Uber rolled out its new upfront pricing scheme a few months ago, and it has proven popular with riders. Drivers have been expressing skepticism about the numbers on their end, and now there’s a lawsuit alleging Uber has used the new cost structure to rip off its drivers. The proposed class action lawsuit claims that regularly shows higher fares to riders than it does to drivers. Uber then apparently pockets the difference in addition to taking its usual cut from the driver. Before upfront pricing was rolled out last year, Uber riders always had to worry their ride would end up being much more expensive based on the time of day and traffic conditions.
Last week, , or tensor processing unit. Google’s results revealed that the TPU is much faster than a conventional GPU for processing inference workloads, at a fraction of the power consumption. While machine learning still takes place on GPUs, Google’s TPU results are a significant leap forward for inference processing — and Nvidia, as one might expect, has its own take on those numbers. According to a new published by Nvidia, the comparison would’ve been quite different if Google had used its Pascal-class GPUs instead of relying on the older, Kepler-based, dual-GPU K80. Here’s Nvidia: Its team released technical information about the benefits of TPUs this past week.
Now that we’ve discussed the of , Microsoft’s follow-up to the original Xbox One, it’s time to cover some of the ancillary information, like 4K support, 1080p goodies, and VR functionality. Microsoft and Sony are pursuing different strategies with their new refreshed hardware, so it’s worth exploring what each platform offers (at least, as of this writing). Backwards compatibility, current game improvements All Xbox Scorpio games (that’s our shorthand, not Microsoft’s specific nomenclature) are required to be backwards-compatible with Xbox One titles. The only exception to this may be VR titles, which require peripherals that the original Xbox apparently won’t support.
Japanese scientists have announced a plan to drill through the Earth’s crust and reach the mantle. The major initiative would be a first for humankind. Despite multiple previous attempts and multiple boreholes of significant depth, we’ve never managed to drill far enough to see what lies beneath the Earth’s rocky crust. Instead, our knowledge of the mantle is mostly based on indirect observations, like the speed at which seismic waves propagate through the planet’s internal geometry. A 2007 investigation into a unique area between Cape Verde and the Caribbean Sea, where the crust of the Earth is missing and the mantle is directly exposed, yielded some fascinating rock samples and scientific data, but not the same information that scientists hope to gather by drilling into the molten layer directly.
Ever since Microsoft launched Windows 10, privacy advocates and concerned users have loudly argued that the firm needed to improve and clarify its privacy policies. To date, the company has mostly ignored those requests, though Windows 10’s recent Creators Update did . But as of today, the company is doing more to explain how, where, and when it collects data, as well as explaining how that information is used. First, everyone who updates to the will be presented with a privacy screen showing them what their current device settings are in certain key areas, as shown below:
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” William Morris once wrote. In the spirit of that quote, here’s a gift guide that’s got something for every major species of geek fandom. In fact, many of these are inexpensive enough to be suitable for a $20 or less gift exchange. Classic sci-fi William Gibson’s punches well above its weight as a founding member of the cyberpunk genre. When I read this in high school, I took it with me everywhere until I was done with it, reading it in class and shamelessly ignoring teachers.
Today, Dell is offering up a substantial discount on the Inspiron 15 5000 laptop. If you’re in need of a powerful 15.6-inch device, this is the perfect time to buy. With a full HD display, a Skylake CPU, a dedicated graphics card, and a sizable hard drive, this laptop offers a complete computing experience wherever you go. • (List price: $845.85) Inside, this model features a sixth generation dual-core 2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U CPU, a discrete AMD Radeon R5 M335 graphics card (with 4GB of memory), 8GB of DDR3L RAM (1600MHz), a 1TB 5400RPM hard drive, a DVD burner, Bluetooth 4.0, and 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi support.
If you’re looking for an Earth-like planet with an atmosphere, you need only go outside. Alternatively, you could travel some 39 light-years toward the constellation Vela. That’s where astronomers have discovered an exoplanet called GJ 1132b, which . While it might not be particularly hospitable to human life, some other organism might find it quite cozy. GJ 1132b was first detected in 2015, but we didn’t know about its atmosphere. Astronomers at the time reported the planet was Earth-like, at least in a broad sense. It’s about the same size, and has a similar mass. However, it’s orbiting close to a red dwarf star—a year for GJ 1132b is only 1.6 Earth days.
Car components giant Delphi Automotive this week announced alliances with three smaller Israeli and German companies to further advance the connected car. However, Delphi also wants to turn a buck on the data generated by the cars and their occupants. Delphi’s chief technology officer, Glen DeVos, said data flowing from the car would be anonymized and aggregated, so nobody would know what the people in any one vehicle are up to. The partners: Otonomo, Valens, Rosenberger A generation ago, automakers and their tier one (biggest) suppliers typically developed technology in-house. Now, they’re inclined to acquire or align with smaller companies.
