Here’s Why Most Modern Cars Have That Weird Flat Edge In the Bodywork Around the Wheel

https://jalopnik.com/heres-why-most-modern-cars-have-that-weird-flat-edge-in-1832739443

There’s an extremely common design trend that may have slipped by right under your nose, slowly taking over seemingly ever new car on the road, one by one. It’s only maybe a couple inches wide at most, and at all four corners of the car. It’s purpose a mystery, until now.

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via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

February 20, 2019 at 12:48PM

Samsung’s foldable phone is finally official—meet the Galaxy Fold

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1459689

  • Samsung’s first foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Fold.


    Samsung

  • Here it is is its folded mode. Those bezels are not tiny!


    Samsung

  • It’s capable of displaying three apps at once.


    Samsung

  • It resembles a typical small Android tablet in its unfolded mode.


    Samsung

  • It also has a fairly decent sized notch in the top-right corner.


    Samsung

  • It comes in a variety of colors.

After years of teasing, Samsung on Wednesday took the wraps off its first foldable smartphone: the Galaxy Fold.

The device will

start

at a whopping $1,980 and arrive on April 26. Samsung says both LTE and 5G-capable variants will be available. The electronics giant detailed the Android phone-tablet hybrid at an event in San Francisco, where it is also expected to unveil its new flagship Galaxy S10 phones.

As the company hinted at its developers conference last year, the Galaxy Fold consists of two displays: a 4.58-inch, 1960×840 resolution panel that serves as a more traditional smartphone display, and a foldable 7.3-inch, 2152×1536 resolution panel that behaves more like a tablet.

OLED panels are known in part for their flexibility, which in this case allows users to close the Galaxy Fold like a book. Samsung says it uses a hinge system with “multiple interlocking gears” to create the fold, which the company claims is—and indeed appears to be, at first blush—hidden from view. The smaller display sits on the outside of the device for one-handed use. When the phone is fully unfurled, the larger, foldable display can be used like one of Samsung’s Android tablets. This setup differs from other early foldable phone designs like that of the Royole FlexPai, which uses one big bendable outer display.

The Galaxy Fold doesn’t fold completely in half, however, so there is a small gap in the center of the device when it is closed. When it is folded, the smaller screen is surrounded by enormous bezels. The larger display, meanwhile, looks more like a modern tablet, with a noticeably elongated notch in its top right corner. The outer display looks to use a plastic cover—not the traditional, inflexible Gorilla Glass—which should make it relatively prone to scratches, though the design should give the inner display at least some protection from scuffing. Effectively having two devices in one also makes the phone relatively thick, though Samsung has not provided specific dimensions as of this writing.

Samsung is pitching the Galaxy Fold as a “luxury device,” and the details it shared on stage sound appropriately high-end. The company says the Galaxy Fold runs on a “state of the art 7nm processor”—i.e., Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 855 SoC—and 12GB of RAM. It has a whopping 512GB of UFS 3.0 storage, which should allow it to read data quicker than most other handsets. Powering the multiple displays are a pair of batteries which combine for a 4,300 mAh capacity. Samsung says there are six cameras in the device in total, including three on the back of the device.

Apart from potential durability concerns with a device that’s constantly being opened and closed, one of the big questions here is how well Samsung and Google have optimized Android for the foldable form factor. Google has already said it’s working on this, and on stage Samsung showed off a few software features unique to the Galaxy Fold. The company gave the example of using Google Maps on the smaller display, unfolding the device, and having that map open up in the same spot on the larger display. It also says that the larger display is capable of running three apps simultaneously.

This is a developing story. Samsung’s event is still underway and we will update this post as more information becomes available. For now, you can follow along in real-time with the Ars liveblog.

Listing image by Samsung

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

February 20, 2019 at 01:13PM

Download Coloring Pages From Over 100 Museums

https://lifehacker.com/download-coloring-pages-from-over-100-museums-1832753859

Over a hundred museums and libraries around the world make coloring books based on their collections for the Color Our Collections program, led by the New York Academy of Medicine. Along with three previous annual collections, there are now 396 PDF coloring books you can print out. Here are some of our favorites.

Read more…

via Lifehacker https://lifehacker.com

February 20, 2019 at 10:00AM

MIT developed a new system to help robots track objects

https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/19/mit-rfid-tags-improve-robotic-accuracy/

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new system that will either improve the quality and accuracy of robotics or lead to humanity’s inevitable demise at the hands of mechanical overlords. Using RFID tags, the researchers were able to make robots more efficient and accurate when tracking moving objects. The development carries major implications for the future of drones, manufacturing robots and many other applications.

The system, which will be presented in a paper at the USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, is surprisingly simple and novel. RFID tags are applied to an object and provides a signal that gives a robot a more precise idea of where its target is. The system could potentially replace computer vision, which is often limited by what is within its range of sight and can lose track of objects in cluttered and fast-moving situations. Radio frequencies, on the other hand, can be identified through walls and other obstacles. According to researchers, robots using the system can locate objects within 7.5 milliseconds with an error range of less than one centimeter.

The system, which researchers call TurboTrack, boasts a lot of potential for use cases in manufacturing. A robotic arm used on an assembly line would benefit greatly from increased accuracy. It could help avoid accidents like the one that occurred in an Amazon warehouse where a robot punctured a can of bear mace and sent dozens of people to the hospital. It could also be used to help dictate the flight patterns of drones, including providing accurate deliveries. And because RFID tags are inexpensive, the system would be cheap to deploy in any number of scenarios.

Source: MIT News

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

February 19, 2019 at 08:42PM

TSMC’s Fab 14B Photoresist Material Incident: $550 Million in Lost Revenue

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13975/tsmcs-fab-14b-photoresist-material-incident-550-million-in-lost-revenue

TSMC on Friday revealed more details regarding an incident with a photoresist material at its Fab 14B earlier this year. The contaminated chemical damaged wafers on TSMC’s 12 nm and 16 nm lines, and the company now expects the full impact of the event to reduce their revenue by a whopping $550 million in the first quarter.

TSMC said that a batch of photoresist it used included a specific element which was abnormally treated, creating a foreign polymer in the photoresist. The problem was detected late when the wafer yeilds were lower than expected. As it turns out, consequences of the photoresist incident at Fab 14B were more serious than initially calculated by TSMC. There are media reports claiming that between 10,000 and 30,000 wafers were affected and had to be scrapped, but TSMC has never confirmed either of the numbers.

According to media reports, the affected companies include HiSilicon/Huawei, NVIDIA, and MediaTek, but TSMC has not disclosed names of its customers that suffered from the incident. The only thing that TSMC does confirm is that it has already negotiated new delivery scheduled with its customers.

In any case, the cost of the wafers totals $550 million and they will be made up in Q2. In the meantime, TSMC is pulling in "certain production" from Q2, which will bring in $230 million in additional revenue in Q1. As a result, TSMC’s first quarter earnings are now expected to be between $7 billion and $7.1 billion, down from $7.3 – $7.4 billion predicted in mid-January.

In a bid to avoid similar situations in the future, TSMC will make inspection of incoming materials more thorough and will strengthen inline wafer inspection. The company also indicated that it will need better controls because of increasing complexity of leading-edge fabrication technologies.

Related Reading:

Source: TSMC

via AnandTech https://ift.tt/phao0v

February 20, 2019 at 07:39AM

Xbox One Gets Open Modding Platform Through A Third-Party

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-one-gets-open-modding-platform-through-a-thir/1100-6465093/

Cities: Skylines publisher Paradox Interactive has announced it is partnering with Microsoft to bring its opening modding platform, Paradox Mods, to Xbox One. Beginning today, February 20, players will be able to download and play mods for select Paradox titles on Microsoft’s console.

Through this partnership, mod creators can now easily distribute their mods across PC and Xbox One "with a single upload" using either GOG or the Paradox Launcher.

"Modding has been, and remains an important part of the Paradox community," Paradox Mods product owner Andres Törlind said. "As we have diversified the way we distribute our games, we want to make sure all our players can take part in the creation process."

The first game to receive mod support is Surviving Mars, a 2018 simulator that tasks players with building and sustaining a colony on the red planet. More than 30 mods are now available for the title. These can be accessed by logging into your Paradox Account on the game’s title screen, then selecting the Mod Manager option at the bottom of the screen. Additionally, the Xbox One version of the game has been updated to allow mouse and keyboard support

While Surviving Mars is currently the only Xbox One title to take advantage of this new feature, Paradox says that mod support for other titles "is planned to come later this year." You can take a look at some of the mods that are available through the platform on Paradox’s website.

via GameSpot’s PC Reviews https://ift.tt/2mVXxXH

February 20, 2019 at 08:25AM