In the wake of yesterday’s AMD , the era of 8K gaming is suddenly upon us. Sure, it existed before, theoretically. But nobody was really gaming at 8K as you needed a television to do it. Plus, frame rates were pretty borderline, as we recall. All that’s changed now that AMD’s newest GPUs have a DisplayPort 2.1 interface. The previous DisplayPort 1.4a version was limited to a peasant’s refresh rate of 60Hz at 8K. The new version bumps that up to a satisfying 165Hz. And according to AMD, its new GPUs can actually achieve that frame rate in some games at that resolution.
(Photo: University of Waterloo)The twenty-first century might be chock-full of unprecedented privacy violations, but at least we’re safe in our own homes, right? Wrong. For some reason, scientists are working on technology that helps drones “see through walls,” and if previous groundbreaking tech is anything to go by, it’s only a matter of time until it ends up in the wrong hands. A pair of at the University of Waterloo and the University of Illinois have created what they call “Wi-Peep,” a that uses the data in Wi-Fi networks to locate devices behind closed doors. Wi-Peep itself consists of a low-cost ESP8266 Wi-Fi microchip, an ESP32 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth microcontroller, a microSD module, and a voltage regulator.
(Photo: Sikorsky)Resupply missions are vital to the success of nearly any combat scenario. They’re also dangerous, placing drivers and pilots in harm’s way as they navigate the battlefield and perilous airspace. But what if supply vessels could undergo these missions on their own, no human operators required? If the US Army’s most recent autonomous flight experiment is anything to go by, this might occur sooner than we think. Last year, the Army partnered with Sikorsky (a Lockheed Martin subsidiary) and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to retrofit a Black Hawk helicopter with autonomous flight technology. February saw the helicopter complete its without a pilot.
(Image: Rewind AI)Most of us have Googled, referenced, or caught a glimpse of something seemingly inconsequential and later wished that we could remember what it was. When it comes to web browsing, you can at least painstakingly sift through your history—but what about that banner ad you saw, or that mid-Zoom call joke? A new Mac app aims to eliminate this issue. Rewind, an app from an artificial intelligence (AI) startup with the same name, is said to record everything “you’ve seen, said, or heard” so you can look back on it later. The app uses optical character recognition (OCR) to capture text input while simultaneously using automated speech recognition to transcribe verbal communications, whether from the user or from people on the other end of a web call.
Good morning, space nerds. Would you like some space debris with your morning coffee? This week, China launched its Mengtian module, completing its Tiangong space station — and leaving behind yet another twenty-ton piece of free-falling space junk, timed to go right along with breakfast this morning and targeting the Gulf of Mexico. NASA announced that InSight’s days are numbered, as the spacecraft finally succumbs to the Martian dust. But we’ve got updates from Artemis — including news from CAPSTONE and Psyche. We’ll discuss reports of a new and potentially threatening space rock nearly a mile wide. Plus, astronomers report discovering an “extragalactic structure” behind a murky region of space known as the zone of avoidance.
Most smart homes are still surprisingly dumb, but there’s a new technology that could change that. The Matter standard, a collaboration between more than 300 companies, was , and now the first devices are ready to make Matter a reality. The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) that oversees Matter held an event to talk about the lights, thermostats, sensors, and other smart home gadgets that you can now get with Matter support. The biggest issue in setting up smart home devices is that most manufacturers have their own apps, and not all of them connect to the same platforms. For example, you can get light bulbs that will work fine with Alexa, but they might not talk to Google Assistant, SmartThings, or HomeKit.
After almost 20 years since its debut, Gmail is still one of Google’s most popular products for both regular users and businesses. Gmail has improved steadily over the years, but Google hasn’t run out of ideas. Case in point: Google is adding integrated package tracking to Gmail, which looks like a real time-saver for those who are constantly checking in with their shipments. Anyone who’s ordered things online, which has to be almost everyone with a Gmail address, has probably looked up tracking information for those shipments. You often get emails that place tracking just a few clicks away, but it still gets tedious when you have to check it multiple times.
(Photo: Caviar)When you picture the word “luxury,” what do you see? What about “obscene luxury?” For some, the resulting image is of a brand-new iPhone with a Rolex embedded in the back, thanks to a bespoke smartphone customization company that has begun offering that very thing. Caviar, a Russian design atelier known for its over-the-top smartphone modifications, has officially put its latest release up for sale: an iPhone 14 Pro with a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona face on the back. Referred to as for short, the phone’s body has been completely reworked to include eight diamonds, 18-karat gold, and a number of other extravagant touches.
Call of Duty is one of the most popular video game franchises in history — Sony has , as it tries to keep Microsoft from acquiring Activision Blizzard. CoD could almost be considered a genre all by itself. Naturally, the release of a new game in the series is a big deal, but as gamers excitedly tear into their physical copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, they’re finding a nasty surprise. Instead of the game, discs have just 72MB of data and the rest must be downloaded. The disc versions of the game appear to be functionally identical to digital copies.
