Month: September 2023
A Hidden Bar Code in iPhone Screens Saved Apple Hundreds of Millions of Dollars
An anonymous reader shares a report: Next time you try to wipe a smudge off your iPhone screen, take a closer look. See if you can spot one of the two tiny QR codes etched into its glass. Chances are you won’t be able to find them. Both codes are tiny — one is the size of a grain of sand and can only be seen with special equipment, while the other, roughly the size of the tip of a crayon, is laser-printed on the reverse side of the glass somewhere along its black border or bezel. The codes are placed on the glass at different stages of manufacturing to help Apple track and reduce defects. They represent the company’s obsessive attention to detail in manufacturing devices such as the iPhone, which has helped it squeeze costs in a traditionally low-margin business.
“Apple has been granularly and singularly tracking many components in the iPhone for some time, but expanding that to the glass and doing it with a microscopic bar code is another level of obsessive attention to detail that few companies would do,” said Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, a popular Apple gadget repair site. “I’ve never heard of serial numbers on the glass level, but if you’re throwing infinite money at improving your manufacturing knowledge, then why not?” Apple added the smaller of the two QR codes — 0.2 mm in width — to iPhone screens in 2020 so it can track precisely how many usable cover glass units its two Chinese suppliers, Lens Technology and Biel Crystal, are making and how many defective cover glass units they are throwing away during manufacturing. Lens and Biel have previously stymied Apple’s efforts to learn the true rate of defects, which can raise its production costs. Apple has paid millions of dollars to install laser and scanning equipment at Lens and Biel factories to both add the microscopic QR code and scan the cover glass at the end of the production process.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Next time you try to wipe a smudge off your iPhone screen, take a closer look. See if you can spot one of the two tiny QR codes etched into its glass. Chances are you won’t be able to find them. Both codes are tiny — one is the size of a grain of sand and can only be seen with special equipment, while the other, roughly the size of the tip of a crayon, is laser-printed on the reverse side of the glass somewhere along its black border or bezel. The codes are placed on the glass at different stages of manufacturing to help Apple track and reduce defects. They represent the company’s obsessive attention to detail in manufacturing devices such as the iPhone, which has helped it squeeze costs in a traditionally low-margin business.
“Apple has been granularly and singularly tracking many components in the iPhone for some time, but expanding that to the glass and doing it with a microscopic bar code is another level of obsessive attention to detail that few companies would do,” said Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, a popular Apple gadget repair site. “I’ve never heard of serial numbers on the glass level, but if you’re throwing infinite money at improving your manufacturing knowledge, then why not?” Apple added the smaller of the two QR codes — 0.2 mm in width — to iPhone screens in 2020 so it can track precisely how many usable cover glass units its two Chinese suppliers, Lens Technology and Biel Crystal, are making and how many defective cover glass units they are throwing away during manufacturing. Lens and Biel have previously stymied Apple’s efforts to learn the true rate of defects, which can raise its production costs. Apple has paid millions of dollars to install laser and scanning equipment at Lens and Biel factories to both add the microscopic QR code and scan the cover glass at the end of the production process.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Pokémon’s Van Gogh collaboration turned out to be kind of a disaster
A painting of Munchlax and Snorlax inspired by Van Gogh’s “The Bedroom.” | Image: The Pokémon Company
The horde of people that descended upon the Van Gogh Museum yesterday to snatch up as much merchandise as they could was the first sign that the Pokémon x Van Gogh collaboration might be a bit more chaotic than expected. While there was hope that all the fracas might die down and give everyone a chance to get in on the fun, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case.
Initially, it seemed like The Pokémon Company’s plan was for people to be able to easily find multiple pieces of merchandise from the special Pokémon x Van Gogh Museum collection online at the Pokémon Center, even if you couldn’t make it to the actual exhibit in Amsterdam. This afternoon, though, The Pokémon Company announced that its online store is already completely sold out — seemingly for good — despite the collaboration having only just begun a day before.
“We understand this is disappointing to many who were looking to our official email and social media channels for guidance on how and when to purchase,” the company said. “We are actively working on ways to provide more ‘Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat’ promo cards for fans shopping at Pokémon Center in the future.”
We apologize to all the fans eagerly awaiting our Pokémon Center x Van Gogh Museum release today.Due to overwhelming demand, all our products from this collection have sold out. We understand this is disappointing to many who were looking to our official email and social media… pic.twitter.com/KM3ZCO1EQZ— Pokémon (@Pokemon) September 29, 2023
Though we reached out asking whether there might potentially be a restock down the line, The Pokémon Company did not get back by the time of publishing.
It never exactly made clear when the Pokémon x Van Gogh swag — an assortment of painting prints, tote bags, card sleeves, and a holographic promo card — would become available this week. On Friday morning, pieces from the collection began popping up with no warning, leading to rushes on the website that led to numerous hiccups that made it hard to add things to a cart and almost impossible to get through checkout.
As unfortunate as all of this is, none of it comes as a surprise given how much more prevalent the scalping of Pokémon products has become recently. In the past, The Pokémon Company has apologized, said that it intended to take steps to combat the scalping problem, and then followed through by doing things like reprinting card sets.
A reprint of the “Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat” promo card appears to be on the way from the sounds of The Pokémon Company’s statement, which is something, and the museum’s exhibit is obviously still available to the public. But for those who were hoping to get their hands on a piece from the rest of the collection, it’s looking like the hunt just got a lot more expensive.
A painting of Munchlax and Snorlax inspired by Van Gogh’s “The Bedroom.” | Image: The Pokémon Company
The horde of people that descended upon the Van Gogh Museum yesterday to snatch up as much merchandise as they could was the first sign that the Pokémon x Van Gogh collaboration might be a bit more chaotic than expected. While there was hope that all the fracas might die down and give everyone a chance to get in on the fun, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case.
Initially, it seemed like The Pokémon Company’s plan was for people to be able to easily find multiple pieces of merchandise from the special Pokémon x Van Gogh Museum collection online at the Pokémon Center, even if you couldn’t make it to the actual exhibit in Amsterdam. This afternoon, though, The Pokémon Company announced that its online store is already completely sold out — seemingly for good — despite the collaboration having only just begun a day before.
“We understand this is disappointing to many who were looking to our official email and social media channels for guidance on how and when to purchase,” the company said. “We are actively working on ways to provide more ‘Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat’ promo cards for fans shopping at Pokémon Center in the future.”
We apologize to all the fans eagerly awaiting our Pokémon Center x Van Gogh Museum release today.
Due to overwhelming demand, all our products from this collection have sold out. We understand this is disappointing to many who were looking to our official email and social media… pic.twitter.com/KM3ZCO1EQZ
— Pokémon (@Pokemon) September 29, 2023
Though we reached out asking whether there might potentially be a restock down the line, The Pokémon Company did not get back by the time of publishing.
It never exactly made clear when the Pokémon x Van Gogh swag — an assortment of painting prints, tote bags, card sleeves, and a holographic promo card — would become available this week. On Friday morning, pieces from the collection began popping up with no warning, leading to rushes on the website that led to numerous hiccups that made it hard to add things to a cart and almost impossible to get through checkout.
As unfortunate as all of this is, none of it comes as a surprise given how much more prevalent the scalping of Pokémon products has become recently. In the past, The Pokémon Company has apologized, said that it intended to take steps to combat the scalping problem, and then followed through by doing things like reprinting card sets.
A reprint of the “Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat” promo card appears to be on the way from the sounds of The Pokémon Company’s statement, which is something, and the museum’s exhibit is obviously still available to the public. But for those who were hoping to get their hands on a piece from the rest of the collection, it’s looking like the hunt just got a lot more expensive.
Letterboxd sells a majority stake after explosive pandemic-fueled growth
The film-focused social media site LetterBoxd has new ownership. Cofounder Matthew Buchanan announced on Friday that Tiny, a venture capital firm, has bought a 60 percent stake in the platform. The New York Times reported that the deal values Letterboxd at over $50 million. Buchanan and fellow founder Karl von Randow will retain minority shareholder positions and continue to lead the company as they insist “very little else will change.”
Founded in 2011, Letterboxd was a rare independently owned social network. It grew significantly during pandemic lockdowns as homebound users sought new movies to stream (and communities to chat with). Lacking the clutter of Amazon-owned IMDb, the website and app provided a haven for film buffs who wanted to write and read reviews, rate movies, create watch lists and socialize with fellow enthusiasts.
Letterboxd’s cofounders frame the move as less about selling out to big money and more a growth opportunity. “Teaming up with Tiny represents a big leap forward for us,” Buchanan and von Randow wrote in a statement. “We see this as a huge win for our community, enabling us to cement Letterboxd’s future with additional resources without sacrificing the DNA of what makes it special.”
The site doesn’t currently support television series, but the founders say they’re working on a way to offer that. They insist they want to incorporate TV shows “only once we know we can do it right.” Letterboxd partnered with Netflix earlier this year, bringing the streaming service’s recommendations to the social platform.
“We’ve been huge fans and users of Letterboxd for a long time and could not be more excited to join forces with Matthew, Karl, and the rest of the team for the long-term,” said Andrew Wilkinson, Co-founder of Tiny. “If you’re running out of things to watch, it’s because you haven’t used Letterboxd yet — and we believe that the potential for superior discovery is a large opportunity.”This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/letterboxd-sells-a-majority-stake-after-explosive-pandemic-fueled-growth-201646444.html?src=rss
The film-focused social media site LetterBoxd has new ownership. Cofounder Matthew Buchanan announced on Friday that Tiny, a venture capital firm, has bought a 60 percent stake in the platform. The New York Times reported that the deal values Letterboxd at over $50 million. Buchanan and fellow founder Karl von Randow will retain minority shareholder positions and continue to lead the company as they insist “very little else will change.”
Founded in 2011, Letterboxd was a rare independently owned social network. It grew significantly during pandemic lockdowns as homebound users sought new movies to stream (and communities to chat with). Lacking the clutter of Amazon-owned IMDb, the website and app provided a haven for film buffs who wanted to write and read reviews, rate movies, create watch lists and socialize with fellow enthusiasts.
Letterboxd’s cofounders frame the move as less about selling out to big money and more a growth opportunity. “Teaming up with Tiny represents a big leap forward for us,” Buchanan and von Randow wrote in a statement. “We see this as a huge win for our community, enabling us to cement Letterboxd’s future with additional resources without sacrificing the DNA of what makes it special.”
The site doesn’t currently support television series, but the founders say they’re working on a way to offer that. They insist they want to incorporate TV shows “only once we know we can do it right.” Letterboxd partnered with Netflix earlier this year, bringing the streaming service’s recommendations to the social platform.
“We’ve been huge fans and users of Letterboxd for a long time and could not be more excited to join forces with Matthew, Karl, and the rest of the team for the long-term,” said Andrew Wilkinson, Co-founder of Tiny. “If you’re running out of things to watch, it’s because you haven’t used Letterboxd yet — and we believe that the potential for superior discovery is a large opportunity.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/letterboxd-sells-a-majority-stake-after-explosive-pandemic-fueled-growth-201646444.html?src=rss
How AI is Changing Data Management: Embracing the AI-Driven Automation Era
We are entering a new era of Big Data wherein data sets have become so vast that humans simply cannot
The post How AI is Changing Data Management: Embracing the AI-Driven Automation Era appeared first on ReadWrite.
We are entering a new era of Big Data wherein data sets have become so vast that humans simply cannot effectively analyze it in a reasonable amount of time. The availability of so much data portends many great things for the future of business intelligence. But as has always been the case, data is only as valuable as the insights that can be extracted from it.
Almost as if on cue, this second wave of Big Data has coincided with the rise of generative AI. This new and exciting technology has transformative potential across nearly every industry on the planet. When turned loose on these unfathomably large sets of data, AI can, in mere seconds, perform complex analyses and identify patterns it would take human observers weeks or even months to complete.
AI is also going to make a huge impact with the way we interact with computers. This will result in software solutions becoming more personalized and user-friendly. We will be seeing a gradual shift in the direction of a more supervisory role to AI-based solutions: We will be directing what needs to be done and AI based solutions will be doing more of the work for us. We’re already seeing AI making a huge impact on new software development, and even existing software solutions being reimagined to give users a better user experience using AI. I believe AI is going to take a lot of the burden off our shoulders in terms of the automated solutions it enables.
AI is already assisting businesses of all sizes extract more value from their data, automate repetitive tasks, and streamline existing data pipeline solutions. The AI revolution represents a seismic technological shift, and an opportunity to enhance both productivity and efficiency for data-driven businesses. Setting yourself up for success in this new AI-driven world of data management does require some planning. But when done right, the benefits are too great to ignore.
Infrastructure
These are exciting times, where everyone is trying to do something with AI. But from an implementation perspective, any business setting out to embark on an AI journey of their own must be sure they have a strong data infrastructure in place. You’ll need the right storage capacity, the right computing power, and the right data tools.
Without these fundamental components, the quality of your data will suffer. This, in turn, will limit your AI module’s abilities to extract meaningful insights from your organization’s data sets. We’ve already seen the quality of AI’s large language models (LLMs) and how they’re trained. There’s a clear trend that their success or failure usually depends on the quality of data. The old programming adage “garbage in, garbage out” can be applied here. So, you need to deliver quality data to your AI in order for it to be successful. That comes from having the right data sets and tools.
With the emergence of AI, things are changing very rapidly. Many organizations are experimenting with different ways to handle their unstructured data. Unstructured data is more difficult to handle compared to neat rows and columns. With AI, actionable insights can be extracted even from large amounts of unstructured data. The processes are very important, and infrastructure is very important. Previously we used to always start by converting unstructured data to structured data. Now we’re looking to do both.
Automation
Automated data management platforms are helping businesses get their data into a workable state in a much quicker timeframe than ever before. This frees up resources for mission-critical tasks like strategic thinking, client partnerships, and understanding the factors that are actually driving what you’re looking for, the story you’re trying to tell, or the problem you’re trying to solve. AI and automation create capacity where it’s really needed, instead of digging through rows of unstructured data.
From a solutions architecture perspective, we recommend businesses ensure their processes are efficient so they’re not spending time on mundane tasks. If you’re spending time on those tasks, you’re wasting time. We believe you should automate whatever can be automated, and that human capital should only be devoted to tasks that cannot be automated. We’ve seen examples of low-code/no-code solutions for some time now, which help users of our products quickly build solutions and improve their data pipelines. But with AI, we’re seeing another dramatic shift. We’ve seen it be able to take on repetitive tasks, the tasks where you spend a lot of time but the gain in terms of productivity and value just aren’t there.
Let’s say you spend several hours putting together a solution to extract certain types of data from a document and going into a database. This is a simple pipeline. To build that would take a few days, maybe a week. Now that can be done within a few minutes. That’s the kind of gain you can see with AI. AI has made existing solutions even more streamlined, and users are now spending time where they should be spending it. Repetitive tasks like checking every comment, rule, or result used to take up a lot of time. With AI, we’re able to minimize that.
Culture
A key component of undertaking a successful automated data strategy is achieving buy-in from members at all levels of the organization. We’ve seen this take shape as companies have placed a significant emphasis on data literacy in recent years. Today, things like data governance, data security, and how that data is handled across organizations’ pipelines has become mandatory knowledge from the C-suite down to rank-and-file employees.
At the same time, however, organizations need to be deliberate with their AI undertakings. Including whether they pursue it at all. Otherwise, they risk merely chasing shiny objects with no particular objective in mind. Companies must ensure these technologies are in line with their business goals: increasing revenue, decreasing cancellations, exploring new markets, etc.
It’s key to have a tangible project or proof-of-concept to embed AI and automation technologies in silos before expanding them across the organization. Identify your key gains, determine if it’s the right fit, then have key stakeholders involved in POCs, then expand in due course.
About Astera
Astera is a leading provider of end-to-end data management platform that puts the power of data-driven decision making into the hands of every user. Astera’s suite of products addresses data extraction, integration, warehousing, and API management needs of a modern enterprise. With a focus on usability, Astera’s products have a short learning curve and are designed to save time and reduce costs.
The post How AI is Changing Data Management: Embracing the AI-Driven Automation Era appeared first on ReadWrite.
Search For Phone Signal Caused Oil Spill, Say Japanese Investigators
Japan’s Transport Safety Board on Thursday judged that a cargo ship that spilled 1,000 tons of fuel oil into a pristine marine environment off the coast of Mauritius in 2020 was travelling off course in search of a cell phone signal. From a report: The MV Wakashio was en route from Lianyungang, China to a Brazilian port when, on July 25 2020, it struck trouble near Blue Bay Marine Park, a popular snorkeling spot on the Indian Ocean nation Mauritius. The Japanese-owned vessel was sailing under a Panamanian flag of convenience, and captained by a Indian national. According to the report, two days before it ran aground, the captain changed the 100,000-plus ton ship’s route to travel five nautical miles from the coast line instead of the originally planned 22 nautical miles. He ordered the course change without obtaining proper marine charts of the area and therefore did not know that waters in the area are less than 20 meters deep.
The ship subsequently hit a coral reef. “Reefs and obstacles were displayed near the place of occurrence,” reads the 89-page Japan Transport Safety Board report in Japanese. “The body buckled due to being knocked to the seabed and broke into the skin near the fuel oil tank. As a result, about 1,000 tons of fuel oil loaded in the tank spilled out to sea,” the document states. The report noted that the captain of the vessel changed the voyage plan for the purpose of coming within range of signal for his smartphone. It also noted the behavior was not an isolated incident and that safety awareness among the crew at large was lacking.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Japan’s Transport Safety Board on Thursday judged that a cargo ship that spilled 1,000 tons of fuel oil into a pristine marine environment off the coast of Mauritius in 2020 was travelling off course in search of a cell phone signal. From a report: The MV Wakashio was en route from Lianyungang, China to a Brazilian port when, on July 25 2020, it struck trouble near Blue Bay Marine Park, a popular snorkeling spot on the Indian Ocean nation Mauritius. The Japanese-owned vessel was sailing under a Panamanian flag of convenience, and captained by a Indian national. According to the report, two days before it ran aground, the captain changed the 100,000-plus ton ship’s route to travel five nautical miles from the coast line instead of the originally planned 22 nautical miles. He ordered the course change without obtaining proper marine charts of the area and therefore did not know that waters in the area are less than 20 meters deep.
The ship subsequently hit a coral reef. “Reefs and obstacles were displayed near the place of occurrence,” reads the 89-page Japan Transport Safety Board report in Japanese. “The body buckled due to being knocked to the seabed and broke into the skin near the fuel oil tank. As a result, about 1,000 tons of fuel oil loaded in the tank spilled out to sea,” the document states. The report noted that the captain of the vessel changed the voyage plan for the purpose of coming within range of signal for his smartphone. It also noted the behavior was not an isolated incident and that safety awareness among the crew at large was lacking.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Take Up to 50% Off Ring Security Cameras for Your Home – CNET
Stay alert for less with these impressive deals on indoor and outdoor Ring security camera options at Wellbots.
Stay alert for less with these impressive deals on indoor and outdoor Ring security camera options at Wellbots.