Also: Our old devices are creating a mountain of e-waste. And it’s getting a lot bigger As one of the most productive areas of electronics (and thus e-waste) today, smartphones sit at the center of ongoing efforts to reduce the environmental impact of our thirst for more and more technology in our personal and professional lives. Most of the top manufacturers in the world already have efforts underway to curtail, or even reverse, the environmental impacts of their respective smartphone production operations....

Through its Cultivate Next venture fund, Chipotle is backing Hyphen, a food service platform designed to help automate kitchens via robotics, and Meati Foods, a company that makes alternative meat proteins from mushroom root. If you had to lay money on the two dominant trends in fast food for the next several years, you’d do well to pay attention. Automation has been making quick progress in the restaurant industry, both in front of and back of house operations....

“We sell our services through retailers, and we’d be very happy to work with retailers to the extent that they want to bring in prepaid products that services a portion of the community and we’d be very happy to work with them,” he said. “We ourselves, we don’t sell directly to consumers.” NBN is currently involved in a Special Access Undertaking consultation that has seen the wholesaler float three possible future pricing options....

“From Feb 2021 to May 2021, NBN Co received a total of 9,970 speed-related/ performance-related faults after which it investigates the actual cause and determines the appropriate resolution of the ticket,” NBN Co said in response to Senate Estimates Questions on Notice. There are around 2.5 million cable connections on NBN’s network, with the company previously saying 97% of connections were able to access speeds of 250Mbps, and 58% were able to get over 500Mbps....

Everyone who uses the internet worries about security, and we’re all doing something about it. Most services require a password; users change those passwords with every login to keep hackers guessing. (At least, the smart ones do.) The catch is that all that diligence can make some people less secure. The more passwords you manage, the harder they are to keep track of. That’s why more people are using a password manager like Enpass....

One example of this is Liberty Mutual Insurance, which has been running an internal training initiative since 2017 that allows participants to develop skills in technical areas that interest them. Called TechStart@Liberty, the annual programme gives entry-level IT employees the opportunity to gain a broader exposure to the organization’s technologies, and build new or existing skills. SEE: Developers, DevOps and cybersecurity: The top tech talent employers are looking for The Fortune 100 company hires about 120 ‘TechStarters’ on an annual basis, depending on the technology or the portfolio, says Neil Duggan, director of tech talent acquisition at Liberty Mutual....

Let’s start with the basics. The new Nighthawk comes with a tri-band Mesh WiFi 6 System 3.6Gbps Router + 2 mesh satellites. Netgear claims it can cover up to 4,500 square feet. I’ll soon be putting it to the test in my not yet finished new office. While it’s only 1,000 square feet, I hope to cover the 2,700 square feet main house with one Wi-Fi system. In the past, I used Ethernet and Powerline networking to extend my office network, but I’d love it if I could use Wi-Fi instead....

Published in Nature Biotechnology, the research said the newly developed SLOW5 format can process complex DNA nanopore sequencing “more than 30 times faster” than the previous file format called – ironically – FAST5. Nanopore sequencing is used to identify a range of diseases and help medical professionals analyse DNA samples in detail so they can provide tailored treatments for cancer patients. The data produced from this process was routinely recorded in FAST5 file formats, which produced large files of around 1....

The new system is powered by the Nvidia HGX high performance computing platform and is the third of four DiRAC “next-generation” supercomputers announced. DiRAC is the United Kingdom’s integrated supercomputing facility for theoretical modelling and HPC-based research in astronomy, cosmology, particle physics, and nuclear physics. It will run the Tursa system. Tursa will allow researchers to carry out the ultra-high-precision calculations of the properties of subatomic particles needed to interpret data from massive particle physics experiments, such as the Large Hadron Collider....

The league will now track 4th down and two-point conversion analytics with Next Gen Stats Decision Guide powered by AWS. Fourth downs continue to be some of the toughest – and most contentious – decisions leaders of the game have to make on Sundays, and the NFL will now give fans some insight into their choices with the help of AWS and tracking technology. He explained that the decision equation focuses on two main components: win probability, which informs how much the game will change in the hypothetical event of each outcome, and conversion probability, which tells us the likelihood of the offense converting a fourth down or 2-point conversion....

One of the pressing issues with 5G is its lack of consumer necessity. Having had 5G service since August, it can definitely be categorised as a non-essential nicety. If 5G disappears off my device tomorrow, the world will not end. But that means the enterprise side of the equation when it comes to 5G is driving adoption, which is a nice place to be, according to Optus Enterprise managing director Chris Mitchell....

Private 5G networks offer organizations a way to dedicate bandwidth for applications that require high-speed, high-capacity, low-latency connectivity. That could be anything from VR employee training to remote-controlled machinery. Organizations can leverage capabilities like network slicing to get even more out of private 5G networks. The NTT network will run on a cloud-native architecture and can be delivered via the cloud, on-premises or at the edge. It will offer NTT’s patent-pending MicroSlicing technology so that organizations can run mission-critical apps on the network....

Ali Kani, vice president and general manager of Automotive at Nvidia, said DeepMap has “a proven track record and are entrepreneurial, nimble and engineering-focused. DeepMap meets a deep need in the industry, and together we will develop and extend these capabilities.” Nvidia said it plans to continue working with DeepMap’s partner ecosystem while also investing in new capabilities and services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Nvidia’s autonomous business is relatively small compared to revenue from its data center and gaming divisions, but the company continues to build out its DRIVE platform with new technologies and partnerships....

Tensor RT is used by hundreds of companies for things like search engines, ad recommendations, and chatbots. Siddharth Sharma, head of the product marketing team for Nvidia’s AI software, told reporters on Monday that it has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times and is in use by companies like American Express, Verizon, LG, Ford, SK Telecom, KLA, Naver, GE Healthcare and USPS. “TensorRT 8 is twice as powerful as 7, twice as accurate as TensorRT 7, and it supports sparsity which can dramatically reduce the amount of compute and memory needed for running applications,” Sharma said....

However, revenue from chips used for crypto mining plunged, the company said. The report sent Nvidia shares up almost 4% in late trading. During the evening’s conference call with analysts, CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang said that his company has been able to secure supplies of its chips from its contract manufacturer, but that the global supply chain situation is a “wake-up call.” “We have a secured guaranteed supply, very large amounts of it, quite a spectacular amount of it, from the world’s leading foundry, and substrate and packaging and testing companies that are an integral usual part of our supple chain,” said Huang....

Nvidia on Thursday showcased how the Massachusetts-based startup Soft Robotics is deploying its technology – including on-site GPUs and the Isaac Sim robotics simulation toolkit – to make it easier to deploy robots designed to handle foods like chicken wings. Also: Nvidia’s robot simulator now includes human characters too Food processing and packaging plants may seem like an obvious place to deploy robots. Foods like chicken wings are quickly moved across conveyor belts as they’re uniformly cooked and prepared for consumption....

The result? A $699 handset that still goes toe-to-toe in some areas with the best phones we’ve tested but misses out on flagship fundamentals we’d expect, like wireless charging and an official IP68 rating for water and dust resistance. It’s the classic give-and-take play by OnePlus, like it or not. By comparison, last year’s OnePlus 10 Pro, which we found didn’t cut as many corners, is looking even more enticing with its now-discounted price tag....

OnePlus just announced the OnePlus Buds Pro with adaptive noise cancellation and premium design. These new true wireless earbuds will be available on September 1 for $149.99. Stay tuned here for a review of the earbuds sometime in August. The major feature of the new wireless earbuds is the ANC that is designed to provide an immersive experience for the listener. Each earbud has three mics that are designed to filter out up to 40dB of environmental noise....

Now, for the first time I’ve seen it anywhere, Stephen discusses sport as a platform. The business benefit of thinking of sport as a platform is rather massive, so read on. If you want talk to Stephen after you’ve read this – and you will – you can reach him here at LinkedIn or at @sb1sport on both Twitter and Instagram. Stephen, the ball is in your court… As a university student I had the good fortune to study sports history from a prominent professor who taught me that “‘sport is a microcosm of society....

Software companies either start with grass-roots developers and smaller enterprises and then move up or start big and make platforms more accessible over time. Palantir is going the latter route, but success moving downstream has been a harder road. Palantir has been working to make its platform more accessible and turnkey to businesses. In its latest quarter, Palantir had 149 customers with most being large organizations. In the first quarter, Palantir said it closed 15 deals of $5 million or more in total contract value, including 6 deals worth $10 million or more....