Nintendo plans to debut an upgraded model of its Switch console next year along with a lineup of new games, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter said, ceding 2020’s holiday spotlight to rival devices from Sony and Microsoft. From the report: The specifications of the new machine have yet to be finalized, though the Kyoto-based company has looked…
Tag: pipeline
Bill Gates Weighs In on US Pandemic Response, Encryption, and Grilling Tech Executives
Bill Gates gave a wide-ranging new interview to Wired’s Steven Levy (also republished at Ars Technica.) The interview’s first question: as a man who’d been warning about a pandemic for years, are you disappointed with the response of the United States? Bill Gates: Yeah. There’s three time periods, all of which have disappointments. There is 2015 until this particular pandemic hit….
New York Bans Use of Facial Recognition In Schools Statewide
The New York legislature today passed a moratorium banning the use of facial recognition and other forms of biometric identification in schools until 2022. VentureBeat reports: The bill, which has yet to be signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, appears to be the first in the nation to explicitly regulate the use of the technologies in schools and comes in response to…
Ubisoft Is Giving Everyone ‘Watch Dogs 2’ After a Giveaway Glitch
Ubisoft announced on Monday that it will give away Watch Dogs 2 for free after a giveaway glitch made it harder for fans to get copies than they initially intended. Uproxx reports: Sunday’s Ubisoft Forward event was a chance for the video game company to show off what’s in the pipeline this fall, highlighted by a first (official) look at Far…
Nearly 70,000 Tech Startup Employees Have Lost Their Jobs Since March
Technology startups have been laying off tens of thousands of workers to cope with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, potentially blunting a key innovation pipeline for the enterprise information-technology market, according to industry analysts. From a report: “Startups are a great source of innovation in the IT industry, but are now especially cash constrained,” said Max Azaham, a senior…
Pepper Spray Sales Soar On Amazon
The unrest following the death of George Floyd has prompted Amazon shoppers to buy pepper spray for self-defense. According to Bloomberg, “a $9.48 canister of Sabre ‘max police strength’ pepper spray shot up to the top-selling rank in Amazon’s sports and outdoors category Monday morning.” The No. 2 spot was a neck gaiter, which can cover the nose and mouth. From…
AMC’s Stock Is Surging On Reports Amazon May Buy It
Today, shares of AMC are up 40% (recouping about 26% of their value lost since January) solely on an unconfirmed report from the Daily Mail that Amazon is interested in buying the global theater chain. “AMC’s market capitalization was about $427 million when the news broke, down from $752 million at the end of 2019,” adds Quartz. From the report: The…
Coming Soon: Open-Source Blueprints for a Tiny Nuclear Reactor
“A nonprofit startup is offering an open-source nuclear plant plan,” reports Popular Mechanics: A mechanical engineer-turned-tech entrepreneur has plans to, well, empower people around the world to build their own 100-megawatt nuclear power reactors. That’s much larger than some of the modular reactors designed by nuclear startups, but still much smaller than operating nuclear power plants in the U.S. The Energy…
Stealth Startup Plans Fundamentally New Kind of Computer with Circuit-Rearranging Processor
VCs have given nearly half a billion dollars to a stealth startup called SambaNova Systems to build “a new kind of computer to replace the typical Von Neumann machines expressed in processors from Intel and AMD, and graphics chips from Nvidia.” ZDNet reports:
The last thirty years in computing, said CEO Rodrigo Liang, have been “focused on instructions and operations, in terms…
France Shuts Down Oldest Reactors, But Nuclear Power Still Reigns
An anonymous reader shares a report from Agence France-Presse (AFP): France will start closing its oldest atomic power plant on Saturday after 43 years in operation, the first in a series of reactor shutdowns but hardly a signal the country will reduce its reliance on nuclear energy anytime soon. Unplugging the two reactors at Fessenheim, along the Rhine near France’s eastern…