The space agency’s years-long competition to find a house suitable for Mars is up to its third and final phase.
Source: CNET
Sing out, all you starry-eyed hipsters, a neural network is trying to recreate the singer’s very personal lyrics.
Source: CNET
Struggling against competition from Chinese smartphones, Samsung Electronics posted a lackluster second-quarter earnings report with its slowest profit growth in more than a year. On the bright side, the Korean tech giant said its semiconductor business is doing well.
Operating profit rose 5.7% year-over-year to 14.9 trillion won (about $13.3 billion), representing Samsung Electronic’s slowest quarterly profit growth since the first quarter of 2017. Net income was 11 trillion won (about $9.8 billion), almost the same result Samsung posted in the same period a year ago. Sales revenue dropped 4% to 58.5 trillion won (about $52.3 billion).
Samsung blamed lower-than-expected sales of the Galaxy S9, its flagship smartphone, seasonality and competition from lower-priced handsets. Two Chinese companies in particular, Xiaomi and Huawei, have emerged as formidable rivals, putting pressure on Samsung in China and India.
As in previous quarters, Samsung’s semiconductor business posted strong performance even as its smartphones suffered. Samsung reported that second-quarter operating profit for its chips rose 45% year-over-year to 11.6 trillion won. The company said it anticipated strong demand for chips during the second half of the year thanks to demand from high density data centers. It expects smartphone and tablet demand to continue lagging, however, thanks to competition from lower-priced devices with strong specifications.
Source: TechCrunch
Inspired by smelly lasagna (!), the tech is designed to help drivers avoid leaving a child in a hot car.
Source: CNET
Big, bad Thanos is snapping his way to your living room.
Source: CNET
Ride-hailing startup plans refocus on self-driving car effort.
Source: CNET
Logitech today announced its intention to acquire Blue Microphones, the hardware company behind popular podcasting microphones like the Yeti and Snowball. It’s a pretty logical acquisition, as far as these things goog –Logitech already operates in the audio space, with speakers and gaming headsets.
The acquisition of Blue would add an important dimension to that category and help the company take on a rapidly expanding space. Blue’s best known products aren’t high-end, exactly, but they’ve become the go-to choice for upstart podcasters looking to get in on the ground floor in the medium.
Heck, we’ve been known to use them from time to time for our own podcasts. The company offers higher end products for music producers, as well, and in recent years, Blue has begun dabbling in the gaming space, offering up microphone and gaming bundles.
“Logitech’s acquisition of Blue Microphones will accelerate our entry into a growing market, and offers another way for us to help bring people’s passions to life,” Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell said in a release tied to the news. “Joining with Blue is an adjacent opportunity for us – a new way to grow – with additional synergies related to our existing gaming, PC webcam and audio categories.”
Blue is being acquired for $117 million in cash. We’ve reached out to the companies to determine what the deal will mean for the Blue brand and its existing staff.
Update: In an emailed statement a company spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the Blue brand is sticking around and the company’s team will be joining up with Logitech . “Logitech is delighted to welcome all Blue employees plus contractors to Logitech. The brand is also welcomed into Logitech’s broader portfolio.”
Source: TechCrunch
Downloadable plans for untraceable guns are on the internet, again.
Source: CNET
The system monitors eye movement, body heat and heart rate.
Source: CNET
When you think of “Firefox,” you probably think of something that looks like this:
Or, perhaps, something like this:
That logo (or some iteration between the two) has been the browser’s logo since it launched back in 2002. Its time for change, Mozilla says.
In a blog post about “evolving the Firefox brand,” Mozilla Creative Director Tim Murray outlines the company’s thinking: Firefox isn’t just one browser now. With side projects like Firefox Rocket (the company’s browser for connections with less bandwidth) and Firefox Reality (Firefox, but for virtual reality), the company is finding it needs a bit more wiggle room with its design language.
While they shared a few work-in-progress potential logos, they were quick to note that none of them are final. They might tweak things over time (and they’re asking for feedback), or just go back to the drawing board all together.
The whole thing might sound a bit up-in-the-air right now, and that’s mostly intentional — it’s still pretty early days in the process. But eventually, Firefox will be getting a new logo; or, more accurately, new logos.
The work was presented in two potential “systems,” each composed of one “Masterbrand” logo and 11 auxiliary logos. The masterbrand would be the primary one used for representing the brand as a whole, while those beneath it could each represent an individual product.
The two new “Systems” of icons:
If it’s a choice between the two systems, I like System 2 — but I’ve always liked the existing Firefox logo, and that’s the set that feels like more of an update and less of a complete replacement. It’s more “Firefox”, less just “fox.”
Firefox says the branding shift should come together “over the next few months” — so if you’re a fan of the classic logo, it’ll still be hanging around for a while.
Source: TechCrunch