Swedish car manufacturer Volvo has announced it’s partnering with Epic Games to give in-car graphics a serious upgrade. The company will be using the Unreal engine for its next generation of vehicle interfaces, which it promises will be “photorealistic.” The company will begin by focusing on the information displayed to the driver. It will then transition to more grandiose plans of rendering realistic graphics for in-car apps and information. Sadly we will have to wait longer than a fortnight (badump-ching) for it to appear in cars on the road. There is no timeline or any information on when it will arrive in the next generation of Volvo’s electric cars.
It’s about to get harder to spin up a crypto mining operation in New York. The state Assembly has passed a bill that will that rely on power-hungry proof-of-work blockchains, like those behind Bitcoin and Ethereum. enthusiasts will still be permitted to spin up new operations that use less wasteful technologies, as well as those relying on renewable sources of energy. In the past several years, power utilization for crypto mining has skyrocketed. Unfortunately, the increased power usage is a feature of proof-of-work blockchains. In the early days, a standard laptop CPU could churn away and generate multiple Bitcoins per day, which are awarded as an incentive for users to contribute processing power to the network.
Everyone in the gaming world is waiting with bated breath for Intel to finally release its Arc desktop GPUs. There have been discussions and hype trains about them for a long time now, and yet, there’s still nowhere to be seen. That is, they were MIA until this past weekend, when Intel brought one to an eSports tournament. Sadly, they weren’t actually powering any of the gaming systems. Instead, they were on display in glass cases. It was a missed opportunity to put a sticker on the case that said, “Break only in the event you need high frame rates.
(Photo: 3DBio)Scientists have found a way to 3D print body parts made from the recipient’s own cells. Alexa, a 20-year-old woman from Mexico, has microtia: a birth defect that causes the external ear to stop growing when it’s still small and unconventionally-shaped. This made her the ideal candidate for an experimental procedure in which doctors take a clump of cells from a patient with a cosmetic concern, then use those cells to print a new body part suited specifically for that patient. The procedure, led by New York-based regenerative medicine company 3DBio Therapeutics, allowed doctors to create an exact copy of Alexa’s fully-formed left ear to replace her right ear.
(Photo: Andalucia)Deep inside a cave called Cueva de Ardales in southern Spain are over 1,000 works of ancient art. An earthquake opened the cave up to exploration in 1821, allowing modern humans to gaze upon the animals, handprints, and humans painted on the walls for the first time in thousands of years. Despite the cave’s relatively newfound accessibility, however, archaeologists have had trouble figuring out who exactly was responsible for the art and when each work was added. Now radiometric data garnered from excavated samples have offered researchers the clues necessary to piece together the chronology of the cavernous “art studio.
Hello folks, and welcome to your Friday briefing on space news great and small. Mercifully, it’s been quiet this week. We’ve got the usual slate of NASA updates, but this week is special. NASA has finally revealed when the first full-color images from the James Webb Space Telescope will land. We’ll also hear from the Canadian Space Agency and the ESA. Last but not least, we’ll preview skywatching opportunities for the month of June. NASA News MAVEN Mission Team Saves The Day NASA’s
(Photo: Brad Lynch)Mark Zuckerberg has been talking up Meta’s upcoming high-end headset for quite some now. The company’s flagship mixed reality headset was first announced as being in production in 2021. Recently, Zuckerberg even gave a demo of it, but the hardware was blurred out to hide its design. Now, images that are alleged to be CAD designs for Project Cambria have leaked, giving us an X-ray view into what’s inside. The headset will be launching in 2022, and this is the most detailed look at it so far. The images were posted by , who posted them on his page via .
(Photo: Randy Fath/)If you thought you had a tough time fixing a broken display on your smartphone, just be grateful you’re not a farmer. Or at least, not a farmer who uses John Deere tractors. In Missouri, a farmer named Jared Wilson recently had the AC go out in his tractor, and he had a devil of a time getting it repaired. In the end he had to file an FTC complaint just to get his tractor examined by his local repair shop. The problems he faced highlight the importance of the right-to-repair movement, and how difficult it can be dealing with a company that refuses to let people fix their own products.
Jon Peddie Research (JPR) has released its Q1 2022 analysis of the global PC and GPU market, and it paints a picture of a market in transition. Everything is beginning to slow down thanks to various disturbances abroad. At fault are COVID-19 lockdowns, the war in Ukraine, and countries still recovering from the pandemic. In the short terms these factors have lead to a reduction in shipments, but overall the future isn’t totally grim. One thing is clear though: the pandemic-induced heyday of record-setting shipments for gaming parts is over. Overall, the shipment of PCs with GPUs declined 6.2 percent for the quarter.
