Author: zppiot
Believe it or not, a U.S. company that just entered the business of building chips for fabless chip designers, will surpass TSMC and Samsung Foundry and take process leadership from the pair next year. The American company is Intel and, per Reuters, it made that announcement today after it signed Microsoft to be a customer of Intel Foundry. Today marked the first technology conference for the foundry which says that it will build Microsoft’s custom chip using its Intel 18A process.The Intel 18A process node will be equivalent to 1.8nm for TSMC and Samsung Foundry. This year, TSMC and Samsung…
You win some, you lose some. That’s basically been the experience of T-Mobile subscribers for quite some time now in relation to the perks and benefits that were once universally hailed as a major network-switching driver across the nation.T-Mobile gave soccer fans a very nice gift in 2023, and T-Mobile is taking said gift away this year, as suspected for a while and confirmed to both CNET and 9To5Mac today. That’s right, you will need to cough up $14.99 a month now if you want to check out live matches from the 2024 Major League Soccer season, which starts… today.Given…
WhatsApp, the popular global messaging app, is taking your privacy seriously with a new feature currently in beta testing. This update aims to prevent unauthorized contacts from taking screenshots of your profile picture. If this feature rolls out widely, it will be a big win for users who want better control over how their image is shared online.According to WABetaInfo, the new screenshot blocking feature is currently available to select beta testers on version 2.24.4.25 of the Android app and will be rolled out more broadly in the coming weeks. With the changes implemented, when someone attempts to screenshot a…
Motorola seems to have some new handsets being prepped according to 91mobiles who spotted them on multiple certification sites including the FCC, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), and the IMEI website. Besides the new phones, accessories and components such as a wireless charger, an adapter for wired charging, and a new battery were seen on TUV Rheinland. The latter tests, inspects, and certifies the safety of various products.On the FCC website, Motorola handsets with the model numbers XT2403-1, XT2403-2, XT2403-4, and XT2403-5 were discovered. According to 91mobiles, these phones could be the Motorola Edge 50 series. Model numbers XT2403-1…
If you use Google services like Gmail, YouTube, or Google Drive, you’ll soon notice a change in the appearance of the pages where you sign in. Google announced today that it is updating the look of its sign-in pages with a cleaner, more streamlined design.This new aesthetic brings these pages in line with the Material Design language used across other Google products, such as Gmail and Search, creating a unified and familiar experience. Just as it previously teased, this redesign will roll out across the web and mobile devices. The new look features the usual Material Design elements, such as emphasizing rounded corners…
Is the (non-Plus) Motorola Razr (2023) the absolute best foldable phone money can buy in 2024? Probably not. But different consumers have different needs and preferences, not to mention different… financial resources, and if you’re part of the category that can’t afford (or simply doesn’t want) to spend north of $900 on a Galaxy Z Flip 5, let alone significantly more for the Galaxy Z Fold 5, this Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 mid-ranger can feel like a gift from the gods above.Normally priced at a fairly reasonable $699.99 and frequently marked down to a seemingly unbeatable and hard-to-resist $499.99 in…
Google completed its rebrand of Bard AI earlier this month, along with the launch of the new Gemini Android app and a new Google One tier created for those that wanted to take advantage of the new Gemini Advanced and its most capable AI model, Ultra 1.0. This new Google One tier, aptly named “Google One AI Premium”, also gave users access to 2TB of storage, as well as other Google One benefits. Video format not supported Gemini’s Ultra 1.0 LLM model has been praised for introducing new advances to the world of AI, such as improved processing efficiency, advanced…
Are you in the market for a nice budget smartphone and can’t decide whether you should opt for the newer and faster Moto G Play (2024) or the older and cheaper Moto G Play (2023)? Motorola’s first-ever deal on this year’s humblest new entry into the hugely popular (and expansive) Moto G handset family is here to make your choice easier… or the complete opposite.Regularly priced at $149.99, the third-gen G Play is marked down to $121.49 surprisingly quickly after its US commercial release, and no, you don’t need to jump through any hoops or meet any special requirements to…
As said before, it doesn’t matter where you position yourself on the paranoid spectrum: encrypted messaging is getting more and more popular. Here’s another fact: Q-Day is coming. It may not be today or tomorrow but it’s coming. And this, as any tech-paranoid aficionado will tell you, is the day when a breakthrough in quantum computing will occur. This means passwords and other public encryption systems could become useless, as cracking passwords will be a walk in the park for quantum computers.On a side note: maybe now’s a good time to sort those old files and folders. Or maybe it’s…
Mark: That’s a great question. And first, I would say across JPMorgan Chase, we do view this as an investment. And every time I talk to a senior leader about the work we do, I never speak of expenses. It is always investment. And I do firmly believe that. At the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is build an analytic factory that can deliver AI/ML at scale. And that type of a factory requires a really sound strategy, efficient platforms and compute, solid governance and controls, and incredible talent. And for an organization of any scale,…
Following the rumors that 2024 could mark the end of the Oppo/OnePlus partnership with Hasselblad (and also vivo’s with Zeiss), I couldn’t help but recall (with a smile) The Scrolls, one of Woody Allen’s great short stories.It’s about a set of ancient scrolls from 4000 BC that are recently translated from “a mixture of Sumerian, Aramaic and Babylonian” although “the authenticity of the scrolls is currently in great doubt, particularly since the word Oldsmobile appears several times in the text”.One of the scrolls tells the story of a man who sells shirts and whose business is in dire straits. The…
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet the divers trying to figure out how deep humans can go Two hundred thirty meters into one of the deepest underwater caves on Earth, Richard “Harry” Harris knew that not far ahead of him was a 15-meter drop leading to a place no human being had seen before. Getting there had taken two helicopters, three weeks of test dives, two tons of equipment, and hard work to overcome an unexpected number of technical problems. But in the…
As the new year kicks off, it is that time again when reports on companies’ performance from the previous year start flooding in. And this year is no exception! Counterpoint Technology Market Research, a global firm known for its expertise in the technology, media, and telecom sectors, has just released its annual list of the top-selling smartphones.Guess what? For the first time, Apple has dominated the entire top seven spots in the global best-selling smartphones for 2023. Samsung managed to snag the three remaining positions, inching up by one spot from 2022. It’s been a two-brand show since 2021, with…
Later this year, Apple is set to drop two new iPad Airs and two iPad Pros, whose dimensions have just leaked. Alongside these, we can anticipate revamped AirPods models. The debut of the next-gen AirPods Pro 3 is a bit up in the air, but we’re likely to see the AirPods 4 and refreshed AirPods Max 2. However, leaks suggest the latter might not be getting too many updates.Weibo user Instant Digital (via MacRumors) suggests that the refreshed AirPods Max will indeed hit the shelves this year. However, the only notable change expected is the inclusion of a USB-C port.…
If you’re a WhatsApp user, and with over 3 billion users worldwide, chances are you are, you’ve likely noticed the app’s frequent updates and addition of new features. Now, there’s another one in the pipeline, aimed at enhancing convenience for users.According to WABetaInfo, a reliable source for WhatsApp updates, the latest WhatsApp beta for Android (version 2.24.5.5), available on the Google Play Store, indicates that WhatsApp is working on introducing the option to select favorite contacts directly within the Android app. Image Credit–WABetaInfo As seen in the screenshot, users will soon have the ability to select their favorite contacts. Once…
If you, like me, are unsure how a power plant can be virtual, my colleague June Kim just published an insightful article explaining the technology and how it works. For this week’s newsletter, I took the chance to ask her some more questions about VPPs. It turns out the technology has a particularly good synergy with the EV industry, which is why the Chinese government has started to invest in VPPs. “VPPs are basically just aggregations of distributed energy resources that can balance electricity on the grid,” June says—resources including electric-vehicle chargers, heat pumps, rooftop solar panels, and home battery…