Zenkoji, Nagano, Japan 善光寺、長野

Mr Mikage (ミスター御影) posted a photo:

Zenkoji, Nagano, Japan 善光寺、長野

The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

Apple hawks $2k folding fondleslab

It’s been a long time since Apple introduced a truly new product. The world finally got one today in the form of the folding iPhone Duo, and while it's new for Apple, it's not new for the industry. Nonetheless, Apple is once again hoping to validate a mostly moribund market as it did with tablets and smartwatches – folding phones only made up 1.6% of total smartphone sales last year, according to Counterpoint Research. Apple announced the iPhone Duo – did no one check the list of cursed gadget brands? – on Wednesday during new CEO John Ternus’ first crack at an Apple keynote, and it's a foldable iPhone. Given its aspect ratio, it’s probably more apt to call it an iPadphone, though. Ternus criticized the shape of other foldable smartphones, likening them to “just two phones strapped together” rather than a purpose-built foldable device. The Duo is intended to break that mold, though it was a little hard to tell from the event. Folded, the Duo has an oddly square shape that Apple described as being “passport sized,” with a 5.4” screen. When opened, the Duo has a 7.6” screen – not much smaller than the 8.3” screen on the iPad mini, which in turn is just a bit smaller than Huawei’s massive 10.3” tri-fold device. Speaking of screens, anyone who’s had an opportunity to play with a foldable smartphone knows their durability is abysmal. The original Samsung foldables were so soft they could be scored with a fingernail, and while successive models have improved, they still aren’t as hard as regular glass. Apple had plenty of platitudes to deliver about the screen, of course: Its many layers use a “visco-elastic adhesive” to allow components to slide against each other so everything folds more easily, and there’s a titanium plate at the back to keep the durability up, too. But what of its hardness? Not a word. As for the hinge – the bane of every foldable smartphone since the first Galaxy Fold hit shelves in 2019 – Apple claims that “over 100 tiny precision components” and the assistance of AI will ensure it's a tight and reliable fit. It’s worth pointing out, however, that Samsung has released eight generations of Galaxy Fold, and iFixit says the hinge is still its weakness. The Galaxy Fold 8, mind you, is only rated at IP48, meaning it’s not completely dust-tight, while the iPhone Duo claims to be IP68, meaning it’s completely dust-tight, though we’d caution waiting to see what the initial teardowns determine before deciding if that’s accurate. Either way, if you’re going to actually spring for this $1,999 phone you’d better plan to get an Apple Care plan, too. Unnecessary introductions There’s another big sticking point about the iPhone Duo that needs to be addressed, and that’s what it does with iOS. Apple apparently knows that such a wide device is going to make using the iOS dock, and other interface buttons less practical, so it’s decided to move all of them to the right side of the iOS screen. Navigation buttons, app interfaces, and everything one would use to get around is now located on the side to, in Apple’s words, “maximize vertical space for content.” That’s all well and good, but it means developers need to make arrangements for the iPhone Duo. Apple knows this, as it made sure to mention a new API that developers can use to adapt their apps. For what it's worth, a revamped version of Siri launching this fall has also required developers to adapt to its presence on Apple devices. According to the New York Times, that hasn’t been going too well, with many big developers yet to make the necessary changes to enable support for Apple Intelligence and its interface with Siri in their apps. That’s for a feature that extends across Apple’s ecosystem, mind you. The Duo is one single device. The Duo also only has two cameras to the iPhone Pro series’ triple lenses, and takes a step backwards by ditching FaceID for a TouchID button embedded in the side button. Apple tends to have a wait-and-see approach to new technology, joining the game late after the competition has had a chance to flounder around and make bad decisions with early models. It’s not clear whether the Duo will be a prime example of that philosophy in action, or whether it’ll join Apple’s other recent developments, like the Vision Pro, in relative obscurity. Ternus and company at least chose a good name if the product withers: No one remembers Microsoft’s Duo either. ®

Samsung to help fortify OpenAI's semiconductor supply chain

OpenAI will design its next-generation AI accelerators with the help of South Korean foundry giant Samsung Electronics. This move could help the ChatGPT maker with memory, process tech, or other key things it needs to succeed. The announcement, made by OpenAI Korea general manager Harrison Kim in a press conference Wednesday, comes just weeks after the company showed its first-generation “Jalapeño” accelerators besting Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs across a slew of inference workloads. "One of the areas where we have made the most progress and gained the most recognition with Samsung Electronics is our joint production and research on the next-generation chips we are developing," he said, according to Reuters. But now that the hype has died down and Wall Street has convinced themselves that the rise of AI ASICs isn’t the threat to Nvidia’s dominance they feared, OpenAI still has to contend with the realities of being a fabless chip designer. The vast majority of leading edge silicon made today comes from a single company: TSMC. That means securing meaningful capacity requires competing with AMD, Nvidia, and practically every other chip biz and hyperscaler designing their own chips. But TSMC isn’t the only leading edge wafer fab out there. They’re just the biggest. Smaller, less popular options include Samsung Electronics and Intel Foundry. The supply of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which OpenAI’s (and Broadcom if we’re being honest here) designs make extensive use of, is similarly constrained with just three major manufacturers capable of producing it in volume: SK Hynix, Micron, and you guessed it, Samsung Electronics. This puts OpenAI in a tough spot of having to compete with larger, higher volume chip designers for both logic and memory silicon. As such, OpenAI’s tie-up with Samsung could go two ways. The most obvious, but also the least interesting, is that Samsung will supply all or at least some of the HBM used in the model dev’s next-gen chips, which we’ll call Habanero for lack of an official code name. Detailed at Hot Chips last month, OpenAI’s Jalapeño AI inference chip uses HBM4, the same tech used by AMD and Nvidia’s latest GPUs. That tells us that there's a pretty good chance Habanero will likely use the faster HBM4E. And given the ongoing memory shortage, if OpenAI wants to secure ample supply, it’s going to need to forge these relationships early. Besides supply chain, timing is important because there’s a good chance OpenAI’s next chip will take advantage of custom base dies to move things like memory controllers or even some logic from the compute silicon to the HBM stack itself. If you recall Nvidia’s disclosures around NVHBM a few weeks back, it’s the same idea. However, these custom base dies require some coordination with the HBM supplier, so fostering a close relationship with Samsung now would benefit OpenAI, even if the compute chiplets themselves end up being manufactured by TSMC. While the most obvious reason for OpenAI’s tie-up with Samsung is memory-related, that’s not to say they couldn’t fab their next chip on Samsung’s 2 nm process tech just to have an alternative supplier to TSMC. Samsung is the second largest leading edge foundry operator in the world and used to produce a lot of silicon for the likes of Nvidia, Apple and others. Nvidia’s Ampere generation used Samsung’s 8 nm process tech for the majority of its PCIe-based cards, while its HBM-equipped accelerators were exclusively fabbed by TSMC. But a number of factors, including the rise of multi-die architectures requiring advanced packaging and broader adoption of HBM-based accelerators, made TSMC the more attractive option. Reported challenges with Samsung’s yields across its 3 nm process tech probably didn’t help either. But as of 2026, Samsung is looking a lot more compelling, with chip designers including Rebellions, Tenstorrent, and Groq building sophisticated AI accelerators at its fabs. Rebellions’ Rebel100 accelerator is a particularly useful proof point as it utilizes a multi-die architecture and HBM3E, both of which require sophisticated advanced techniques to stitch everything together. The chip shows that Samsung is more than capable of producing OpenAI’s next chip. What’s more, doing so could open the door to larger allocations than they would get from TSMC alone. We reached out to OpenAI for comment on its silicon strategy, but had not heard back as of publication. ®

Rijnmond - Nieuws

Het laatste nieuws van vandaag over Rotterdam, Feyenoord, het verkeer en het weer in de regio Rijnmond

Van Bronckhorst ziet leerzame avond voor Feyenoord: 'We speelden met achttien debutanten op dit niveau'

Bij Feyenoord overheerste na afloop van het met 5-1 verloren duel met FC Barcelona gematigde positiviteit. Het spel dat Feyenoord bij vlagen toonde in Camp Nou, lag daaraan ten grondslag. Toch waren de Rotterdammers ook zelfkritisch. "’Ik ben nog lang niet op dat niveau."

Van Bronckhorst ziet leerzame avond voor Feyenoord: 'Op dit niveau wordt iedere fout afgestraft'

Bij Feyenoord overheerste na afloop van het met 5-1 verloren duel met FC Barcelona gematigde positiviteit. Het spel dat Feyenoord bij vlagen toonde in Camp Nou, lag daaraan ten grondslag. Toch waren de Rotterdammers ook zelfkritisch. "’Ik ben nog lang niet op dat niveau."

The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Ultrarunner Megan Eckert shatters US men’s and women’s records with 636 miles in six days

  • Distance tops US men’s mark by more than 30 miles

  • Eckert also beat women’s world record she set last year

While some teachers spent the second week of September easing into their school routines, Megan Eckert was making more ultrarunning history.

The New Mexico middle school math teacher shattered the six-day women’s world record and the American men’s record by running 636.482 miles, completing her feat on Wednesday morning in Balatonfüred, Hungary.

Continue reading...

RAUM Utrecht

Overal in Nederland worden nieuwe wijken opgetrokken aan de buitenranden van bestaande steden. Wat gebeurd daar dan als we het hebben over cultuur? Wanneer begin je daarmee: Kip of ei…? Met mislukkingen in de achterhoofden [Meer...]

this isn't happiness.

ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, DESIGN & DISAPPOINTMENT INSTAGRAM ★ ELSEWHERES

I know if you don’t ask me, Nieves Mingueza

I know if you don’t ask me, Nieves Mingueza

Eldorado, Christopher Soukup

Eldorado, Christopher Soukup

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Zorgen om oplopende olieprijs bezorgen Wall Street verlies

NEW YORK (ANP) - De aandelenbeurzen in New York zijn woensdag met verliezen gesloten. Beleggers maken zich zorgen over de oplaaiende gevechten tussen Iran en de Verenigde Staten en stijgende energieprijzen. De prijs voor een vat Brentolie kwam voor het eerst sinds juli boven de 100 dollar uit.

De vrees is dat duurdere energie en brandstoffen zich vertalen in een langere periode van hoge inflatie. Daarmee neemt ook de kans op renteverhogingen toe, en daarvan worden beleggers zenuwachtig. De publicatie van nieuwe inflatiecijfers voor de VS op vrijdag biedt ze mogelijk meer duidelijkheid.

De Dow-Jonesindex zakte 0,8 procent tot 52.380,66 punten. De bredere S&P 500 zakte 0,5 procent tot 7636,36 punten en techgraadmeter Nasdaq verloor 0,6 procent tot 26.253,34 punten.

Olie

Uit het Midden-Oosten kwamen berichten over beschietingen over en weer tussen Iran en de Verenigde Staten. Iran liet weten voorbereid te zijn op een escalatie van het geweld.

Een vat Brentolie werd rond het sluiten van de New Yorkse beurzen voor 101,55 dollar verhandeld, een stijging van 3,7 procent. Amerikaanse olie werd 4 procent duurder op 96,71 dollar per vat. Olieconcerns ExxonMobil en Chevron stegen tot 2,2 procent dankzij de duurdere olie.

Nieuwe iPhone

Apple eindigde 0,3 procent lager. Het techbedrijf onthulde zijn eerste opvouwbare iPhone, die zo'n 2000 dollar moet kosten. De nieuwe iPhone 18 Pro en Pro Max gaan 100 dollar meer kosten dan hun voorgangers, bleek verder uit de productpresentatie.

Dow zakte 0,6 procent. Het concern overweegt uit een gezamenlijk chemiebedrijf met olieconcern Saudi Aramco te stappen, schrijft persbureau Bloomberg op basis van ingewijden.

Google-moederbedrijf Alphabet sloot 2,3 procent lager na de bekendmaking van een grote investering in Finland. Google wil er 13 miljard dollar steken in nieuwe AI-datacenters, de grootste investering ooit van het bedrijf in Europa.