Congratulations to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), who got the Chandrayaan 3 mission successfully landed near the lunar south pole - the first to ever do it and only the fourth country to make a successful moon landing (USA, Russia & China the others). Soon, "Chandrayaan 3's Vikram lander will extend a ramp to deploy a small rover named Pragyan" that will "take multiple measurements to support research into the composition of the lunar surface, the presence of water ice in the lunar soil, the history of lunar impacts, and the evolution of the Moon's atmosphere". The entire mission will last for around 12 days, as that's how much sunlight there is at the landing site. Russia's Luna 25 mission tried to do similar on the weekend but failed "during a burn of the vehicle's propulsion system to move the spacecraft into a pre-landing orbit" that "sent the vehicle crashing into the lunar surface".
I honestly thought Nvidia's entry to the US$1t market cap club would be short lived, but based on its freshly announced Q2 FY2024 financial results, they're going nowhere. In the span of 3 months, Nvidia made a net income (aka profit) of over US$6b - an 840% increase over the same quarter last year. That is insane for a company of Nvidia's size and age. They aren't a new startup, they've been the industry leader in GPUs for over a decade. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of that profit comes from their "data center" division, which has seen an explosion in demand due to AI applications. Companies are frothing for H100 "Hopper" GPUs as there's no real competition coming from AMD and Intel for data center GPUs. Nvidia can keep jacking up the price to meet demand and demand still grows! Apparently the CUDA ecosystem is a huge moat for them.
Sony's let loose with more details on "Project Q", aka the PlayStation Portal handheld remote gaming device. This US$199.99 8" 1080p screen unit with a PS5 controller slapped on the sides will let you stream games directly from your PS5 console either locally on the same wi-fi network or remotely via the internet. Bizarrely, it won't work with the PlayStation's cloud streaming service, so it's limited to games you have installed on your PS5. It also doesn't support Bluetooth, so if you want to use headphones with it you gotta use ones that support PlayStation Link or get a USB adapter. Here's a hands-on demo video on YouTube. Looks like a well made piece of hardware but
One of the big benefits of a smartphone versus a "traditional" camera is all the smart stuff Apple, Google and others manage to do in software to enhance the images coming out of that tiny sensor and lens combo. Canon, not wanting to be left behind, released its own deep learning technology white paper earlier this year (in Japanese) showing how they can use it to make subtle, but important improvements to all photos. The examples of noise reduction without loss of detail, reducing moire and correcting problems with lenses to improve resolution look impressive. No word if they're gonna add them to a Canon camera any time soon however.
In 1993 France Telecom created the experimental Bi-Bop phone network in Strasbourg, Lille and Paris. Users could make and receive calls if they were in an area covered by a radio transmitter, to which they had to connect first. Blue, white and green stickers on drainpipes and electric poles identified the transmitters' location. France Telecom offered the service on attractive terms: consumers paid much less for Bi-Bop, including the mobile phone, than for GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) system. But GSM was more efficient and easier for users, who did not have to be near a transmitter. The system was a commercial failure, France Telecom discontinued service in 1997 and GSM became the mobile telephony standard. (Musee des Arts et Metiers / Google Arts & Culture)
📻 Wareruraido - Boris
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