For iPhone users looking for extra power plus wireless charging who want to stay in the Apple ecosystem, the MagSafe battery pack is the best (and only) way to go. It's pretty expensive at $99, but Amazon now has it on sale for $80 ($19 off the regular price), the cheapest we've seen it this year.
The MagSafe battery pack snaps magnetically onto the back of all iPhone 12 or 13 models and starts charging the handset once attached with about 5 watts of power. It fits onto the back of even the iPhone 13 mini, so you can continue to use your phone with one hand while powering up. If you plug in the battery pack while charging your iPhone, you'll get up to 15W of power and you can keep track of your phone's and the battery pack's recharge on your iPhone's lock screen.
The main downside to the MagSafe battery pack is the 1,460 mAh battery that can't fully charge any of the supported iPhones, and charging speed limited to 5 watts — lower than some third-party models. If you need more juice, take a look at Anker's $60 5,000 mAh MagGo model or the bulky but powerful $60 Belkin 10,000 mAh magnetic charger and portable power bank. Apple's MagSafe model is certainly more elegant and portable than those options, so if you've been looking to buy one, it'd be best to act soon.
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The United States is on top of the supercomputing world in the Top500 ranking of the most powerful systems. The Frontier system from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) running on AMD EPYC CPUs took first place from last year's champ, Japan's ARM A64X Fugaku system. It's still in the integration and testing process at the ORNL in Tennessee, but will eventually be operated by the US Air Force and US Department of Energy.
Frontier, powered by Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) Cray EX platform, was the top machine by a wide margin, too. It's the first (known) true exascale system, hitting a peak 1.1 exaflops on the Linmark benchmark. Fugaku, meanwhile, managed less than half that at 442 petaflops, which was still enough to keep it in first place for the previous two years.
Frontier was also the most efficient supercomputer, too. Running at just 52.23 gigaflops per watt, it beat out Japan's MN-3 system to grab first place on the Green500 list. "The fact that the world’s fastest machine is also the most energy efficient is just simply amazing," ORNL lab director Thomas Zacharia said at a press conference.
Other machines in the TOP10 include another HPE Cray EX system install at EuroHPC in Finland (151.9 petaflops), the IBM-built Summit system using 22-core Power( CPUs and NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs (148.8 petaflops) and Lawrence Livermore's Sierra, a smaller-scale version of Summit that hit 94.6 Pflop/s.
China held two top-ten spots with its Sunway TaihuLight from the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology (NRCPC) and Tianhe-2A built by China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). However, China is rumored to already have no less than two exascale systems (according to the Linmark benchmark) on new Sunway Oceanlite and Tianhe-3 systems. Due to the current state of semiconductor politics, however, China is reportedly not revealing any new benchmarks or important advances.
How Does a Rotary Encoder Module Work and how to Interface it with Arduino?
A rotary encoder is a type of electromechanical position sensor that can be used to identify the angular position of the rotary shaft. This type of sensor or module generates an electrical signal based on the movement and direction of the rotary shaft. This encoder is constructed with mechanical parts thus sensors are very robust, and can be used in many applications like robots, computer mice, CNC machines, and printers. There are two types of rotary encoder: one is an absolute encoder and another is an incremental encoder.
On Sunday, the final day of Disney’s Star Wars Celebration 2022 event, the company shared the first trailer for season two of The Bad Batch. And while we’ve known since last year that Disney planned to continue the series, the new season now has a release timeframe. It will debut on Disney+ this fall.
The trailer the company shared suggests the story will pick up following a time skip that leaves the members of Clone Force 99 looking older than they were in season one. Each one also is also seen wearing updated armor, with squad leader Hunter sporting a new scarf, for instance. As ever, it looks like the group has a tough journey ahead of them as they try to find a place in a changing galaxy. Oh, and there's a Wookie with a lightsaber.
A release window for season two of The Bad Batch was one of a handful of announcements Disney shared during Star Wars Celebration 2022. We also got our first look at Rogue One prequel Andor and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the sequel to Respawn’s Fallen Order, in addition to updates on The Mandalorian and Ahsoka.
In 1933, archaeologists excavating the remains of Pompeii found the bodies of two individuals, their skeletons almost perfectly preserved by the volcanic ash that buried their home in the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24th, 79CE. While many of Pompeii’s residents fled the natural disaster, these two did not.
Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità
In a photo from the early ‘30s (pictured above), you can see the residents of the “House of the Craftsmen” slumped over in the corner of their home’s dining room, almost as if they were eating lunch just as their lives were about to end. It’s a poignant scene archeologists have long sought to unpack, and now we have a better understanding of what may have happened to those two Romans, thanks to the latest advances in DNA sequencing technology.
In a paper published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, a joint team of researchers from Italy, Denmark and the US shared that they recently sequenced the genome of one of the House of Craftmen’s inhabitants – marking the first time archaeologists have decoded the mitochondrial DNA of a resident of Pompeii, according to The New York Times.
With genetic material pulled from his petrous, a dense, pyramid-shaped segment of bone that protects the inner ears, the team found that the male inhabitant of the house suffered from spinal tuberculosis, or what’s better known today as Pott diesase. Associated symptoms include back pain and lower body paralysis. “The condition would have forced him to have little mobility,” Dr. Pier Francesco Fabbri, one of the anthropologists who contributed to the paper, told The Times. It’s very possible the man, who was about 35 years old when he died, would have had difficulty fleeing Pompeii even if he wanted to escape the burning city.
We now also have a better idea of the man’s origins. Comparing his DNA against 1,030 ancient and 471 present-day West Eurasian individuals, the research team concluded that some of his ancestors came from Anatolia, which is now mostly part of modern Turkey. He also had links to the island of Sardinia. However, he had the most genetic similarities with people who lived in and around Rome during Pompeii’s destruction. That lends evidence to the suggestion that the Italian peninsula was a melting pot of racially diverse people at the height of the Roman Empire.
With so little left from that time, our understanding of the ancient world will always be imperfect, but thanks to advances in technology, we’re constantly learning more about what life was like thousands of years ago. It was only at the end of last year that researchers “unwrapped” one of the most pristine mummies ever found with the help of a CT scan. Professor Gabriele Scorrano, the lead researcher on the Pompeii study, told the BBC that future genetic studies could reveal more about the city, including information about the biodiversity of the surrounding area. "Pompeii is like a Roman island,” he said. "We have a picture of one day in 79CE."
At the start of the year, a handful of developers, including Steve Troughton-Smith, found references to “realityOS,” the operating system for Apple’s long-rumored virtual and augmented reality headset. Now, a little more than a week before the start of WWDC 2022, the name has resurfaced in trademark filings seemingly linked to the company.
On Friday, Vox Media product manager Parker Ortolani took to Twitter to share two United States Patent and Trademark Office filings he found registered by a company called Realityo Systems LLC. As Parker and others have pointed out, there’s evidence to suggest Realityo Systems is a shell company created by Apple to obscure its tracks.
First, there’s the June 8th foreign filing deadline for both trademarks, which falls just two days after the start of WWDC 2022. Additionally, as noted by 9to5Mac, Realityo Systems LLC shares the same address as Yosemite Research LLC, the shell company Apple used to secure trademarks for past versions of its macOS operating system, including macOS Monterey. One more interesting tidbit of evidence is that in some countries Realityo Systems submitted trademark filings that include a realityOS logo written in Apple’s signature San Francisco typeface.
The timing of the filings suggests Apple is getting closer to the day it will feel comfortable sharing details about its augmented and virtual reality ambitions. However, we would caution against expecting an announcement as early as next week. In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman predicts the company won’t hold “a full-blown presentation” on its mixed-reality headset at WWDC. In fact, he says he would be “wary of expecting” such an announcement from the company. Gurman previously reported that Apple was considering pushing the device's debut back to 2023 due to ongoing development problems. Still, the company is clearly moving forward with the project.
Snapchat has updated its Custom Stories feature to allow more people to participate. While the original version of the feature only gives you a way to add friends to view and contribute to your Stories, the new version called Shared Stories allows the friends you add to add their own contacts. Say you're cooking and want your friends to add their cooking Stories, too — just add them to the group, so they can add more people, as well. Snap says that makes it easier "for the whole soccer team, camp squad, or group of new coworkers to get in on the fun."
Like regular Stories, shared ones will only be visible for 24 hours before disappearing, but it doesn't have a chat component, probably because it's assumed that not all participants would know each other. The app will also use automatic language detection and other review tools to monitor additions and make sure they're all safe. Finally, you will get a notification if you've joined a Shared Story with someone you've blocked. That gives you the chance to leave the Story if you're not comfortable sharing a part of your life with those users.
Snapchat has released and promised a number of other new features over the past couple of months, likely in an effort to get people to use the app more in face of slowing revenue growth. In April, it introduced a new suite of creator-friendly editing tools called "director mode" that will help you produce more polished content. It also introduced an ASL alphabet lens that you can use to learn the ASL alphabet and released the capability to share YouTube videos directly on the platform.
With WWDC 2022 little more than a week away, more details about what Apple could announce at its annual developer conference are emerging. In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests the company will have a fair amount to share about iOS 16, including enhancements to the lock screen. Gruman says the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system will include wallpapers with widget-like capabilities.
Additionally, iOS 16 will reportedly include support for an always-on display feature that will be initially exclusive to the company’s next iPhone Pro models. The functionality would allow those devices to show you notifications and other glanceable information without the need to fully wake their displays. That’s a feature that’s long been available on many Android phones, and Apple had reportedly planned to add it to the iPhone 13 last year but later changed its plans.
Reiterating his previous predictions, Gurman says iOS 16 will also include enhancements to how the operating system handles multitasking and windowing. Gurman cites a recent tweet from developer Steve Troughton-Smith that shows Apple is likely working on a way to let iOS users resize app windows. That’s a feature that would be particularly useful on iPad. Gurman says he also expects the company to add new social network-like features within Messages. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait long to see what Apple has planned for iOS 16. WWDC 2022 kicks off on June 6th.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed how we live, how we work, how we get from where we live to where we work or even if we have to leave where we live to get to where we work. But the number of workers that have had their commutes shortened from 45 minutes to 45 feet constitute only a fraction of the American workforce — the remainder are still making the twice daily trek. In his new book, Going Remote: How the Flexible Work Economy Can Improve Our Lives and Our Cities, urban economist Matthew E. Kahn examines how this tectonic shift in work-life balance might eventually play out, as well as the increased economic and social stratification it could bring about.
Not everyone can engage in remote work. If 35 percent of the workforce is engaged in remote work at least a few days a week, this will have at least three effects on other workers. First, service jobs demand will rise in the residential areas where remote workers move to. As remote workers move farther from city centers, this will create exurban demand for service workers at the Starbucks and other stores where they shop. Land prices are cheap at the suburban fringe and the purchasing power of such local service providers will be higher than if they sought jobs in the center city. While service workers cannot work remotely, they can move to remote locations where rents are cheaper if more people work from home. If 35 percent of the workforce begins to work from home three days a week and thus are home five days a week, there is a demand for a service sector in areas where they live. This creates new jobs for less educated workers in such areas. In these areas, housing is cheap. This increases the quality of life for such service providers. There will also be new construction jobs as new homes are built farther from the employment centers. Families who spend more time at home will invest money to upgrade the home. This creates new opportunities for those who supply home improvement services. Some people may add a new office to their home or other features to customize it to their needs.
While there are significant opportunities for less skilled workers to live and work far from the cities in the cheaper parts of metropolitan areas, one countervailing force is the rising minimum wage. In cities, the minimum wage is usually not binding as workers must be paid higher nominal wages to attract them. In contrast, in more suburban and exurban areas, being required to pay service workers $15 or more per hour may reduce demand for workers. If workers can find very cheap housing far from the cities, then many would be willing to work for less than $15 an hour. While most people think that a high minimum wage is “good” for low-skill workers, economists emphasize the likely unintended consequence. When employers are required by law to pay a higher than competitive market wage to people, they create fewer jobs. For example, such firms can substitute and rely on robots or other pieces of capital. Economists argue that a higher minimum wage increases unemployment for less skilled workers. In places where housing is cheaper, the minimum wage will more likely be a binding constraint on employers. The net result here is perhaps counterintuitive. Less skilled workers will gain more from the rise of WFH when they live and work in states with less generous minimum wages.
Throughout this chapter, I have focused on how the WFH eligible reconfigure their lives to make the most of this new opportunity. Here it is important to note that those who are currently not WFH eligible are not locked into this category. Younger workers can retrain in fields to open up this possibility for themselves. Parents of younger children can make investments in their children to raise their probability of being WFH eligible in the future.
Those who work in the service industry and thus earn a living from face-to-face interaction still gain from the rise of WFH because they gain from a larger menu of options of where to live their lives. If a wealthy environmentalist community forms in Bozeman, Montana, then this creates new opportunities for those in the service sector to live and work there. While this option may not be attractive to everyone, the key is to increase the menu of possibilities. Non-WFH-eligible workers know themselves and their life goals, and they will make the right choices for themselves and gain from having a larger menu of alternatives.
As more people have the opportunity to live and work where they want to be, this increases not only their physical and mental health but also the accountability of our institutions. If there are places whose governments are failing to meet the desires of local residents, then people will be more likely to move away. In this setting, real estate prices will more quickly reflect changes in local quality of life. If an area features a rising crime rate, in the new WFH economy people will “vote with their feet” and real estate prices will decline in that area. This demands that local officials be more responsive in addressing emerging quality-of-life challenges because if they fail to do so, the tax base will shrink.
While this has been an optimistic chapter, I must add a few cautionary notes about concentrated urban poverty. WFH creates an incentive for the American people to spread out. This chapter has sketched out the benefits from this emerging trend. At the same time, such suburbanization may contribute to the further isolation of the urban poor. Poor people live in center cities in areas such as Baltimore and Detroit because there is old, cheap housing and there is good public transit. If the poor remain in these center city areas and richer people are suburbanizing, then there is greater geographic isolation of the poor and this may reduce political support for programs that redistribute to them because there is an “out of sight, out of mind” effect and the physical distance between the groups acts as a type of moat. Past research in urban economics has documented that college graduates are more likely to suburbanize when violent crime increases in the center city. This propensity to engage in “flight from blight” is likely to increase in a WFH economy because educated people no longer commute to center city jobs five times a week.
