Month: November 2020

5G and the pandemic are already changing the way people buy and use their devices, so to help bring more competition to affordable mobile devices, MediaTek is launching a new line of smartphone and Chromebook processors.

Starting with its smartphone chip, the new MediaTek Dimensity 700 is based on a 7nm architecture and features an integrated 5G modem, which MediaTek claims delivers up to 28% better energy efficiency than a comparable 8nm chip. Meanwhile, when it comes to 5G, the Dimensity 700 supports 2CC 5G carrier aggregation which can result in mobile download speeds of up to 2.7 Gbps.

That said, the Dimensity 700’s biggest upgrade may be support for features like 90Hz displays, 64-MP cameras (with special processing for Night Mode shots), and MediaTek’s 5G Ultra Save tech to help reduce battery drain when using 5G. Internally, the Dimensity 700 features an octa-core design with two ARM A76 cores to help deliver speedy performance.

Now I admit, smartphone chips (especially budget and mid-range chips like these) aren’t exactly the most exciting topic. But with the number of new phones that have come out recently featuring Qualcomm’s mid-range Snapdragon 765G chip (such as the Pixel 5, Nokia 8.3 5G, LG Wing, and more), it’s nice to see MediaTek release an updated mid-range chip to help increase CPU choice for 5G phone makers. That could end up meaning savings to people buying phones down the line. Unfortunately, the one drawback to the Dimensity 700 is that it doesn’t come with integrated support for mmWave 5G, which could make it a tough sell for phones on carriers like Verizon.

As for Chromebooks, which have recently suffered from massive product shortages due to so many people working and learning from home, MediaTek is releasing two new chips in the 7nm MT8192 and 6nm MT8195.

The MT8192 will be the slightly more affordable of the two and features an octa-core design comprised of four high-performance ARM A76 cores and four energy-efficient A55 cores. However, unlike a lot of budget Chromebook chips, the MT8192 also provides support for features like 1920 x 1080 displays with 120Hz refresh rates and 4K HDR video decoding, which are things you typically don’t find on a lot of low-cost notebooks.

Building off that, the MT8195 takes things a bit further with a 6nm octa-core design featuring four ARM A78 cores, four A55 cores, and MediaTek’s new APU 3.0, which allow for things like support for up to three displays simultaneously, HDR via Dolby Vision, 7.1 surround sound, and up to 80-MP cameras (or dual 32-MP cams).

Similar to the Dimensity 700’s play when it comes to making cheaper 5G phones, MediaTek’s new Chromebook chips should help increase the supply and reduce the price of future low-cost laptops, which is something that could really benefit a lot of students as kids continue to have to learn from home.

While the general caveat about new processors is that they don’t mean a ton until they find their way into actual devices you can buy, there shouldn’t be a huge delay as the Dimensity 700 is expected to start shipping in phones in early Q1 2021 and MT8192 and MT8195 are expected to be featured in products starting as early as Q2 2021.

It’s officially the busiest Atlantic hurricane season in 170 years of record keeping. Subtropical Storm Theta formed late on Monday, taking us further into the Greek alphabet.

The storm itself isn’t a particularly formidable sight to behold or even that interesting. It’s subtropical, meaning it has characteristics of both tropical storms and those that form in the higher latitudes with cold cores (think your nor’easters and whatnot), but we get a few of those a year, especially late in the season. Theta has winds of 50 mph (80.5 kph), which isn’t going to do much damage. It’s puttering eastward from the middle of the Atlantic toward the Strait of Gibraltar. While Portugal’s Madeira Islands are in its path, it’s way too early to talk about if landfall will happen there, let alone impacts.

But for all the ho-hum characteristics, it’s what the storm represents when we zoom out to the season level that matters. Theta is the 29th storm to form in an Atlantic hurricane season that started early, and with few exceptions, never really let up. A record-setting number of storms have now formed, adding to the other slew of records set this season. Those include cumulative ones such as a record 12 cyclones making landfall in the U.S. as well as individual freaks such as Tropical Storm Cristobal’s “lakefall” on Lake Superior, and Hurricane Laura, which tied for the strongest storm to ever make landfall in Louisiana. The disaster fatigue has been real, as 2020 has layered record hurricanes on top of record wildfires on top of a derecho on top of a deadly pandemic.

Conditions were prime for a busy season, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast reflected that. But the season has outpaced even the forecast as the atmosphere and ocean conspired to keep churning out storms. Overall, this year has seen slack winds high above the Earth’s surface that have allowed hurricanes to spin up. That can actually be linked in part to cooler-than-normal ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific, where a La Niña has formed. In the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico, though, warm ocean waters have in turn allowed a spate of cyclones to rapidly intensify, sometimes with disastrous consequences right before landfall.

That includes Eta, a former major hurricane that smashed into Central America last week and has done a loop de loop over Cuba and Florida. It could make yet another landfall on the Gulf Coast again this weekend because why not.

Climate change could be playing a role. Everything getting hotter, including oceans, is a hallmark of climate change (you know, the whole global warming thing). Atlantic hurricanes have been intensifying more rapidly and into more fierce storms in recent decades. Atlantic hurricane season has also seen the Power Dissipation Index—a measure of a season that takes into account the number of storms, intensity, and duration—rise over the course of the satellite era. Both natural- and human-caused climate change-driven factors are behind the trend.

Findings show the deadly 2017 hurricane season got a boost from climate change, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see similar results about this year’s flurry of cyclones. We’ll have to wait for research to come out on the exact role, but then we also have to wait for this season to officially end on Nov. 30. And Theta may not be our last storm; the National Hurricane Center has already identified another disturbance to watch over the next five days in the Caribbean.

Autonomous delivery company Nuro, whose R2 vehicle has no pedals or steering wheel and only room for packages, said Monday it has raised $500 million as e-commerce gets a huge boost from the pandemic.

Nuro joins other self-driving firms that raised big money this year. Earlier this year Waymo, the self-driving unit of Alphabet Inc raised $3 billion, helping to boost the total raised in 2020 by autonomous car companies to $7.1 billion as of November 4, according to data firm PitchBook. While that slightly exceeds 2019’s total, it falls short of the record $9.4 billion raised in 2018. Also far fewer startups are getting funded.

Early last year Nuro raised $940 million from SoftBank, and a source close to the company said the valuation doubled from that last funding round to $5 billion.

This round was led by T. Rowe Price Associates and includes new investors Fidelity Management & Research Company, LLC. and Baillie Gifford. Existing investors SoftBank and Greylock also participated.

The funding will help Nuro expand its team but also scale up manufacturing, said Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson. Its R2 vehicle is currently manufactured in Detroit with Roush Enterprises, but he declined to say how many were produced and on the road today.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in February gave Nuro approval to deploy up to 5,000 R2 vehicles on public roads over two years, said Ferguson. They currently drive around in Houston, Texas, Scottsdale, Arizona, and Mountain View in California.

Nuro is currently using Prius cars outfitted with its self-driving technology to deliver groceries and prescriptions for Kroger and CVS in Houston. Ferguson said in the “next couple of quarters” the R2 would be doing the deliveries to “ramp up a full unmanned delivery service”.

 

 

SEATTLE — Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop has completed the world’s first passenger ride on a super high-speed levitating pod system, the company said on Sunday, a key safety test for technology it hopes will transform human and cargo transportation.

Virgin Hyperloop Chief Technology Officer Josh Giegel and Sara Luchian, the company’s director of passenger experience, reached a peak speed of 107 miles per hour at the company’s DevLoop test site in Las Vegas, Nevada, the company said.

“I had the true pleasure of seeing history made before my very eyes,” said Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, chairman of Virgin Hyperloop and group chairman and chief executive of DP World.

The trip on the 500-meter test track took 6.25 seconds, and the passengers pulled 3 times the force of gravity. But it was “much smoother than I expected,” Luchian was quoted in the New York Times as saying.

“It felt not that much different than accelerating in a sports car,” said Giegel.

Los Angeles-based Hyperloop envisions a future where floating pods packed with passengers and cargo hurtle through vacuum tubes at 600 miles an hour (966 kph) or faster.

In a hyperloop system, which uses magnetic levitation to allow near-silent travel, a trip between New York and Washington would take just 30 minutes. That would be twice as fast as a commercial jet flight and four times faster than a high-speed train.

The company has previously run over 400 tests without human passengers at the Nevada site.

The test comes a month after Reuters first reported that Virgin Hyperloop picked the U.S. state of West Virginia to host a $500 million certification center and test track that will serve as a proving ground for its technology.

The company is working toward safety certification by 2025 and commercial operations by 2030, it has said.

Canada’s Transpod and Spain’s Zeleros also aim to upend traditional passenger and freight networks with similar technology they say will slash travel times, congestion and environmental harm linked with petroleum-fueled machines.

 

SEATTLE — Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop has completed the world’s first passenger ride on a super high-speed levitating pod system, the company said on Sunday, a key safety test for technology it hopes will transform human and cargo transportation.

Virgin Hyperloop Chief Technology Officer Josh Giegel and Sara Luchian, the company’s director of passenger experience, reached a peak speed of 107 miles per hour at the company’s DevLoop test site in Las Vegas, Nevada, the company said.

“I had the true pleasure of seeing history made before my very eyes,” said Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, chairman of Virgin Hyperloop and group chairman and chief executive of DP World.

The trip on the 500-meter test track took 6.25 seconds, and the passengers pulled 3 times the force of gravity. But it was “much smoother than I expected,” Luchian was quoted in the New York Times as saying.

“It felt not that much different than accelerating in a sports car,” said Giegel.

Los Angeles-based Hyperloop envisions a future where floating pods packed with passengers and cargo hurtle through vacuum tubes at 600 miles an hour (966 kph) or faster.

In a hyperloop system, which uses magnetic levitation to allow near-silent travel, a trip between New York and Washington would take just 30 minutes. That would be twice as fast as a commercial jet flight and four times faster than a high-speed train.

The company has previously run over 400 tests without human passengers at the Nevada site.

The test comes a month after Reuters first reported that Virgin Hyperloop picked the U.S. state of West Virginia to host a $500 million certification center and test track that will serve as a proving ground for its technology.

The company is working toward safety certification by 2025 and commercial operations by 2030, it has said.

Canada’s Transpod and Spain’s Zeleros also aim to upend traditional passenger and freight networks with similar technology they say will slash travel times, congestion and environmental harm linked with petroleum-fueled machines.

 

It may not have a very exciting name, but that doesn’t matter when the (potential) product is so darn cool. Meet the Electric Brands eBussy, which uses a modular design to (potentially) offer a whole range of passenger- and cargo-carrying configurations.

We’re partial to the Camper and Cabrio shells, but Electric Brands envisions everything from a basic platform (which ought to be fairly customizable for upfitters) to two- and four-door pickup trucks and everything in between. The concept reminds us of another impossibly cute series of products that all started with the Volkswagen Beetle. The German automaker used one basic chassis design that we colloquially call the “pan,” altering it as necessary to offer a range of coupes, sedans, vans and trucks.

In addition to street-oriented options, Electric Brands also intends to offer a variant it calls Offroad with a lifted suspension and all-terrain tires. Each of the optional shells can sit atop the off-road chassis, and since the entire platform boasts permanent all-wheel drive and four-wheel steering, venturing off the beaten path ought to be a legitimate possibility. Every version would also feature integrated solar modules and regenerative braking.

With a chassis that reportedly measures just shy of 12 feet in length, the eBussy platform would theoretically offer battery packs ranging from 10 kWh to 30 kWh. Due to the lightweight 1,000-ish pound weight of the base vehicle, that’s enough to provide between 124 and 373 miles. Naturally, we expect that range estimate could change drastically depending on the vehicle’s configuration and load, plus European estimates are notoriously more range favorable than those quoted in the United States.

We’re not sure what kind of performance the eBussy platform would offer, but the specifications gear more toward carrying loads than hitting the drag strip. Quoted horsepower stands at a low 20, but we’re not sure if that’s the total number of ponies or if that’s per wheel. The company’s claim of 737 pound-feet of torque is surely delivered where the rubber meets the road, not by the motor(s).

Electric Brands is currently accepting reservations for all eBussy styles with prices starting around $18,400 (15,800 euros) and rising from there. As of this writing, the company’s website reports 4,080 current reservations and the most popular style has been the camper van (via Motor1). We don’t know of any current plans to import these ridiculously cool little electric machines to the States, but here’s hoping. Deliveries are slated to begin at some point in 2021.

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