The White House has updated federal rules to close a loophole that enabled journals to keep taxpayer-funded research behind a paywall.
This policy guidance will end the current “optional embargo” that allows scientific publishing houses to paywall taxpayer-funded research behind a subscription to the whole journal. These costs add up quickly. For a college or university, even the bare minimum of journal subscriptions can add up to thousands of dollars a year, which is a hard sell on a limited budget. And that’s just the required reading.
The new rule also expands the definition of a “scholarly publication” to include “not only peer-reviewed articles but also book chapters and conference proceedings.” And unlike the previous policy, which covered some 20 federal agencies, this new rule applies to all of them. In short: If we the people paid for the research, you the company don’t get to refuse us access to it.
Open-access journals got a further boost during the COVID-19 pandemic. Image shows the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Credit: NIH
As then-Vice President Biden said in 2016 when he spoke to the American Association for Cancer Research, “Right now, you work for years to come up with a significant breakthrough, and if you do, you get to publish a paper in one of the top journals. For anyone to get access to that publication, they have to pay hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars to subscribe to a single journal. And here’s the kicker — the journal owns the data for a year. The taxpayers fund $5 billion a year in cancer research every year, but once it’s published, nearly all of that taxpayer-funded research sits behind walls. Tell me how this is moving the process along more rapidly.”
Publicly Funded Research Will Now Be Public
The ban may shake up the insular world of biomedical research. And it’s not the first time that a high-level action by the federal government has done so. Myriad Genetics went to the Supreme Court in 2013 over whether you can patent a gene sequence. At the time, the company “owned” the gene sequences for BRCA1 and BRCA2, the two genes most closely associated with breast cancer. The Court’s unanimous decision struck down the patenting of naturally occurring human genes. In so doing, it also allowed academic and corporate labs nationwide to begin their own research on breast cancer prevention and treatment. Similarly, kicking open the paywall door ensures access to precisely the research that already got government funding because it was in the public interest.
While this announcement was something of a surprise, it builds on trends dating back a decade. The growth of preprint servers where authors could publish studies submitted for public review has made research more widely available. There are, or rather were, restrictions on how long journals could hide federally-funded research behind a paywall. This new rule supersedes them all.
Under the new policy, research performed with federal dollars must be made public on the same day it appears in a scientific journal. While research may still be published in paywalled journals, the same work must also be made available for free. Federal agencies should have plans in place to support the initiative within a year.
With the recent prevalence of COVID-19, monkeypox, and polio, many of us have germ control and personal health on the mind. While the spread of these viruses is inherently stressful, for once, there’s good news on the disease-fighting front: a new coating can keep surfaces germ-free for months after being applied.
Scientists at the University of Michigan have developed a durable coating that continuously kills both viruses and bacteria. It’s clear and can be brushed or sprayed onto a variety of surfaces. Though made with hospitals, airports, and other high-traffic areas in mind, the coating could be used to eliminate germs on touch screens, personal computer keyboards, and even cutting boards.
“Rapid” disinfectants like bleach, alcohol, and UV light are conventionally used to kill any viruses or bacteria that might exist on a surface. Though these work quickly, they don’t provide lasting protection against germs; the surface can be re-infected within a matter of minutes. On the other end of the spectrum, certain copper-based alloys make it difficult for bacteria to survive but work far more slowly. The University of Michigan’s coating meets these solutions in the middle by kicking in within a matter of minutes while remaining effective long-term.
(Image: A. Dhyani et al/Matter)
Lab tests proved the coating capable of killing SARS-CoV-2 (the virus associated with COVID-19), E. coli, MRSA, and a number of other common pathogens. The coating continued to kill 99.9 percent of viruses and bacteria for six months (the length of the experiment), during which test surfaces were given a bit of a beating: Raw chicken was placed on the coated cutting board while the coated keyboard and smartphone were repeatedly touched. The scientists even compared coated surfaces with uncoated surfaces that had been cleaned with a Clorox wipe, exposed to UV light for 12 hours, and kept in a freezing environment for 25 hours. There were fewer germs on the coated surface than on the one that underwent an obsessive level of cleaning.
If you’re wondering how such an aggressive substance can possibly be safe for those who touch it, there’s more good news: the antimicrobials that lend the coating its germ-killing capabilities are derived from tea tree oil and cinnamon oil, two nature-derived substances that have long been used for cleaning purposes. The antimicrobials themselves are “generally regarded as safe” by the FDA and can even sometimes be found in food. To function as a coating, the antimicrobials are added to polyurethane, another safe and commonly-used substance. Though the oils in the coating begin to evaporate after about six months, all it takes is a quick swipe with more oil to make the coating effective again.
The 2016 election is almost six years in the past, but the fallout is still top-of-mind for Facebook parent company Meta. Years of legal wrangling over the Cambridge Analytica scandal has put CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the congressional hot seat and forced numerous changes to Facebook’s privacy and security features. One of the most serious cases against Meta appears to be headed for a settlement. The company has entered into a preliminary agreement in San Francisco federal court that would save Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg from testifying.
Facebook exploded in popularity throughout the mid-2000s, eventually becoming the world’s largest social network. With all those users, the site was a wellspring of information during the 2016 election cycle. Revelations that UK political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested data on millions of Facebook users hit the company hard, but the consequences are shaping up to be minimal.
In the heady days of 2016, Facebook allowed third parties deep access to its platform. Cambridge Analytica used that access to collect data on an estimated 50 million users (down from early estimates of 87 million). The firm, which worked with then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign, used the data to target ads and develop profiles of potential voters. It was also accused of promoting racial bias to suppress black voters.
The lawsuit in the Northern District of California alleges that Facebook acted illegally by failing to protect user data. Zuckerberg and co have been reluctant to speak on the matter publicly, save for his 2018 visit to congress. It wasn’t just US-based users who had their data collected by Cambridge Analytica, but privacy regulators and legislatures in other countries haven’t seen even that much of Zuckerberg.
The settlement, the details of which are still sealed, will save Zuckerberg and Sandberg from giving hours of sworn testimony about the company’s operations. Even if they were forced to give testimony, they would likely claim no knowledge that Facebook’s tools were being used to exfiltrate a mountain of data on Facebook users.
The settlement has been agreed to in principle, and both Meta and the state have asked for a 60-day pause in the case to finalize the details. So, later this year, we’ll probably hear about what it took to make the case go away. Hopefully, the financial penalty is more than the paltry £500,000 UK fine. Cambridge Analytica faced the brunt of the fallout. It was shuttered in 2018, but several firms related to Cambridge Analytica still exist.
French tax authorities are using AI to detect and tax homeowners’ dirty little secret: swimming pools.
Using an algorithm developed by Google and technology consulting firm Capgemini, France’s Ministry of Economy and Finance has begun inspecting aerial images of residential lots and taxing homeowners accordingly. Add-ons like swimming pools, verandas, and home extensions all have the potential to increase the value of a property, resulting in increased taxes. Despite the fact that such add-ons are required to be reported within 90 days of completion, however, most aren’t. Some homeowners simply forget in the chaos of modifying their homes; others, it can safely be assumed, might want to avoid footing a larger tax bill.
Whether by accident or on purpose, these tax avoidances are no longer in the hands of individual homeowners. The Google-Capgemini AI combs aerial photographs (likely from Google Earth) and compares observations with land registry databases to capture previously undisclosed add-ons. Since it began experimenting with the algorithm about a year ago, the ministry has found 20,356 pools—and that’s only in a few select areas of the country.
(Photo: Power Trip/Unsplash)
The algorithm isn’t perfect. According to officials who spoke with French newspaper Le Parisien, the Google-Capgemini AI sometimes snags small, inconsequential structures like dog houses or children’s playhouses. Earlier this year the algorithm had an abysmal (at least for the authorities) 30 percent error rate, often mistaking reflective solar panels for swimming pools and missing add-ons that happened to be partly hidden by shadow. It’s since improved and has entered a “second stage of research.” The ministry says the algorithm will soon be able to detect whether a property is empty and therefore not being taxed.
The practice echoes US insurance companies’ relatively new use of drones to observe insured parties’ homes. Last year homeowners began receiving letters from their insurance companies indicating that their roofs, which had been photographed by drone, were outdated and needed to be replaced if coverage were to continue. Some insurance companies even used the information gathered to drop homeowners entirely. Since then, providers have been known to spy on insured parties to make sure they don’t have hot tubs or pools (which raise a homeowner’s premium) in their backyards.
France will soon use the Google-Capgemini AI in all areas of the country, bringing in an extra €40 million in new taxes per year.
Logitech announced several weeks ago that it was betting on the future of cloud gaming with a new handheld that supports Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce Now. While Logitech gave the impression the device was still in the early stages, you won’t have to wait to get a peek — the Logitech G Gaming Handheld has leaked in all its glory. And it seems to have less of a cloud focus than expected.
The leaked images come courtesy of @evleaks on Twitter. He posted the images of the game machine on Monday evening, and Logitech filed a DMCA takedown just a few hours later. You can’t erase anything from the internet, though. That’s as good as confirming the pics are legitimate, so this is probably very close to the hardware Logitech will eventually release.
The handheld looks similar to a Nintendo Switch with a large screen in the middle with buttons pushed to the left and right edges. Like the Switch Lite, the controllers don’t appear to detach from the screen, but the shape of the chassis is molded to be more comfortable in the hands. The control layout is typical for a modern game controller. There are two thumbsticks, a d-pad, shoulder buttons, triggers, and an ABXY button cluster. There are also home and Logitech G buttons — it’s unclear what the latter will do. There are a few other miscellaneous buttons around the periphery
Logitech didn’t provide any hardware or software details at the time of the announcement, but the leaked images tell us several important things. The Play Store is featured prominently on the screen, which all but confirms this device will be running a certified build of Android. That means you’ll be able to run mobile games alongside cloud titles on GeForce Now and Xbox, both of which are also visible. There are even Chrome and YouTube icons on the screen. If you miss the Nvidia Shield Handheld, the Logitech G Gaming Handheld looks like its spiritual successor.
There are still some things we can’t ascertain from the leaked images, and the price is right at the top of the list. The inclusion of the Play Store suggests the hardware could be more powerful than it would otherwise need to be if it was only a terminal for cloud-rendered games. At the same time, Google certification requires OEMs to support devices with software updates, which could make a potentially high price tag easier to swallow. While Logitech called out Xbox and GeForce Now in its announcement, the inclusion of the Play Store should provide access to Stadia and even Amazon Luna, though perhaps they won’t be as well-optimized for the hardware. We’ll find out later this year when the device is expected to launch.
The skyrocketing value of cryptocurrency seemed unstoppable in early 2022, fueled in no small part by the massive interest in NFTs. These “non-fungible tokens” attracted mainstream interest, getting many people to purchase crypto for the first time. Then, the crash came. According to data from crypto tracker DappRadar, trading volumes on the most popular NFT marketplace have dropped by a staggering 99 percent in the intervening months.
Bitcoin is seen as a bellwether for cryptocurrency as a whole, and the original digital cash has dropped in value by more than half since the start of 2022. A single Bitcoin was valued at more than $60,000 in late 2021, and now it struggles to remain above $20,000. Ethereum, which is often used to buy and sell NFTs, has seen a similarly precipitous drop from almost $5,000 per ETH to about $1,500 at the end of August.
The OpenSea marketplace was confidently riding the crypto wave as celebrities were all over TV and the internet showing off their Bored Apes. On May 1, OpenSea recorded $2.7 billion in NFT transactions, but this past Sunday, it managed just $9.34 million, a negligible fragment of the trading volume from just a few months ago.
Even the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which has been the most popular NFT project over the past year, has seen its fortunes slide. The floor piece of the NFT collection has dropped 53 percent since spring, landing at 72.4 ether (about $110,000).
ETH price throughout 2022.
NFTs gained traction because of the artificial scarcity ingrained in the tokens. While most NFTs are just low-resolution JPEGs, the ability to “own” and trade them as an asset attracted massive attention. People didn’t want to miss out and were spending millions of dollars in crypto to obtain their most sought-after JPEGs — the fact you can simply right-click and copy most NFTs didn’t even seem to bother people.
OpenSea tells Fortune that it disputes DappRadar’s methodology, which includes the dollar value of crypto. When you ignore the value of cryptocurrency and look just at ETH volume as OpenSea prefers, trading has fallen a less alarming 62 percent. Further, OpeSea says the 99 percent drop compares the site’s all-time high trading volume with one of its lowest this past Sunday. Although I would point out, that’s generally how comparisons work, and Sunday isn’t much of an outlier. Even in the middle of the week, trading volume is under $20 million. Still, OpenSea says it expects volatility in NFTs and cryptocurrency.
Current NFTs don’t do much, but many have pegged these digital assets as a vital part of the metaverse pushed by Mark Zuckerberg and others. Real progress in the development of virtual spaces could pump up interest (and thus prices) again, but that could take years, and the NFT fad could be long dead by then.
Seasonal droughts have been with us forever. But, especially in the western US, they are of increasing duration and severity. Unfortunately, that trend is expected to continue. The result is less water that’s available for people to use—which means higher prices and, increasingly, various forms of rationing. Commercial-scale users have long had tools for monitoring their usage and allowing them to make smart reductions. Until recently, homeowners have mostly only had vague guidelines like “take shorter showers, water less often, get rid of lawns that need irrigation,” and so on.
Flume has introduced a slick tool that will allow most homeowners to get a precise, real-time handle on their water usage. The Flume 2 ($199 from Flume) is a small transmitting meter that ties to your current utility meter. It’s based on your specific meter; you upload a photo to the company’s site and it identifies the meter. Once calibrated, the Flume 2 measures the spinning disk in your utility water meter and sends its output to a plug-in bridge that can be placed anywhere in your house. The bridge connects to Wi-Fi, and ties into both the Flume website and a mobile app.
The Flume system includes both a sensor unit that attaches to your water meter and a base unit that you place within Wi-Fi range.
Installing a Flume 2
Once you’ve verified that your meter is compatible and you’ve received your Flume, installation is pretty simple. If you can reach around your meter, you simply use the rubber straps on your Flume to attach it. If your meter is against a wall or the side of a box, Flume provides additional straps you can use to achieve the same result by attaching it to the water pipe itself.
We didn’t need them, but Flume even provides a set of gloves if you don’t want to get your hands dirty when attaching it to your water meter.
In case you don’t have a tool that you can use to open your water meter cover, Flume provides one of those as well (for “keyed” water meter covers). Then you simply need to plug the small base unit into an outlet in an area that has access to your Wi-Fi. Amazingly, Flume says the radio between the meter and the base unit can work at up to 1,000 feet. Ours certainly works fine with the base unit in our basement about 150 feet from our water meter. Flume doesn’t seem to worry about battery life, so I’m guessing it draws some power from the spinning meter wheel it uses to measure usage. Some water utilities seem to worry about whether that affects meter readings (to their detriment), but our water utility, CalWater, actually sold us ours for a discount as part of a promotion, so it doesn’t seem to bother them.
Using the Flume App
Installing and setting up Flume’s app is straightforward. I was a bit taken aback when it required a name and address. I assume that is to help it provide data relevant to your specific area and water utility. In any case, if you’re worried about sharing personal data, it didn’t seem to care whether you made something up.
The main screen is a dashboard that shows whether it has detected any leaks, your water usage so far today, your current usage, your usage over the last few hours — by hour — along with some charts tracking your monthly usage so far. Even that screen is enough for basic monitoring, and even for noticing the flow rate when you turn a faucet or hose on or off.
Flume lets you compare day-to-day usage based on learned categories like Indoor and Outdoor
But you can also dig a lot deeper. The detail screen lets you see your water usage by hour, day, week, month, and year. Notifications allow you to customize not only the default leak detection setting, but to create rules for receiving custom notifications. These are fairly flexible in letting you set amounts and lengths of time, but they don’t let you activate rules based on time of day.
For example, we run our sprinklers at 5 AM twice a week (per our current drought guidelines). That triggers the “high-water-usage” notification that we have set in case someone leaves something running. It’d be great to tell Flume to ignore water running at 5 AM. Hopefully, this can be added. One interesting feature is that if you activate “Away Mode,” leak alerts will be texted to an emergency contact. We have more than one friend who has accidentally flooded their house while on vacation, and for whom this feature would have spared a lot of expense.
Machine Learning Puts the ‘Smart’ in Flume’s Smart Water Meter
Like the Sense electric meter that we’ve reviewed previously, Flume uses machine learning to try to identify different categories of water use, including indoor, outdoor, shower, dishwasher, toilets, and clothes washer. We’ve only had ours for a couple of months, but it has successfully identified our irrigation use as outdoors, as well as our dishwasher usage and some of our shower usage. Unlike with the Sense, I haven’t found a way to help it learn by manually tagging known water uses as they occur. If you don’t want it sorting through your water data, you can turn this feature off. Personally, I’m fine sharing it with Flume, unless they become another division of Amazon or Google.
Flume’s mobile app for iOS and for Android is an easy way to monitor your water usage, if you don’t want to navigate to their website.
Flume is going through some teething pains with rolling out these features. Its website says that the ML-based “Details+” are only available to Insight subscribers. I seem to have a permanent subscription (presumably it came with my Flume 2), but the “Buy It” page isn’t there. It’s also a bit hard to tell which kinds of data I can see in the app are tied to the subscription. That’s another area where Flume could help by making the situation clearer.
Should You Buy a Flume 2?
The Flume meter is compatible with most current meters, but not all. For example, the company told me that it works with all models of Badger meters except for the Ultrasonic model with a built-in cellular interface. Some utilities are installing those for existing customers so that they don’t have to have people in trucks drive around to read the current short-range meters. Badger has a web portal that does provide some water usage information, but it only sends data once or a few times a day to save cellular bandwidth and perhaps extend battery life. As a result, you can’t use it as a real-time monitoring tool. So if you have a meter that works with Flume, it’s an excellent choice.
At the retail price of $200, the Flume 2 is a bit of a niche product, best suited for big water users, those who live with drought restrictions, and water nerds. In our family’s case, the $50 promotion from our water company made it a no-brainer (especially since we have plenty of drought restrictions).
If you don’t want to spend the money or bother with installing a meter add-on, then some water utilities are moving to Badger cellular-enabled smart meters. These transmit water usage each day, and you can view that data on its version of a personal website. In the case of CalWater, that’s eyeonwater.com. However, it is missing the most unique version of Flume — real-time data. You can learn what happened yesterday, but not what is happening now. I assume that is because it uses a cellular connection to send data to the cloud — which is expensive — compared with the Flume, which piggybacks on your Wi-Fi. These can be read remotely but only at a limited distance, so trucks still have to drive by each house.
M74 shines at its brightest in this combined optical/mid-infrared image, featuring data from both the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The dust threaded through the arms of the galaxy is coloured red, and the young stars throughout the arms and the nuclear core are picked out in blue, by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument – MIRI. Meanwhile, the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys adds depth: the glow of the heavier, older stars towards the galaxy’s centre are primarily yellow, combined with the blue in this image to make a spooky green glow. The red bubbles of star formation are also visible in Hubble’s optical wavelengths. Scientists combine data from telescopes operating across the electromagnetic spectrum to truly understand astronomical objects. In this way, data from Hubble and Webb compliment each other to provide a comprehensive view of the spectacular M74 galaxy. Links Image A Image C
The James Webb Space Telescope is changing the way we see the universe. The instrument’s cutting-edge optics and ultra-sensitive infrared imager can see even more detail than the aging Hubble Space Telescope, and astronomers recently turned it toward an object known as M74, or more stylishly, the Phantom Galaxy. This spiral galaxy was one of Hubble’s most famous shots, and now we’re seeing it in a whole new light.
The Phantom Galaxy is about 32 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces. It’s one of a sub-type of spiral galaxies known as a “Grand Design Spiral” because the whirlpool-like arms extending from the core are bright and well-defined. It’s also directly facing Earth, which makes it a favorite target for astronomers.
Following its launch in late 2021 and subsequent commissioning in space, time on the James Webb Space Telescope has been in high demand. The PHANGS (Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS) survey has used various observatories to study star formation, and now it has new observations of the Phantom Galaxy with the Webb Telescope. The team used Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) instrument to peer right into the heart of this stunning spiral.
In the iconic Hubble images, the galaxy is studded with bright pink dots. These are actually enormous clouds of hydrogen gas, which are known as HII regions. They glow due to the ultraviolet radiation from newly forming, super-hot stars. Hubble operates in the visible and ultraviolet wavelengths, and now Webb adds the infrared, providing an almost ghostly structural element to the Phantom Galaxy.
New images of the Phantom Galaxy, M74, showcase the power of space observatories working together in multiple wavelengths.
The European Space Agency (ESA) notes that Webb is able to detect the delicate filaments of gas weaving through the spiral arms, which were not visible with Hubble. The relative lack of gas in the core of the galaxy allowed Webb to capture an unobscured image of a nuclear star cluster at the galaxy’s center. Above, you can see how Hubble and Webb data can be combined to provide a more complete image of M74.
The James Webb Space Telescope is so sensitive in the infrared that it could never operate correctly in low-Earth orbit like Hubble. That’s why it had to jet all the way out to the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point, more than a million miles away. There, it can remain nice and cool as it scans the universe to return amazing images like the new Phantom Galaxy snapshots. Webb still has about 20 years of operation ahead of it — this is only the beginning.
Android apps run on Android-based devices, obviously, but Google wants to connect apps to a wide range of platforms. Google has announced new “multi-device experiences” are coming to Android, and it’s handed developers a new SDK to make it happen. It has tools to simplify device discovery, connection, and authentication, allowing apps on your phone to reach out beyond the Android world. At least, that’s the goal. To start, cross-device apps will focus on linking multiple Android devices together to enable collaboration and sharing in new ways.
Google first talked about the Cross Device SDK at Google I/O this past May, but it wasn’t one of the company’s keynote announcements. The SDK has only just become available for download. It’s more important for developers right now as they’re the ones who will have to take these new tools and create the experiences Google has envisioned.
The SDK uses essentially every wireless technology to negotiate connections, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ultra-wideband. Developers don’t have to worry about the intricacies of how two different devices talk — the SDK does all the heavy lifting. It can share current app states, start apps on a secondary device, and hand off tasks between the devices.
Google provides a few examples of how cross-device connections could improve apps. Imagine you’re ordering food at a restaurant that uses mobile apps instead of paper menus. An app developed with the Cross Device SDK could link your party’s phones, allowing everyone to add to an order without passing a single phone around the table. It could also make content on the devices that belong to you easier to access. The new SDK could lead to apps that share location and map data seamlessly between your Android phone, tablet, and an in-vehicle navigation system. You could also start reading an article on your phone, and then pick up your tablet to continue where you left off instantly.
Developers can start tinkering with all these features today, but the SDK is only available as a preview. The final version won’t be available until later, and Google isn’t providing a specific timeline. Also unknown is when the Cross Device SDK will support non-Android systems. Google says it intends to enable device connections to Windows and iOS, but that’s probably more of an aspirational goal. We’ll have to see if the Android-to-Android functionality works the way Google hopes, and whether developers embrace it.
The 2010s were a period of stagnating mobile development, but smartphones are getting exciting again, thanks in no small part to Samsung’s exploration of foldable form factors. Phones that fold in half might not be the end of mobile innovation for the South Korean technology giant, though. A new patent application teases a phone with two screens, but unlike the dual-screen Microsoft Duo, this one would have a secondary transparent display on the back.
Samsung filed the patent with WIPO (World Intellectual Property Office) in January of this year, and it was just published late last week. It describes a flat, non-folding phone that looks like any other from the front, but the party is around back in the form of a secondary screen covering almost the entire rear panel.
The patent doesn’t mean Samsung is going to release a phone with an invisible secondary screen any time soon — or at all. It just means that Samsung’s engineers have developed the basic concept, and this is how they believe it could be implemented.
This would not be the first device with pixels on the back. Who can forget the regrettable Yota Phone with its rear e-paper screen? ZTE also embedded an OLED in the rear glass panel of the Nubia X several years ago. More recently, Xiaomi released the Mi 11 Ultra with a tiny screen on the back next to the camera module, allowing for selfie snaps with the superior main camera array. Samsung itself offers similar functionality in its foldables, which can display the viewfinder on the exterior screen.
All these devices have a distinct, totally visible screen on the back, but Samsung’s patent proposes something that would be invisible when not in use. With the (presumably OLED) matrix embedded in the back of the phone, it could display system controls, notifications, pop-up windows, camera viewfinders, and anything else without taking over the entire space.
Whether or not people want an invisible rear-facing screen is another matter entirely. While the selfie angle has some demonstrable support, the feature may end up as little more than an expensive gimmick. Of course, Samsung has been known to try the occasional gimmick. The original Galaxy Note seemed strange at the time, as did the original Galaxy Fold. Now, Samsung sees foldables as the future.
Conceptual illustration of a solar canal. (Image: Turlock Irrigation District)
When it comes to firsts, California’s on a roll. Last month the state became the first to budget in its own insulin manufacturing, and last week California legislators made a historic vote to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars after 2035. Though less flashy, the state recently claimed yet another first by planning to install solar panels over its canals.
California is home to about 4,000 miles of canals. For decades these complex networks have delivered more than 600 million gallons of water per day to agricultural areas and to residents throughout the state. At the same time, California’s water supply has dwindled. Rising temperatures, groundwater depletion, and decreased precipitation have resulted in an unprecedented, years-long drought, bringing the state’s reservoir levels down to the lowest they’ve been in a century. This has prompted legislators, researchers, and environmental activists to seek out ways to protect California’s water supply.
Conceptual illustration of a solar canal. (Image: Turlock Irrigation District)
The 8,500 feet of solar panels installed over central California’s Turlock Irrigation District (TID) will have two purposes: to save water and to generate clean energy. According to a study conducted by the University of California, Merced in 2021, these so-called “solar canals” will save more than 65 billion gallons of water per year by preventing the water from evaporating in the sunlight. They’ll also generate 13 gigawatts of energy per year, matching about a sixth of California’s current solar capacity.
These 13 gigawatts would help the state meet key clean electricity goals. Last year, the state’s air, energy, and public utility agencies announced a plan to gradually make California’s energy grid carbon-free. The plan involves building at least six gigawatts of new renewable and storage resources annually to make 60 percent of the state’s energy sources carbon-free by 2030 and 100 percent carbon-free by 2045. Once the solar panels are installed over the canals, the state will have exceeded its goal for 2022.
The University of California’s study also suggests that the solar panels’ shade will help temper aquatic weed growth within the canals. Aside from being a bit of an eyesore (and sometimes producing a nasty odor), aquatic weeds consume water that would otherwise eventually reach a predetermined destination. When they’re particularly prolific, canal weeds can even inhibit water flow.
Turlock Irrigation District, central California’s water and energy utility organization, has already begun developing prototypes of the solar canal covers in the Central Valley. All 8,500 feet are expected to be completed by late 2023.
Just as the prophecy, er, press release foretold, AMD announced its first Zen 4 CPUs at a media event last night. The company will be bringing four Zen 4 CPUs to market initially: the 7950X, 7900X, 7700X, and the 7600X. This covers a lot of ground for AMD as far as prices go, with the least expensive (7600X) going for $299 and the most expensive (7950X) hitting $699. The 7900X will sell for $549, and the 770X will sell for $399. Overall these prices are the same as those for the Zen 3 launch. This shows AMD is looking to be aggressive with Intel this time around by not raising prices at all. The initial batch of CPUs will go on sale on Sept. 27.
The brief livestream didn’t include a ton of new information, but AMD did release some “final” numbers for its Zen 4 architecture. Dr. Su said they originally had hoped to deliver an 8-10 percent uplift in IPC for Zen 4. However, as they’ve been optimizing it ahead of launch that number is now 13 percent. She also said AMD has been able to increase the maximum frequency to 5.7GHz at the “top of the stack.” That clock speed increase along with the IPC uplift allows for a 29 percent increase in single-core performance, at least on the Ryzen 9 7950X.
The doctor focused a lot on the flagship CPU at the event; the Ryzen 9 7950X. This is the company’s 16-thread, 32-core CPU. She noted it’s packing 80MB of L2/L3 cache, with a 170W TDP. This is quite an increase from Zen 3’s 105W maximum TDP. She displayed a chart showing the new chip dominating the older Ryzen 9 5950X in both 1080p gaming and content creation. In gaming, it was between six and 35 percent faster depending on the game measured. She said on average it’s 15 percent faster in gaming than the 5950X thanks to its single-core IPC uplift.
For content creation, it destroyed the Zen 3 CPU by 30 to 48 percent. She said it will average a performance increase of 40 percent for workloads such as rendering. She also compared it to the Core i9-12900K, showing it was faster than Intel’s flagship CPU in both gaming and content creation. In one test, V-ray, it was 62 percent faster than Alder Lake, with 47 percent better performance-per-watt, according to Dr. Su.
From there she discussed the rest of the stack, showing that all four Zen 4 CPUs were faster than the Core i9-12900K in single-core performance in Geekbench. To demonstrate this she showed an F1 2022 benchmark running on both the Core i9-12900k, and the “mainstream” Ryzen 7 7600X. Once it finished, the much less expensive Zen 4 CPU was faster than Intel’s flagship by 11 percent.
Next, Mark Papermaster delivered some more metrics on Zen 4’s advancements. Discussing the Ryzen 9 7950X, he said it can deliver the same performance as the 5950X with 62 percent less power. When compared with the 7nm Ryzen 5000 line in general, he said it offers 49 percent more performance at the same power consumption. He also mentioned the gains it has made across the three power envelopes: 65W, 105W, and 170W. The lion’s share of the gains is at the lower power levels, with the company reaching 35 and 37 percent gains on the high end. He went on to claim its die area is half the size of Alder Lake’s, while still being 47 percent more efficient.
Next, David McAfee came on stage to discuss the new AM5 platform. First, he noted it will have two classes of motherboards; X670 and B650. Both classes will offer standard and extreme versions. As an incentive for early adopters, the X670 boards will be available one month ahead of the less-expensive B-series boards. One big difference on the X-series boards is both will offer PCIe 5.0 for storage, but only the extreme boards will offer that connection for the GPU. We should note that we doubt Nvidia will make its next-gen GPUs PCIe 5.0, but AMD sure seems like it’s going to. Will that make a difference? We seriously doubt it. Still, it’s future-proofing.
Possibly most surprising was his announcement that the B-Series Extreme boards will also offer PCIe 5.0 graphics and storage. He then put an end to any rumors that AMD might support DDR4 memory. It will be DDR5 only, and will also support EXPO, or Extended Profiles for Overclocking. This was first leaked way back in April. It’s similar to Intel’s XMP as it enables “one-click” overclocking, which he says is good for up to an 11 percent boost in 1080p performance, as well as lower latency. He said they will be coming out of the gate with DDR5 6400 kits available from various partners such as Corsair. Finally, he said the AM5 motherboard market will be priced as low as $125 and will be guaranteed to be compatible until at least 2025. That’s not quite as long as AM4’s six-year lifecycle, but it’s certainly better than Intel’s two-CPUs-per-new-socket situation.
The event ended with Dr. Su finally showing off the pricing listed above, along with clock speeds, cache sizes, and TDP. She pulled a “one more thing” by showing a glimpse of an RDNA 3 GPU, just to tease the crowd. Unfortunately, all she showed was it running Lies of P from the developer Neowiz. She showed the game running smoothly at 4K on an unnamed GPU along with the Ryzen 9 7950X CPU. Sadly there was no frame counter, so it was a bit of a letdown without any metrics.
Overall there’s nothing too surprising in this announcement as it had all previously been leaked for the most part. Still, Zen 4 seems like it will be quite a capable platform. All the comparisons to Alder Lake were for naught though, as it will be going up against Intel’s Raptor Lake. We’re still not sure when that will launch, but that will be quite the matchup when it does happen.
Artemis 1 is a test flight, a vanguard of NASA’s Artemis mission to put boots on lunar soil within the 2020s. The rocket was scheduled to lift off at 8:33 AM EDT (12:33 GMT) from Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. However, mission controllers scrubbed the Artemis launch at T-40 minutes.
Safety checks before launch halted the countdown. “The launch director called a scrub because of an engine bleed that couldn’t be stopped,” Artemis launch control explained. “Engineers are gathering data about this engine and the bleed that didn’t work out. The hydrogen bleed was a goal of the previous wet dress rehearsal that didn’t happen due to a hydrogen leak, so engineers are focused on gathering as much data as they can.”
Because the SLS didn’t take off, NASA will now use one of the mission’s backup launch dates: this Friday, Sept. 2 at 12:48 PM EDT, or perhaps next Monday, Sept. 5. At the time of publication, the agency hasn’t given a new launch date.
“We don’t launch until it’s right,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a briefing after the scrub. “They’ve got a problem with the gases going on the engine bleed on one engine. You can’t go. There are certain guidelines. And I think it’s just illustrative that this is a very complicated machine, a very complicated system, and all those things have to work. You don’t want to light the candle until it’s ready to go.”
Stress Test
On Saturday, NASA detected five lightning strikes at Pad 39B, but the agency is confident that none of the strikes affected the SLS rocket itself. Instead, all five hit the launchpad’s lightning protection system — a system of towers and ‘catenary wires’ that can divert and safely ground out lightning strikes. NASA Artemis 1 senior test director Jeff Spaulding said none of the strikes represented a threat to the launch in a Sunday briefing.
Once in lunar orbit, the Orion capsule will remain in lunar orbit for 42 days. That’s twice as long as it will orbit with humans on board. It is a stress test, and NASA officials remain circumspect.
“In all of our excitement, I want to remind people this is a test flight,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. “We’re going to stress this thing in a way that we would never do with humans on board. And so I just want to bring everybody back to reality.”
Clocking in at 8.8 million pounds of thrust, the SLS rocket is more powerful than NASA’s Saturn V super-heavy lift vehicle. Atop the rocket sits the Orion space capsule, fully 30 percent larger than its Apollo ancestor.
Instead of human passengers, for Artemis 1 the Orion capsule is carrying three crash test dummies rocket scientists. Two are female mannequin torsos, named Helga and Zohar. Most crash test dummies are male-bodied, so most safety gear is sized for men. Unfortunately, that means that women are disproportionately likely to be injured during a crash or accident. Helga and Zohar are testing out safety gear and a shiny new radiation protection vest, all sized for women. The third is a mannequin named Commander Moonikin Campos, who will helm the mission.
NASA’s SLS: Launching Real Soon Now
NASA’s Space Launch System is sometimes “affectionately” called the Senate Launch System. That’s because the SLS is also a de facto jobs program, bringing tens of thousands of solid jobs to “space states,” mostly in Alabama. But in light of the SLS’s ever-expanding cost, along with the current and future launch capabilities of private space companies like Blue Origin, RocketLab, and SpaceX — why does the SLS program still exist at all?
NASA’s Artemis I mission is the first integrated test of the agency’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, SLS rocket, and supporting ground systems. Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
Earlier this year, Paul Martin, NASA’s inspector general, spoke before Congress. Martin said that his office had calculated the cost for the first three flights of the SLS to be $4.1 billion each — a price tag the inspector general said was “unsustainable.” NASA and Boeing both pushed back on that analysis, on grounds that it included a long list of unrelated expenses. But an independent analyst calculated that the SLS would cost between $876 million and $2 billion per launch, depending on how one tallies up the total.
Put bluntly, these are all huge numbers. Meanwhile, SpaceX can put a Falcon Heavy rocket in low-earth orbit for around $100 million per launch. And at the same time, NASA’s whole goal is to be “one of many” entities with a presence in LEO and, eventually, lunar orbit. The agency’s Commercial Crew and Commercial Cargo programs are attempts to ensure that SpaceX and other private launch companies create a robust commercial ecosystem in space. In Martin’s words, “relying on such an expensive, single-use rocket system will, in our judgment, inhibit if not derail NASA’s ability to sustain its long-term human exploration goals to the moon and Mars.”
According to a NASA review, the SLS supports about 25,000 jobs nationwide, with a total economic impact of $4.7 billion.
It feels like just yesterday we were covering the Steam Deck’s announcement and eventual release. Despite the console’s success since, Valve doesn’t appear interested in resting on its laurels. A new booklet from the distributor strongly implies a new version of the Steam Deck might someday hit virtual shelves.
Valve recently partnered with Komodo to bring the Steam Deck to four new regions: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Steam itself hasn’t historically been popular or easily accessible in these areas, so in anticipation of the Steam Deck’s introduction, Valve wrote a colorful booklet to explain its company’s philosophy and show off its console’s features. The unnamed 50-page booklet dives into Valve’s history, the process by which it developed the Steam Deck, and a few of its most popular titles—as well as its new-ish console’s future.
On a page titled “The Future: more Steam Decks, more SteamOS,” the booklet explicitly calls the Steam Deck “ a multi-generational product line.” Later on, the page implores readers to share what they’d like to see in a future version of the console. “We will learn from the Steam community about new uses for our hardware that we haven’t thought of yet, and we will build new versions to be even more open and capable than the first version of Steam Deck has been,” the English version of the booklet reads.
(Photo: Valve)
The same page confirms that the evolution of SteamOS is ongoing, with new features and improved game compatibility to come. This will include a generic version of the SteamOS installer, which will allow users to enjoy the Steam Deck’s operating system on PC without the need for third-party intervention. Developers will also use the compatibility work that went into the Steam Deck to make Steam gaming possible on other platforms, like Google’s ChromeOS.
It might be a bit tough for some people to get excited about the Steam Deck’s second iteration, given the first is still relatively challenging to obtain. Though Valve has certainly exceeded its original fulfillment obligations—many buyers have gotten their units a fiscal quarter or two earlier than promised, and new buyers need “only” wait one quarter to receive their consoles—three months is still a hefty wait time. After all, the Steam Deck isn’t something you can just pick up at the store, and based on Valve’s previous hardware releases, this is unlikely to ever be the case.
Nvidia announced the results from its second fiscal quarter this week. Though it was a rough period for team green financially, CEO Jensen Huang noted things will turn around soon as it prepares to launch its next-gen architecture. Huang teased a big announcement by saying he’ll have some exciting news at GTC in September, where he will be delivering the keynote address. It’s widely anticipated that he will reveal the RTX 4090 at the conference.
He summarized the upcoming announcement by saying, “I look forward to next month’s GTC conference, where we will share new advances in RTX, as well as breakthroughs in AI and the metaverse, the next evolution of the internet.” Translation: Huang will probably reveal at least the RTX 4090. The reason we know that is he said the next-generation GPUs will be launched with Ampere still in the channel. According to TechSpot on the earnings call, he said, “Ampere is the most popular GPU we’ve ever created. And it remains the best GPUs [sic] in the world, and it will be very successful for some time. However, we do have exciting new next-generation coming and it’s going to be layered on top of that.”
If you think these prices are good, just wait a few more weeks.
“Layered on top” is the operative phrase here. That implies Nvidia will likely only be announcing the flagship GPU at the conference, as that won’t endanger sales of existing RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 cards. Another hint that the Lovelace is imminent is he says Nvidia will be clearing out the channel to make way for new GPUs. Once again, Huang stated, “We’ve reduced sell-in to let channel inventory correct and we’ve implemented programs with our partners to price position the products in the channel in preparation for our next generation.”
Overall, Nvidia had a forgettable second quarter. The cryptocurrency crash is hitting the company’s bottom line hard. Gaming revenue for the quarter declined 33 percent year-on-year, and 44 percent from last quarter. Huang blamed “supply chain transitions in a challenging macro environment” for the company’s 2nd quarter woes. At the same time, it’s doing gangbusters business in the data center, which is helping to offset its losses in gaming. Overall data center revenue increased 61 percent year-over-year. It also increased its revenue in the automotive sector by 59 percent from just the last quarter.
GTC takes place from Sept. 19 to 22, with Huang delivering the keynote on the 20th at 8 AM PST. Like previous keynotes at this conference, it will include a lot of discussion about AI, data center, and so forth. However, it would not be a surprise if he pulls a “one more thing” at the very end to show off the RTX 4090. It’s also possible it will be unveiled at a separate event focused on gaming during the conference. Also if the announcement does happen, it will put to bed the previous rumors about possible delays for the RTX 40-series due to GPU oversupply. However, it is still possible the mainstream cards (RTX 4070, 4060) might not arrive until next year sometime. We can see Nvidia using CES in January to announce the midrange Lovelace GPUs. Maybe by then, the existing stock will be depleted.
This is an illustration (artist’s impression) showing what the exoplanet WASP-39 b could look like, based on current understanding of the planet. WASP-39 b is a hot, puffy gas giant planet with a mass 0.28 times that of Jupiter (0.94 times that of Saturn) and a diameter 1.3 times that of Jupiter, orbiting just 0.0486 astronomical units (4 520 000 miles) from its host star. The star, WASP-39, is fractionally smaller and less massive than the Sun. Because it is so close to its star, WASP-39 b is very hot and is likely to be tidally locked, meaning that one side faces the star at all times. Data collected by Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) show unambiguous evidence for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, while previous observations from Hubble, Spitzer, and other telescopes indicate the presence of water vapour, sodium, and potassium, as well. The planet probably has clouds and some form of weather, but may not have atmospheric bands like those of Jupiter and Saturn. This illustration is based on indirect transit observations from Webb as well as other space and ground-based telescopes. Webb has not captured a direct image of this planet.NIRSpec was built for the European Space Agency (ESA) by a consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defence and Space (ADS) with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre providing its detector and micro-shutter subsystems.
The James Webb Space Telescope is wasting no time exploring the universe, and it’s not just looking at galaxies and stars — exoplanets are also on the menu. The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced the first-ever confirmed detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. The planet, known as WASP-39 b, is nothing like Earth, but this is still a major step forward in the study of alien worlds.
WASP-39 b is situated about 700 light years away from Earth, and it orbits very close to its host star. It’s one of a class of exoplanets called “hot Jupiters.” This one is even larger than Jupiter, though, and it reaches temperatures of 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit (900 degrees Celsius). It was discovered using the transit method, which requires a planet to pass in front of its host star from our perspective on Earth. This is the most common way of spotting exoplanets, and it also offers the tantalizing opportunity to probe their atmospheres.
When light from the star WASP-39 (also known as Malmok) passes through the exoplanet’s expansive atmosphere, some wavelengths of light are filtered out. By analyzing that light, we can identify some of the atmospheric components. However, you need a highly sensitive telescope to do that — something like the Webb Telescope and its Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument.
The NIRSpec absorbance spectrum of WASP-39 b shows a small “hit” between 4.1 and 4.6 microns, a telltale sign of carbon dioxide. The ESA calls this “the first clear, detailed, indisputable evidence for carbon dioxide ever detected in a planet outside the Solar System.” No other astronomical instrument is capable of differentiating so many colors of light between 3 and 5.5 microns, which is considered essential for identifying water, methane, and carbon dioxide. The presence and ratio of these molecules are crucial to understanding the processes — biological or chemical — on exoplanets.
A transmission spectrum of the hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-39 b, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on July 10, 2022, reveals the first definitive evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the Solar System.
Carbon dioxide can be an important signal that expands our understanding of a planet’s origins. Measurements of carbon dioxide can also help determine how much of a planet is solid versus gas. That could tell astronomers which super-Earths are rocky like our own planet, and which are small gas giants like Neptune.
The James Webb Space Telescope launched in late 2021 after more than a decade of development hell. It’s all paying off, though. The spacecraft has performed perfectly since launch, and it is already making major discoveries. NASA believes Webb could continue operating for up to 20 years, so there’s a lot of time to take a peek at other exoplanets like TOI-1452 b.
