Topps Blog

Wednesday, 27 July 2022

Motherboards are Getting Updates for Unannounced Raptor Lake CPUs

At this point in mid-summer, Intel still hasn’t officially said anything about Raptor Lake’s launch date. We don’t know when it’s coming or what pricing will be. All we know is that it will arrive this year, most likely in the fall. Despite this situation, motherboard manufacturers have already begun making their motherboards compatible with Intel’s 13th generation CPUs. Raptor Lake is an upgraded version of Alder Lake, so both platforms use the LGA 1700 socket.

You might not have noticed, but in the past month all the big motherboard manufactures issued BIOS updates adding Raptor Lake support. This includes MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, and ASRock, according to Ars Technica. These updates apply to all Intel-based chipsets, including Z690, B660, H610, and H670. However, since Raptor Lake isn’t released yet, these BIOS updates won’t let you use the CPU like you would normally if you somehow got your hands on one. Asus’ update has this footnote, “Note that the initial BIOS version is for power-up purposes only and is not suitable for performance testing. A full-function version will be made available when the new CPUs are launched.”

This is certainly good news for those who are looking to upgrade to Raptor Lake from an older platform. When Intel’s 12th generation chipset debuted, people were shocked by some of the prices, especially for Z690 motherboards. That was at the end of 2021, when we had a chip shortage. We also had a DDR5 memory shortage, so most people who made the leap likely bought DDR4 to save a few bucks. At the time, the cost of a Z690 board with DDR5 memory was ludicrous.

When Raptor Lake launches though, it’s quite possible those same Z690 boards will be a bit more affordable. As long as they support Raptor Lake, which all 12th generation boards will at some point, it could be a winning package. That’s provided you don’t mind missing out on whatever Z790 brings to the table. Intel has yet to discuss those features, but there was a recent leak showing what the platform would look like (image above).

The launch of Raptor Lake will complete LGA 1700’s lifecycle, as it was promised to support two generations of CPUs. That is a far cry from what AMD delivered with its AM4 platform, obviously. AMD launched AM4 in 2016, and it’s still supported even today for AMD’s latest processors. We will have to see if that continues with AM5, and the same goes for whatever socket follows Intel’s LGA 1700. This is long been a pain point for Intel users, and AMD has been wise to offer a better alternative.

Raptor Lake is rumored to be launching on October 7th, according to Videocardz. Like with Alder Lake, it’ll unveil its high-end CPUs first, with non-K (unlocked) SKUs debuting at CES in January. Launch models will allegedly be the Core i9-13900K/KF, 13700K/KF, and the i5 13600K/KF. One of the big changes with Raptor Lake is upgraded memory specs. DDR5 will go from JEDEC 4800 to JEDEC 5600. However, like Alder Lake it will support both DDR4 and DDR5 memories.

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Man Who Lost Crypto Fortune in Landfill Wants to Use Robots to Find It

Imagine realizing that you accidentally threw away a winning lottery ticket. You’d probably be digging through the trash, and if the jackpot was high enough, you might even toy with paying a visit to your local landfill. This has been a reality for a UK man named James Howells for the past decade, only instead of a lottery ticket, he’s looking for a hard drive containing the keys to millions of dollars worth of bitcoin. His latest plan to find his buried treasure involves robot dogs, because of course it does.

Today, mining bitcoin is a complex, energy-intensive process because the proof-of-work calculations get more difficult over time. But a decade ago, Howells was able to mine about 8,000 bitcoins on a modest home computer before the crypto boom. Even after the recent collapse in cryptocurrency prices, Howells’ lost fortune is worth about $166 million. All he needs to claim the money is the passcode saved on the hard drive he mistakenly tossed in 2013.

Howells — a former IT worker and current crypto trader — has been working on schemes to find his fortune ever since he realized his mistake. The problem, the local landfill in Newport, Wales has since been sealed and covered with earth. According to an interview Business Insider conducted with Howells, he has devised a plan costing $11 million to excavate the landfill. He’s reportedly gotten funding from venture capitalists Hanspeter Jaberg and Karl Wendeborn, but he needs some robots to get the job done.

The plan calls for several Boston Dynamics Spot robots, which would march around the landfill in search of the hard drive. Trash excavated from the landfill would be sorted at a nearby pop-up facility with the help of human workers and AI systems. Even if Howells could find the hard drive in a mountain of garbage, there’s no guarantee it would still work. If the data is unsalvageable, his bitcoins are still lost. And lets not forget this hard drive has been sitting in a dank pit for the last decade. Garbage water isn’t good for hard drives (or anything, for that matter).

The elements aren’t the only thing standing between Howells and his fortune. The local city council has always been skeptical of Howells and his schemes. They weren’t interested in his offer to share 25 percent of the recovered crypto, noting that digging up the landfill could incur millions in costs to the local government, and there are real ecological concerns when opening a landfill near residential areas. Howells apparently hopes his new plan will get the council to change its mind, but that seems unlikely after all these years. Howells has not, however, ruled out filing a lawsuit to secure the rights to root around in a big pile of garbage. There are probably easier ways to make $166 million.

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Tuesday, 26 July 2022

Google is Rolling Out Improved Android Tablet Apps

The first Google-blessed Android tablet launched in 2011, and now more than a decade later, Google has rediscovered tablet apps. After neglecting large-screen devices for most of the intervening years, the company has announced new, tablet-friendly features in some of its most popular apps.

Google itself is largely responsible for the dearth of Android tablets. When it gave up on tablets in the wake of the disastrous Pixel C, it also stopped optimizing apps for the large screen, making an already bad problem that much worse. Whereas Apple has worked to standardize large-screen interfaces and provide developers with the tools to develop on the iPad, Google focused Android almost entirely on phones.

Now that Amazon and Samsung have carved up what’s left of the tablet market, Google is back at it. Part of that is the move toward foldable form factors, which can blur the line between a phone and a tablet, and the division is only going to become blurrier with time. To that end, Google is adding tablet enhancements to several of its flagship Workspace apps: Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Keep.

Multitasking is one of the key use cases for tablets and large foldables, and that is exemplified in the new drag-and-drop functionality. All the updated apps now support this feature in split-screen mode. So, you could grab an image or file from Chrome, and drag it into Google Drive to upload it. Likewise, you can select a table from Sheets and drag it into a Docs window.

The Drive app, which acts as a hub for Sheets, Docs, and Slides, is also getting a specific multitasking enhancement. Now, you’ll be able to open two instances of Drive side-by-side. This will help immensely if you need to dig around in your files, opening documents to find something in particular. It also jives nicely with the new drag-and-drop functionality.

The new Workspace functionality should be live in the coming weeks. This move comes just a few months after the most recent Google I/O, during which Google announced it would release a raft of app updates with tablet-optimized interfaces, and it’s working with third-party developers like Zoom and TikTok. Google also plans to release a new tablet. The predictably-named Pixel Tablet will launch next year, but that’s essentially all we know about it.

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Chess-Playing Robot Breaks 7-Year-Old Opponent’s Finger

(Photo: Randy Fath/Unsplash) A relatively normal—well, as normal as human-vs-robot chess can be—chess game went awry last week when a 7-year-old boy’s robotic opponent broke the boy’s finger.

The 7-year-old, identified as Christopher by the Russian news outlet Baza, is said to be one of Moscow’s best chess players under nine years of age. His opponent on July 19 was Chessbot, an artificial intelligence-equipped robot trained to simultaneously play up to three games of chess. Christopher was challenging Chessbot alongside two other human players when the machine grabbed hold of the boy’s finger and wouldn’t let go. By the time Christopher got free, his finger was broken.

Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, told state-owned TASS that the robot had played several games of chess without incident before. And then he stated the obvious: “The robot broke the child’s finger. This is, of course, bad.”

Bone-breaking robots are bad, especially when the public doesn’t know why said bone-breaking occurs. Footage of the incident depicts Chessbot plucking a piece from the board and adding it to a bin of discarded pieces. Christopher quickly goes to make his next move, and the chaos begins. Chessbot grabs onto Christopher’s finger smoothly and unceremoniously. Though there’s no audio and Christopher’s head blocks some of the action, it’s clear the boy is attempting to remove his hand from the robot’s grip.

A few adults eventually jump up to Christopher’s rescue, and after a few too many moments of struggling, they free the boy from his robot opponent’s grasp. But it’s unknown whether Chessbot thought it was picking up a chess piece or was startled by Christopher’s eager move (which, it should be said, wasn’t particularly sudden or erratic). Was Chessbot performing the way it was meant to, but without the right safeguards in place? Or did it lash out on its own, having been thrown off by its human opponent’s body language?

The Russian Chess Federation insists it’s the latter. The organization’s vice president told Baza that Christopher had violated the “safety rules” by failing to allow Chessbot to complete its move. Safety guidelines are typically a good idea when it comes to operating or interacting with machinery, but if the Russian Chess Federation is correct, this incident has exposed a major gap in Chessbot’s engineering. Robots designed to work in close proximity to human hands ideally have security measures in place to prevent bone-snapping and other shudder-inducing injuries. One would especially think so when the robot might be used alongside children.

Christopher’s parents reportedly filed a report with the public prosecutor’s office following the incident. Not all is lost, though: Christopher had his finger in a cast and was able to play in a chess tournament just one day after his harrowing experience, with volunteers helping to make each move.

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Meta to Allow ‘Mature Content’ in Horizon Worlds

Most companies are waiting to see if the metaverse comes to be, but Facebook parent company Meta is trying to get in on the ground floor. Mark Zuckerberg is so sure of the benefits of the metaverse that he changed the name of his company to signal his commitment. Today, the metaverse is little more than a collection of ideas and predictions, but the VR-based Horizon Worlds is probably the closest thing we have right now, and Meta is making a big change to the content policy. Going forward, developers will be allowed to create “mature” content for the platform.

Until now, Horizon Worlds (formerly Facebook Horizon) has been squeaky clean. Meta executives have previously spoken about the importance of moderating this emerging online space, and unique challenges are already popping up. For example, Meta was forced to implement a “personal boundary” to the game because some users were approaching other player avatars and making sexual gestures.

UploadVR says that Meta developers who have created worlds were alerted to the change last week via email. The message told devs to add a rating to their worlds to indicate whether they were mature or not. Anyone who doesn’t update their content will see their world automatically marked as mature.

What does “mature” mean in the metaverse? Facebook isn’t going into great detail, but there are a few bullet points to help guide developers. Meta now says that sexually suggestive content is allowed, including “near” nudity and “suggestive positions.” So, VR teabagging is back on the menu, it would seem. However, Meta is still not willing to allow VR porn into Horizon Worlds.

The Meta Quest 2 is the primary way to access Horizon Worlds.

The policy change also opens the doors to depictions of certain adult content like marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, and gambling. However, Meta draws the line at depictions of illegal drugs or drug abuse. Curious, then, to call out cannabis as specifically allowed when it’s still illegal in half of the US.

Mature content in Horizon Worlds can also include “Intense or excessively violent fictional content.” That isn’t much of a surprise considering some of the most popular VR games involve shooting, smashing, and otherwise killing NPCs. Depictions of real-life violence are still banned, though.

All of the above used to be forbidden in Horizon Worlds, but you should begin to see 18+ spaces soon. The internet has been around for decades, and it’s far from squeaky clean. The metaverse probably won’t be any different in the long run.

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OnePlus Confirms Its New Phone Won’t Have Trademark Mute Switch

In the past decade, OnePlus has gone from a niche provider of enthusiast phones to a staple of carrier stores in the US. The company releases multiple phones every year, and there’s a new one launching in just a few weeks. The upcoming OnePlus 10T has been revealed in official renders, and something’s missing: the iconic mute switch is gone. Oh, OnePlus has its reasons, but fans of the company aren’t having it.

Anyone who has used an iPhone knows how useful a physical mute switch can be. Apple has always offered that feature on its devices, and OnePlus started doing something similar with the OnePlus 2 in 2015. Every flagship phone from the company since has had the same slick three-position mute switch (sometimes called an alert slider), allowing users to choose between sound, vibrate, and silent.

This feature always struck me as a great add-on that helped OnePlus stand out from other Android OEMs — you can see the textured slider in the above image. The OnePlus 10T (below) will be fully revealed on August 3rd, and OnePlus has provided an official render to tide us over. The official image clearly shows there is no alert slider on the 10T. The phone will technically have all the same functionality without the slider, but you will have to change the alert settings in the phone’s software. With the slider, you can just change modes on the fly without even waking the screen.

According to The Verge, OnePlus made the decision to drop the slider because it takes up too much internal space. In previous OnePlus phones, the motherboard had to set aside 30 square millimeters for the slider, which is a lot when you’re talking about a smartphone that has to be nominally pocket-sized. The company says it wanted to focus on different things with the 10T, including a refined wireless setup with 15 antennas arrayed around the phone and faster charging. The response from fans of the company is overwhelmingly negative.

The potential for faster charging is interesting. OnePlus has been among the few OEMs to push higher charging speeds in the US — the OnePlus 10 Pro supported 65W charging in the US, which was slower than the Chinese version of the phone. Still, 65W was already very fast for the US market, and something that can charge even faster would be great to see. But at the expense of the alert slider? This seems like a very questionable decision.

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New Technology Uses Tears to Detect Ocular Disorders, Diabetes

(Photo: Marc Schulte/Unsplash) Technological advancements out of China reveal that tears don’t just flush the eye and convey emotion—they also hold the secret to diagnosing a number of diseases.

Biomedical engineers at Wenzhou Medical University have developed a system for detecting ocular, endocrine, and even neurodegenerative disorders using just a few tears. The system, aptly named iTEARS, uses exosomes in tears to determine whether a certain disease is present in the human body.

Exosomes themselves act as microscopic messengers that carry information about cell health and various bodily processes. When exosomes are captured and analyzed in sufficient quantities, they have the power to reveal whether a person has specific disorders…but the “quantity” portion of testing is the tough part. Tears are already quite small, and obtaining tear samples with high enough concentrations of exosomes can be challenging.

iTEARS, however, can isolate exosomes from the rest of a solution, allowing the exosomes’ cellular messages to shine through. The technology uses two vibrating nanoporous membranes to separate exosomes from tears in as little as five minutes. Once isolated, the exosomes can be used for various forms of disease testing. Not only can the molecular “fingerprints” within a patient’s exosomes help diagnose dry eye, but they can differentiate between types of the disorder, thus allowing the patient and their provider to determine which treatment would be most effective. Compared with a healthy control, tear exosomes can also be used to detect diabetic retinopathy—a relatively rare eye condition associated with diabetes—and even diabetes itself.

(Image: Liu et al/ACS Nano)

The use of exosomes in detecting certain disorders isn’t new. Exosomes exist in all bodily fluids, including blood and urine, which are frequently used to determine whether a patient has a certain disease or condition. But blood and urine aren’t exactly approachable when it comes to at-home tests, which the engineers at Wenzhou hope to eventually create with iTEARS. If such a product is ever made, those worried about ocular and endocrine disorders can test themselves affordably and in the comfort of their own homes, then seek out a specialist if needed.

Most remarkably, such a test might extend beyond ocular and endocrine disorders. The team at Wenzhou believes their technology might someday be used to detect emotional disorders, cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders. While they didn’t specify which disorders might be diagnosed using iTEARS, it’s become known in recent years that exosomes might play a role in detecting Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

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