Scientists find cleaner, more efficient way to turn CO2 into fuel

Conventional fuel aren’t going away just yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t produce them in a more responsible way… and scientists might have found that way. They’ve developed a process that can convert CO2 into carbon monoxide (and subsequently into fuel) using solar energy with nearly flawless selection — that is, you can get the material you want virtually every time. The trick was to create a spongy nickel-organic photocatalyst that purposefully includes a lot of defects, letting it produce adequate amounts of carbon monoxide without creating surprise molecules.

There’s a lot of work to be done before this method is ready for the real world, particularly when it comes to handling large-scale production, but it raises the possibility of reliably generating synthetic fuels (such as ethanol and acetic acid) with a minimal impact on the environment. Instead of leaning heavily on fossil fuels or farms, you’d mainly need CO2 and some sunlight. The result still wouldn’t be completely eco-friendly, but it would be clean enough that companies that still have to use conventional fuels could do so without making CO2 emissions worse than they already are.

Via: Reddit

Source: Science Advances

AMD rips the veil off Threadripper, surprises with entry-level option for $550

Why it matters to you

AMD has put a date on Threadripper’s release, and also gave full details for the entire processor line, including a surprise entry-level addition.

Computing power users have been hearing about AMD’s Threadripper chips since May of 2017. AMD can’t hold back any longer, and at Capsaicin Siggraph in 2017, it finally rolled out the launch details for its beefy new line of professional workload chips. It even announced a new Threadripper CPU that was, until this point, a secret.

The chips

Most of the high-end Threadripper options are what we expected to see, based on earlier official teasers, as well as unofficial leaks. AMD revealed the major specifications of both the $1,000 Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and $800 1920X last week, only fleshing out the minor details at Siggraph.

The surprise then, came from the Ryzen Threadripper 1900X, a new chip at the $550 price point that was previously unannounced. It cuts down to eight cores and sixteen threads, with a 3.8GHz base clock and 4.0GHz boost clock. Like its more expensive peers, the 1900X is unlocked for overclocking, supports up to 64 PCI Express lanes, and up to four channels of DDR4 memory.

Here’s the specifications for all three Threadripper chips.

Cores
Threads
Base
speed
Boost
speed
Price
1900X
8
16
3.8GHz
4.0GHz
$550
1920X
12
24
3.5GHz
4.0GHz
$800
1950X
16
32
3.4GHz
4.0GHz
$1,000

Of course, chips with these numbers aren’t intended for light gaming, or checking your email. The Threadripper CPUs are built for ultimate speed, heavyweight multi-tasking, and handling some of the most complex tasks computers handle — like 3D rendering, lighting calculations, and video encoding. That’s why they’re so expensive.

Or are they? AMD is leaning heavily on its price advantage when comparing itself to Intel, which announced a new Extreme Edition line-up in response to Threadripper. The latest information puts Intel’s least expensive 8-core chip at $600. Its 16-core chip, the Core i9-7960X, is expected to sell for $1,700.

That also means that AMD’s chips offer more cores at any given price point. The top-end 1950X, for example, is priced alongside Intel’s Core i9-7900X, which has 10 coers and 20 threads. AMD says the Threadripper 1950X is up to 38 percent quicker than the i9-7900X in Cinebench nT.

The support is there, too. Gigabyte, ASRock, Asus, and MSI all have X399 platform motherboards ready to accept any of the three new Threadripper chips. There are also 20 liquid cooling options, four air cooling options, and a bracket in the box to use some of older coolers.

When can you buy it?

Just a few days before the event, Alienware began offering pre-orders on Threadripper powered Area 51 systems. If you’re looking for a pre-built system with one of the larger two chips and just can’t wait, that’s the best option. If you’re willing to wait a few hours, pre-orders with 90 retailers and boutique system builders will launch on July 31.

If you want to build your own system, then you’ll have to wait until August 10 to grab a Threadripper 1920X or 1950X. The more affordable 1900X will launch at the end of August.

AMD’s approach to the Threadripper launch can only be described as cheeky. Senior Vice President of Computing and Graphics Jim Anderson showed off a graph with an unprecedented price drop in Intel’s Extreme Edition chips at the eight and ten core level. What could cause what seemed to be yearly price increases to turn south all of a sudden? According to AMD, it’s competition. If a market leader flinches ahead of a big product release, it’s probably a good sign for the underdog.

But as they say, the proof is in the pudding, and we’ve yet to taste Threadripper ourselves. Companies often find fortuitous ways to contextualize their products, and AMD has targeted the absolute beefiest chips Intel offers. It’ll be interesting to see who comes out on top.

Finally! AMD unveils Vega 64 and 56, puts Nvidia GTX 1080 and 1070 in the crosshairs

Why it matters to you

AMD’s new GPUs aren’t just powerful, they specifically target weak points in Nvidia’s offerings.

Ever since AMD took the budget GPU world by storm with the RX 480, users have been wondering when the red team would make a move on the higher-end graphics market. With gamers drooling for a card based on the new Vega architecture, AMD is ready to deliver with the Radeon Vega 56 and 64. It also plans to hit the workstation market with two new Radeon Pro WX cards, one of which is packed with two terabytes of memory.

We learned a lot about the Vega architecture at CES 2017, and our post from that event lays out a lot of the new additions and improvements. With that said, let’s dig into what’s new.

Vega finally arrives for gamers

The Radeon Vega 64, as its name implies, is powered by a set of 64 Next-Gen Compute Units, with a total of 4,096 Stream Processors. It has a 1,247MHz base clock, and 1,546MHz boost clock, resulting in a peak performance 12.66 Teraflops, over twice the RX 580. Paired up with 8GB of High Bandwidth  Memory 2 (HBM2), and boasting 484GB/s of memory bandwidth, the Radeon Vega 64 represents a huge leap in potential performance, but comes in at a surprisingly reasonable $500. That’s for the air-cooled variant.

If that’s still a bit too rich for your blood, the Radeon Vega 56 may be a better fit. It cuts the number of Next-Gen Compute Units down to just 56, which also shaves $100 off the price, for a very competitive $400 price point. Despite that, it still offers up 10.5 TFlops of potential performance.

The positioning or AMD’s new Vega hardware lends some credibility to rumors that Vega cards will not beat the performance of Nvidia’s GTX 1080 Ti. That card sells for about $700, so if Vega did beat the GTX 1080 Ti, it would do so at a discount that’s perhaps too good to be true.

Instead, it appears that the new Vega cards will be setting the GTX 1080 and 1070 in their sights. While perhaps not as exciting on paper, a win for AMD against those cards would be huge. The GTX 1070, in particular, is a top seller for Nvidia, and AMD has struggled to find an answer for it.

A little bit of Nano

While AMD provided briefings of most the Vega hardware, it did hold one thing back as a surprise — the Vega Nano. The company gave the first of these cards to Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games.

While we still don’t have official specifications on the card, which is roughly half the size of other Vega entries, it’s likely to be a slightly under-clocked version of Vega that will compete at a slightly lower price point, and target small form-factor desktops. AMD took a similar tact with the Radeon Fury Nano.

A bundle of joy

Not content to just sell the cards on their own, AMD is willing to sweeten the pot for anyone looking to build a new system in the red team’s ecosystem. Radeon bundles include a Radeon Vega GPU, $200 off the Samsung CF791, an ultra-wide 3,440 x 1,440 monitor with FreeSync, as well as $100 off a Ryzen 7 CPU and motherboard bundle. It even comes with two free games — Prey and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus — at least in the North American market.

There’s a Radeon Vega 56 bundle at $500, a Vega 64 bundle at $600, and a Vega 64 liquid-cooled bundle for $700. AMD says a bundle deal will be the only way to buy a liquid-cooled Vega 64 at launch.

Gamers who go for a bundle will receive the discounts at the time of purchase, and can choose not to buy the Ryzen bundle and Samsung monitor if they’d just like the free games. AMD is not issuing coupons that will be valid at a later date, or requiring mail-in rebates.

While the bundles are no doubt meant to help move AMD-friendly hardware, we suspect they’re also meant to ward off cryptocurrency miners, who will be eager to suck up Vega hardware. While a gamer will see benefit from a sleek new Samsung CF791 — which won our Editor’s Choice award — miners will have no use for it.

The professional

Vega 64 and 56 weren’t the only hardware AMD brought to LA for the 2017 Capsaicin Siggraph event. It gave details on two other new cards, built on the Vega 10 architecture, that expand the WX workstation GPU series into new areas.

The first, the WX 9100, packs in a whopping 12.3 TFlops of peak performance, although we don’t know much else about what’s under the hood, yet. What we do know is that the card packs in 16GB of HBM with error correction, an important feature for those looking to use the GPU for computational work.

The other Radeon Pro card, the WX SSG, takes a different tack by offering a full 2TB of HBM 2 memory. It sports an 8GBps read speed, and 6GBps write speed, both numbers that are absolutely insane, considering the massive amount of memory available on the card. That configuration provides some interesting benefits. Importantly, it allows content creators to work with and edit 8K video in real time. Adobe has adopted the SSG API already, so Premiere Pro users can benefit from the Radeon WX SSG as soon as it hits the market.

When that will be, however, is still unclear. AMD hasn’t provided any details on availability or price yet, but may share the details during the Capsaicin Siggraph keynote. We’ll update this post as the Radeon team fills in the blanks.

There’s new software too

The Ryzen CPU and RX series GPUs introduced a wide swath of new software features, which we’re already big fans of. Radeon Wattman in particular made overclocking your system’s CPU and GPU dead simple, and you can even adjust a number of settings, like clock speed and voltage, without even rebooting the computer.

It goes beyond just tweaking and tuning, however, as Radeon has already rolled out a number of features in the previous weeks that improve both the development and consumption of GPU-reliant software.

You can read about the latest consumer driver update , and catch the latest professional driver update here.

When can you buy it?

Well, that’s the last thing you’ll have to wait for.

AMD says Vega will be on shelves in August. However, the exact date is still “to be determined.” We will post the release date as soon as AMD makes it known.

The state of Android updates in India: Nougat edition

The update situation has gotten much better in India, but there are a few notable holdouts.

Android continues to dominate in India, commanding a market share in excess of 97%. With India now the second-largest smartphone market in the world, that means a lot of phones running Android.

However, most of those devices aren’t on the latest version of Android, with manufacturers unwilling to commit engineering resources to continually update their products. For what it’s worth, the situation is better than last year, but there’s a lot of work left to be done.

To preserve my sanity, I’ve focused on phones that launched in India after October 2016. Here’s a look at where things stand when it comes to platform updates in the country.

Samsung

Samsung continues to dominate the Indian handset market, with the Galaxy S8 and S8+ doing remarkably well in the country. Both phones came with Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box, and continue to receive timely security patches — Samsung rolled out the July 1, 2017 patch a few weeks ago.

However, Samsung hasn’t fared well when it comes to delivering the Nougat update to its mid-range devices. That wasn’t the case last year, but this time around, the Galaxy A5 2017, A7 2017, and the A9 Pro are still running Marshmallow. The Galaxy C7 Pro is also on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, and there’s no mention of a Nougat update for the C9 Pro — Samsung’s first phone in India with 6GB of RAM — either.

Samsung has launched phones running Nougat, Marshmallow, and Lollipop — all in 2017.

More recent launches in the Galaxy J series — the Galaxy J7 Nxt — come with Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box. But for every Galaxy J7 Nxt, there’s a Galaxy J3 Pro, which launched in May 2017 running Android 5.1 Lollipop. Samsung loves to recycle older devices in India, and that’s how we ended up with a device in May 2017 running a version of Android that’s two years old. Considering the device is aimed at the entry-level segment, it’s unlikely it will ever see an update.

The Galaxy J7 Pro and J7 Max, which debuted in India last month, thankfully run Nougat. The J7 Pro is particularly interesting as it is the first budget phone from Samsung to offer Samsung Pay. The Galaxy On Max — another device aimed at the budget category — is also running Nougat.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi saw a drastic shift in its fortunes in the Indian market over the last twelve months, with the brand now the fastest-growing smartphone vendor in the country. Xiaomi’s always been great at rolling out products that offer great value for money, and it used that strategy to great effect with the Redmi 3S in the entry-level segment, the Redmi Note 4 in the budget category, and more recently the Redmi 4.

It’s no coincidence, then, that the Redmi Note 4 and the Redmi 4 are two of the best-selling phones in the country this year. With the Mi Max 2 making its debut earlier this month, Xiaomi has a wealth of options in the sub-₹20,000 segment. Unfortunately, only two products from the manufacturer — the Mi Max 2 and the Mi 5 — currently run Nougat.

At the Redmi Note 4 launch, Xiaomi announced a beta Nougat build for the device, and six months later, there’s no mention of a stable build. There’s no mention of when the Redmi 3S, Redmi 4, and the Redmi 4A will make the switch to Nougat.

Xiaomi has just two phones running Nougat.

Xiaomi unveiled MIUI 9 in China last week, with the beta test for the ROM slated to kick off from August 11. That’s for the Chinese version of the ROM, and there’s no word yet on when the global ROM will become available.

It’s likely that Xiaomi will deliver the Nougat update directly with MIUI 9, but that means an agonizing wait of at least a few months for the likes of the Redmi 3S and Redmi 4A. The manufacturer has confirmed that 15 devices will receive the Nougat update, with testing underway for five devices — Redmi 4, Mi Note 2, Mi Mix, Mi 5s, and the Mi 5s Plus.

Only one of those devices made it to India, so it’ll likely be a while before the rest of Xiaomi’s portfolio gets updated to Nougat.

Motorola/Lenovo

Following its rebirth under Google, Motorola has led the way for software updates. The brand continues to be the first to deliver platform updates to its phones, and while there have been a few missteps along the way, particularly in the U.S., Motorola has a strong track record in India.

A key change in strategy for Motorola this year is the expansion of its portfolio. Lenovo is increasingly leveraging the Motorola brand name to boost global sales, and to that effect we’ve seen the introduction of several new devices in recent months. These are the phones Motorola launched in India over the last nine months:

• Moto E4 Plus
• Moto E4
• Moto C
• Moto C Plus
• Moto Z2 Play
• Moto G5
• Moto G5 Plus
• Moto M
• Moto Z
• Moto Z Play

Moto E4, E4 Plus, and the Z2 Play run Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box, while the Moto C, C Plus, G5, and G5 Plus are on Android 7.0 Nougat. Motorola started seeding the Nougat update to the Moto M earlier this month, while the Moto Z and Z Play picked up the update earlier this year.

Most of last year’s phones have also been updated to Nougat, with the exception of the Moto E3 Power. Motorola

Motorola is a shining light in a sea of indifference.

Over the last two years, I convinced everyone in my family to switch to Motorola devices. The reasoning was simple: their use case included a lot of calls, WhatsApp usage bordering on addiction, and taking a few images. For that, the Moto G series fit the bill very well, and starting with the Moto G4 Plus, the camera was actually usable.

Aside from a few overheating issues with the Moto G4 Plus and intermittent performance drawbacks with the Moto X Play, I didn’t have to do a whole lot of troubleshooting, and that alone makes recommending Motorola phones worthwhile.

Only time will tell if Motorola can manage to deliver timely updates considering the recent additions to its roster, but for what it’s worth, the Moto G5 Plus continues to be one of the best phones in the budget segment.

Lenovo launched just four phones in the country in the last nine months — the Lenovo Z2 Plus, K6 Note, K6 Power, and the P2 — and all four phones have picked up the Nougat update. Now that Motorola is shouldering most of the burden in the handset segment, Lenovo has had an easier time rolling out updates to its device.

Vivo and OPPO

While Xiaomi focused its attention on the online segment, OPPO and Vivo turned to the retail segment. Both companies launched an ad blitz in the country, and it’s now at a stage where you cannot go over 100 feet in a major city without coming across Vivo or OPPO signage.

The aggressive marketing efforts have paid off — both brands are selling millions of devices in India. Their online presence is limited, but with a nationwide retail network numbering in the thousands, it doesn’t look like either brand is keen on the online space. The strategy has worked magnificently — seven out of ten phones are still bought at offline stores.

As both brands rely on offline sales, their phones command a higher premium when seen against the likes of Xiaomi. The phones also don’t offer as much value for money, and come with heavily-skinned versions of Android — OPPO’s skin is called ColorOS, while Vivo’s ROM is Funtouch.

Don’t hold out for the Nougat update if you’re using an OPPO or Vivo phone.

Vivo introduced seven phones in India this year — the Y53, Y55S, Y66, V5, V5 Plus, a special edition of the V5 Plus, and the V5s. ALl seven models run Funtouch OS 3.0 atop Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and while the manufacturer recently unveiled a Nougat-based build of Funtouch in China, there’s no telling when it will roll out to its Indian portfolio.

Given Vivo’s history, it isn’t going to be anytime soon. Last year’s V3 launched with Lollipop, and it’s yet to make the switch to Marshmallow.

OPPO has launched four phones in India over the last nine months — a special variant of the F1s called the F1s Diwali, A57, F3, and the F3 Plus. The F1s Diwali runs ColorOS 3.0 that’s based on Android 5.1 Lollipop, while the other three devices offer ColorOS 3.0 atop Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It doesn’t look like OPPO is in a hurry to deliver the Nougat update either.

Indian manufacturers

Over the course of the last twelve months, local vendors like Micromax, Lava, and Intex decided it would be more fun to give way to their Chinese counterparts, who now effectively control the Indian handset market. As a result, local brands have shifted focus to the offline sector, where they can eke out sales by partnering with retail stores.

Out of the dozens of largely-forgettable phones Micromax currently sells, only three devices — the Selfie 2, Canvas 1, and Canvas 2 — run Nougat. And as far as I can make out, there isn’t a single Lava Mobiles phone that offers Nougat.

Intex fares much better in this regard. Out of the 20 phones the manufacturer is selling, eight are based on Android 7.0 Nougat:

• Aqua Lions 3.col2
• Aqua Power IV
• Aqua Selfie
• Aqua S3
• Aqua Zenith
• Aqua A4
• Aqua Crystal+
• Aqua Elyt-E7

Karbonn Mobiles also has four phones that are on Nougat — K9 Kavach, A40 Indian, Aura Note 2, and Aura Power 4G Plus.

Smartron is a recent entrant to this list, and the manufacturer is one of the few local vendors to focus on software as a differentiator. The brand is a Qualcomm licensee, which gives it the ability to eke out the most from the hardware, and ensure that it ties in well with the software.

Its second device, the srt.phone, is powered by the 28nm Snapdragon 652 and not the newer 14nm Snapdragon 625 like the rest of the budget segment, but Smartron was able to find a balance between energy efficiency and performance.

The phone runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box, and Smartron is committing to delivering security updates at least once every two months. Smartron doesn’t have to worry about rolling out updates to a lot of phones, and that should make its task easier.

Your turn

That’s a broad look at the state of Android updates in India. Did your phone pick up the Nougat update? Let us know in the comments below.

Firmware shows the next iPhone will use infrared face unlock

Ever since our close look at an alleged render of the next iPhone back in May, there have been rumors of 3D face scanning plus a large screen-to-body ratio flying about. Today, we finally bring you some solid evidence about these features, courtesy of — surprise, surprise — Apple itself. After digging up new details about the Apple HomePod in its leaked firmware, iOS developer Steve Troughton-Smith came across some code that confirm the use of infrared face unlock in BiometricKit for the next iPhone. More interestingly, in the same firmware, fellow developer Guilherme Rambo found an icon that suggests a near-bezel-less design — one that matches rumored schematics going as far back as late May. For those in doubt, Troughton-Smith assured us that this icon is “specific to D22, the iPhone that has Pearl (Face ID).”

These discoveries are by far the best hints at what to expect from the “iPhone 8,” which is expected to launch later this year. Additionally, we also learnt from our exclusive render that the phone may feature a glass back along with wireless charging this time. That said, there’s still no confirmation on the fate of Touch ID: while the HomePod firmware code seems to suggest that it’s sticking around, there’s no indication as to whether it’s ditching the usual Home button execution in favor of an under-display fingerprint scanner (as shown off by Qualcomm and Vivo at MWC Shanghai). Given how poorly Apple has been guarding the secrets of its next smartphone this time round, chances are we’ll hear more very soon.

Source: Steve Troughton-Smith, Guilherme Rambo

Campy horror game ‘Night Trap’ arrives on PS4 August 11th

Do you miss the days when full-motion video was the biggest deal in games? When just seeing a known actor in a cutscene was enough to work everyone into a frenzy? You’re in luck. A couple of months later than promised, Screaming Villains and Limited Run Games have announced that Night Trap: 25th Anniversary Edition will arrive on August 11th. You’ll have to buy a physical PS4 copy to play on day one, but digital releases will be available on PS4 and PC (via Steam) on August 15th. And don’t worry, Xbox One owners — you’re getting a version too, although there’s no release date just yet.

The remastered Night Trap isn’t as dramatic an upgrade as some other remakes, since the developers are dealing with source video that was clearly recorded in the late 1980s. Rather, the biggest changes come with everything around the periphery of Dana Plato and company. The interface is much sharper (if still in that lo-fi Sega CD vein), and you’ll get a bounty of extras including a behind-the-scenes documentary, deleted scenes and a theater mode that lets you watch without having to save anyone.

And of course, it’s important to stress that the title wasn’t the pinnacle of gameplay even when it was new. More than anything, this is a nostalgia trip for those who remember how Night Trap both epitomized early CD games and triggered a controversy over its not-all-that-scandalous content. Think of this as a museum restoration that preserves a moment in time. You may not come back to it as often as you would other remakes, but it could easily be worth a look for the nostalgia trip.

Via: Geek

Source: Screaming Villains (YouTube)

AMD returns to high-end gaming graphics with Radeon RX Vega

AMD has been content to cater to budget gamers with its graphics cards over the past couple of years, but it’s ready to play in the big leagues once again. After plenty of leaks and no shortage of hype (Apple even name-dropped AMD at the iMac Pro debut), the chip giant has unveiled GPUs based on its high-end Vega architecture. The Radeon RX Vega series touts processors with numerous tweaks that promise to finally give AMD performance comparable to NVIDIA’s higher-end offerings, including updated geometry and pixel engines, a high-bandwidth cache controller and support for multiple data operations per cycle. Overall, Vega promises twice the throughput per clock cycle and twice the memory bandwidth per pin of earlier Radeon hardware — not the highest bar to clear given AMD’s recent lack of top-end cards, but still a huge improvement.

AMD isn’t providing the most extensive benchmarks to go with the Vega launch, but its emphasis is on baseline performance over peak frame rates. Its highest-end models should offer a minimum of 53 frames per second when playing numerous games on an ultra-wide 1440p monitor, which is comfortably higher than the 45 of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080. AMD is almost certainly cherry-picking tests that favor its design (what about maximum FPS or 4K gameplay?), but it’s reasonable to say that its fastest GPUs are at least competitive with those of its arch-rival, which is more than we could say for a long, long while.

Thankfully, the firm isn’t leaning on speeds alone to reel you in. The RX Vega line can handle single-cable 5K displays, which are hard to find outside of the Mac ecosystem. A software plugin gives you the first hardware-accelerated playback for 4K VR video. And if you spring for the most advanced board, you’ll get liquid cooling that promises both more headroom for overclocking and a quieter PC.

You might pay for more than you were expecting, though. The line starts off with the usual stand-alone cards, including the $399 Radeon RX Vega 56 (named for its 56 compute units) and $499 Vega 64 Air Cooled (logically, 64 compute units). However, AMD is pushing the concept of Radeon Packs that bundle two games (in the US, Prey and Wolfenstein II) and discounts on the prices of both a Samsung ultra-wide monitor as well as a Ryzen 7-plus-motherboard combo. You’ll need to spend $100 more to get the Vega 56 and 64 Air boards with these packs, and the $699 Vega 64 Liquid Cooled is only available with a Radeon Pack. Also, be prepared to wait a little while: the whole Vega series ships on August 14th.

Oh, and the company has one more piece of gamer-focused news in store. Remember that ludicrous 16-core Threadripper processor? It finally has a release date. The $999 beast arrives on August 10th alongside a more modest 12-core CPU ($799), while a ‘low-end’ 8-core part ($549) shows up on August 31st. Threadripper is absolute overkill for most home users and is really meant for people who juggle many apps at once, or just want to show off and have money to burn. However, it was impressive enough that it prompted Intel to fire back with the Core i9. Clearly, both AMD and Intel see the value in over-the-top core counts, even if it’s just to help sell processors to gamers that insist on the best hardware.

Source: AMD (RX Vega), (Threadripper)

iPhone 8 Infrared Face Detection and General Device Design Revealed in HomePod Firmware

Late last week, Apple released early firmware for its HomePod smart speaker, which won’t be launching to the public until December. HomePod will run a version of iOS, and the firmware released by Apple corresponds to iOS 11.0.2.

One iOS developer has dug into the firmware and discovered that it also contains hints of what we can expect for other devices. Most importantly, the firmware includes numerous references to infrared face detection within the BiometricKit framework that is currently home to Touch ID authentication, supporting claims that the iPhone 8 will rely at least in part on facial recognition. Developer Steven Troughton-Smith has also confirmed these discoveries.

Within BiometricKit are new “FaceDetect” methods addressing such circumstances as faces being too close or too far from the camera, the presence of multiple faces, and more.

Other references point to infrared capture in BiometricKit, pointing toward the rumored infrared sensors on the front of the iPhone being involved in capturing images for authentication, rather than using visible light through a traditional camera.

Various references point toward the code name for this functionality being “Pearl,” while the code name for the iPhone 8 is “D22.” The iOS 11.0.2 HomePod firmware also includes a glyph for this D22 device representing an iPhone that looks much like the rumored iPhone 8, featuring a full-front display with a notch cut out at the top for the earpiece and sensors.

The iPhone 8 is expected to debut around the usual September timeframe, but availability may be delayed somewhat due to production difficulties. Apple has reportedly been trying to incorporate Touch ID fingerprint sensing beneath the device’s display, but some rumors have suggested Apple has had difficulty achieving that goal and may instead switch to facial recognition for authentication purposes.

Related Roundup: iPhone 8
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Chinese scientists created the largest virtual universe

A team of Chinese scientists put the world’s faster supercomputer to the test by using it to create the biggest virtual universe. They’re calling it a “warm-up exercise” for the machine called Sunway TaihuLight, which used 10 million CPU cores to crunch numbers for the simulation. According to South China Morning Post (SCMP), an English-language newspaper based in Hong Kong, Sunway’s universe was five times bigger than the simulation ran by astrophysicists from the University of Zurich back in June. The downside was that it only lasted for an hour, whereas the Swiss simulation lasted 80.

Simulations of the cosmos can help astronomers look for the most promising regions of space to investigate and could shed light on its mysterious components, like dark matter and dark energy. The Chinese team’s simulation, in particular, recreated the birth and early expansion of the universe, around tens of millions years after the Big Bang. Unfortunately, they had to stop after they reached that point: Team leader Gao Liang said the supercomputer had other clients in line that day.

SCMP says Chinese-made supercomputers typically have major weaknesses and rarely run at full capacity. The team must have found a way to maximize Sunway’s powers, because the project reportedly stretched the machine to the limit without breaking it. Gao is hoping to run a simulation from the birth of the universe up until the current era — it’s now around 13.8 billion years old — but they might wait until Sunway’s successor is ready before launching their next attempt. The next-gen supercomputer will apparently be 10 times faster than Sunway and could be up and running sometime in 2019.

Source: South China Morning Post

Scientists may have found a Neptune-sized alien moon

Astronomers have found an abundance of exoplanets, but no exomoons. Despite ongoing efforts, the tiny celestial bodies have just been too elusive to detect using modern technology. However, researchers might have just hit paydirt. They’ve used Kepler Space Telescope data to discover signs of what looks like a Neptune-sized moon orbiting a planet in the Kepler-1625 system, 4,000 light years away from Earth. They were tipped off to the companion when they noticed dips in brightness (indicative of an object transiting in front of a star) around a planet during three of its transits. It’s a very promising piece of evidence, but we wouldn’t bet money just yet — there’s some homework left to do before the discovery is validated.

Right now, there’s only the Kepler telescope data to work with. It’s one of the strongest candidates for an exomoon to date (most candidates fail quickly), but not so bulletproof that you’d stake your life on it. The scientists want to collect measurements from the Hubble telescope before they can make an authoritative statement one way or the other. This is probably an alien moon, but you never want to rule out the possibility of another object.

Of course, a bona fide exomoon wouldn’t be shocking. Ask anyone with a passing interest in space and they’ll probably argue that moons are common in other star systems, if just through sheer numbers. Rather, it could represent a big milestone in how humanity studies space. Where the focus so far ha been on spotting the largest objects, this suggests that astronomers might have some success looking for the minutiae of a system. And that’s more important than you think. Earth’s Moon increased the chances for life on its host planet (by stabilizing the rotation and shielding it from asteroids), so it’s conceivable that an exomoon might produce a similar effect.

Via: Phys.org, BBC

Source: ArXiv.org