Samsung Electronics warned it's grappling with the fallout from a "serious imbalance" in semiconductors globally, becoming the largest tech giant to voice concerns about chip shortages spreading beyond the automaking industry. From a report: Samsung, one of the world's largest makers of chips and consumer electronics, expects the crunch to pose a problem to its business next quarter, co-Chief Executive Officer Koh Dong-jin said during an annual shareholders meeting in Seoul. The company is also considering skipping the introduction of a new Galaxy Note -- one of its best-selling models -- this year, though Koh said that was geared toward streamlining its lineup.

Google's second-generation Nest Hub will be able to track your sleep via a Soli radar sensor -- not a camera. "Sleep Sensing" is the highlight feature, though, as "there's still a 7-inch display with a middling 600p resolution, a rear-facing fabric-covered speaker, and the device sensors poking through the otherwise uniform bezel," reports Android Police. From the report: According to Google, about 20 percent of first-gen Nest Hubs were placed in bedrooms, and the new Nest Hub can only show its full capabilities when you put it next to your bed. The lack of a camera is actually a selling point here as it ensures a certain degree of privacy. The Hub won't be able to see you, but it still kind of "sees" with radar waves. The Soli radar module creates a bubble where the Hub can track your breathing and movement overnight. Google says Soli in the Hub is accurate enough to detect the general shape and position of a person, but not specific faces or bodies. Combined with temperature and light levels, the Nest Hub can track your sleep and feed that data into Google Fit. Over time, Sleep Sensing can offer actionable tips to improve your sleep, too. This is similar to what you get with various fitness trackers and smartwatches that have sleep monitoring features, but you never have to worry about forgetting to wear your device to bed.

Google says the raw Soli data (above) never leaves your Hub -- machine learning enhancements allow the smart display to do all the processing locally to further preserve your privacy. Soli also supports some basic gestures like holding your hand up to pause media or waving to snooze an alarm. Sleep Sensing will be a free feature at launch, but Google is planning to make it a paid add-on in the future.

The new generation of Intel Core CPUs is here. Intel is using a new architecture on its ancient 14nm process to power the 11th-generation Rocket Lake-S processors. From a report: That results in some significant power improvements, but it also means that Intel can only fit 8 cores on its flagship Core i9-11900K. That sacrifice to the number of cores looks bad compared to the 12-core AMD Ryzen 9 5900X or even the last-gen 10-core i9-10900K. But Intel is also promising massive improvements to efficiency that should keep the Rocket Lake-S parts competitive -- especially in gaming. Rocket Lake-S CPUs launch March 30. The $539 Core i9-11900K has 8 cores and 16 threads with a single-core Thermal Velocity boost of 5.3GHz and 4.8GHz all-core boost. The slightly more affordable $399 i7-11700K boosts up to 5GHz, and the i5-11600K is $262 with 6 cores at a 4.9GHz boost.

While the lack of cores is going to hurt Rocket Lake-S CPUs in multi-threaded applications, Intel claims that its 19% improvement to instructions per clock (IPC) will make up much of the difference. The UHD graphics processor in the CPUs also deliver 50% better performance than last generation. Of course, Intel is focusing on games because that is where its processors remain the most competitive versus AMD. And that should continue with its Rocket Lake-S chips. These high-clocked parts with improved performance should keep up and even exceed AMD's Zen 3 chips in certain games, like Microsoft's Flight Simulator (according to Intel).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Hackaday: Probably the best known brand of cutter comes from Cricut, and that company has dropped a bombshell in the form of an update to the web-based design software that leaves their now very annoyed users with a monthly upload limit of 20 new designs unless they sign up for a Cricut Access Plan that costs $9.99 on monthly payments. Worse still, a screenshot is circulating online purporting to be from a communication with a Cricut employee attempting to clarify matters, in which it is suggested that machines sold as second-hand will be bricked by the company.

We'd like to think that given the reaction from their online community the subscription plan will backfire, but unlike the world of 3D printing their market is not necessarily an online-savvy one. A crafter who buys a Cricut from a bricks-and-mortar warehouse store and uses it with Cricut cartridges may not balk at being required to pay rent to use hardware that's already paid for in the same way a member of our community with a 3D printer would. After all, Cricut have always tried to make their software a walled garden. However if the stories about second-hand models being bricked turn out to bear fruit that might be a different matter. UPDATE 3/18/21: Cricut has decided to reverse its decision and allow every member to upload an unlimited number of images and patterns for free.

"Right now, every member can upload an unlimited number of images and patterns to Design Space for free, and we have no intention to change this policy," a Cricut spokesperson told us in an email. "This is true whether you're a current Cricut member or are thinking about joining the Cricut family before or after December 31, 2021."

They addressed these changes in a letter to the Cricut community, which you can read here.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Electrek: Researchers at ETH Zurich and Empa have chemically modified wood and made it more compressible, turning it into a mini-generator. When compressed, it generates an electrical voltage. Such wood could serve as a biosensor or as a building material that harvests energy.

Ingo Burgert and his team at public research university ETH Zurich and Swiss federal laboratory Empa have proven that wood is much more than just a building material. Their research enhances the properties of wood in order to use it for new applications. For instance, they have already developed high-strength, water-repellent, and magnetizable wood. Now, together with the Empa research group led by Francis Schwarze, the team has used one chemical and one biological process to generate electrical voltage from a type of wood sponge. In doing so, they amplify what is known as the "piezoelectric effect" of wood. The findings appear in the journal Science Advances.

"Mighty Buildings is using robots and 3D printers to build a $15 million community of homes in California," reports Business Insider: Mighty Building's upcoming project in Rancho Mirage, California will have the title of "world's first planned community of 3D printed homes," according to its maker... The tech-forward housing development will consist of 15 homes across five-acres. This $15 million project will be built using the Mighty Kit system, which utilizes prefabbed panels to create custom homes.

Through this system, gone are the days of concrete. Instead, the homes will be based on Mighty Building's 3D printed proprietary Light Stone Material, which sets its shape upon UV light exposure, according to the company. The printers also rely on "robotic automation" and robotic arms, the latter for functions like quality control scans, Ruben told Insider in an email interview...

The 3D-printed homes won't look any different than a traditionally constructed mid-century modern home. The 1,450 square-foot homes — which will be placed atop 10,000-square-foot plots of land — will come with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. If that's not enough space, the homes will also have a separate 700-square-foot two-bed, one-bath unit. Looking to take advantage of the California sunshine? The backyard will feature a swimming pool and deck, but this outdoor space can be upgraded with hot tubs, firepits, or open-air showers...

The homes will be "zero-net-energy," relying on solar and optional Tesla Powerwall batteries for power. Electric vehicle chargers also come optional.
This development should be completed next spring, reports Business Insider — adding that the company "is already in talks with a 'number of developers' for potential future communities."

nickwinlund77 shares a report from Bloomberg: There's nothing unusual looking about the 38-foot-long cargo plane that's been flying around Northern California for the past month. But the insides of the Cessna 208 have undergone a sci-fi makeover, resulting in a plane that's been taxiing, taking off, maneuvering in the air, and landing without a pilot. The machinery and software that let it fly on its own come from a startup called Reliable Robotics Corp., which has spent four years working on autonomous flight. The company has a grand total of two planes, but its long-term plan is to fill the sky with pilotless aircraft transporting cargo and passengers.

Reliable's story begins with the self-doubt of its co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Robert Rose. His attempt to become a pilot in college ended for lack of money, but by 2016 he'd earned enough to give the cockpit another shot. Rose, who'd spent his career building autonomous cars and spacecraft for Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, expected that planes would have modernized since he last hopped in a cockpit. But the one he took up had decades-old technology. The shock of how much the flight still relied on a human pilot hit Rose midair as he contemplated his rusty skills and mortality. "My first thought was, 'Wow, it's insane that a private person is allowed to do this,'" he says. "You have all this navigation that you need to manage and all the communications you have to do between other planes and taking instructions from air traffic control. There's layers and layers of stuff. All the while, you are one mistake away from a fatal accident. I kept thinking, 'How is this OK?'"

Rose founded Reliable in 2017 with Juerg Frefel, an old buddy from SpaceX. The pair set up shop in Rose's garage in Los Altos, Calif., planning to make improved autopilot technology. They hoped to tap into the mechanical and positioning systems available on most planes, buy a couple of off-the-shelf sensors, and tie everything together with clever software that could make the types of decisions usually expected of pilots. Each step of the way, however, they discovered the existing gear for sale wasn't resilient enough for the job. "You just could not have a serious conversation about removing the human from the plane with these parts," Rose says. "That meant we had to build."

Scientists have used 3D computer modeling to figure out how the world's oldest "computer" worked. BBC reports: The Antikythera Mechanism has baffled experts since it was found on a Roman-era shipwreck in Greece in 1901. The hand-powered Ancient Greek device is thought to have been used to predict eclipses and other astronomical events. But only a third of the device survived, leaving researchers pondering how it worked and what it looked like. Scientists from University College London (UCL) believe they have finally cracked the puzzle using 3D computer modeling. They have recreated the entire front panel, and now hope to build a full-scale replica of the Antikythera using modern materials.

On Friday, a paper published in Scientific Reports revealed a new display of the gearing system that showed its fine details and complex parts. The mechanism has been described as an astronomical calculator as well as the world's first analogue computer. It is made of bronze and includes dozens of gears. The back cover features a description of the cosmos display, which shows the motion of the five planets that were known at the time the device was built. But only 82 fragments -- amounting to around a third of the device -- survived, This meant scientists have had to piece together the full picture using X-Ray data and an Ancient Greek mathematical method.

An official version of the popular 7-zip archiving program has been released for Linux for the first time. Bleeping Computer reports: Linux already had support for the 7-zip archive file format through a POSIX port called p7zip but it was maintained by a different developer. As the p7zip developer has not maintained their project for 4-5 years, 7-Zip developer Igor Pavlov decided to create a new official Linux version based on the latest 7-Zip source code. Pavlov has released 7-Zip for Linux in AMD64, ARM64, x86, and armhf versions, which users can download [via their respective links].

"These new 7-Zip binaries for Linux were linked (compiled) by GCC without -static switch. And compiled 32-bit executables (x86 and armhf) didn't work on some arm64 and amd64 systems, probably because of missing of some required .so files." "Please write here, if you have some advices how to compile and link binaries that will work in most Linux systems," Pavlov stated on his release page.

Adobe today officially unveiled Photoshop for Apple's M1 chip, claiming it provides a 50% performance boost compared to analogous Intel Macs. The Next Web reports: While Adobe has had a beta version of Photoshop for M1 available since November, this is the first time it's been available widely. Previously Apple users could run the Intel version through Apple's Rosetta technology, which didn't fully take advantage of the new chip's power.

[According to Adobe:] "Our internal tests show a wide range of features running an average of 1.5X the speed of similarly configured previous generation systems. Our tests covered a broad scope of activities, including opening and saving files, running filters, and compute-heavy operations like Content-Aware Fill and Select Subject, which all feel noticeably faster. Our early benchmarking also shows that some operations are substantially faster with the new chip." Be warned that there are a couple of recent features missing on the M1 version of the app, most notably inviting others to edit cloud documents and preset syncing.

MojoKid writes: Some may think it strange to design and build an entire PC and custom enclosure, dedicated to running a 20-year-old screensaver, but retro computing fans and well-seasoned enthusiasts may remember the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium. This classic screensaver from the late 90s was created by the legendary artist of Defender of the Crown and more, Jim Sachs. SereneScreen's combination of beautiful fish and technology is still mesmerizing, so why not build a miniature, 3D-printed aquarium and power it with a single board computer like the Rock Pi X and a 1920X480 resolution IPS LCD display? That's just what product developer Colton Westrate did.

Searching for an x86 PC in a Raspberry Pi-sized form factor, Westrate chose the Rock Pi X that purportedly packs the perfunctory punch to push the Windows OS and aquarium screen saver's pulsating pixels. The Rock Pi X is based on a circa 2016 Intel x5-Z8350 processor, which is a 2-watt, quad-core Cherry Trail Atom chip. From there, with a little Fusion 360 parametric modeling, a clear acrylic napkin holder, and some serious skills, Westrate created this adorable pint-sized digital fish tank. There's a full parts list and how-to guide on HotHardware, along with links to the CAD files up on Thingiverse, so you can build yourself one too, if you're feeling inspired.

nickwinlund77 shares a report from NPR: Lou Ottens, who put music lovers around the world on a path toward playlists and mixtapes by leading the invention of the first cassette tape, has died at age 94, according to media reports in the Netherlands. Ottens was a talented and influential engineer at Philips, where he also helped develop consumer compact discs. Ottens died last Saturday, according to the Dutch news outlet NRC Handelsblad, which lists his age as 94. The cassette tape was Ottens' answer to the large reel-to-reel tapes that provided high-quality sound but were seen as too clunky and expensive. He took on the challenge of shrinking tape technology in the early 1960s, when he became the head of new product development in Hasselt, Belgium, for the Dutch-based Philips technology company.

"Lou wanted music to be portable and accessible," says documentary filmmaker Zack Taylor, who spent days with Ottens for his film Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape. Ottens' goal was to make something simple and affordable for anyone to use. As Taylor says, "He advocated for Philips to license this new format to other manufacturers for free, paving the way for cassettes to become a worldwide standard."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple will soon be making a significant change to its serial number format for future products that will see some key information stripped out. In an internal AppleCare email this week, obtained by MacRumors, Apple said the new serial number format will consist of a randomized alphanumeric string of 8-14 characters that will no longer include manufacturing information or a configuration code. Apple said the serial number format transition is scheduled for "early 2021," and confirmed that IMEI numbers will not be affected by this change.

Any currently shipping Apple products will continue to use the current serial number format, while future products will use the new format, according to Apple. The new serial numbers will initially be 10 characters, the company indicated. Apple's current serial number format has long allowed both customers and service providers to determine the date and location that a product was manufactured, with the first three characters representing the manufacturing location and the following two indicating the year and week of manufacture. The last four characters currently serve as a "configuration code," revealing a device's model, color, and storage capacity. Apple initially planned to transition to the new serial number format in late 2020, but delayed. Apple hasn't explained the reasons for the change, but the new format will effectively make it impossible to view details about when and where a device is manufactured.

HTC's latest tease on its Twitter account looks related to the lip-tracking module for its Vive headsets. UploadVR reports: Paired with last week's tease that included the message "It's your move," plus numerous replies that use the word 'tracking' and even a more recent reference to Avatar, it certainly seems like HTC is teasing new add-ons for its existing Vive headsets, rather than an all-new device.

HTC revealed the lip-tracking module for Vive all the way back at GDC 2019. At the time the company said it had no plans for a full release of the device. The kit hangs below the headset and reads movement in your mouth, which a given experience could then use to replicate on a virtual avatar of yourself. Paired with the eye-tracking in the HTC Vive Pro Eye, it's feasible that HTC could soon be bringing very expressive virtual avatars to VR. Go a step further and implement the Vive Trackers for full-body tracking, and there's a lot of potential here.

A user shares a report from Apple Insider: Researchers are working on a cabling system that could provide data transfer speeds multiple times faster than existing USB connections using an extremely thin polymer cable, in a system that echoes the design path of Thunderbolt. Presented at the February IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, the research aims to develop a connection type that offers far better connectivity than current methods. In part, it aims to accomplish this by replacing copper wiring with something else.

Copper is typically used for wires like USB and HDMI to handle data transfers, but it requires a lot of power to work for high levels of data transmission. "There's a fundamental tradeoff between the amount of energy burned and the rate of information exchanged," said MIT alumni and lead author Jack Holloway. While the "increasingly bulky and costly" copper could be replaced by fiber optic cables, that introduces its own issues. As silicon chips have difficulty dealing with photons, this makes the interconnection between the cable and the computers more challenging to optimize. Combining the benefits of copper and fiber optic conduits, a plastic polymer is used by the researchers. This makes it cheaper to manufacture than copper wires, which could be an attractive proposition for cable producers.

The polymer can also use sub-terahertz electromagnetic signals, which is more energy-efficient than copper at high data loads. It is believed this efficiency brings it close to that of fiber optic systems, but crucially with better compatibility with silicon chips. Low-cost chips are paired with the polymer conduit that can generate the high-frequency signals powerful enough to transmit into the conduit directly. As such, the system is expected to be manufactured with standard methods, which also makes it cost-effective to produce. The cables themselves can also be extremely thin, with the cross-sectional area of the interconnect measuring 0.4 millimeters by a quarter millimeter, smaller than typical copper variants. That small hair-like cable can be used to transport data over three different parallel channels, enabling it to achieve a total bandwidth of 105 gigabits per second. Bundling conduits together could bring the cables into the terabit-per-second range, while still remaining at a reasonable cost.

LG's battery division is planning to build advanced battery cells for Tesla's electric vehicles in 2023 and is considering potential production sites in the U.S. and Europe, according to Reuters. From the report: Tesla has not yet agreed to a deal that would expand LG's role in its supply chain beyond China, one of the sources said. Last week, the Korean battery maker told Korean reporters it plans to build a U.S. factory where it would make battery cells for EVs and energy storage systems, to cater to U.S. and global customers as well as startups. It did not identify potential customers then, but one of the sources said it was hoping Tesla would buy the batteries.

In September, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk announced an ambitious plan to develop new cells in-house, prompting suppliers like LG and Panasonic to embrace the unproven technology or face risks of losing a major customer for the longer term. The Korean supplier, a unit of LG Chem, has made samples for the so-called 4680 large-format cylindrical cells, said the sources, who asked not to be identified. It faces technological hurdles and the challenge of scaling up production, people familiar with the matter said.

"LG plans to produce 4680 cells at its new U.S. factory. They plan to build a new 4680 cell line to supply Tesla's Giga Berlin in Europe," one of the sources said, adding Spain is one of candidate for the European plant. One of the sources said LG has never mass produced such large-format cylindrical cells, although increasing battery capacity is the correct call. "Tesla is a major customer, and LG can take risks," another source said. He said LG has not yet secured orders from Tesla for the 4680 cells, still under development. For now, Tesla is sharply boosting orders for 2170 cells used in the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles made in China, the source said.

Dropbox announced today that it plans to acquire DocSend for $165 million. The company helps customers share and track documents by sending a secure link instead of an attachment. From a report: "We're announcing that we're acquiring DocSend to help us deliver an even broader set of tools for remote work, and DocSend helps customers securely manage and share their business critical documents, backed by powerful engagement analytics," Houston told me. When combined with the electronic signature capability of HelloSign, which Dropbox acquired in 2019, the acquisition gives the company an end-to-end document sharing workflow it had been missing. "Dropbox, DocSend and HelloSign will be able to offer a full suite of self-serve products to help our millions of customers manage the entire critical document workflows and give more control over all aspects of that," Houston explained.

MIPS Technologies, the company that had been synonymous with the MIPS processor architecture, will now be developing processors based on RISC-V architecture. TuxPhones reports: The MIPS silicon manufacturer is one of the oldest RISC chip manufacturers, used in several systems since the late 80s. Characterized by clean and efficient designs, allowing adaption in varied applications, this company has been considered one of the most innovative in the market during its golden age - to the point that the Windows OS had a MIPS port in the early 90s. However, the company has been struggling with an increasingly lower market share and risked bankruptcy in recent years, ultimately leading to acquisition by start-up Wave Computing, which faced bankruptcy last year.

How this company was reborn just weeks ago, exiting the state of bankruptcy, is surprising, but not at all irrational: in its official statement, (the new) MIPS has become a member of RISC-V International, the non-profit organization managing the fully open-hardware ISA, substantially replacing their current architecture with the de facto open chip standard in its entirety. Licensing of the original MIPS architecture to third parties will probably be managed as before, so that the "old" architecture will remain available upon need. This is officially known as the "8th generation" of MIPS chips, indicating a total architectural gap from the previous seven iterations, essentially leaving the old architecture and fully embracing the new one. The Electronic Engineering Journal says it's likely that the new MIPS will continue to honor pre-existing licensing agreements, but it's unclear what level of support the company will offer for older MIPS-based chip designs.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Cyprus, Greece and Israel on Monday signed an initial agreement to build the world's longest and deepest underwater power cable that will traverse the Mediterranean seabed at a cost of about $900 million and link their electricity grids. The project, called the Euro-Asia interconnector, will provide a back-up power source in times of emergency, said Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, who was in Nicosia to sign a memorandum of understanding with his counterparts. Cypriot Energy Minister Natasa Pilides said it marked "a decisive step towards ending the island's energy isolation, and consequently, our dependence on heavy fuels."

The cable will have a capacity of 1,000-2,000 megawatts (MW) and is expected to be completed by 2024, according to Israel's energy ministry. With a length of about 1,500 km and a maximum depth of 2,700 meters, it will be the longest and deepest subsea electricity cable to have ever been constructed, it said. Calling the project a "2,000 mega-watt highway," Pilides said the first stage is expected to be operational within 2025. It will cover three sections of the Mediterranean: some 310 kilometers between Israel and Cyprus, about 900 kilometers between Cyprus and Crete, and about 310 additional kilometers between Crete and mainland Greece. Greek power grid operator IPTO has started construction of the Crete-mainland part, seen concluding by 2023. The Greek operator and Eurasia have been working closely to make sure the two cables link to each other efficiently, an IPTO official said. The European Union has recognized the cable as a "Project of Common Interest", categorizing it as a project it is willing to partly finance.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Elon Musk is getting into the Texas power market, with previously unrevealed construction of a gigantic battery connected to an ailing electric grid that nearly collapsed last month. The move marks Tesla's first major foray into the epicenter of the U.S. energy economy. A Tesla subsidiary registered as Gambit Energy Storage LLC is quietly building a more than 100 megawatt energy storage project in Angleton, Texas, a town roughly 40 miles south of Houston. A battery that size could power about 20,000 homes on a hot summer day. Workers at the site kept equipment under cover and discouraged onlookers, but a Tesla logo could be seen on a worker's hard hat and public documents helped confirm the company's role. Property records on file with Brazoria County show Gambit shares the same address as a Tesla facility near the company's auto plant in Fremont, California. A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lists Gambit as a Tesla subsidiary. According to a document on the city of Angleton's website, the installation will use lithium iron phosphate batteries that are expected to last 10 to 20 years. The document says that it will generate around $1 million in property tax revenue for the city and the site will be unmanned but remotely monitored.