An infrared proximity sensor or IR Sensor is an electronic device that emits infrared lights to sense some aspect of the surroundings and can be employed to detect the motion of an object. As this is a passive sensor, it can only measure infrared radiation. This sensor is very common in the electronic industry and if you’ve ever tried to design an obstacle avoidance robot or any other proximity detection-based system, chances are you already know about this module, and if you don’t, then follow this article as here we will discuss everything about it.
Just when I thought the NFT chaos had calmed, here comes Instagram. Speaking at SXSW, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed digital collectibles would be arriving on Instagram “in the near term.” Zuckerberg said NFTs could one day play a role in the company’s eventual metaverse. “I would hope that, the clothing that your avatar is wearing in the metaverse… can be basically minted as an NFT, and you can take it between your different places,” he said.
SXSW 2022 is this week, and we’re remotely reporting on all the major panels, announcements and reveals. Just, sadly, without the Austin food scene on hand.
Google mentioned in its Games Developer Summit keynote that a Steam alpha test for Chrome OS will be available for "select" Chromebooks. Details weren't available as of this writing, but Google pointed would-be players to a (currently unavailable) Chromebook community forum post. What about minimum specs? According to rumors, you might be limited to models with at least an 11th-gen Core i5 and 7GB of RAM. And hey, what about Stadia?
The API is available to game developers right now.
"Windows games can ship with DirectStorage," starting today, Microsoft has announced. DirectStorage is the tech giant's fast game-loading technology that was introduced with the Xbox Series X and S consoles. In September 2020, Microsoft revealed it'll also make the DirectStorage API available on Windows, allowing games for PCs to take advantage of the technology. It may take a while for more titles to come with DirectStorage, especially since not everyone has upgraded to NVMe SSDs yet.
Tesla has raised the prices of its electric vehicles for the second time in a month. After adding $1,000 to some long-range models last week, the automaker has now implemented a much larger price increase across its lineup. Prices now start at $46,990 for the base Model 3, $2,000 higher than before. Although Tesla has quietly raised prices overnight, the move didn't come out of left field. On Twitter, company chief Elon Musk hinted at the possibility of a price hike. He said both Tesla and SpaceX are seeing "significant recent inflation pressure in raw materials [and] logistics."
Ms. Marvel, one of several Marvel Cinematic Universe shows coming to Disney+ this year, will premiere on June 8th. It centers around Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a Pakistani–American whose idol is Captain Marvel. She’ll be the MCU's first Muslim superhero and will also appear in The Marvels movie, which is scheduled to hit theaters on February 17th, 2023.
The company's still awaiting the go-ahead from US regulators.
European Union officials have unconditionally OKed Amazon's $8.45 billion bid to buy famed movie and TV studio MGM. The European Commission's antitrust regulators determined there was limited overlap between the companies and said the merger wouldn't severely reduce competition in the movie business.
Amazon still needs the green light from the Federal Trade Commission before it can close the deal, which was announced last May. Recent reports suggested the FTC was planning to challenge the merger with an antitrust lawsuit. However, that requires a majority vote by commissioners.
When Audio-Technica introduced its latest true wireless earbuds last month, the company only shared UK and EU pricing and availability. Starting today though, you can purchase the lost-lasting ATH-CKS50TW model in the US. For $149, you can expect up to 20 hours of battery life with active noise cancellation (ANC) disabled, and up to 15 hours with it on. That's well beyond what most of the competition offers — with or without noise canceling abilities.
The IPX4-rated ATH-CKS50TW supports multipoint Bluetooth pairing, so you can be connected to two devices at once and easily switch between the two. On-board controls give you quick access to music, volume, calls and enabling ANC or transparency mode. A handy sidetone feature will allow you to hear yourself during calls so you don't feel the need to shout.
Inside Audio-Technica's app, you can turn on a low-latency mode for streaming or games, adjust the EQ, locate lost earbuds and change audio codecs. For that last item, aptX, aptX Adaptive, AAC and Sony 360 Reality Audio are all supported. Google Fast Pair is available for Android devices and a quick-charge feature will give you 90 minutes of use with a 10-minute rest inside the included case.
Bandai Namco expected FromSoftware's Elden Ring to sell 4 million copies in five weeks. It would've been already impressive if that's what had happened, considering Dark Souls 3sold 3 million copies within a month of its release. Elden Ring, however, eclipsed the company's expectations: It sold 12 million units worldwide, 1 million of which were sold in Japan alone, within 18 days of its release. The companies have announced the game's blockbuster sales numbers in a press release and also mentioned the possibility of expanding the IP "beyond the realm of games."
According to the announcement, those numbers came from the "distribution figures of the package version and sales figures of the downloadable versions" as of March 14th, 2022. With those sales numbers, Elden Ring smashed a bunch of other records associated with Souls-type games. FromSoftware's previous release, Sekiro, sold 2 million copies in 10 days, and it took four years for Dark Souls 3, the best-selling game in the series, to reach 10 million units sold worldwide. Based on how well it's doing, it seems apt to compare Elden Ring to Pokémon Legends Arceus, which sold 6.5 million copies in seven days — and that's a game from a franchise that already has a massive following.
FromSoftware developed Elden Ring with help from A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R. R. Martin, who wrote the overarching mythos for the game that features Lovecraftian creatures and dragons. At the helm of the project was Hidetaka Miyazaki, known for creating the notoriously difficult Souls games, as well as directing Bloodborne and Sekiro. It was supposed to be available back in January but was ultimately released on February 25th for the PlayStation 5 and 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC via Steam.
Several organizations in Russia have found themselves locked out of their Slack accounts without notice, according to Axios. The Salesforce-owned business messaging app has started cutting off Russian users from its platform to comply with international sanctions against the country, as well as with the policies its parent company implemented following the invasion of Ukraine. Axios said it was mostly organizations directly affected by the sanctions that were locked out and that the terms of the restrictions against them require an immediate cutoff.
Since Slack serves as companies' main internal form of communication and can also be used to share files within organizations, it typically hosts a lot of important data for its customers. The organizations that suddenly lost access to their accounts may have also lost the chance to download their data, unless they'd prepared for the possibility of getting locked out.
Salesforce published a statement earlier this month that it's exiting business in Russia, after all. The company said that it has a very small number of customers in the country and that it had already started exiting those relationships the week before. In a statement, Slack told Axios:
"Slack is required to take action to comply with sanctions regulations in the U.S. and other countries where we operate, including in some circumstances suspending accounts without prior notice, as mandated by law. We are in contact with affected customers regarding the impact of these actions on their account status, where permitted by law."
While Slack isn't deleting data owned by the Russian customers it suspended, the sanctioned organizations also won't have access to their data until the sanctions affecting them are lifted.
[Kevin] has long wanted to do something musical with a vintage rotary phone and an Arduino, and has finally done so and committed the first of several experiments to HTML in a five-part series. He found a nice old British Telecom number, but it had been converted to plug and socket wiring to work on the modern system. Because of this, [Kevin] wanted to keep it completely functional as a phone. After all, it ought to work fine until 2025, when pulse dialing will no longer be supported in [Kevin]’s locality.
As you can likely understand, [Kevin] was keen to interface with the phone from the outside and leave the inside untouched. He used a sacrificial ADSL filter’s PCB to break out the socket, and added a pull-up resistor between the pin and 5 V.
Pretty quickly, [Kevin] figured out that when the phone is on the hook, it gives a constant high signal, where as the picking up the phone presents as a high signal going low, and dialing each number results in pulses of that quantity that alternate between high and low.
In part two of the series, [Kevin] really gets into decoding the pulse dialing, which is necessary for the third installment when things get musical. Here, [Kevin] adds in a MIDI module and a Roland MT-32 synth to use the dial as a MIDI note generator — each note dialed will sustain until the receiver is replaced on the hook.
Part four focuses on a MIDI patch changer. [Kevin] picks up the phone, dials a code up to three digits long, and hangs up, which this triggers the synth to change to the assigned voice. In part five, the phone becomes a random note sequencer, and each successive spin of the same digit will produce a different, randomly-chosen note. This is really just the beginning, however, so we’ll be checking back for updates. In the meantime, you can listen to the note generator and the random note sequencer demos after the break.
Doordash has launched a gas rewards program aimed at helping delivery drivers mitigate the high cost of fuel. While it’s better than nothing, it’s more complicated and possibly less impactful than the fuel surcharges recently added by Uber and Lyft.
Beginning on March 17th, drivers for Doordash will be able to receive 10% cashback on gas purchases, though only if they’re enrolled in the company’s own DasherDirect Visa cards. On top of that, drivers who drive a certain amount of miles per week will qualify for weekly gas rewards, ranging from $5 to $15 per week. Unlocking the $5 discount requires drivers to complete at least 100 miles worth of trips in a week. Drivers who total more than 225 miles worth of trips will earn a $15 weekly bonus. Some Dashers easily soar past that—Gridwise calculated that the average courier on the platform traveled anywhere from 75 to 290 miles per day—but others have quit the platform in recent weeks due to rising gas prices. One viral TikTok video by a Dasher showed her earnings amounted to roughly $6 an hour after deducting the price of gas.
Like most delivery platforms like Instacart and UberEats, Doordash drivers are responsible for fuel costs and the maintenance and care of their vehicle. But earnings can vary greatly per week due fluctuating demand, how much customers choose to tip and gas costs. When gas prices are high, drivers often have to do a cost-benefit analysis on the fly, as TheRideShareGuy notes.
Both Uber and Lyft recently unveiled gas surcharges in order to account for high fuel prices — which unlike DoorDash opted to pass the additional expense onto customers. Uber drivers will receive anywhere from $0.45 to $0.55 a trip. A 2019 study by Uber ex-chief economist John List found that the average Uber driver makes just under 30 trips a week. This amounts to approximately an extra $13.50 per week to help with gas. While not insignificant, the extra income may not do much to offset the costs of drivers in states like California where the average has crept up to $6 a gallon.
GM's Super Cruise will learn two new tricks this summer. GM announced on Tuesday that the driver assist system will offer Automatic Lane Change and Trailering capabilities for eligible owners.
Owners of the 2021 Cadillac CT4 and CT5 will have the opportunity to purchase Automatic Lane Change capabilities while 2021 Escalade owners will be given the Trailering option, which allows the SUV to tow without touching the steering wheel. The company estimates that some 12,000 CT4s, 5s, and Escalades will be eligible for the paid updates. "Eligible customers will receive communication from Cadillac about pricing, and how they can purchase and install these new upgrades in the near future," a GM spokesperson told Engadget via email.
Super Cruise, which can be found on a variety of GM products including the new Hummer EV is a Level 2 system, in that it is a driver assist and not fully-autonomous. It relies on a mixture of LiDAR mapping, GPS, visual cameras and radar sensors to navigate traffic. GM originally announced these new features back in 2020, however the COVID pandemic and a global processor shortage have hampered their rollout.
Apple ordered the evacuation of a "portion" of its Apple Park headquarters on Tuesday after first responders from the Santa Clara County Fire Department found an envelope containing an unidentified powdery white substance, according to NBC Bay Area.
We'll update this article once more information on the situation becomes available.
Since last June, Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service has been broadly available on iOS devices, but for many iPhone and iPad owners, the experience wasn’t up to what the company offered on other platforms. On Monday, however, Microsoft announced it had implemented a series of enhancements that would improve performance on all iPhone and iPad devices. At the time, it didn’t provide details on the work it had done, noting only they would lead to a “smoother and more responsive gameplay experience.”
But following an email from Engadget, Microsoft has shared more details on the update. The company says it optimized video output and network data transmission on iOS devices. It also found a way to reduce overall input lag. Since input lag is something that can easily take you out of a game, the work Microsoft did there should be easily noticeable.
One of the tricky things about Xbox Cloud Gaming on iOS is that Microsoft is forced to offer it through Safari, as opposed to a dedicated app, due to Apple’s policies on game streaming apps. Browser APIs have come a long way in the past few years, but a web experience still isn’t a substitute for a native app.
