iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:
Ordinary Taiwanese, young and old, are joining courses to learn how to fly drones amid looming China military threat
In a small, crowded room in Taipei, Pan Chien-chin is trying to keep a drone hovering steadily. Imagining himself flying a plane, he gently nudges controller joysticks to guide the insect-like device as it hums through the air.
Cheers break out as Pan, who has never flown a drone before, steers it around a rectangular course marked by traffic cones without crashing. Around him are about two dozen fellow trainees, all signed up for the same course: Taiwan’s first civil defence drone training programme.
Continue reading...⚽️ Kick-off time: 8pm local/12pm AEST/3am BST/10pm EDT
⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Mail Jonathan
With Harry Kane scoring twice against Croatia earlier today – and Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé already putting on a show – see how the race for the golden boot is shaping up.
And check out the all-time standings for good measure.
Continue reading...Reports suggest fans able to evade security checks
Fans report ‘huge gaps’ at the side of ticket barriers
Fifa has played down reports that ticketless England supporters were able to gain entry for the World Cup opener against Croatia after evading security checks at the Dallas Stadium.
An unspecified number of fans without tickets are said to have made their way into the ground despite a huge security operation being put in place at the home of the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington. Officials said that snipers were in place inside the stadium, with the Arlington police department deploying “highly trained personnel and specialised resources” at the venue.
Continue reading...
CCS Insight expects global smartphone shipments to fall 15% this year as AI-driven demand pushes memory manufacturers toward higher-margin server chips. "[S]ome entry-level devices have already seen their sticker prices go up by more than 50 percent since last year," reports The Register. From the report: The firm found that the primary smartphone market (meaning new devices) contracted 4.4 percent in the first quarter of this year, despite sales channels front-loading (meaning stockpiling) product inventory, as device prices begin to rise sharply. As CCS notes, this casts an ominous shadow on the outlook for the rest of the year, and it seems things have worsened since The Register first started reporting on the smartphone memory woes.
Back in January, the forecast was for handset price rises of 6-8 percent, while the most pessimistic outlook was that the global market might contract as much as 5.2 percent. By February, analysts were expecting to see a decline in shipments of around 8 percent across the global market, and for prices to increase by about 14 percent.
The root cause of all this is the AI craze, which has seen huge demand for high-performance GPU-filled servers to process it all. Chipmakers have moved to capitalize on this by prioritizing production of high-margin memory components for those servers, rather than making the plain old DRAM and NAND needed for PCs and phones. "The memory chip crisis shows no sign of slowing down in the near future, ramping up the pressure on manufacturers and consumers. Memory components now account for more than 30 percent of a manufacturer's bill of materials in some smartphones." said CCS research analyst Ben Hatton. "The full impact has yet to be felt in many regions, but it's clear that device prices will accelerate over the rest of the year."
Back in January, the forecast was for handset price rises of 6-8 percent, while the most pessimistic outlook was that the global market might contract as much as 5.2 percent. By February, analysts were expecting to see a decline in shipments of around 8 percent across the global market, and for prices to increase by about 14 percent.
The root cause of all this is the AI craze, which has seen huge demand for high-performance GPU-filled servers to process it all. Chipmakers have moved to capitalize on this by prioritizing production of high-margin memory components for those servers, rather than making the plain old DRAM and NAND needed for PCs and phones. "The memory chip crisis shows no sign of slowing down in the near future, ramping up the pressure on manufacturers and consumers. Memory components now account for more than 30 percent of a manufacturer's bill of materials in some smartphones." said CCS research analyst Ben Hatton. "The full impact has yet to be felt in many regions, but it's clear that device prices will accelerate over the rest of the year."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This is kind of fantastic: Ribbie lets you watch actual MLB baseball games “rendered pitch by pitch in a cozy 8-bit view while they happen”.
Ribbie is a simple way to keep a live baseball game nearby. It shows the score, the bases, the count, and a tiny pixel field that moves with the real game.
I built it because I wanted something between a stats tab and a full broadcast. Something you can leave open while you work, cook, or do whatever else, then glance over and know what is happening.
There are a few different views you can use. The image above is the fullscreen view. Here’s the fullscreen game chooser view and the room view of the game.
I love this. Nice use of Silkscreen too. 😊
Tags: baseball · design · Silkscreen · sports · typography
WASHINGTON (ANP) - De presidenten van de Verenigde Staten en Iran hebben de tijdelijke overeenkomst tussen de landen officieel ondertekend. Dat melden Iraanse staatsmedia en bevestigt een functionaris van het Witte Huis aan persbureau Reuters.
Eerder was er sprake van dat de overeenkomst vrijdag zou worden getekend in Zwitserland, tijdens een ceremonie waarbij ook de Amerikaanse president JD Vance en de Iraanse parlementsvoorzitter Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf aanwezig zouden zijn. Een woordvoerder van het Iraanse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken liet in de nacht van woensdag op donderdag echter weten dat een dergelijke ceremonie niet in de plannen van Iran past.
In het zogenoemde memorandum van overeenstemming is onder meer afgesproken dat de Straat van Hormuz wordt geopend en dat alle conflicten in de regio worden beëindigd, inclusief in Libanon. Volgens de woordvoerder van het Iraanse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken zijn de zestig dagen waarvoor de afspraken gelden donderdag direct ingegaan. De landen kwamen overeen in die zestig dagen onderhandelingen te voeren over een definitief akkoord, maar spraken af dat die termijn met wederzijdse instemming kan worden verlengd.
Ook heffen de VS de sancties op en zetten ze een fonds op voor de wederopbouw van Iran. De tekst van het plan kwam eerder in handen van Amerikaanse media en werd woensdagavond laat ook gedeeld door staatsmedia in Iran.