Fully Integrated Precise Time Scale System Combines Multiple High-Performance Clocks to Provide Primary Source of UTC-Class Time for National Timing of Critical Infrastructure
Microchip Technology Inc. has announced the new Precise Time Scale System which is a fully integrated system capable of providing timing accuracies and the core products integrated into this PTSS are SyncSystem 4380A Time Scale Edition, Time Scale Orchestrator, 5071A Cesium Clock Primary Frequency Standard, and MHM 2020 Active Hydrogen Maser.
A new trove of leaked documents has shed an unfavorable light on the early days of Uber. Dubbed the Uber Files, the leak consists of approximately 124,000 internal company documents, including more than 83,000 emails and text messages exchanged between former CEO Travis Kalanick and other executives, that date to a period between 2013 and 2017. The latter marks the year Kalanick stepped down as CEO of Uber amid mounting controversy.
Working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), The Guardian shared the trove with 180 journalists at 40 outlets across 29 countries. The documents show a company willing to do things many of its own executives thought were “fucking illegal.”
In 2016, for instance, Kalanick reportedly ordered French employees to encourage local Uber drivers to counter-protest the taxi strikes that were underway in Paris at the time. When one executive warned Kalanick that “extreme right thugs” were part of the protest, the former CEO pushed back. “I think it’s worth it,” he said. “Violence guarantee[s] success. And these guys must be resisted, no?”
One former senior executive told The Guardian thatKalanick’s response was consistent with a strategy of “weaponizing” drivers and a playbook the company returned to in other countries.
Another selection of documents details the lengths the company went to escape regulatory scrutiny. In at least 12 instances, Uber ordered staff at local offices in six countries, including France, the Netherlands and India, to employ the “kill switch,” an internal tool the company developed to protect its data.
“Please hit the kill switch ASAP,” Kalanick wrote in one email shared by The Washington Post. "Access must be shut down in AMS,” he added, referring to the company’s Amsterdam office. In two cases involving Uber’s Montreal office, authorities entered the building only to see all the computers and tablets before them resetting at the same time. The company told The Post “such software should never have been used to thwart legitimate regulatory actions,” and that it stopped using the system in 2017.
“We have not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly not in line with our present values,” said Jill Hazelbaker, Uber’s senior vice president of marketing and public affairs, in a statement the company issued after The Guardian published its findings on the Uber Files. “Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we’ve done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come.”
In a statement published by the ICIJ, Travis Kalanick’s spokesperson said any suggestion the former executive “directed, engaged in, or was involved” in “illegal or improper conduct" is “completely false."
"The reality was that Uber's expansion initiatives were led by over a hundred leaders in dozens of countries around the world and at all times under the direct oversight and with the full approval of Uber's robust legal, policy, and compliance groups," they added.
Nearly two years ago, NASA made history when its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft briefly “tagged” 101955 Bennu to collect a regolith sample from the surface of the asteroid. While the mission won’t return to Earth until late next year, NASA shared new information about the celestial body. In an update published this week (via Mashable), the agency revealed OSIRIS-REx would have sunk into Bennu had the spacecraft not immediately fired its thrusters after touching the asteroid's surface.
"It turns out that the particles making up Bennu’s exterior are so loosely packed and lightly bound to each other that if a person were to step onto Bennu they would feel very little resistance, as if stepping into a pit of plastic balls that are popular play areas for kids," NASA said.
#OSIRISREx data gathered during sample collection show that asteroid Bennu's exterior is made up of loosely packed & lightly bound rock. So, standing on its surface would feel like being in a plastic ball pit.
That’s not what scientists thought they would find on Bennu. Observing the asteroid from Earth, the expectation was that its surface would be covered in smooth, sandy beach-like material. Bennu’s reaction to OSIRIS-REx’s touchdown also had scientists puzzled. After briefly interacting with the asteroid, the spacecraft left a 26-foot (8-meter) wide crater. In lab testing, the pickup procedure “barely made a divot.”
After analyzing data from the spacecraft, they found it encountered the same amount of resistance a person on Earth would feel while squeezing the plunger on a French press coffee carafe. “By the time we fired our thrusters to leave the surface, we were still plunging into the asteroid,” said Ron Ballouz, a scientist with the OSIRIS-REx team.
According to NASA, its findings on Bennu could help scientists better interpret remote observations of other asteroids. In turn, that could help the agency design future asteroid missions. “I think we’re still at the beginning of understanding what these bodies are, because they behave in very counterintuitive ways,” said OSIRIS-REx team member Patrick Michel.
Ambrose Island, Hitman 3’s first new level since release, will arrive on July 26th. IO Interactive detailed the DLC on Friday when it published the game’s latest monthly roadmap. The studio promised to share more information about the new locale closer to release but on Friday IO said Ambrose Island would introduce new challenges for players to complete. Fans can also look forward to new rewards to unlock and targets to assassinate.
As The Verge points out, IO first previewed Ambrose Island at the start of the year as part of Hitman 3’s year two reveal. At the time, all the company had to share was a single screenshot of the tropical locale. With Friday’s announcement, IO said the DLC would take players to a pirate stronghold located in the Andaman Sea, and reunite protagonist Agent 47 with an “old friend.” Check out the trailer for the DLC below.
Amazon’s annual Prime Day sale may not begin until next week, but you can already find a handful of deals on electronics like the 10.2-inch iPad. This weekend, the retailer has discounted both the 64GB and 256GB variants of Apple’s entry-level tablet. You can now buy the base model 10.2-inch iPad – in both silver and space gray – for $299. A $30 discount off may not seem like much, but it effectively returns the iPad to its lowest price. As for the 256GB model, it’s currently $429, or $50 off its usual $479 price.
Engadget deputy editor Nathan Ingraham awarded Apple’s ninth-generation iPad a score of 86 in 2021. The 10.2-inch iPad is a solid entry-level tablet. With the company’s A13 Bionic chip inside, the 2021 model is fast, and you can expect to get about 10 to 14 hours from the battery. The new model also features a much-improved 12-megapixel front-facing camera with Apple’s Center Stage technology. The feature helps keep you in the middle of the frame during video calls.
Aside from looking stale, there are some practical downsides to the iPad’s dated design. If you want to use an Apple Pencil with the tablet, your only option is the first-generation model. Unfortunately, that means you must connect the stylus to your iPad’s Lightning Part anytime you need to charge it. The 10.2-inch model also doesn’t have the best screen. If you can get past those flaws, the ninth-generation iPad is a solid entry point into Apple’s ecosystem.
It's not just that one uncle who's not allowed at Thanksgiving anymore who's been spreading misinformation online. The practice began long before the rise of social media — governments around the world have been doing it for centuries. But it wasn't until the modern era, one fueled by algorithmic recommendation engines built to infinitely increase engagement, that nation-states have managed to weaponize disinformation to such a high degree. In his new book Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare, David Sloss, Professor of Law at Santa Clara University, explores how social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have become platforms for political operations that have very real, and very dire, consequences for democracy while arguing for governments to unite in creating a global framework to regulate and protect these networks from information warfare.
Social Media, Misinformation, and Democratic Governance
Governments were practicing disinformation long before the advent of social media. However, social media accelerates the spread of false information by enabling people to reach a large audience at low cost. Social media accelerates the spread of both misinformation and disinformation. “Misinformation” includes any false or misleading information. “Disinformation” is false or misleading information that is purposefully crafted or strategically placed to achieve a political goal.
The political objectives of a disinformation campaign could be either foreign or domestic. Prior chapters focused on foreign affairs. Here, let us consider domestic disinformation campaigns. The "Pizzagate" story is a good example. In fall 2016, a Twitter post alleged that Hillary Clinton was "the kingpin of an international child enslavement and sex ring." The story quickly spread on social media, leading to the creation of a discussion board on Reddit with the title "Pizzagate." As various contributors embellished the story, they identified a specific pizza parlor in Washington, DC, Comet Ping Pong, as the base of operations for the child sex operation. "These bizarre and evidence-free allegations soon spread beyond the dark underbelly of the internet to relatively mainstream right-wing media such as the Drudge Report and Infowars." Alex Jones, the creator of Infowars, "has more than 2 million follows on YouTube and 730,000 followers on Twitter; by spreading the rumors, Jones vastly increased their reach." (Jones has since been banned from most major social media platforms.) Ultimately, a young man who believed the story arrived at Comet Ping Pong with "an AR- 15 semiautomatic rifle... and opened fire, unloading multiple rounds." Although the story was debunked, "pollsters found that more than a quarter of adults surveyed were either certain that Clinton was connected to the child sex ring or that some part of the story must have been true."
Several features of the current information environment accelerate the spread of misinformation. Before the rise of the internet, major media companies like CBS and the New York Times had the capacity to distribute stories to millions of people. However, they were generally bound by professional standards of journalistic ethics so that they would not deliberately spread false stories. They were far from perfect, but they did help prevent widespread dissemination of false information. The internet effectively removed the filtering function of large media organizations, enabling anyone with a social media account — and a basic working knowledge of how messages go viral on social media — to spread misinformation to a very large audience very quickly.
The digital age has given rise to automated accounts known as "bots." A bot is "a software tool that performs specific actions on computers connected in a network without the intervention of human users." Political operatives with a moderate degree of technical sophistication can utilize bots to accelerate the spread of messages on social media. Moreover, social media platforms facilitate the use of microtargeting: "the process of preparing and delivering customized messages to voters or consumers." In summer 2017, political activists in the United Kingdom built a bot to disseminate messages on Tinder, a dating app, that were designed to attract new supporters for the Labour Party. "The bot accounts sent between thirty thousand and forty thousand messages in all, targeting eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds in constituencies where the Labour candidates needed help." In the ensuing election, "the Labour Party either won or successfully defended some of these targeted districts by just a few votes. In celebrating their victory over Twitter, campaign managers thanked... their team of bots." There is no evidence in this case that the bots were spreading false information, but unethical political operatives can also use bots and microtargeting to spread false messages quickly via social media.
In the past two decades, we have seen the growth of an entire industry of paid political consultants who have developed expertise in utilizing social media to influence political outcomes. The Polish firm discussed earlier in this chapter is one example. Philip Howard, a leading expert on misinformation, claims: "It is safe to say that every country in the world has some homegrown political consulting firm that specializes in marketing political misinformation." Political consultants work with data mining companies that have accumulated huge amounts of information about individuals by collecting data from a variety of sources, including social media platforms, and aggregating that information in proprietary databases. The data mining industry "supplies the information that campaign managers need to make strategic decisions about whom to target, where, when, with what message, and over which device and platform."
Political consulting firms use both bots and human-operated "fake accounts" to disseminate messages via social media. (A "fake account" is a social media account operated by someone who adopts a false identity for the purpose of misleading other social media users about the identity of the person operating the account.) They take advantage of data from the data mining industry and the technical features of social media platforms to engage in very sophisticated microtargeting, sending customized messages to select groups of voters to shape public opinion and/or influence political outcomes. "Social media algorithms allow for the constant testing and refinement of campaign messages, so that the most advanced techniques of behavioral science can sharpen the message in time for those strategically crucial final days" before an important vote. Many such messages are undoubtedly truthful, but there are several well-documented cases where paid political consultants have deliberately spread false information in service of some political objective. For example, Howard has documented the strategic use of disinformation by the Vote Leave campaign in the final weeks before the UK referendum on Brexit.
It bears emphasis that disinformation does not have to be believed to erode the foundations of our democratic institutions. Disinformation "does not necessarily succeed by changing minds but by sowing confusion, undermining trust in information and institutions, and eroding shared reference points." For democracy to function effectively, we need shared reference points. An authoritarian government can require citizens to wear masks and practice social distancing during a pandemic by instilling fear that leads to obedience. In a democratic society, by contrast, governments must persuade a large majority of citizens that scientific evidence demonstrates that wearing masks and practicing social distancing saves lives. Unfortunately, misinformation spread on social media undermines trust in both government and scientific authority. Without that trust, it becomes increasingly difficult for government leaders to build the consensus needed to formulate and implement effective policies to address pressing social problems, such as slowing the spread of a pandemic.
Early Prime Day deals keep popping up as we get close to the two-day shopping event, and this time they discount the Chromecast with Google TV by $10. You can pick up the streaming device for $40 right now, which is a return to its record low. Not only does this gadget give you access to services like Netflix, YouTube TV and others, but it also supports classic casting from your smartphone and other devices.
The latest Chromecast came out in 2020, but it remains a great option for those who already rely on the Google Assistant or those who prefer the Android TV ecosystem. Like most streaming devices in this price range, it supports 4K HDR content as well as Dolby Vision and Atmos. It's just as easy to install as other streaming dongles, but one of the best things about it is its voice remote. That makes it much easier to navigate the Android TV interface, and it has a voice button that you can press when you want to search for content using voice commands.
When you're not binge-watching your favorite show, you can also use the Chromecast with Google TV to turn your set into something like a huge smart display (sans touch capabilities). Using Assistant commands, you can ask the Chromecast to display forecasts on your TV, show live feeds from compatible security cameras and control smart lights and other accessories. We also like that it supports Ambient Mode, which lets you display Google Photos on your TV when you're not actively using it.
Ahead of its annual Prime Day sale next week, Amazon has discounted the Apple Watch Series 7. As long as you don’t mind buying the wearable in green, you can get the 41mm model with GPS connectivity for $284. The $115 price drop represents a nearly 30 percent discount from the usual price of Apple’s latest smartwatch. And if green is not your color, some of the other models are available for $329 or less.
Engadget gave the Series 7 a score of 90 last fall. Apple may have not dramatically redesigned the wearable, but the changes it did introduce were impactful. Deputy editor Cherlynn Low found the move to a roomier screen made the Series 7 easier and more enjoyable to use thanks to there being more space the UI. She also appreciated the fact the Series 7 could charge faster than its predecessor.
If you’re on the fence because the Series 8 is right around the corner, most recent reports suggest you won't miss out on much. The one big feature that’s reportedly on the way is a body temperature sensor that will warn you when you’re running a fever. Otherwise, the Series 8 is expected to feature the same design and performance capabilities as its predecessor. For that reason, you’re probably better off picking up a discounted Series 7 now rather than waiting to buy the new model at full price.
Blizzard is ending development on Heroes of the Storm. In a brief blog post published on Friday, the studio said it plans to support the MOBA “in a manner similar” to games like Starcraft II. Moving forward, Blizzard said fans can expect the company to continue to release patches that address bugs and balance issues “as needed.” However, it has “no plans” to add new content to the in-game shop – which, for the time being, will continue to operate.
“To our Heroes community, we say, ‘thank you,’” Blizzard said, noting it will gift a free in-game mount to players with the game’s next patch. “You continue to be one of our most passionate communities, we’re grateful for your continued dedication and support, and as always, we look forward to seeing you in the Nexus.”
Friday’s announcement effectively caps off what’s been a slow death for the Blizzard-universe MOBA. In 2018, former studio president J. Allen Brack said the studio had made the “difficult” decision to move some of the staff that had been working on Heroes of the Storm to other projects. Since then, the cadence of new content slowed to a trickle. The game’s most recently added hero came in 2020. Blizzard’s abrupt decision to end its support of the Heroes of the Storm esports scene also left many pros bitter with the company.
Samsung’s next Galaxy S series phone could mark the end of an era. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the company is likely to single-source the processor for its next S series flagship from Qualcomm. That would be a significant departure for Samsung. Over the years, the company has used both Snapdragon and Exynos SoCs in its flagship phones.
The model you got would depend on where you lived. In the US, Galaxy S and Note series phones have exclusively come with Qualcomm chips, much to the envy of Samsung customers in Europe and Asia. In the past, in nearly every situation where Samsung has offered both Snapdragon and Exynos variants of its phones, the former have either outperformed the company’s in-house chips or provided better battery life. Qualcomm processors tend to also offer a more stable experience when it comes to apps and games.
(1/3) 1. Qualcomm will likely be the sole processor supplier for Samsung Galaxy S23 (vs. 70% shipment proportion for S22) thanks to the next flagship 5G chip SM8550 made by TSMC 4nm.
Kuo suggests that reality has become too hard for Samsung to ignore. “S23 may not adopt Exynos 2300 made by Samsung 4nm because it can’t compete with SM8550 in all aspects,” he wrote on Twitter, referring to the next flagship chips from both Samsung and Qualcomm. Kuo adds such a decision would further cement Qualcomm’s dominance in the Android market.
What all of that could mean for the future of Samsung’s Exynos brand is hard to say. The company spent years working with AMD to design and create the Galaxy S22’s Exynos 2200, only for that chip to run into many of the same issues that affected its predecessors. In April, Samsung Mobile president TM Roh reportedly told employees the company was working on a chipset that would be “unique” to Samsung smartphones but didn’t elaborate on how that component would be different from the company’s existing Exynos designs.
