Technology - Google News

Google has blocked Huawei from using Android in any new phones - MIT Technology Review
Facebook is experimenting with robots to push its AI research forward - The Verge
Apple Stores are quietly selling a 23.7-inch LG UltraFine display - 9to5Mac

Google has blocked Huawei from using Android in any new phones - MIT Technology Review

Posted: 20 May 2019 02:47 AM PDT

It's part of the fallout from the US government's decision to add Huawei to a trade blacklist last Thursday.

The news: Google has suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware, software, and technical services, except those publicly available via open-source licensing, Reuters reports.

What does that mean? Anyone who currently owns a Huawei handset will still be able to download app updates provided by Google. However, as it stands, future Huawei handsets will not include proprietary apps and services from Google—for example, YouTube, Maps, or Gmail.

The impact: Huawei is the second biggest smartphone maker in the world, and losing access to the Android operating system could jeopardize its smartphone business beyond China (where most Google mobile apps are banned anyway). Being blacklisted makes it very difficult for Huawei to do business with US firms, although it says it has prepared for this eventuality.

Chip supply chains: Arguably, a bigger problem for Huawei may be the loss of access to US-made chips. Chipmakers Intel, Qualcomm, Xilinx, and Broadcom have told their employees they won't sell software and components to Huawei until further notice, Bloomberg reports.

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Facebook is experimenting with robots to push its AI research forward - The Verge

Posted: 20 May 2019 06:15 AM PDT

Facebook is certainly a high-tech company, but it's not one you would necessarily associate with robots. However, as the firm revealed today, that's exactly where its researchers are looking next — trying to see how experiments in robotics can further its work in AI.

This isn't uncommon for big tech companies. A lot of firms, including Google, Nvidia, and Amazon, use robots as a platform to explore avenues of AI research. Controlling robots is, in many ways, trickier than challenges like playing board games and video games. With these latter tasks, researchers have access to simulated game environments, which allows AI agents to play and learn at accelerated speeds. There's no such shortcut for training robots.

"The great thing about robotics is that it takes place in real time, in the real world," Facebook's Antoine Bordes, co-managing director of the company's artificial intelligence research labs, told Bloomberg News.

The research is wide-ranging, and Facebook has shared details about a trio of papers. The first involves getting a six-legged robot to teach itself how to walk through trial and error, the second is about leveraging "curiosity" to help robots learn faster, and the third is about using a sense of touch to help a robot achieve simple tasks like rolling a ball.

None of these papers are breakthroughs, per se, and the topics being researched are also being addressed elsewhere by universities and labs. But it's notable, still, that Facebook's AI research lab (known as FAIR) is pursuing this line of work.

The company's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, told Bloomberg that FAIR has a duty to "see around corners" and be prepared for future products and services, including robots. "You've got to start early," said LeCun. "It's not just something you can jump into when it picks up."

In some small ways, Facebook has already shown that getting to grips with physical systems can have unexpected payoffs. For example, when the company launched its Portal home video chat camera, it worked with filmmakers to design the camera movements that frame users for each shot. Despite widespread privacy concerns surrounding the Portal, reviewers did praise the company for making the calling experience surprisingly seamless.

Knowing how to tie together AI and hardware gave Facebook a small leg up with Portal, and it could do so again with future products.

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Apple Stores are quietly selling a 23.7-inch LG UltraFine display - 9to5Mac

Posted: 20 May 2019 07:26 AM PDT

The saga of the LG UltraFine display mystery continues. After the disappearance of the LG 4K UltraFine display from the Apple Store, and the continued lack of availability for the 5K UltraFine, the plot thickens with the discovery from TidBITS that you can now buy a new 23.7-inch LG display from Apple that is otherwise unlisted.

The seemingly-unannounced display is priced at $699. This is the same price as the 'old' 21-inch 4K LG UltraFine, and a few hundred dollars below the sale price of the 5K sibling.

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The report says that the 23.7-inch monitor features a mere 3360×1890 resolution and therefore has a pitiful 162 PPI by modern standards. This low pixel density means it does not qualify as a Retina display, even though it bears the UltraFine branding.

That being said, 9to5Mac found documentation matching the model number which stated the product had a 3840×2160 display, which would represent a more reasonable 4K resolution. It would still be less dense — as it is a 23.7-inch diagonal rather than 21-inch — but still on the borderline of Retina (It's therefore, possible the reported 3360×1890 spec is one of macOS' standard scaled resolutions, but the native panel is actually 4K).

The 23.7-inch display looks similar to the LG UltraFine 4K display in physical appearance but features an additional Thunderbolt 3 port on the back, making for a total of 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports and 3 standard USB-C ports to connect peripherals. Like the current 4K, this display appears to be compatible with both Mac computers and the 2018 iPad Pro.

Here's the full product specification that we could find for the mysterious item:

The LG 23.7-inch UltraFine display is on sale now at some retail Apple Stores. The product is not listed in the Apple Online Store so you'll have to go in person and ask the retail store staff if they have any stock.

Between this mysterious model and the disappearance of the current SKUs, the situation with the UltraFine displays is very strange. Mixed into all this, Apple is expected to announce a new high-end pro display at some point this year, maybe as soon as WWDC on June 3 alongside the unveiling of a new Mac Pro.

This doesn't feel like the end of the tale. We'll have to wait and see for further developments.

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