danger.”

Then you have to imagine a scene that goes past the most sluggish of slow motion.
After its contact with the ground, Mascot, which lacked an anchoring system, went back upwards, starting a series of slow bounces. As explained, before landing, calculations predicted that the rebound phase could last a maximum of 105 minutes. According to the initial information provided by the DLR, the German space agency, this phase finally took only a few minutes.

At 7:36 am (Europe time), Mascot’s Twitter account sent this message: « And then I found myself in a place like no other on Earth, a region full of wonders, mystery, and danger! »
The end of the tumbles was not intended to mark the end of the landing itself. It was also necessary that the big dice that Mascot constituted placed itself on the right side, the one that allowed his instruments to work. The designers of the device, therefore, added a kind of arm with a weight to it to change faces.

Once correctly positioned, the lander, which has only about fifteen hours of autonomy, had to start harvesting scientific data using the four instruments that equip it, the main one being the French spectrometer.

The idea is to gather the maximum information about Ryugu, to get a relatively accurate picture of his soil, to prepare the sample collections that Hayabusa-2 will make; the first will take place at the end of October.

We should have to note that scientists designed Mascot as a scout, in the service of the Japanese probe. The principal objective of the mission is to bring back to Earth, at the end of 2020, a few tiny samples from the asteroid. Their analysis will help astronomers understand the composition of the Early Solar System, of which this type of body is a perfect representative.

Sales of portable weed vaporizers are on the rise in the world in 2018. Made popular with those who want to use ganja in a healthier way. They remain illegal in most countries, but are seen as less harmful by renown addictologists.

“Every time I smoked a joint, I would go back to smoking cigarettes. During a trip to the United States last year, I found and purchased a dry herb vaporizer. It may sound strange, but it has allowed me to smoke healthily ever since.”

But what are these high tech products?

An alternative to the traditional joint you smoke. With these types of devices, no combustion or even smoke. Cannabis herb is heated to at least 375°F to help it releasing it’s agents through the creation of vapor.

Very fashionable in the United States

“Today, people want to inhale clean and eat healthy,” assures a coffee shop owner interviewed last week in Amsterdam Holland. Many want to adopt it and give up electronic cigarettes, which they find too toxic. On the Internet and in our shop, we sell up to 10 to 20 a day,” he adds.

How does a vaporizer work?

These devices, are very popular in the United States, are used in clinics in Germany, Israel, or Switzerland, and countries that have legalized the medicinal use of cannabis, in the form of CBD, a hemp molecule, to calm anxiety and pain.

What is a portable vaporizer?

It is a device that heats enough vegetable matter to evaporate the active principle or essential oil to then be able to inhale it, but that will not heat it enough to trigger combustion (cellulose, the main component of vegetable matter burns at around 445°, but THC evaporates at + or – 320°). It is the combustion which releases a whole pile of toxic and carcinogenic substances by emitting a thick, irritating and malodorous smoke.

The vaporizer is a kind of mini furnace of precision which will allow you to extract essential oils, or active principles of a plant in the form of vapor and thus avoiding you to absorbing a great part of the toxic substances due to the combustion. The taste of the vaporized plant will be much better than when it is burned.

There are desktop vaporizers available such as the famous Volcano or portable vaporizers such as the DaVinci IQ, the Mighty, Crafty or Firefly 2. Visit this page to know more www.cannavapos.fr/vaporisateurs-portables/!

Some look like e-cigs, others fit in the palm of your hand. Prices vary from 50 to 500 $ and more for medical desktop models.

Vaporizing is less toxic than combustion

“When you smoke herbs mixed with tobacco, you swallow tar, heavy metals, carbon monoxide,” says a head representative of the Norml association, which campaigns for governments to easy on cannabis regulations in Europe. On their website, they advise the use of vaporizers rather than the use of regular joints harmful to your lungs.

The advantages of a dry herb vaporizer

1. Cleanliness / hygiene: no combustion = no ashes or persistent odours on clothes or skin.
2. Discretion: no combustion = a little discreet steam instead of a thick smoke = no smell or almost.
3. Well-being / health: no burning, no irritating smoke, much less tar, and much less toxic gas = no bad taste in your mouth, more breathing and lung capacity, less chronic irritation and cough or other potential disease.
4. Savings: no more leaves and cigarettes to buy, less material used for the same result.
5. Taste: without combustion the taste of the plant is not altered and is much better.

One thing is certain, it is not by chance that all therapists advise the use of medical cannabis, either in the form of concentrated oil or dye to ingest, or in the form of steam to inhale, because these are the two safest methods according to them.

Here is an exemple of a vaporizer:

On Saturday 21, Apple made a discreet introduction of its two new MacBook Pro. Both are equipped with the usual Touch Bar and offer better technical performance than their predecessors.

If the announcement was made without the show to which the brand has accustomed us, it is undoubtedly because the design does not present any real significant evolution. For this time, the apple company focused mainly on a definite improvement in performance.

MacBook Pro 13″

For the first model, whose size is 13 inches, it features an Intel Core i5 quad-core processor at 2.3 GHz, or i7 at 2.7 GHz, depending on the user’s choice. As a reminder, the previous chip provided in the other models offered only two cores. Therefore, no doubt the new MacBook Pro will be much more powerful and influential than the previous generation. As for the graphics chip, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is equipped with an Iris Plus Graphics 655 graphics chip.

This new range of MacBook Pro 2018 13″ is launched from 2000$.

MacBook Pro 15″

As for the 15-inch MacBook Pro, it also comes with an 8-core Core i7 clocked at 2.2 GHz and 2.6 GHz. A 2.9 GHz Core i9 is also available as an option. According to Apple, this would improve the power of the computer by 30 to 70%, depending on the activities of the user of the device. As for the graphics cards, they are Radeon Pro 555X or Radeon Pro 560X from AMD with 4GB of GDDR5 memory. For the autonomy, Apple made the choice of DDR4 strips, which offers 32 GB of RAM.

The new MacBook Pro 15″ 2018 is launched with a minimum price of 2800$.

Both computers have the innovative keyboard which uses the butterfly mechanism and is highlighted by Apple as quieter than before. It remains to be seen whether this new version will put an end to the problems of the past. The MacBook Pro also comes with a T2 chip for further Siri integration.

Available on both models, a True Tone screen will adapt the colorimetry to adjust to the ambient light.

Google officially deploys its new features and strengthens its Pay application. In this update, it will be possible to store concert tickets and boarding tickets; it will also be possible to make financial transactions between friends.

Sending money

No more Google Pay Send and Google Pay. From now on, just Google Pay. All Google Pay services are now available in a single application under a single name.

Google Pay then called “Pay With Google” was merely to facilitate online mobile payment using payment methods stored on its own Google accounts. At the same time, users could previously send and request money from their friends through the Google Pay Send application. From now on, this service will be directly available from Google Pay.

The update includes features that many people have been using for years through various services, including support for mobile ticketing and friend payments like Lydia or Apple Pay. Users can also share the addition of purchases and instantly ask their friends for money.

Access concert tickets, loyalty cards, gift cards and other airline tickets

In addition to transactions made possible by Google Pay, the service also provides access to concert tickets, loyalty cards, gift cards and other airline tickets if they have been saved on Ticketmaster or Southwest platforms. The number of “partner platforms” is expected to increase significantly over time and with the democratization (in other countries) of these functionalities.

In the field of ticketing and reservations stored on mobile phones, the Mountain View firm had fallen a long way behind. They are trying to catch up with their competitors, including Apple, which has been offering this service for several years already.

Please note that the update is only available in the United States. However, it is expected to be launched soon in the United Kingdom. No information was communicated concerning the other markets, so let us cross our fingers and hope that the deployment in France will be done quickly.