MojoKid writes: AMD officially launched its Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics cards today, previously known in the PC gaming community as Big Navi. The company claimed these high-end GPUs would compete with NVIDIA's best GeForce RTX 30 series and it appears AMD made good on its claims. AMD's new Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon 6800 are based on the company's RDNA 2 GPU architecture, with the former sporting 72 Compute Units (CUs) and 2250MHz boost clock, while the RX 6800 sports 60 CUs at a 2105MHz boost clock. Both cards come equipped with 16GB of GDDR6 memory and 128MB of on-die cache AMD calls Infinity Cache, that improves bandwidth and latency, feeding the GPU in front of its 256-bit GDDR6 memory interface. In the benchmarks, it is fair to say the Radeon RX 6800 is typically faster than an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 just as AMD suggested. Things are not as cut and dry for the Radeon RX 6800 XT though, as the GeForce RTX 3080 and Radeon RX 6800 XT trade victories depending on the game title or workload, but the RTX 3080 has an edge overall. In DXR Ray Tracing performance, NVIDIA has a distinct advantage at the high-end. Though the Radeon RX 6800 wasn't too far behind and RTX 3070, neither the Radeon RX 6800 XT or 6800 card came close the GeForce RTX 3080. Pricing is set at $649 and $579 for the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800, respectively and the cards are on sale as of today. However, demand is likely to be fierce as this new crop of high-end graphics cards from both companies have been quickly evaporating from retail shelves.

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Rising temperatures are destabilising lake and river ice, boosting the risk of people drowning.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Are Technica: The Federal Communications Commission today voted to add 45MHz of spectrum to Wi-Fi in a slightly controversial decision that takes the spectrum away from a little-used automobile-safety technology. The spectrum from 5.850GHz to 5.925GHz has, for about 20 years, been set aside for Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), a vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications service that's supposed to warn drivers of dangers on the road. But as FCC Chairman Ajit Pai today said, "99.9943 percent of the 274 million registered vehicles on the road in the United States still don't have DSRC on-board units." Only 15,506 vehicles have been equipped with the technology, he said. In today's decision, the FCC split the spectrum band and reallocated part of it to Wi-Fi and part of it to a newer vehicle technology. The lower 45MHz from 5.850GHz to 5.895GHz will be allocated to Wi-Fi and other unlicensed services. "This spectrum's impact will be further amplified by the fact that it is adjacent to an existing Wi-Fi band which, when combined with the 45MHz made available today, will support cutting-edge broadband applications," the FCC said. "These high-throughput channels -- up to 160 megahertz wide -- will enable gigabit Wi-Fi connectivity for schools, hospitals, small businesses, and other consumers." "Full-power indoor unlicensed operations" are authorized immediately, while "outdoor unlicensed use" will be allowed "on a coordinated basis under certain circumstances," the FCC said. The FCC ordered DSRC services to vacate the lower 45MHz within one year. The other 30MHz currently allocated to DSRC is being set aside for a newer vehicle-safety technology called Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X). "Today's action therefore begins the transition away from DSRC services -- which are incompatible with C-V2X -- to hasten the actual deployment of ITS [Intelligent Transportation Systems] services that will improve automotive safety," the FCC said. The FCC still has to finalize technical rules for outdoor unlicensed operations on the lower 45MHz and for how to transition the upper 30MHz from DSRC to C-V2X. Freeing up 45MHz "will supersize Wi-Fi, a technology so many of us are relying on like never before," said FCC Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel. Meanwhile, FCC Democrat Geoffrey Starks called the spectrum reassignment an important step toward reducing congestion "and ensuring that we realize the full potential of our broadband connections." In addition to improving home Wi-Fi, the extra 45MHz will benefit public Wi-Fi networks that are relied upon by many people without good Internet access at home, he said.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Researchers in China say they've created sarcasm detection AI that achieved state-of-the-art performance on a dataset drawn from Twitter. The AI uses multimodal learning that combines text and imagery since both are often needed to understand whether a person is being sarcastic. The researchers argue that sarcasm detection can assist with sentiment analysis and crowdsourced understanding of public attitudes about a particular subject. In a challenge initiated earlier this year, Facebook is using multimodal AI to recognize whether memes violate its terms of service. The researchers' AI focuses on differences between text and imagery and then combines those results to make predictions. It also compares hashtags to tweet text to help assess the sentiment a user is trying to convey. "Particularly, the input tokens will give high attention values to the image regions contradicting them, as incongruity is a key character of sarcasm," the paper reads. "As the incongruity might only appear within the text (e.g., a sarcastic text associated with an unrelated image), it is necessary to consider the intra modality incongruity." On a dataset drawn from Twitter, the model achieved a 2.74% improvement on a sarcasm detection F1 score compared to HFM, a multimodal detection model introduced last year. The new model also achieved an 86% accuracy rate, compared to 83% for HFM. The paper was published jointly by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Information Engineering, both in Beijing, China. The paper was presented this week at the virtual Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) conference.

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How long might immunity to the coronavirus last? Years, maybe even decades, according to a new study -- the most hopeful answer yet to a question that has shadowed plans for widespread vaccination. From a report: Eight months after infection, most people who have recovered still have enough immune cells to fend off the virus and prevent illness, the new data show. A slow rate of decline in the short term suggests, happily, that these cells may persist in the body for a very, very long time to come. The research, published online, has not been peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal. But it is the most comprehensive and long-ranging study of immune memory to the coronavirus to date. "That amount of memory would likely prevent the vast majority of people from getting hospitalized disease, severe disease, for many years," said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology who co-led the new study. The findings are likely to come as a relief to experts worried that immunity to the virus might be short-lived, and that vaccines might have to be administered repeatedly to keep the pandemic under control. And the research squares with another recent finding: that survivors of SARS, caused by another coronavirus, still carry certain important immune cells 17 years after recovering. The findings are consistent with encouraging evidence emerging from other labs. Researchers at the University of Washington, led by the immunologist Marion Pepper, had earlier shown that certain "memory" cells that were produced following infection with the coronavirus persist for at least three months in the body. The study has yet to be published and peer-reviewed.

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How long might immunity to the coronavirus last? Years, maybe even decades, according to a new study -- the most hopeful answer yet to a question that has shadowed plans for widespread vaccination. From a report: Eight months after infection, most people who have recovered still have enough immune cells to fend off the virus and prevent illness, the new data show. A slow rate of decline in the short term suggests, happily, that these cells may persist in the body for a very, very long time to come. The research, published online, has not been peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal. But it is the most comprehensive and long-ranging study of immune memory to the coronavirus to date. "That amount of memory would likely prevent the vast majority of people from getting hospitalized disease, severe disease, for many years," said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology who co-led the new study. The findings are likely to come as a relief to experts worried that immunity to the virus might be short-lived, and that vaccines might have to be administered repeatedly to keep the pandemic under control. And the research squares with another recent finding: that survivors of SARS, caused by another coronavirus, still carry certain important immune cells 17 years after recovering. The findings are consistent with encouraging evidence emerging from other labs. Researchers at the University of Washington, led by the immunologist Marion Pepper, had earlier shown that certain "memory" cells that were produced following infection with the coronavirus persist for at least three months in the body. The study has yet to be published and peer-reviewed.

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Frequent-flying "super emitters" who represent just 1% of the world's population caused half of aviation's carbon emissions in 2018, according to a study. From a report: Airlines produced a billion tonnes of CO2 and benefited from a $100bn subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they caused, the researchers estimated. The analysis draws together data to give the clearest global picture of the impact of frequent fliers. Only 11% of the world's population took a flight in 2018 and 4% flew abroad. US air passengers have by far the biggest carbon footprint among rich countries. Its aviation emissions are bigger than the next 10 countries combined, including the UK, Japan, Germany and Australia, the study reports. The researchers said the study showed that an elite group enjoying frequent flights had a big impact on the climate crisis that affected everyone. They said the 50% drop in passenger numbers in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic should be an opportunity to make the aviation industry fairer and more sustainable. This could be done by putting green conditions on the huge bailouts governments were giving the industry, as had happened in France.

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As the UK government unveils new environmental targets, what about the previous ones?

As the UK government unveils new environmental targets, what about the previous ones?

As the UK government unveils new environmental targets, what about the previous ones?

Google said today it plans to add a new section on the Chrome Web Store where extension developers will disclose what user data they're collecting from users and what they plan to do with the information. From a report: The new section is set to go into effect on January 18, 2021, and will appear as a "Privacy practices" button on each extension's Web Store listing. To aid the process, Google has added a new section today in the Web Store dashboard where extension developers will be able to disclose what data they collect from their users and for what purposes.

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Apple is paying $113 million to settle an investigation by 34 states and the District of Columbia over the company's practice of slowing down the performance of older iPhones when their batteries degrade. From a report: Apple's moves weren't announced by the company, but rather proven by internet sleuths. That led regulators and customers alike to criticize the company for not being forthcoming, particularly when asked about it in the past. "Big Tech must stop manipulating consumers and tell them the whole truth about their practices and products," Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who helped lead the investigation, said in a statement. "I'm committed to holding these goliath technology companies to account if they conceal the truth from their users." Apple will pay Arizona in particular $5 million, with the rest split among other states.

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Google is launching a major redesign of its Google Pay app on both Android and iOS today. From a report: Like similar phone-based contactless payment services, Google Pay -- or Android Pay as it was known then -- started out as a basic replacement for your credit card. Over time, the company added a few more features on top of that but the overall focus never really changed. After about five years in the market, Google Pay now has about 150 million users in 30 countries. With today's update and redesign, Google is keeping all the core features intact but also taking the service in a new direction with a strong emphasis on helping you manage your personal finances (and maybe get a deal here and there as well). Google is also partnering with 11 banks to launch a new kind of bank account in 2021. Called Plex, these mobile-first bank accounts will have no monthly fees, overdraft charges or minimum balances. The banks will own the accounts but the Google Pay app will be the main conduit for managing these accounts. The launch partners for this are Citi and Stanford Federal Credit Union. "What we're doing in this new Google Pay app, think of it is combining three things into one," Google director of product management Josh Woodward said as he walked me through a demo of the new app. "The three things are three tabs in the app. One is the ability to pay friends and businesses really fast. The second is to explore offers and rewards, so you can save money at shops. And the third is getting insights about your spending so you can stay on top of your money." Paying friends and businesses was obviously always at the core of Google Pay -- but the emphasis here has shifted a bit. "You'll notice that everything in the product is built around your relationships," Caesar Sengupta, Google's lead for Payments and Next Billion Users, told me. "It's not about long lists of transactions or weird numbers. All your engagements pivot around people, groups, and businesses."

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Sales of Sony and Microsoft's new gaming consoles fell short of their predecessors during their first week in Japan, suggesting persistent supply bottlenecks will hamper the debut of two of this holiday season's most hotly anticipated gadgets. From a report: Sony sold 118,085 PlayStation 5 consoles from its debut on Nov. 12 to Nov. 15, roughly a third of the PS4's performance over launch weekend, Famitsu estimated. Microsoft tallied 20,534 units of its Xbox Series X and S during the six days from its start on Nov. 10, also shy of the 23,562 that the Xbox One managed during its first few days, the research house said. The estimates provided a first glimpse at sales of the new Xbox and PlayStation, two devices that should dominate wishlists this Christmas. Japan was among the first markets globally to get the consoles and is considered a key battleground between two companies vying to establish a lead in next-generation gaming and drive longer-term growth. Factory and logistical disruptions during the pandemic have hurt manufacturers' ability to keep up. The outcome is likely more reflective of the available supply than demand for the consoles, as both companies saw their machines sell out on day one, said Serkan Toto, an industry consultant in Tokyo.

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An Australian photographer says it feels "amazing" to capture spectacular images of long-absent storms.