Month: March 2022

In September Apple revealed that it had been working with many states in the US to allow the storage of state-issued IDs, driver’s licences and drivers licenses inside the Apple Wallet. Today, Apple announces that Arizona is the first US state to officially roll this feature out.

We’re thrilled to bring the first driver’s license and state IS in Wallet to Arizona today, and provide Arizonians with an easy, secure, and private way to present their ID when traveling, through just a tap of their iPhone or Apple Watch[…] We look forward to working with many more states and the TSA to bring IDs in Waller to users across the US.” – Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s Vice President of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet

To add an Arizona ID to your Wallet app, click the “+” button in the upper right corner of the screen. After scanning both the driver’s or ID, you will be asked to take a picture of each side. The document holder will then be asked to take a photo that can be matched against Arizona MVD. It’ll be up to the state to verify and approve the user’s request to add their document to Apple Wallet.

Adding a state ID to Apple Wallet

In addition, residents traveling from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport can tap their Apple Watch or iPhone at select TSA check points to proceed to their gates. At a participating TSA checkpoint, you’ll just tap the identity reader and on iPhone and Apple Watch, the user will be shown what information is being requested and consent to it using Face ID or Touch ID. Although the information will be shared electronically, the TSA may also take a photograph of the individual to verify it.

Driver’s license and state ID in Waller is available on iPhone 8 and newer if it is running iOS 15. 4, or Apple Watch Series 4 and newer running watchOS 8. 4 or later. The next few states include Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio, and the territory of Puerto Rico.

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Samsung made the Galaxy M23 and M33 quietly official at the beginning of this month, but without any prices to speak of. We are now able to give the European prices for Galaxy M001 and M23 as they pertain to Germany. This is where it seems they will first launch on the continent.

The Galaxy M23 should be available before the end of this week in Germany, for a price of EUR289 with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. You can get it in Orange copper, Light Blue, and Deep Green.

Samsung Galaxy M23

On the other hand, the Galaxy M33 is priced at EUR349 with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and is expected to hit the shelves in Germany on April 8. It will be available in Dark Blue, Khaki Green, and brown.

The Galaxy A13 is also headed to the country for EUR189 (which is the exact same price we saw it retail for in the Netherlands) – with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. This one is landing on March 25 in black, light blue, and white.

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For all haters of algorithmic feeds in social networking apps, today is a big day. Instagram has just revealed that it will be bringing back the chronological feed.

The new app features two additional feeds. You can access them by clicking on the Instagram logo above. The first is called Following, and this is the chronological feed of every post from every account you follow, while the other one is called Favorites and is pretty self-explanatory.

You can add up to 50 accounts as your favorites, and when choosing this feed you’ll only see their posts – also sorted chronologically. You will also see posts from your Favorites accounts higher up in the home feed. Changes to your Favorites can be made at any moment. People aren’t notified about changes.

And now for the bad news. At least not for the moment, neither of these feeds will be default. Instagram will still show the algorithm-based default feed every time you log in. You can choose to see either your Favorites or Following feeds, but you have to select them manually. It’s still a good step in the right direction for users to have more control of their use of Instagram.

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Carl Pei, the man behind Nothing made important announcements today. Nothing is not an audio company as previously thought and it aims to be an ecosystem rival to the likes of Apple. Pei went so far as to claim that Nothing is “the most compelling option to Apple”, with products that seamlessly connect and work together. The company is in fact readying an entry in the smartphone market which will be dubbed Nothing phone (1) and will run a custom user interface on top of Android dubbed Nothing OS.

As described by Pei, Nothing phone (1) will “be a breath of fresh air to the sleepy smartphone industry” bringing better value to users with a one-of-a-kind design. Although no specifics were given, we know that Nothing has partnered with Qualcomm to provide chipsets. This is in addition to Samsung, Sony, and Visionox who will be the key component suppliers.

Pei confirmed more information will be shared later this summer signaling a likely launch for the Nothing phone (1) and guaranteed 3 OS updates and 4 years of Android security updates. We also got a cryptic schematic of what’s believed to be the phone (1)’s back design which may feature notification lights and a transparent back design expected to expose some of its key components.

Nothing phone (1) design teaser

Nothing OS will be the custom Android skin power the Nothing phone (1) and the Nothing OS launcher will be available to download and use for select Android smartphones in April. The premise behind the skin is a smooth and fast user experience without any bloatware or heavy system apps. The interface features a dot matrix design with font, icons and widgets throughout the operating system having a unified look.

Pei also talked about dynamic RAM caching which will help your most-used apps launch faster. It features uniform design and gentle animations. Apps like voice recorder and first-party apps have a simple design. They also include a cool rewind function. Speaking of rewind, you can re-watch today’s Nothing event here.

Apple Card has been out for nearly three years now but it’s only available in the US. This might change soon as the Cupertino tech giant recently acquired UK-based fintech company Credit Kudos which handles consumer banking data and makes credit assessment checks. According to reports the deal is estimated at $150 million and will help Apple in its quest to offer Apple Card across the UK and Europe.

Credit Kudos is a credit checking that provides detailed financial and credit score assessments for individuals thanks to its unique API. The now Apple subsidiary is heralded as the missing link for rolling out Apple Card in the UK and its expertise will likely play a key role in the service’s expansion across Europe and other regions too.

Source | Via

Nvidia unveiled new GPUs, but no, it’s not the RTX 4000 series. Instead the company is introducing a number of workstation GPUs – one for the desktop and several for professional laptops.

The Nvidia RTX A5500 is based on the GA102 GPU with 10,240 CUDA cores. This is the same configuration as an RTX 3080 Ti. However, this GPU uses ECC memory (Error Correction Code), which can detect and correct errors. This doesn’t matter so much for games, but it is crucial for professional tasks – simulations, 3D design, machine learning and so on – where errors can lead to incorrect results.

Nvidia RTX A5500 workstation GPU based on the Ampere architecture with 24 GB of ECC GDDR6 VRAM

The A5500 has a whopping 24 GB GDDR6 (with ECC) and that can be expanded to 48 GB using Nvidia NVLink to hook up a second GPU. The A5500 offers double the performance for ray tracing compared to the previous generation and can be up to 12x as fast for machine learning tasks. A single card can be used by multiple remote users thanks to virtualization.

Nvidia also unveiled a laptop version of the RTX A5500. This one is based on the GA103 chip (same as the laptop RTX 3080 Ti) and has 7,424 CUDA cores, nearly 30% less than its desktop counterpart. Correspondingly, single-precision (FP32) performance falls from 34. 1 to 24. 7 TFLOPS. Also, this GPU comes with 16 GB of GDDR6 VRAM of the non-ECC variety.

There’s no word on pricing yet, but the desktop RTX A5500 is available today from select Nvidia partners and will be featured in pre-built systems in Q2. Workstation GPUs aren’t cheap even in better times, however, so if your budget can’t stretch to an A5500, you still have some options.

The Nvidia RTX A500 may be the smallest Ampere GPU for laptops yet with just 2,048 CUDA cores and 4 GB of VRAM (for comparison, a 3050 has 2,560 cores). There are also the A1000, A2000 and A3000 with 4 GB, 8 GB and 12 GB of VRAM respectively.

The mid-range is the RTX 4500, which is based on a GA104 with 5,888 CUDA cores (this parallels the RTX 3070). This one is equipped with 16 GB of RAM, the same as the pricier A5500.

The current line-up of Nvidia workstation GPUs

Endorsements from professionals using Nvidia GPUs were quick to follow. Here is one from Brian Rotty, a senior engineer at M4 Engineering (a leading aerospace engineering firm focused on conceptual aircraft design, analysis and development):

“The multi-app product development workflows we use at M4 are well-served by the NVIDIA RTX A5500 and its 24GB of memory. My team can handle larger CAD and CAE datasets than before and, critically, we can interact with and iterate these larger datasets simultaneously by making use of the extra GPU memory headroom and compute capabilities of this new card.”

Here is a demonstration from a CG artist who uses an RTX powered laptop to generate create a 3D animation from scratch:

Source | Via (in German)

Year One was just a warm-up year, says Nothing (Carl Pei’s new company). In that time the company was founded, attracted investors and launched its first product (the ear (1) TWS headset). What’s next?

That is exactly the topic of today’s event, which is cheekily titled “The Truth”. Although the company teases a new product today, the larger picture will be revealed at the event – including a roadmap for future Nothing products as well details about what the company wants.

Everyone is speculating that Nothing will announce a phone – Pei is the co-founder of OnePlus, after all. There haven’t been many leaks. All that we’ve heard is that it will feature a transparent design similar to the ear (1), which will become the trademark of the company.

Not that we’re complaining, copious, detailed leaks spoil the surprise. But if you want to know what Nothing will do next, you will have to watch the stream – the event starts at GMT 14:00.

Sony announced that it is working on Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support for the PlayStation 5 (it has been since late 2020, actually). This feature will be released “in the coming months”, other features are rolling out now with today’s update.

VRR matches the display’s frame rate to the output of the console, which may vary from moment to moment as the player moves through more or less complex scenes. It reduces screen tearing or frame pacing problems and also decreases input lag.

Sony is working on variable refresh rate support for the PlayStation 5

Note that you will need a compatible TV or PC monitor with HDMI 2. 1 for this to work (e.g. Sony Bravia TVs). As for game support, future games may include a VRR option at launch, current games can get it with a patch. Sony even included a toggle that allows you to turn on VRR in games that do not support it. However, there are some issues with this feature.

Moving on to today’s update, it enables some user-requested features. One of them is the ability to create and join Open and Closed Parties on PS5 and PS4. Open Parties are visible to your friends and they can join freely, Closed Parties are hidden and require an invitation.

Viewing open parties and creating a new party

Sony will be gradually rolling this out to the PS App, so you can create parties using your phone instead of the console. The apps’ Game Base UI has been updated to make accessing Friends, Parties and messaging features easier.

The PS App is getting an updated Game Base UI, also support for creating open and closed parties

The PS Remote Play app now has a dark mode and new Screen Reader languages. These include Portuguese for Portugal and Brazil as well as Finnish, Swedish and Turkish.

Back on the console, the Game Base and Trophy cards have been updated. Sony has also tested a Voice Command feature that allows you to start games and control media playback using your voice. This is available only in the US and UK and only in English for now.

The PS5 interface updates: Pro tips, an improved Trophy tracker and more

Finally, there are accessibility enhancements like mono audio for headphones.

Source | Via