The correlation coefficient between global GDP and the IC market will rise to 0.95 between 2018 and 2022 up from 0.88 in the 2010-2017 time period, says IC Insights. IC Insights depicts the increasingly close correlation between worldwide GDP growth and IC market growth through 2017, as well as its forecast through 2022, in Figure ...
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TCL, the world’s third largest TV manufacturer, has entered the UK market with its UK debut range now available in retail channels and fully supported. “We see the UK market as one of great opportunity for TCL,” says TCL’s UK boss Bernie Chen. TCL entered the European market by partnering withThomson in France in 2004 ...
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Samtec has launched connector sets compliant with the revised ANSI/VITA 42.0-2016 XMC Standard. VITA 42 XMC defines an open standard for supporting high-speed, switched interconnect protocols on an existing, widely deployed form factor. This revision further defined the concept for the preferred Standard connectors in XMC applications including: Solder ball attachment replaced Paste-On-Pad (POP) for ...
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49 members of the US Congress have asked the Trump Administration to remove tariffs on U.S. semiconductor products imported from China. In a letter to Ambassador Robert Lighthizer, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), the government body charged with issuing the tariffs, the Representatives stressed the importance of semiconductors in the modern economy, arguing that the duties ...
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Green Hills Software has combined its INTEGRITY RTOS with Paragon Software’s File System Link to deliver safe and secure IVI systems. Paragon’s drivers enable car owners to connect USB devices, SD cards, or other storage media directly to in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems and instantly enjoy audio and video recordings, regardless of the file system used. ...
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Synopsys has announced availability of a new Seeker release, an interactive application security testing (IAST) solution redesigned to enable DevSecOps and continuous delivery of secure web applications. Seeker integrates into CI/CD pipelines and monitors web applications during preproduction testing cycles. It clams to be the only application security solution that detects and automatically verifies whether ...
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Spotify has been experimenting with incorporating non-musical formats over the last couple of years, including videos and multimedia podcasts. Next up: Motion comics based on new Archie stories.
For those of you who haven’t been keeping track of the comics incarnations of Archie and his friends, the title was recently rebooted by writer Mark Waid (Kingdom Come) and artist Fiona Staples (Saga). While I was initially skeptical about the need to mess with the characters’ classic designs, I found the first collection to be a perfectly enjoyable combination of teen comedy and soap opera.
Now, as announced in Nerdist, the first six issues have been transformed by digital comics startup Madefire with music and voice acting.
It’s still a comic book, and you can still see Staples’ gorgeous art, but it’s a story that you hit a “play” button to experience, rather than turning any pages. (Madefire and its CEO Ben Wolstenholme prefer the term “motion books” to distinguish the format from the cheesy motion comics of the past, but I suspect the distinction is lost on most readers.)
You can find them on Spotify as Spotlight: Archie — The New Riverdale.
Archie Comics CEO Jon Goldwater said told Nerdist that “Archie has always been about trying to find new ways to get comics to fans and readers,” and said that working with Spotify was “a perfect match.”
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It is unclear where the UkuRobot came from and where it will go once it is done with humanity but I fear that it is up to no good. Look at this robot: small, compact, infinitely complex. Its fretting system stares at us, gimlet-eyed, while the plucking system continues its dark work on the strings. The system uses Lego, motors, and what looks like an Arduino to bring evil songs out of that mini-guitar of death, the ukulele. The world will never be the same and, honestly, do we deserve it to be?
The UkuRobot can play almost any song. In these videos it plays two songs, The Godfather theme and Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day. In the end the tune this monstrous creation plays does not matter. It will pluck out the end of days, winking stars from the sky as each note cascades out of its sound hole. In the end we will not fear the UkuRobot but we will obey it. In the end, all will be lost.
You can also watch it play the Requiem for a Dream theme song here. Pretty cool stuff.
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Aiming to bridge the link between R&D into graphene’s properties and making its application into products on an industrial scale, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the National Graphene Institute (NGI, pictured) at the University of Manchester, have set up a graphene characterisation service. Graphene is stronger than steel, yet is lightweight and flexible, it ...
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Poland-based CallPage offers something other customer interaction apps don’t: the ability to call your website visitors as soon as they click on your page. In a world where the difference between a sale and a click past your site onto Facebook, this is a pretty cool little feature.
CallPage began in 2015 when the founders, Ross Knap, Sergey Butko, and Andrew Tkachiv, tried to figure out why website visitors would leave their sites. They started out as a consultancy and the product was born out of some after-hours tinkering by the team. Instead of messaging users, they thought, why not let managers talk to them on the phone?
“Our widget analyzes user behavior on your website,” said CEO Knap. “Then when it sees an interested visitor, it offers him a free callback in 28 seconds. The interested visitor leaves a phone number on your site, our widget calls to the first available manager’s mobile phone and then the next one if no one picks up. After the conversation client will receive an SMS of thanks. It doesn’t require any extra work.”
The team raised a $4.5 million Series A from TDJ Pitango Ventures, Innovation Nest, and Market One Capital. They have 3,000 customers and it makes 280,000 calls monthly. The team started with a $50,000 seed check from an early investor.
Knap and the team have big plans.
“CallPage will continue the realization of our development plan,” said Knap. “The company is going to change into a product more from the perspective of ‘All your company calls in one place.’ The R&D department have already started working on using machine learning and AI which allows analyzing of hundreds of thousands of calls through the CallPage system. Thanks to this, companies will be able to run their communications more effectively.”
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The latest trailer for Sony’s Venom delivers the most extensive look yet at the superpowered title character played by Tom Hardy.
The film’s first teaser focused on Hardy and the other human cast members, with no footage of the actual alien “symbiote” (basically, it’s a sentient costume with a bad attitude). When we actually got to see Venom a few months later, some people were really into it. This new trailer goes even further than those previous glimpses of oozing CGI skin and enormous fangs — it’s got big Venom action scenes and even a full-on, joke-y symbiote monologue.
Venom was created by David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane (who drew on previous storylines about the symbiote costume). He started out as Spider-Man’s enemy, and that’s the role he filled on-screen a decade ago in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3.
But — as is often the case with comic book characters — Spider-Man and Venom have sometimes shifted into being uneasy allies, and it looks like the new movie will focus on Venom as an antihero rather than outright bad guy. Venom is directed by Zombieland‘s Ruben Fleischer, with an impressive cast that also includes Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed and Jenny Slate.
By the way, you may have noticed “In Association With Marvel” card at the beginning the trailer. That’s a little hint at the film’s convoluted connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: While a deal between Sony (which controls the film rights to Spider-Man and associated characters) and Disney/Marvel allowed the studios to collaborate on Spider-Man: Homecoming, Venom is meant to kick off a new cinematic universe for Sony, built around Spider-Man’s supporting characters like Black Cat and Silver Sable.
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An evaluation board from Recom, maximises runtime for small battery-powered wireless devices. The R-78S evaluation board (R-78S3.3-0.1-EVM) for Recom’s 3.3V R-78S boost converter is now available from Dengrove Electronic Components. The evaluation board maximises runtime by generating a regulated 3.3V output as the battery discharges to as low as 0.65V. Test points measure load current and ...
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Thalia Design Automation and Catena have delivered the first of their analogue IP reuse projects. The two companies have worked together to migrate Catena’s WiFi and variants of Bluetooth IP including a low-power version, between multiple sub-40nm process nodes and foundry providers. Analogue IP providers increasingly need to respond to customer demands for absolute flexibility in ...
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An international team has added another two-dimensional material to the expanding list that started with graphene. Hematene is an iron oxide mono-layer, which has been made by exfoliating it from the naturally-occurring iron ore heamatite (or ‘hematite’). Liquid exfoliation was used, a technique also used to knock graphene from naturally-occurring graphite. “The two-dimensional morphology of ...
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IQD has launched a range of quartz crystals which can operate in the fundamental mode up to 200 MHz. The quartz crystals are housed in an hermetically sealed 2.5 x 2.0 x 0.6mm (IQXC-152) and 2.0 x 1.6 x 0.5mm (IQXC-153) ceramic 4 pad package, 2 of the pads are grounded to the metal lid to ...
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Advantech, Behr Technologies (BTI), Hitachi Solutions America, and Microsoft are collaborating to deliver wireless communications for private industrial internet of things (IIoT) networks. The joint effort will provide a mass-market, end-to-end wireless gateway to ensure connectivity with sensors for production-level industrial and commercial applications. This collaboration aims to meet growing demand in the marketplace for ...
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Tencent has jouned the LoRa Alliance to develop LoRaWan technology. Tencent has invested significantly in technology and applications for LoRaWAN and will support further development of the LoRaWAN ecosystem. The company also announced plans to build a LoRaWAN network in Shenzhen with local partners. Finally, it provides device-edge-cloud LoRaWAN solutions on its network for a ...
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Researchers from NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) have produced clouds of ultracold atoms called Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) aboard the International Space Station (ISS), representing the coldest experiments ever conducted in space. BECs, which can reach temperatures just above absolute zero, the point where atoms should theoretically stop moving entirely, have never previously been produced in ...
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Uber will stop it’s autonomous truck development to concentrate on self-driving cars. Two years ago, Uber bought Otto which develops self-driving technology for trucks. Uber is said to have paid $680 million for Otto which was started by an ex-Waymo engineer who, Waymo alleged, had stolen 14,000 documents from Waymo. That precipitated a bitter lawsuit ...
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T-Mobile, the third largest US mobile network, has given Nokia a $3.5 billion contract to build its US 5G network. The move may incentivise other operators to build 5G networks which they have been reluctant to do because of cost. T-Mobile says it will run a 5G service next year in LA, Las Vegas, New ...
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3D body scanning systems have hit the big time after years of stops and starts. Hot on the heels of Original Stitch’s Bodygram, another 3D scanner, 3DLOOK, has entered into the fray with a $1 million investment to measure bodies around the world.
The founders, Vadim Rogovskiy, Ivan Makeev, and Alex Arapovd, created 3DLOOK when they found that they could measure a human body using just a smartphone. The team found that other solutions couldn’t let them measure fits with any precision and depended on expensive hardware.
“After more than six years of building companies in the ad tech industry I wanted to build something new which was not a commodity,” said Rogovskiy. “I wanted to overcome growth obstacles and I learned that the apparel industry had mounting return problems in e-commerce. 3DLOOK’s co-founders spent over a year on pure R&D and testing new approaches and combinations of different technologies before creating SAIA (Scanning Artificial Intelligence for Apparel) in 2016.”
The team raised $400,000 to date and most recently raised a $1 million seed round to grow the company.
The team also collects “fit profiles” and is able to supply these profiles based on “geographic location, age, and gender groups.” This means that 3DLOOK can give you exact sizes based on your scanned measurements and tell you how clothes will fit on your body. They have 20,000 profiles already and are working with eight paying customers and five large enterprise systems. Lemonade Fashion and Koviem are both using the platform.
“3DLOOK is the first company that managed to build a technology that allows capturing human body measurements with just two casual photos, and plans to disrupt the market of online apparel sales, offering brands and small stores an API for desktop and SDK for mobile to gather clients measurements and build custom clothing proposals,” said Rogovskiy. “Additionally, the company collects the database of human body measurements so that brands could build better clothing for all types of body and solve fit and return problems. It will not only allow stores to sell more apparel, it will allow people get the quality apparel.”
3D scanners have gotten better and better over the years and it’s interesting to see companies being able to scan bodies just from a few photos. While these things can’t account for opinions of taste they can definitely make sure that your clothes fit before you order them.
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In what amounts to one of the simplest but most baffling forms of social engineering, hackers from China have taken to sending CDs full of malware to state officials, leading the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a government security outfit, to release a warning detailing the scam.
The trick is simple: a package arrives with a Chinese postmark containing a rambling message and a small CD. The CD, in turn, contains a set of Word files that include script-based malware. These scripts run when the victims access them on their computers, presumably resulting in compromised systems.
“The MS-ISAC said preliminary analysis of the CDs indicate they contain Mandarin language Microsoft Word (.doc) files, some of which include malicious Visual Basic scripts,” wrote security researcher Brian Krebs. “So far, State Archives, State Historical Societies, and a State Department of Cultural Affairs have all received letters addressed specifically to them, the MS-ISAC says. It’s not clear if anyone at these agencies was tricked into actually inserting the CD into a government computer.”
While it should be obvious that you shouldn’t stick unrequested storage media into your computer, clearly this scam seemed feasible enough for someone to spend a little cash to make and ship these little CD-ROMs. Now they just have to target victims who still use CD readers.
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Surrey-based Cliff Electronics is offering pre-assembled fibre-optic connector rack panels, fitting 16 connectors in each 1U x 19” panel. Based on the firm’s ‘FeedThrough’ profile, which fits various electrical and optical connectors in the standard cut-out for an XLR connector, there are four pre-loaded panels – include one with the ST MM (multi-mode) fibre-optic connector whose straight ...
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Q2 silicon wafer area shipments rose 2.5% to 3,160 million square inches from Q1’s 3,084 million square inchesM according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG). Q2 total area shipments are 6.1% higher than Q2 2017 shipments. “The second calendar quarter of the year typically enjoys a volume increase over the first quarter,” says SEMI SMG chairman ...
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Charcroft Electronics, the Llanwrtyd Wells-based specialist components manufacturer and distributor, has signed a UK distribution franchise agreement with Euroquartz which manufactures quartz crystals, oscillators, filters and frequency-related products to the electronics manufacturing industry world-wide. “The addition of the Euroquartz product range is a natural extension to our existing portfolio of Defence, Space-grade and high-reliability products,”says Charcroft md Debbie ...
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EC Electronics is offering low-pressure over-moulding encapsulation for PCBs and cable assemblies from its facility near Reading, as well as its Romanian factory. The process is an alternative between traditional potting and injection moulding. “Although initially used in the automotive industry to waterproof connectors and to add strain-relief for wires and cables, over-moulding is now used to ...
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“Historically, p-channel jfets availability has declined,” according to Californian fet maker Linear Integrated Systems (LIS). “Complementary single n-channel and p-channel jfets have become limited to a few industry standards. Complementary monolithic dual n-channel and p-channel jfets have not been offered for many years, leaving designers under supported.” And its answer to the dearth of choice is ...
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Toshiba shipping volume quantities of two new high current photorelays that are fabricated using the latest U-MOS IX semiconductor process. The TLP3553A and TLP3555A devices feature OFF-state output terminal voltage ratings of 30V and 60V, and ON-state continuous current ratings of 4A and 3A – higher than previous generation products. When operated in pulsed mode, ...
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Infineon is in volume production of the 1200V TRENCHSTOP IGBT6. It is the first discrete IGBT duopack on the market manufactured on 12 inch wafers. The product family was optimized for use in hard switching and resonant topologies operating at switching frequencies from 15 kHz to 40 kHz. Typical applications for the IGBT6 are uninterruptible ...
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Kingston maintained its lead in the DRAM module market last year with 60% growth, reports DRAMeXchange. ADATA was No.2, growing its sales 146%. DRAM module makers saw sales rise 69% last year to $11.7 billion. Driving this was the rising ASP of DRAM which rose 50% in 2017 and rose 60% in the spot market. ...
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SEMI has objected to tariffs on Chinese imports used by the semiconductor manufacturing equipment industry SEMI’s Jonathan Davis has called for the removal of 29 tariff lines covering items critical to semiconductor manufacturing including machines and spare parts used to make, wafers, flat panel displays and masks. Davis stressed that while SEMI supports stronger protections ...
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The DCMS ( Digital, Culture, Media and Sport ministry) published a report yesterday saying that Facebook was disingenuous in answers to questions from a parliamentary committee ‘to the point of obstruction’. The DCMS report was investigating the use of Facebook to interfere in elections and to publish fake news and Is looking at whether social ...
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More bad news for subscription movie ticket service MoviePass, which acknowledged yesterday that there was an unidentified issue preventing people from using their MoviePass credit cards to get tickets.
A regulatory filing from parent company Helios & Matheson offers more insight about what happened. The filing (first spotted by Business Insider) announces a “demand note” of $6.2 million, including $5 million in cash that the company borrowed. It goes on to explain:
The $5.0 million cash proceeds received from the Demand Note will be used by the Company to pay the Company’s merchant and fulfillment processors. If the Company is unable to make required payments to its merchant and fulfillment processors, the merchant and fulfillment processors may cease processing payments for MoviePass, Inc. (“MoviePass”), which would cause a MoviePass service interruption. Such a service interruption occurred on July 26, 2018.
In other words, it looks like MoviePass wasn’t able to pay one of its service providers, which led to the outage. In order to make those payments, it borrowed $5 million.
This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in MoviePass’ finances. A Helios & Matheson filing from earlier this month suggested that the company was looking to raise up to $1.2 billion in equity and debt financing to fund MoviePass’ operations and growth.
Meanwhile, although the service is best-known for offering access to unlimited movie tickets for $9.95 per month, the specifics of the pricing model have been changing pretty frequently.
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Netflix has optioned Shoe Dog, the bestselling memoir by Nike co-founder and former CEO Phil Knight.
While the streaming service has had its most high-profile success with original shows like Orange is the New Black and Stranger Things, it sounds like it’s planning to turn Shoe Dog into a film. Knight and Frank Marshall will produce, while Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (the true-life-focused writing team behind Ed Wood, Man on the Moon and The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story) pen the screenplay.
Netflix’s announcement says Marshall and Knight first met on the set of Back to the Future, where Marshall was one of the executive producers.
“Ever since our collaboration on BTTF and being a runner myself, I’ve always been fascinated by Phil’s story and how the company came to be,” Marshall said in a statement. “It’s an amazing tale about what the path to success really looks like, with its mistakes, struggles, sacrifice and even luck. It’s about how a company can grow with the right people, dedication, a belief in the power of sport and a shared mission to build a brand that would change everything.”
This isn’t the first time Netflix has tried to tell business stories drawn from the real world. It adapted Sophia Amoruso’s Girlboss into a series last year, then canceled the show after one season.
Shoe Dog was published in 2016. Bill Gates wrote that in contrast to most books about entrepreneurship, Knight’s memoir is “a refreshingly honest reminder of what the path to business success really looks like.” It remains on the New York Times besteller list more than two years later.
It’s also worth noting that Knight also has a connection to the film world through his ownership of the Laika, the stop motion animation studio behind Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings — the latter film was directed by Laika CEO (and Knight’s son) Travis Knight.
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Sunflower Shield adds a touch-enabled 3.5in QVGA TFT LCD to Arduino projects, and demonstrates Bridgetek’s FT813 video controller – which uses the firm’s innovative ‘EVE’ video controller which does away with the need for video ram. Designed by Cowfish Studios, it will render 24bit colour content in either landscape or portrait orientations, plus support smooth 60frame/s animations as ...
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Panasonic is releasing a new series of automotive-qualified Aluminium electrolytic capacitors benefiting from very high ripple current (2 to 2.5 times higher than existing FC series products) and large capacitance values (up to 60% higher than existing FC series products). FP series radial lead type devices also feature a high endurance of 4000h up to ...
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Salto is a jumping robot that is all heart (and legs). A project originally launched in 2017 this tiny robot thrusts itself up and down and back and forth like a crazed grasshopper, jumping with absolute precision and loads of speed.
Created by the UC Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, this little robot uses rotor-based thrusters and bouncy legs to do its tricks.
Salto, which stands for “Saltatorial Locomotion on Terrain Obstacles,” is designed to mimic saltatorial – jumping – animals like kangaroos and bush babies.
Sadly, this little robot doesn’t always survive its jumps. In this video, Salto basically destroys itself as it jumps, something all robots may need to fear as they reach for the sun (or ceiling.)
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Element14 is launching a new reality series called “Path to Programmable” sponsored by Xilinx. The series will take five community members new to FPGASoCs and train them to better understand the technology, development tools and design flow process over the course of the twelve-week programme. From Machine Learning and 5G Wireless to Cloud Computing and ...
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Custom MMIC has added to its LNA and Phase Shifter MMIC portfolio. The LNA is a C Band, 4-8 GHz device housed in a leadless 3×3 mm plastic surface mount package. The LNA delivers greater than 16 dB of gain with a corresponding output 1 dB compression point of +18 dBm and a noise figure ...
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Applied Materials, Symetrix and ARM have won a DARPA contract to develop a neuromorphic switch based on CERAM (Correlated Electron RAM), The contract is part of DARPA’s ERI (Electronics Fesurgence Initiative) aimed at accelerating the performance of electronic systems. The CeRAM approach is looking at sppeding up the processing of analogue signals. gCeRAM is a ...
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Intel had Q2 net profit of $5.91 billion on sales 15% up y-oy of $16.96 billion. The PC business had revenues of $8.73 billion up 6% y-o-y. The server business had revenues of $5.55 billion- up 27% y-o-y. The memory business had revenues of $1.08 billion – up 23% y-o-y the IoT business had sales ...
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Finally, a little justice for the scammers who prey on the unsuspecting. Twenty-four more phone scammers have received prison sentences of up to 20 years for fraud and money laundering. The extent of their efforts was truly staggering.
One defendant, Miteshkumar Patel of Illinois, received 240 months in prison followed by three years of probation. Patel, wrote the Department of Justice, “served as the manager of a Chicago-based crew of ‘runners’ that liquidated and laundered fraud proceeds generated by callers at India-based call centers.”
Those callers used call scripts and lead lists to target victims throughout the United States with telefraud schemes in which the callers impersonated U.S. government employees from the IRS and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The callers duped victims into believing that they owed money to the U.S. government and would be arrested or deported if they did not pay immediately. After the victims transferred money to the callers, a network of U.S.-based runners moved expeditiously to liquidate and launder fraud proceeds through the use of anonymous stored value cards. In addition to recruiting, training, and tasking runners in his crew, Patel also coordinated directly with the Indian side of the conspiracy about the operation of the scheme. Patel was held accountable for laundering between $9.5 and $25 million for the scheme.
The scam — familiar to anyone with a phone number — involves a robocall that appears to be from the IRS. When you call back, you get a call center staffed with threatening non-English speakers who yell at you if you try to weasel out of paying them with iTunes gift cards.
“This type of fraud is sickening,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick in a release. “However, after years of investigation and incredible hard work by multiple agents and attorneys, these con artists are finally headed to prison. Their cruel tactics preyed on some very vulnerable people, thereby stealing millions from them. These sentences should send a strong message that we will follow the trail no matter how difficult and seek justice for those victimized by these types of transnational schemes. We will simply not stand by and allow criminals to use the names of legitimate government agencies to enrich themselves by victimizing others.”
The fact that up to $25 million was collected in this scam is amazing. The resourcefulness and nastiness of this particular breed of scam is truly impressive, and Patel and 23 others will be going away for a while for their many crimes.
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The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has released the funding it promised for low-carbon ‘Supergen’ national energy research centres last year. £15m will be shared between the centres, which are to be multi-disciplinary collaborations between universities, academic bodies and industry. Getting £5m each, the three Supergen Energy hubs will be focused on off-shore renewable energy, ...
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Long distance cameras in the NileCam series operate up to 15m from the host processor while still supporting low latency and high frame rates, says e-con Systems. The cameras use GMSL technology, a serdes technique, to carry high speed video, bidirectional control data and power over a single coaxial cable. The cameras can be used where long ...
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MIT has found a way to get electronics into hard-to-access places, by flowing it in as a colloid. Colloids, milk is one, are suspensions of particles in a liquid that never settle out. “We wanted to figure out methods to graft complete, intact electronic circuits onto colloidal particles,” said MIT chemistry professor Michael Strano. What ...
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Vitrek has introduced a 140kVdc 100kVac smart bench-top test probe. Called HVL-150, it is intended to expand the measurement range of the firm’s Model 4700 precision high-voltage meter. The probe has a proprietary low thermal coefficient attenuator that minimises the effects of self-heating (0.2ppm of reading per KV2), and low capacitance for ac measurement. Alone, ...
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Diodes has released simple LED driving chips for regulating current in strings of LEDs, particularly in cars and other road vehicles – some of which match parts from Infineon and Nexperia (see table below). Called the the BCR4xxUW6Q series, they come in SOT26 (SC70) packages and are expected to find use with LEDs displacing conventional bulbs ...
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Specialist component distributor, APC Technology Group, announced its second acquisition of 2018, buying RF and microwave component, test and measurement equipment distributor, Aspen Electronics for £2.2million. Since 1974, Aspen Electronics has supplied RF and microwave components and test and measurement equipment from more than 50 manufacturers. The company also has a service facility to design, manufacture and ...
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A simulation developed by Kyoto University and the Tokyo Institute of Technology could help scientists decide what molecules best interact with each other to build nanomaterials from scratch. The approach involves connecting the chemical properties of molecules with the nanostructures that form as a result of their interaction. A machine learning technique generates data that ...
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Advantech has introduced an 8cm high EKI-2525LI Ethernet switch. The EKI-2525LI is an unmanaged 5-port Ethernet switch in an ultra-small enclosure whit fits in the palm of a hand. Compact devices such as PLCs typically have a height of only approximately 10 cm. Conventional Ethernet switches however, are usually taller than this, resulting in a ...
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The ultrasound modules market had sales of $2.1 billion in 2017, and expects a CAGR of 18% between 2017 and 2023. The market in 2023 should reach $5.7 billion, says Yole Developpement. A Yole report: Ultrasound Sensing Technologies for Medical, Industrial & Consumer Applications looks at the ecosystem and its players. It points out the ...
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BrainChip is offering access to its Akida Development Environment – a machine learning framework for the creation, training, and testing of spiking neural networks (SNNs). The Akida Development Environment includes the Akida Executiony Engine, data-to-spike converters, and a model zoo of pre-created spiking neural network (SNN) models. The framework leverages the Python scripting language and its ...
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Samsung has begun mass producing 2nd-generation 10nm-class (10-19nm) LPDDR4X (Low Power, Double Data Rate, 4X) DRAM to improve the efficiency and lower the battery drain of smartphones and other mobile applications. Compared to the mobile DRAM memory chips most used in current flagship mobile devices (1x-nm 16Gb LPDDR4X), the 2nd– generation LPDDR4X DRAM features up ...
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As expected, China’s regulatory approval for the takeover of NXP by Qualcomm had not been received by the deadline of midnight New York time yesterday and the deal has been called off. “We obviously got caught up in something that was above us,” says Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf. The US-China trade spat scuppered the deal. ...
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Grubhub announced this morning that it’s agreed to acquire LevelUp for $390 million cash.
Founder and CEO Matt Maloney told me that while previous Grubhub acquisitions like Eat24 were designed to give the company’s delivery business more scale, “This is kind of a different acquisition. It’s a product and strategic positioning acquisition.”
LevelUp is based in Boston, offering a platform to manage digital ordering, payments and loyalty, with customers like KFC, Taco Bell and Bareburger. Maloney said that buying the company allows Grubhub to deepen its integration with restaurants’ point-of-sale systems. That, in turn, will allow them to handle more deliveries.
At the same time, Maloney said LevelUp can help Grubhub build a restaurant platform that goes beyond delivery, for example by managing their customer interactions across mobile and the web.
“We want to help restaurants actively engage with their diners,” Maloney said. “This is a huge step in that direction.”
Once the regulatory waiting period is over, the entire LevelUp team will be joining Grubhub, with founder and CEO Seth Priebatsch reporting to Maloney — who said that in the short term, he plans to change very little, aside from the POS integrations. Even in the long term, he suggested that LevelUp could continue to operate as its own brand within the larger Grubhub platform.
“They’re doing something really well and we don’t want to screw that up,” he said. “We want to make as little change as possible, until we all understand how we’re better working together.”
The LevelUp platform was launched in 2011, and the company has raised around $108 million in total funding, according to Crunchbase. Investors include Highland Capital, GV, Balderton Capital, Deutsche Telecom Strategic Investments, Continental Advisors, Transmedia Capital and U.S. Boston Capital.
“For the last seven years, we have worked to provide restaurant clients with a complete solution to engage customers, and this agreement is the biggest and most exciting step in achieving that mission,” Priebatsch said in a statement provided by Grubhub. “After close, the entire team will remain in Boston and our office will become Grubhub’s newest center of technology excellence.”
The announcement came as part of Grubhub’s second quarter earnings release, which saw the company grow active diners by 70 percent year-over-year, to 15.6 million, while revenue increased 51 percent, to $240 million.
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Spectrum Instrumentation has added twelve new products to its family of German-made LXI-based digitizerNETBOX data acquisition instruments. Designed specifically for situations where multiple signals need to be acquired, stored and analysed, users can select from models that provide 24, 32, 40 or 48 synchronised channels. Called the DN6.59x series, the digitisers are all based on ...
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Intended for protecting op-amp, sample-and-hold and multiplexer inputs, Linear Systems has created a range of extremely low-leakage picoamp diodes (PADs) with reveres currents ranging from 1pA to 100pA, which are “pin-for-pin replacements for Siliconix-Vishay”, said Linear. They are available in: TO-92 two-lead (part name = JPAD, 35Vmax reverse) TO-72 (PAD, 45Vmax) SOT-23 (SSTPAD 30V) DFN eight-lead ...
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ST had Q2 revenues of $2.27 billion up 18% on Q2 2017. Gross margin was 40% and profit was $261 million. It expects Q3 revenues to show growth of 10% to about $2.5 billion. The company’s growth target for the year is between 14 and 17% growth. “We are growing significantly in the third and ...
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Imec has achieved a record result for its 4-terminal Perovskite/silicon tandem photovoltaic cell. With a power conversion efficiency of 27.1%. The imec cell beats the most efficient standalone silicon solar cell. Further careful engineering of the Perovskite material will bring efficiencies over 30% in reach. Perovskite microcrystals are a promising material system to make high-performance ...
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Tsinghua Unigroup is to buy connector, inlay and antenna specialist Linxens of France for $2.6 billion, reports Reuters. The deal still has to be approved by French and German regulators. Following objections by the US regulators to a string of proposed takeovers, the Chinese have reduced investment in the US by 75% and have spent ...
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C-SKY Microsystems a China-based semiconductor company acquired by the Alibaba Group in April, has licensed UltraSoC’s embedded analytics technology for use in C-SKY’s SoCs. The companies plan a long-term partnership, with the first products targeted at sophisticated artificial intelligence-based applications. C-SKY will employ UltraSoC’s embedded analytics technology to enable advanced product developments based on its own ...
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DARPA, the US Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is to work with research teams from industry and academia under DARPA’s $1.5 billion Electronics Research Initiative (ERI) to boost long-term semiconductor research. The partnerships will target advances in semiconductor circuit design, materials, and systems architectures. ERI is divided into three main research thrust areas – ...
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June billings of $2.48 billion for semiconductor manufacturing equipment were 8% lower than May’s 2018 $2.7 billion, and is 8.1% higher than June 2017 billings of $2.3 billion. “Global billings of North American equipment manufacturers declined for the current month by 8% from the historic high but is still 8% higher than billings for the same ...
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Marvell has opened an EMC lab. The testing facility is CISPR 25 qualified and Delivers an in-house capability to perform a wide range of emission, immunity and ESD testing. With this facility, Marvell’s automotive Ethernet products can be designed into system solutions that meet the EMC challenges faced by automotive manufacturers and help shorten the time-to-market. ...
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MEMS timing specislist SiTime and Intel are to work together on integrating timing for Intel’s 5G multi-mode radio modems, Intel’s 4G chips, and its millimeter-wave wireless, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GNSS products. SiTime’s MEMS timing solutions enhance system performance in the presence of stressors such as vibration, high temperature, and rapid thermal transients. Such stressors can ...
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PicsArt, the company behind the photo-editing app of the same name, has hired Tammy Nam as its first chief operating officer.
Nam was most recently the CEO of Viki, the Rakuten-acquired video streaming service, and before that served as a marketing executive at Viki, Scribd and Slide.
PicsArt said Nam will report to founder and CEO Hovhannes Avoyan, and that she will oversee all aspects of the business except for product and engineering.
“PicsArt has grown organically so far, but our next big opportunity is in directing this growth through the right market development, community engagement and revenue channels,” Avoyan said in the announcement. “In addition to her proven operational experience in both consumer advertising and subscription-based businesses, Tammy adds deep bench strength in market, brand and community development — areas that will be critical for us moving forward.”
The company announced last year that it’s reaching 100 million monthly active users. Nam told me she was particularly impressed that it achieved that growth without significant marketing spend.
“I understand what it takes to grow quickly, but also thoughtfully,” she said. “Because of my background, the CEO and the board felt like I would be a great match to [help PicsArt] reach the next 200 million, the next 500 million users.”
Asked what thoughtful growth looks like for PicsArt, Nam said it means not just growing at any cost, but also considering things like revenue and the different communities using the app. She said she’s trying to examine the company’s structure to ensure it can “maximize efficiencies towards these big goals.”
“It will continue to grow organically, but the branding, the user development will definitely evolve,” she added. “There’s a sea of companies that play in our space … How do you stand out? And how do you stay relevant?”
Nam also said that she’ll be looking at PicsArt’s opportunities for international growth. Not that the company has been neglecting the world beyond the United States — China is its fastest-growing market and already one of its top countries for revenue. (The company says it recently became profitable following the launch of its PicsArt Gold subscription.)
Nam suggested that PicsArt can move into new markets without competing with the dominant social media platforms, because it’s “agnostic” in terms of where users publish their edited photos.
“It’s completely lowered the barrier,” she said. “It used to be you had to know Photoshop. Now it’s so easy to create professional-looking photos, images and soon animations, videos, etc. Everyone is a creator.”
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Knock Knock, a startup building games for platforms like Facebook Messenger and WeChat, is announcing that it has raised $2 million in seed funding.
The goal isn’t to build interactive chat fiction, but rather fully fledged mobile games that are accessed from messaging apps, while also taking advantages of the opportunities offered by incorporating messaging and chatbots into the game mechanics.
“This is the most frictionless an experience can get,” said CEO Andrew Friday. “There’s no download, it’s hooked up to a fast messaging medium that you’re already using and people can bring their friends into the experience seamlessly.”
Friday was a senior product manager for chat games at Zynga, while his co-founder Andrew N. Green was previously the head of business operations at TinyCo. They plan to release their first game for Facebook Messenger later this year, and then a WeChat title in early 2019.
When I asked if there are any specific genres that will do best on messaging, Friday suggested that there’s actually “an embarrassment of riches.”
“Most great mobile game genres, and game genres in general, are good for the platform,” he said. “It’s just that if you try to just port those designs to the platform, it’s not going to work. If you rethink or reimagine these mechanics, how they would work best, how they would be most fun on the platform, there are so many genres that can work on chat.”
He also suggested that compared to FRVR, another recently funded startup looking to build chat games, Knock Knock is less focused on “hypercasual” games and instead taking “a deeper, more thoughtful approach.” Although thoughtfulness and depth are relative — Friday suggested that Knock Knock could still create the initial versions of its games in 90 days.
The funding was led by Raine Ventures, with participation from London Venture Partners, Ludlow Ventures and Gregory Milken.
“Knock Knock has the potential to usher in the next wave of chat games that will redefine the market,” said Courtney Favreau, a venture capital partner at Raine, in the funding announcement. “The founding team has an impressive track record in the mobile and chat gaming spaces and we’re very excited to help them bring their vision to life.”
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Doxa is a storied dive watch company and their most popular watch, the Sub, has just gotten a 2018 overhaul. The watches were made famous by writer Clive Cussler whose character, Dirk Pitt, consulted his beefy Doxa on multiple occasions.
This new model is made in collaboration with gear manufacturer Aqua Lung and features a 42mm steel case with 300 meters of water resistance, a Swiss ETA movement, and a unidirectional diving bezel. It will cost $2,190 when it ships in August.
The SUB 300 ‘Silver Lung’ continues the yearlong 50th anniversary celebration for DOXA Watches, whose pioneering SUB would first plumb the ocean depths in 1967 as the first purpose-built dive watch for the emerging recreational scuba diving market. Lauded for its bright orange dial and professional-grade build quality and dependability, the SUB quickly became the benchmark against which all other dive watches were measured, and ultimately won the approval of the pioneers of modern diving. This included those at Aqua Lung, who would soon distribute the watches under the US Divers name before consolidating into the singular name Aqua Lung in 1998.
Why is this important? First, it’s a cool-looking watch and priced low enough for a Swiss movement and case to be interesting. Further, it has real history and provenance and is a little known brand. If you’re a diver or just want to pretend to be one you could do worse than this beefy and very legible piece.
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Reward miles are nice if you fly a lot but what if you bike or take Lyfts or just like to wander around town? A new app called Miles aims to give you rewards for all of those things, bringing the concept of rewards out of the air and onto the ground.
Miles, co-founded by Jigar Shah, Paresh Jain and Parin Shah, is a San Jose-based company that looked at the problem of reward miles outside of airlines as well as the problems associated with city planning and traffic data generation. The app, which is now in the iOS App Store, can see when you walk, ride a bike, take the bus, drive yourself, or even hop in a Lyft or an Uber. It then rewards you on a sliding scale depending on how eco-friendly your trip is. Biking, for example, is worth more than driving or even taking the bus.
“Mobility today is a universal behavior that goes largely unrewarded,” said Jigar Shah. “To date, travel rewards have been siloed and limited to one form of travel – with consumers facing exclusions when comes to earning and redeeming rewards. Miles solves for this gap in market by allowing anyone to earn rewards – simply by traveling and commuting how they do every day.”
What can you get with your miles? Just for signing up you can get 2,000 miles which is enough for a $5 Starbucks, Target, or Whole Foods gift card, among others. There are also “nearby” that bring up deals from merchants in your area but right now most of the deals are online. More miles gets you better deals.
“In contrast to rewards programs in the market today, Miles delivers value for every mile traveled, across every mode of travel, anywhere in the world. Whether by car (as a driver, passenger or rideshare), plane, train, subway, bus, boat, bicycle, or on foot, the Miles app effortlessly awards users’ travel – regardless of where their journey takes them. Miles can be saved or redeemed at any time – with the value increasing every month as more merchants accept them as a form of payment,” said Shah.
Because the app tracks your movement on multiple types of transport the Miles team foresees connecting with city governments to supply traffic and usage data for various forms of transport. Further, because miles can be redeemed locally, they could also increase foot traffic.
The company raised $3 million from Porsche Digital, Scrum Ventures, and others. Former TechCruncher Keith Teare also worked with the team on the raise.
Interestingly, the platform can also work to create predictive recommendations based on your position and past likes and dislikes.
“By leveraging the Miles’ predictive AI platform, business and brands can deliver value to customers by offering to meet their near future needs as they travel, such as when someone needs a meal, a fill-up at the gas station, or a ride,” wrote the team. “Annoying marketing can become true customer service by enabling hyper-targeted rewards related to immediate need. This not only leads to increased customer loyalty and repeat visits, but also increased sales.”
“We saw an opportunity to deliver more value to people as transportation continued to evolve,” said Shah.
Multiple city governments are looking to implement the technology locally and the Contra Costa Transportation Authority will “offer rewards as an incentive to promote alternative and sustainable mode of transportation through the Miles platform.” Seattle is next and maybe some day soon you’ll be earning miles for walking and driving in your home town. At least it will get us out of the house.
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Analog Devices has introduced a 150V buck converter that draws 9µA quiescent – that is only 1.35mW wasted at full input voltage. Called LTC3894, its input range is 4.5 to 150V, and the the firm makes an interesting point: that this wide range can eliminate the need for external surge suppression devices on lower voltage rails. ...
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Toshiba is sampling SSDs that are based on its 96-layer, 3D flash memory. They come in 256GB, 512GB and 1024 GB capacities. The first SSD to use this technology, the XG6 series, is targeted to the client PC, high-performance mobile, embedded, and gaming segments – as well as datacentre environments for boot drives in servers, ...
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AMS had a Q2 operating loss of $48.6 million on revenues of $252.8 million after a key customer, believed to be Apple, cut back orders for 3D sensors for iPhones. In Q2 2017, AMS had an operating profit of $1.6 million. AMS blamed a delay in orders which left it with unused capacity. AMS, which ...
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The market for GaAs substrates will see a 15% CAGR in volume between 2017 and 2023, says a report from Yole Développement (Yole). Photonics applications will grow at 37%. Apple’s choice of GaAs-based VCSELs for 3D sensing and the use of GaAs for LIDAR have ignited demand for GaAs wafers, reports Yole. The report, “GaAs Wafer & Epiwafer ...
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Many thanks to SEPAM for pointing up this one – a report by PwC on the affect of AI on jobs. PwC, the business consultancy, reckons that as many UK jobs will be created by AI as will be lost by AI. A PwC report forecasts that about 20% of UK jobs will be automated ...
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Qualcomm is sampling 5G NR mmWave and sub-6 GHz RF modules for mobile devices. The Qualcomm QTM052 mmWave antenna module family and the Qualcomm QPM56xx sub-6 GHz RF module family pair with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G modem to deliver modem-to-antenna capabilities across several spectrum bands, in a footprint that is suitable for mobile devices. ...
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ON Semiconductor has launched a USB Type-C analog audio switch with integrated protection, and the NCS21x series of current sense amplifiers. TheUSB Type-C port multimedia switch, designated FSA4480, supports analog audio headsets allowing a common USB Type-C port to pass USB2.0 signals, analog audio and analog microphone signals. The device, which supports an audio sense path, ...
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Startup founders don’t usually pitch their ideas by admitting that they’re fixing something “boring,” but it seems to work for RevenueCat‘s Jacob Eiting.
In fact, Eiting alternately described his startup (which is part of the current class at accelerator Y Combinator) as handling “boring work” and solving a “boring problem.” RevenueCat helps developers manage their in-app subscriptions, which Eiting said “is just boring — developers don’t want to do it.”
And yet it can be crucial for their business. After all, Eiting and his co-founder Miguel Carranza both worked at brain training app Elevate (where Eiting was CTO and Carranza was director of engineering), and he said shifting Elevate’s business model from one-off purchases to recurring subscriptions “saved the company.”
Eiting left Elevate more than a year ago, ultimately deciding to build a startup around “this weird skill I have.” RevenueCat offers an API that developers can use to support in-app subscriptions on iOS and Android, which means they don’t have to worry about all the nuances, bugs and updates in the way each platform handles subscriptions.
Eiting said this is the kind of thing that “holds a lot of companies back — maybe not forever, but it’s usually at a time when a company shouldn’t be worrying about this.”
The API also allows developers to bring all the data about their subscription business together in one place, across platforms. Ultimately, he wants to turn RevenueCat into a broader “revenue management platform,” allowing developers to try out strategies like offering different prices to different customer segments.
More broadly, Eiting suggested that subscriptions offer a way out of the current “race to the bottom in how software is sold” — particularly in mobile app stores, where many of us expect everything to be free or dirt cheap. Obviously, that’s not a great situation for someone hoping to make money by selling software, but Eiting pointed out that it can be bad for the consumer too, because it means the developer has less reason to support and update the app.
“Someone who pays for your 99-cent app once, they think they own your time,” he said. “You want to be helpful, you don’t want to let down a paid user, but your incentives aren’t really aligned.”
Subscriptions, even if they’re just for 99 cents a month, can re-align those incentives — Eiting has described this as a system of app patronage: “You want this thing to stay working, you need to pony up some money to developers.”
He also acknowledged that as more apps shift to this model, there’s a risk of subscription fatigue, which could lead to “maybe not a harsh backlash, but there might be a secondary correction.”
But in Eiting’s view, that’s less a problem for individual developers and more for the mobile platforms. Those platforms, he said, should be building better tools for consumers to manage all their subscriptions in one place.
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The deadline for entries to the Elektra Electronics Industry Awards 2018 has been extended to 10 August 2018.
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Harting has introduced a range of current sensors which can be directly mounted on busbars. With dimensions of 6cm in height and 14cm wide, the HCME range of current sensors measure high currents up to 5500A. The design of the HCME sensors is based on the open-loop measurement principle. This provides a direct representation ...
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FTTH will be universal by 2033 under a plan from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) . “We want everyone in the UK to benefit from world-class connectivity, no matter where they live, work or travel,” said DCMS Secretary Jeremy Wright, “this radical new blueprint for the future of telecommunications in this ...
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The Intel Core i7+ and Core i5+ Boxed Solutions, available from Rutronik, combine Intel Core processors of the eighth generation with Optane Cache modules in packages for notebooks and desktop PCs. The combination of powerful processors and Optane Cache modules accelerates systems with HDDs especially. It serves both in desktop PCs and notebooks as an alternative to the ...
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RS Components is working with a start-up company that develops ‘middleware’ software for Internet of Things (IoT) projects and applications. The distributor’s agreement with Zerynth will mean its IoT development environment will be available via a portal on the RS DesignSpark engineering community, allowing customers to download the tools. Zerynth has developed a suite of ...
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Wednesday may see the end of the NXP – Qualcomm saga. If the China government doesn’t OK the deal by then, it’s off. Qualcomm says that if there’s no approval on Wednesday it will not seek an extension to the approvals process. Qualcomm will have to pay NXP a $2 billion break-up fee if the ...
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Researchers have created the fastest man-made rotor in the world which revolves more than 60 billion times a minute – more than 100,000 times faster than a high-speed dental drill. “This study has many applications, including material science,” says Purdue’s Tongcang Li, “we can study the extreme conditions different materials can survive in.” Li’s team ...
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TSMC has taped out ICs for an enhanced 7nm EUV process and expects 7nm to account for over 20% of sales next year. Crypto mining weakness has caused TSMC to drop its year-end growth forecast for 2018 from 10% to between 5-9%, reports Digitimes. The forecast capex for 2018 has been revised from $11.5-12 billion ...
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Today at Comic-Con, Warner Bros. gave fans a peek at the first DC Comics films post-Justice League.
Warner Bros. and DC had a bumpy 2017. There was the astonishing critical and commercial success of Wonder Woman, followed by the box office disappointment of Justice League — leading to an executive shakeup and a general rethinking of its movie strategy.
Will Aquaman, which stars Jason Momoa as the titular superhero and is due out on December 21, turn things around? Director James Wan told the Comic-Con audience that his goal is to create a movie that “plays more like a science-fiction fantasy film than a traditional super hero movie.”
Wan (who’s best-known for horror titles like Saw and The Conjuring but also directed Furious 7) previously said there’s been a long wait for the trailer because he wanted to ensure the visual effects were ready — and after watching this footage, you can see what he was talking about.
The trailer does spend some time establishing the relationships between Aquaman, his love interest Mera (Amber Heard), his mother Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) and his half-brother/rival Orm (Patrick Wilson). My real takeaway, though, is that this is going to be a spectacular, effects-filled movie with plenty of undersea action.
Then there’s Shazam!, which looks like it could be DC’s first outright comedy.
With the film’s release date (April 5, 2019) still nearly a year away, this trailer seems to focus on a few key scenes setting up the premise, with young Billy Batson (Asher Angel) gifted by a mysterious stranger with the ability to turn into a big red superhero (Zachary Levi) by just calling out the word “Shazam!” (The character was originally known as Captain Marvel, but I assume that they’ll stick with the Shazam name in the movie.)
Like Wan, director David F. Sandberg has previously helmed horror movies (specifically Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation), but the trailer makes it clear that he’s taking a light-hearted approach to the material. Despite his appearance as an invulnerable superhero, this version of Shazam is still a goofy kid.
And if you were hoping for a glimpse at Wonder Woman 1984, it sounds like the filmmakers did show off footage at Comic-Con, but they don’t have a polished trailer yet to put online.
Director Patty Jenkins said she looks at the movie as less of a sequel and more a standalone story with the same character: “We can make a whole new movie that’s as strong and unique as the first. It’s not more of anything; it’s its own thing.”
Oh, and stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoiled for a year-old movie, but if you’re wondering why Chris Pine is in 1984 when his character Steve Trevor appeared to die in the first Wonder Woman: Apparently there were no answers forthcoming during the panel.
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