The Battle Over Chips is About to Get Uglier

“We’re in a new world where governments are more concerned about the security of their digital infrastructure and the resiliency of their supply chains,” Jimmy Goodrich, vice president of global policy with the Washington-based Semiconductor Industry Association, tells Bloomberg. “The techno-nationalist trends gaining traction in multiple capitals around the world are a challenge to the semiconductor industry.” At once highly globalized…

New York’s New Digital Subway Map

An anonymous reader shares a report: The date was April 20, 1978; the scene, the Great Hall of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art on Astor Place. On the stage where Abraham Lincoln once spoke sat two men, the Italian modernist Massimo Vignelli and the cartographer John Tauranac, constituting two sides of the Great Subway Map Debate….

YouTubers Are Upscaling the Past To 4K. Historians Want Them To Stop

YouTubers are using AI to bring history to life. But historians argue the process is nonsense. From a report: The first time you see Denis Shiryaev’s videos, they feel pretty miraculous. You can walk through New York as it was in 1911, or ride on Wuppertal’s flying train at the turn of the 20th century, or witness the birth of the…

New system detects faint communications signals using the principles of quantum physics

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have devised and demonstrated a system that could dramatically increase the performance of communications networks while enabling record-low error rates in detecting even the faintest of signals, potentially decreasing the total amount of energy required for state-of-the-art networks by a factor of 10 to 100. …

Blizzard Co-Founder Mike Morhaime Launches New Gaming Endeavor Dreamhaven

Mike Morhaime, the cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, has launched a new game company called Dreamhaven, and it has established two new game studios: Moonshot and Secret Door. VentureBeat reports: The Irvine, California-based company is a pretty good clue that Morhaime and his wife Amy Morhaime weren’t quite done with games when they left Activision Blizzard in 2018. Mike will be the…

A New York Clock That Told Time Now Tells the Time Remaining

For more than 20 years, Metronome, which includes a 62-foot-wide 15-digit electronic clock that faces Union Square in Manhattan, has been one of the city’s most prominent and baffling public art projects. Its digital display once told the time in its own unique way, counting the hours, minutes and seconds (and fractions thereof) to and from midnight. But for years observers…

Quibi Reportedly Weighs Selling Itself Less Than 6 Months After Launching

According to The Wall Street Journal, the mobile streaming service Quibi is exploring strategic options including a possible sale. “It is also considering raising more money or going public through a merger with a specially formed company that could help it fund deals,” adds CNET. From the report: It declined to comment directly on the report, but Quibi said in a…

Thieves’ Guild: a BBS Game With the Best 1990s Pixel Graphics You’ve Never Seen

“The sky is clear, the breeze is strong. A perfect day to make the long sea voyage to Mythyn,” writes BBS history blogger Josh Renaud. “You prepare your galley, hire a crew of sailors, and cast off. But a few hours into your trip, the dreaded words appear: ‘Thou seest rippling waters…'” He’s describing the beginning of a 27-year-old game that…

Hate Speech on Facebook Is Pushing Ethiopia Dangerously Close To a Genocide

Ethnic violence set off by the assassination of a popular singer has been supercharged by hate speech and incitements shared widely on the platform. From a report: Throughout his life, Ethiopian singer Hachalu Hundessa sang about love, unity, and raising the marginalized voices of his Oromo ethnic group. He had always tried to keep his work and politics separate, saying, “Art…