The popularization of raytracing has led to one of the biggest leaps in graphics quality in recent memory, but so far the technology has only graced PC and console rigs. Now Samsung is preparing to bring raytracing to phones with the announcement of the Exynos 2200 processor, with a new ‘Xclispse’ GPU powered by AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture. The partnership between Samsung and AMD was first announced in June of last year, and the Exynos 2200 was actually supposed to launch last week before Samsung
Microsoft’s $68.7B splurge on Activision Blizzard is huge news for gaming, but the company has also pointed to its impact on another market: the metaverse. In a press release announcing the deal, the Xbox owner said the deal will “provide building blocks” for the metaverse. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chairman and CEO, reiterated the point in a letter to shareholders: Gaming has been key to Microsoft since our earliest days as a company. Today, it’s the largest and fastest-growing form of enterta
Oil giants like BP and Shell have been reluctant to welcome the transition to electric cars, for fear of losing money and market share. But now things seem to be changing and it looks like investing in EV infrastructure could bring more money than selling fuel. BP’s head of customers and products Emma Delaney told Reuters that while the company’s charging division isn’t expected to be profitable before 2025, on a margin level (money in, money out) it’s nearing the levels of gas filling. As per
The last two years have made us all reevaluate what we really want. Working from home has shown us that a remote workforce is possible. More time with our families has demonstrated that we don’t want long commutes. Stressful situations have highlighted how important it is to work for a company that champions wellness. While the ‘Great Resignation’ has caused a huge shift in the workforce, there is no one size fits all policy. Every single person will have different wants and needs when it comes
All in all, 2021 has been a great year for European unicorn creation with some media speaking of a ‘European unicorn boom’. To date, more than 70 European private companies have boasted a $1 billion plus valuation, bringing the total number of unicorns produced since 1990 to 296, slightly more than China. But there’s still a long way to go. While Europe may be pulling ahead of China in terms of fresh unicorns, the US managed to mint 184 in the first eight months of 2021, with more on the way in
Science fiction is a genre very much associated with technological marvels, innovations, and visions of the future. So it may be surprising to find so many of its writers are drawn to Shakespeare – he’s a figure associated with tradition and the past. Sometimes his plays are reworked in a science fiction setting. The 1956 film Forbidden Planet is just one of many variations on a “Tempest in space” theme. Sometimes the playwright appears as a character caught up in a time travel adventure. The Dr
We’ve all been there before: we need to send a file from our phone to our laptop or vice versa, only to find that it can still be a surprisingly clunky process even in 2022. While most of us will resort to sending ourselves an email or uploading a file to cloud storage, Google is apparently working on a way to make it easy and intuitive to send files to yourself. The company recently launched Nearby Share on ChromeOS and Android as a competitor to Apple’s AirDrop, allowing you to easily send fil
If you want artificial intelligence to have human ethics, you have to teach it to evolve ethics like we do. At least that’s what a pair of researchers from the International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore, India proposed in a pre-print paper published today. Titled “AI and the Sense of Self,” the paper describes a methodology called “elastic identity” by which the researchers say AI might learn to gain a greater sense of agency while simultaneously understanding how to avoid “c
NFT art has exploded in popularity, but it faces an uncertain future on Wikipedia. Editors of the online encyclopedia recently voted against categorizing non-fungible tokens as art. The result sparked fury in the crypto community. The poll stemmed from discussions about Wikipedia’s list of the most expensive artworks by living artists, Cointelegraph reports. The editors debated whether NFTs such as Murat Pak’s $91.8M The Merge and Beeple’s $69M Everydays should join the list. A majority of edito
The idea of a road that can collect and harvest energy from the vibrations of passing cars, buses, and trucks sounds like science fiction. Fortunately, energy harvesting is an idea that’s been alive and well in the scientific community. But it has only recently made the pivot into real-world commercial applications. So, let’s take a look at the most prominent that are working towards making science (fiction) a reality: ElectReon (Israel) ElectReon is an Israeli firm developing an in-road induct