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Labs Over Fabs: The Geopolitics of RISC-V
How the open-source ISA could spark a new wave of hardware innovation and what governments should do about it
For the past six months, I’ve been working with Chris Miller (Tufts) and Danny Crichton (TechCrunch) on a Korea Foundation-funded exploration of issues facing the US semiconductor industry. Today I’m publishing the final section, which examines how the US could take advantage of the rise of the RISC-V ISA as well as goes over our takeaways for policymakers. If those words don’t make sense to you, just keep reading, I promise it’s interesting and important!
See here for the full report complete with footnotes and a fancy pdf layout.
We’ll also be doing a zoom event with my co-authors this morning at 9 AM EST. Feel free to register here.
Twenty years ago, a custom chip cost close to $1 billion in engineering, licensing, and production costs. Today, the cost to design a 7nm chip is somewhere around $100m and 1,000 man-years, significantly cheaper but far outside the budgets of most firms and venture capital. Proponents of the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) believe it could bring the cost down to $10 million while creating an open-source standardized ecosystem for all computing devices, leveling the global playing field for chip design, and making extensible, modular hardware design available to all universities and companies. RISC-V’s rise will spark faster innovation from more designers as the development of shared core designs reduces time to market and increases transparency and security.
Some in government and industry worry that an open-source hardware revolution would undercut America’s preeminent position in the chip industry and cede ground to China. However, former Intel CEO Andy Grove once famously quipped that in semiconductors “only the paranoid survive.” This paranoia needs to be channeled to ride—not resist—the flow of technological change. To set America up for the post-Moore’s Law world, where the surface area of the technological frontier gets spread wide, the U.S. government must realize that open-source hardware is coming, and it must invest in the future at home to ensure that it is positioned to lead the field.
What is RISC-V?
An ISA is an abstract model of a computer serving as the boundary between software and hardware, and it is the part of the processor visible to a software engineer. Currently, Intel’s x86 ISA dominates the desktop, laptop, and server market, while ARM drives chips inside most smartphones. RISC-V, first conceptualized in University of California, Berkeley labs in the 1980s, was realized as an architecture, again at Berkeley, in 2010.
The RISC-V Foundation, established in 2015, aims “to build an open, collaborative community of software and hardware innovators based on the RISC-V ISA.” Its members include over a hundred of the world’s leading firms in the semiconductor space, including Qualcomm, Huawei, Nvidia, Alibaba, Google, Western Digital, Cadence, and Samsung. Notable exceptions include Arm and Intel, which see RISC-V as a competitor. Of the eleven premier members whose $100,000-250,000 annual membership fee buys a seat on the Technical Steering Committee, eight are headquartered in China.
Alongside its open-source nature, RISC-V features several revisions to the base ISA model, which give it an edge relative to ARM and x86 for certain types of compute. By building around modern innovations in processor design like instruction compression and macro-ops fusion, RISC-V programs can be more efficient compared to other architectures by conducting fewer operations while using the same amount of memory. In RISC-V, instructions that outlive their usefulness can be easily discarded, allowing designers to save precious silicon and letting the ISA easily adapt to future innovations in micro-architecture. Its simplicity and lack of licensing requirements have also made it attractive as a teaching and university research tool, particularly in Europe, opening up the pipeline for chip talent.
While RISC-V is the first open-source ISA to gain momentum, open-source software has already made an enormous impact on the world. Open-source software is code “designed to be publicly accessible—anyone can see, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit. Open-source software is developed in a decentralized and collaborative way, relying on peer review and community production.”
RISC-V hopes to emulate a growth trajectory akin to network protocol TCP/IP or Linux. Linux, an open-source operating system, was created in 1991 by then 21-year-old Finnish student Linus Torvalds. It started out as a playground for hobbyists and idealists, but eventually became mainstream as thousands of developers’ free contributions made it competitive with Microsoft Windows. IBM’s announcement in 2000 that it would be investing $1 billion into Linux helped legitimize it in the corporate world, helping to put it on a trajectory where today it remains a major alternative to Microsoft Windows. In servers, it holds a respectable 14% market share.
RISC-V still has a long way to go to be considered a real competitor to ARM or x86. Open-source hardware faces a far more challenging path to developing its ecosystem than software. First, the technical bar to contribute to an open-source hardware project is much higher and more specialized than most software projects. There are far more people who have picked up a software programming language like C than know enough electrical engineering to make sense of an ISA. Although RISC-V is more straightforward than x86, it still must reconcile the technical input of hundreds if not thousands of contributors, though the centralized RISC-V Technical Steering Committee could accelerate the process more than the decentralized way Linux dealt with problems.
Most importantly, an open-source ISA will struggle to progress without having the actual hardware on hand and creating robust verification systems. Even if RISC-V gets a critical mass of people in academia and industry developing the theoretical ISA itself, the movement will still need to manufacture on silicon to test alterations to the architecture. Arm and Intel have invested enormous sums into verification for their client companies, and firms that branch out into an immature extensible architecture like RISC-V have their work cut out for them. As verification commonly takes two-thirds of the total effort involved in making a modern System-on-a-Chip (SoC), forcing firms who adopt RISC-V to do this themselves is a major burden. One American startup founded by a group of RISC-V leaders, SiFive, is creating one of the first production-ready chips in this ecosystem, attempting to force a complete production pipeline into existence. However, this process will take years to mature.
Other efforts that will fill out the broader RISC-V ecosystem will take as long or longer. Arm was introduced in 1985 as a challenger to the then-dominant x86. It would take 25 years to develop a strong enough ecosystem to enable it to win substantial market share, and only then because Arm became the standard for smartphones and other mobile devices, which grew rapidly in popularity in the late 2000s. The transition to RISC-V should be somewhat more straightforward, however, as Arm and RISC-V are both from the same family of architectures known as reduced instruction set computing.
Entire generations of engineers have cut their teeth on Arm and x86. Even though RISC-V is simpler to work with, most chip designers are specialized to work with x86 and ARM. It will take years to build a new pipeline of professionals, mostly likely those who worked with RISC-V at university, to acquire expertise needed to realize RISC-V’s promise. Furthermore, open-source chip design (EDA) tools to compete with incumbents like Synopsis and Cadence are potentially decades away. Without open-source EDA, RISC-V wouldn’t be all that different from its competitors—just an open-source instruction set relying on the same expensive, closed-source design tools used by x86 and ARM designers.
Despite that myriad of barriers, RISC-V hopes to ride shifting industry trends to greater market share. In earlier generations, steady improvements in general purpose computing drove chip sales. Now, with Moore’s Law slowing down and as more computing is happening in the edge (i.e., in your smartphone, car, or doorbell), instead of in a data center, new requirements that demand optimized domain-specific workloads for a large variety of platforms suit a more flexible architecture like RISC-V.
Internet of Things (IoT) chips comprise the most promising market for RISC-V. Each IoT device, whether a wearable, an internet-enabled thermostat, or a smart speaker, needs a chip customized for its specific requirements. IoT applications don’t necessarily need to be programmable and interface with other applications, making the immaturity of RISC-V compatible software less of a drawback.
Startups in this fragmented space are cost-conscious and have younger, more affordable engineers. As Codasip’s Chris Jones argues,
With so many new IoT applications emerging, the demand for custom silicon keeps rising. It cannot be reasonably expected for the same semiconductor device to run a wireless protocol in one product, to encode video data in a second consumer device, and to perform facial recognition in a third. A chip could be designed in a general-purpose fashion to handle each of these tasks, however it would then be large and power inefficient. That is why the scalability of RISC-V is so attractive, allowing for different performance/power profiles while preserving the software investment across multiple devices.
The largest commitment to RISC-V thus far has come from solid-state drive manufacturers, a relatively straightforward application of the ISA. Western Digital has committed to transitioning a billion cores (today’s processors are often built with multiple processing cores) to RISC-V, and competitor Seagate in late 2020 rolled out two RISC-V processors. Both firms stand to save considerable sums transitioning away from ARM and thereby avoiding that company’s licensing fees. Moreover, they believe their commitments to RISC-V will lead to “lower latency, power savings, higher drive capacities at a faster pace, computational capabilities in storage drives, and improved security for data created at the edge of the network.” Other promising markets include vision systems for cars and security cameras, factory-floor applications, and smart agriculture such as tracking livestock.
Semico, in a market research project produced in collaboration with the RISC-V Foundation, estimated in late 2019 that RISC-V would capture 4.5% of overall cores consumed by industry by 2025. Given their rather conservative methodology, which linearly extrapolates from present day survey data, it may even possibly underestimate RISC-V’s growth.
Today, China has the liveliest RISC-V ecosystem. Every major Chinese tech firm seems to boast a RISC-V strategy, with Alibaba producing what may be the world’s fastest RISC-V chip targeting artificial intelligence applications. Alibaba also announced its desire to put RISC-V at the center of its future cloud and edge computing strategy, while Xiaomi is selling a wearable with a RISC-V based processor. Huawei has announced it was considering adopting RISC-V as a replacement to ARM for its mobile chips. In all, over 300 established firms and startups are working on RISC-V in China. Chinese firms have popped up at all points in the RISC-V supply chain, from core IP design firms like Alibaba’s Dharma Institute and Saifang Technology, to design companies like Zhaoyi Innovation and Beijing Junzheng, and lastly to brand manufacturers like Xiaomi and Huawei.
Xiaomi’s newest Mi Smart Band 5 is powered by a Huami RISC-V core. I own one and it’s very good!
Why the intense interest? As one Chinese media article explaining the importance of RISC-V begins, “You cannot build a house on someone else’s foundation.” While PRC leaders dating back to Mao Zedong have prioritized technological independence to varying degrees, the recent U.S. export control restrictions targeting firms like Huawei have led China to redouble efforts to create a self-reliant technological ecosystem. In particular, U.S. sanctions on ZTE, which nearly killed a $10 billion household name firm, led to a “Sputnik Moment” for both industry and government. ISAs, like EDA tools, are a potential chokepoint for the United States to restrict China’s chip ecosystem. However, despite excitement about RISC-V, the Chinese government has done little to support it, devoting a miniscule slice of the tens of billions publicly committed to boosting the domestic chip industry.
In addition to avoiding U.S. export controls, RISC-V represents Chinese firms’ first opportunity to be present at the creation of a new ISA, benefitting from the opportunity to develop know-how and products alongside a new technological framework. Chinese firms have struggled for decades to build globally competitive chips. The reset that technological shifts and RISC-V portends gives these firms another chance to take market share from Western leaders.
China is by no means destined to dominate the RISC-V space. As Saifang Technology CEO Xu Tao said in a recent interview, “the Chinese ecosystem’s main shortcomings with regards to RISC-V are on the talent, software, and application sides.” Its firms, like the rest of the world’s, lack talent with deep experience in the ISA, though universities are rolling out new teaching materials and conducting RISC-V competitions, and the fifteen thousand who tuned into a recent RISC-V livestream of a conference on the mainland testifies to broad interest. As Xu Tao explained,
“China has never had a real success story when it comes to building a software and application ecosystem…particularly when it comes to basic software like compilers, debuggers, an OS, basic libraries, upper application frameworks, and so on. There are gaps in the overall contribution of similar software, but the current growth is relatively fast. Many domestic companies have continued to improve such software, and the gap is narrowing step by step.”
Other emerging economies could gain from RISC-V’s potential to reshape the industry, too. The Indian government has invested in developing a series of indigenous processors, with IIT-Madras’ Shakti program leading the way. The hope is that a more commoditized industry will undercut premium pricing for processors, upending the semiconductor market and turning the industry into more of a services business. Indian firms, already world-class service providers, could then leverage the country’s electrical engineering talent to compete with the global players on everything outside the highest-end chips.
Should the U.S. fear RISC-V?
Some within the U.S. government fear Chinese firms’ eagerness to adopt RISC-V. Given that open-source software enabled the rise of Chinese internet tech giants like ByteDance and Tencent, some think RISC-V could presage similar dynamics in the hardware space, whereby Chinese firms backed by government subsidies could capture the domestic market. RISC-V could replace Western intellectual property. In such a case, chip design could become more of a commodity whereby China’s scale and capacity for subsidies could flood the global market. Serge Leef, a DARPA microcontroller product manager, argued in January 2021 to the Wall Street Journal that RISC-V could be “giving China a leg up on all these technologies because they can now save 20 years of engineering and catch up to Western technology overnight? It’s not unlikely.”
In early 2020, the RISC-V Foundation reincorporated from the United States to Switzerland in a bid to “calm concerns of political disruption to the open collaboration model.” Some Chinese lead
Although the announcement was praised by firms like Huawei, the move doesn’t guarantee that RISC-V will stay outside the reach of U.S. export controls. If the U.S. government was determined, regardless of the Foundation’s domicile, it could very well put much of the intellectual property out of the reach of Chinese members, or at the very least fracture the Foundation such that U.S. firms could no longer contribute to the community and have to start their own independent line of the project. That said, many U.S. firms are likely to lobby to keep RISC-V open, as only Arm and Intel would potentially gain from an aggressive export control policy directed at the ISA.
Though some in Washington fear RISC-V, the United States has much to gain from RISC-V—if it can take advantage of the opportunity that open-source hardware provides. Open-source software powered the rise of today’s American software giants. While the rise of RISC-V would lower the price of chip design and lead to commoditization in some areas in the semiconductor industry, it would shift the key point of competition from capital to design creativity. This would play to America’s strengths as the global leader in producing high-end engineering talent and matching it with business acumen. What’s more, so long as open-source EDA tools are a long way off, the United States will still have a choke point to squeeze Chinese firms for a long time. Moreover, U.S.-based SiFive is today best-positioned to develop a leading role in the global RISC-V ecosystem among new chip companies.
So what should the United States do to invest in the open-source hardware paradigm? First, the country should put in place a policy of “do no harm,” and instead encourage more development and growth of this important sector. It should subsidize additional research at university and industry research labs, encourage and underwrite student training in this new space, and work to build a handful of centers of excellence that not only propel the technology forward, but also connect researchers and academics to industry.
DARPA has a role to play in pushing out the technological frontier. However, as one DARPA project manager said in relation to RISC-V, “DARPA funds projects not infrastructure.” To support the broader ecosystem to revitalize the domestic chip industry, the United States needs investments in companies that are willing to look on a longer investment horizon than Silicon Valley has for a return. For the past 20 years, American VCs have been less interested in semiconductor startups, citing their high startup costs and low growth in the industry. Given that firms (like Redhat) based on open-source technologies have taken a long time to mature, government could do more to invest in building out this ecosystem. Congress should consider earmarking funding for open-source hardware technologies into the Endless Frontier Act aimed at boosting research and development.
With the U.S. semiconductor industry facing intensified competitive pressure—and with computer chips playing a fundamental role in America’s accelerating technology competition with China—policymakers are taking chips more seriously than they have in decades. Today, semiconductor shortages are impact supply chains for goods like autos. Yet, discussion about risks to America’s semiconductor sector are too focused on specific subsets of the industry at the expense of the broader ecosystem. On top of this, U.S. debate too often turns toward how to defend existing advantages rather than how new innovation can shift existing paradigms.
Congress and the Biden administration are considering ways to support the industry. The history of the industry suggests that trying to subsidize specific firms or today’s technologies is likely to fail. The government is not going to have better knowledge than semiconductor industry experts themselves about the future of technology. The industry simply moves too fast for Congress or the White House to pick winners or to understand the technology trajectory with enough granularity.
Rather than trying to protect specific firms or to acquire a defined set of technological capabilities, the government can help by supporting a healthy semiconductor ecosystem, including a well-trained workforce; an amply-funded venture capital environment, especially for early-stage firms; and an educational system that fosters new and disruptive ideas.
The U.S. government has a long track record in playing this role, from the invention of the first silicon chip. Research into next-generation technologies; fostering partnerships between government, universities, and companies; and using existing government bodies like DARPA and In-Q-Tel to support microelectronics are ways that Washington can bolster the chip industry without trying to take major bets on specific companies or technologies.
Some in industry and in Congress have advised spending billions of dollars subsidizing the construction of new manufacturing facilities (“fabs”) in the U.S. Given that the most advanced new fabs can cost up to $20 billion to build, its not clear that subsidizing fabs is the most cost-effective way to support the industry. For example, during the 1980s, the investments in university research centers that seeded U.S. dominance in the sphere of electronic design automation cost tens of millions, not tens of billions. It is these investments that help make U.S. export controls on China effective today. The other “chokepoint” technology that the U.S. current controls is in semiconductor manufacturing equipment, a subset of the semiconductor sector that has attracted far less public attention than chipmakers themselves. But for U.S. foreign policy, manufacturing equipment is no less important.
Subsidizing the construction of fabs will certainly boost the semiconductor industry, providing more semiconductor jobs and strengthening the ecosystem. But policymakers must ask whether it is the most cost effective way to accomplish this goal. The two leading chip manufacturers, Samsung and TSMC, are both foreign companies, so even if they agree to set up new facilities in the U.S., their core technology and R&D will continue to take place mostly abroad. Moreover, the leading U.S. chip manufacturer, Intel, is already highly profitable and already produces a major share of its chips in the U.S. It has reported billions of dollars even profits during the period in which it lost its manufacturing edge to TSMC and Samsung. Lack of funding wasn’t the cause of their technological issues, and it probably won’t be the solution. It would be smarter for the U.S. government to consider how it can support Intel’s efforts to expand potential growth markets, such as chips needed for O-RAN telecoms technology.
A final recommendation for policymakers is to take a sophisticated approach to open-source software. Some media reports have characterized open-source as a tool for China to undermine U.S. intellectual property or market dominance. In fact, the U.S. could be the greatest beneficiary of increasing use of open-source architectures if this unlocks new creativity in chip design, a segment in which the U.S. plays a leading role. Government can be supportive by seeing open-source not as a threat but as an opportunity, and helping to educate a workforce that is familiar with open-source designs.


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Merchant Says Teens Causing Trouble
EAGLE LAKE | Michele Landolt doesn't think her customers should have to navigate a sea of teenagers to get to her bread store in Eagle Lake.
"Even some younger people are complaining about it," she said. "But it's mainly the elderly people who don't like it. It scares them."
Landolt's Merita bread store is a stone's throw from Lake Region High School along U.S. 17. Not coincidently, the problems start about 2:30 p.m., right after school lets out.
About 12 to 15 students who take the Citrus Connection bus to school start gathering in the bread store's parking lot instead of waiting in the bus shelter by the roadway. But not all catch that bus, she said.
"Some of them just come to hang out, and some come into the store and buy something, and that's fine," Landholt said. "It's the ones who don't buy anything that are the problem. I've had them cuddle up in the corner necking, and I had to tell them to leave. It's awful."
Polk County sheriff's Sgt. Rodney Chauncey, who oversees law enforcement duties in Eagle Lake, said he takes the problem seriously.
"We are trying to do whatever we can to accommodate Merita bread and get rid of the problem," he said. "We recognize that it's a problem, absolutely."
Chauncey said he's received complaints that some of the teenagers have been abusive to customers.
"Nobody should have to deal with that," he said.
Last week, Deputy Sharon Rawson stood guard just inside the door of the bread store to let the teenagers know they mean business.
"They've been very cooperative," she said. "They were all standing up here by the door and I told them they'd need to move on out. A few of them kind of grumbled under their breath, but that's it."
Landolt has posted "no loitering" signs at the front of the store, although some were taken down in less than a day.
"I don't want a few students to ruin it for my customers," she said.
Landolt said this isn't a new problem for her, but she's had enough.
"We started having problems with parents picking up their kids here instead of getting into that mess over at the school," she said. "We aren't seeing as much of that anymore, but the kids just standing around out there, that seems to just be getting worse."
Landolt said she's hoping a more visible presence by the Sheriff's Office will help.
[ Suzie Schottelkotte can be reached at email@example.com. ]

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By now everyone seems to believe that HP bought Palm to overhaul it’s Slate ditching Windows 7 for Palm WebOS.
The original HP Slate was first showcased by Steve Ballmer at CES 2010, early this year. But soon after the company realized that Windows 7 is no Tablet-friendly OS, they needed some as intuitive as the iPhone OS – like iPad, so took the idea of modifying the WebOS, a great mobile OS, into a tablet form factor. As per the latest development, an insider at HP reveals that a webOS tablet under the code name “HP Hurricane” could be released the third quarter of this year.
HP desperately wants to build a iPad killer. Slate, with half the battery life, was not even near and not to forget, the experience was meant to be pathetic. A non-specialized OS cannot fit into Tablet form factor. You just cant use multitouch instead of mouse and keyboard.
“It is a really interesting device, but runs as slow as a turtle,” says Los Angeles industry analyst Paul Mueller. “I think they could have had something with a faster processor, but that would have led to less battery life than the Slate already had. If rumors of this tablet are true, this can be a killer device–webOS is an outstanding operating system for a tablet.”
Palm had failed to publicize a great mobile operating system. Their marketing campaign was literally poor and failed to prove their point where they could have easily done it. WebOS is way more intuitive than the current gen iPhone OS (3.x). the way it handles multitasking, app-switching, navigation, its a great operating system to have on a Tablet device.


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12 Need-to-Know Facts About Marketing to WomenRieva Lesonsky
In case you haven’t noticed, the women of the world are becoming a force to be reckoned with. Globally, women account for some $20 trillion in spending each year, and that number is projected to reach $30 trillion by 2020, according to statistics cited in MediaPost. In the U.S. alone, women control somewhere between $5 trillion and $15 trillion in spending, depending on which source you read. And if you think their purchases are traditionally “female” products or that the best way of marketing to women is to make products pink, think again.
MediaPost shared some stats every business owner need to know about why women consumers matter. Keep them in mind when marketing to women.
- Some 1.3 million U.S. women have salaries over $100,000
- Women hold 60 percent of all personal wealth in the U.S.
- More than 70 percent of Boomer couples are dual-income households
- Women make 85 percent of all consumer purchases
- Women make 93 percent of all food purchases
- Three-fourths of women say they are the primary shopper in their household
- Women buy 50 percent of the product that are marketed to men
- Women make 80 percent of healthcare purchasing decisions
- Women make 68 percent of new car purchasing decisions
- Women make 92 percent of travel/vacation decisions
- Women make 66 percent of decisions about purchasing computers
- Here’s one stat you really might not know: Women aged 50 to 70 account for the largest segment of women consumers and are the biggest spenders, due to their higher incomes and substantial net worth. The first generation of women to go to college in significant numbers, the Boomers transformed women’s earning power, and they continue to shape the face of America. And with women getting college degrees at higher rates than men, the number of high-earning women in the workforce is projected to grow.
Are you marketing to the Boomers and the women who are following in their footsteps? If you do, are you doing it right? Sadly, 91 percent of women in the study say marketers don’t understand them. That can be a costly mistake.
Want more assistance growing your business online? Join the Web.com Small Business Forum for free access to our library of ebooks, the latest industry news and support from other business owners, entrepreneurs and working professionals. Join a Group to ask questions, share your opinions and grow your network! Visit Web.com to learn about our full range of affordable website design and online marketing services.
Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Email Rieva at email@example.com, follow her on Google+ and Twitter.com/Rieva, and visit her website, SmallBizDaily.com, to get the scoop on business trends and sign up for Rieva’s free TrendCast reports.


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By Andrew Starke
The Foster’s Group is in the process of finalising a marketing campaign that will see the third vintage of Crown Ambassador Reserve targeting premium retailers, restaurants and bars in early June.
The third vintage of the super-premium Crown Ambassador Reserve will arrive in August this year.
While details remain sketchy for now, a spokesperson for Crown told TheShout that the CUB team is currently putting the finishing touches on a trade strategy for the 2010 vintage.
Following its successful launch in 2008, Crown Ambassador Reserve 2009 was launched last year with only 6000 individually numbered bottles publicly released.
This year’s vintage is expected to consist of 7000 individually numbered 750ml (six standard drinks) bottles likely to sell for well over $100 on-premise.
RRP will be $89.99 per 750 ml bottle.
However, unlike past years, this year's launch will be accompanied by a concerted push into the on-premise trade to raise the brand's profile.
Previous vintages have been known to change hands on eBay for well over $200.
Crown Ambassador Reserve is a full-bodied, rich lager-style beer that boasted an ABV of 9.2 percent in 2008, with 2009 and 2010 vintages at a hefty 10.2 percent ABV.
With only 5,000 bottles produced in 2008, Crown Ambassador Reserve has been positioned from the start as the perfect beer for celebrating special occasions.


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Winners of 2019 FICO Decisions Awards Announced! Companies Celebrated For Analytic Excellence
- FICO announces the 2019 winners of the FICO® Decisions Awards. These awards established eight years ago recognize organizations achieving remarkable success using FICO solutions
- Winners in eight categories come from seven countries and span financial services, telecoms, transportation, pharmaceuticals and more
- Entries for 2020 FICO® Decisions Awards to open in August
Today FICO is celebrating the achievements of its customers and their achievements with AI, machine learning and decision management. The winners of the 2019 FICO® Decisions Awards can now be formally announced.
More information: https://www.fico.com/en/fico-decisions-awards-2019
"The 2019 FICO Decisions Award winners have demonstrated what is possible with a clear business objective, innovative use of technology and a great partnership," said Nikhil Behl, FICO's chief marketing officer. "Our winners have innovated in lending, supply chain optimization, customer management, debt collection, fraud and financial inclusion. They come from all corners of the globe and many varied sectors of the economy. I congratulate them on their achievements and winning their categories in what was a very competitive line-up."
- AI, Machine Learning and Optimization:
Bank of Americaand Grupo Fleury
- Cloud Deployment: ACT and Vodafone and SA Taxi
- Customer Onboarding & Management: Banreservas
- Debt Management:
Swisscard AECS GmbH
- Decision Management Innovation: Procter & Gamble
- Financial Inclusion: Home Credit China
- Fraud & Security: PULSE, A
- Regulatory Compliance: BNSF
The FICO Decisions Awards recognize organizations that are achieving remarkable success using FICO solutions.
AI, Machine Learning and Optimization
Grupo Fleury, one of
ACT, best known for its flagship college entrance exam, has optimized its test assembly process in the cloud, reducing the time required to assemble tests from 2-4 weeks to 2 days. This allows ACT to serve over 40,000 concurrent examinees with latency below half a second per test item.
SA Taxi, a financier of over 10 percent of
Customer Onboarding & Management
Banreservas, the largest bank in the
Decision Management Innovation
Procter & Gamble (P&G), has optimized its consumer product transitions, saving it millions of dollars and allowing it to reduce time spent on initiative planning. The supply chain innovation has boosted analytic efficiency 90 percent, reducing the weekly analysis time to less than five minutes.
Home Credit, a global non-bank consumer lender, has reduced its credit risk on point-of-sale loans by 25 percent and online loans by 15 percent while maintaining loan volumes and keeping approval rates steady by incorporating the FICO® Score X Data to optimize its loan process in
Fraud & Security
Discover's PULSE Network, one's of the
These results were identified as best-in-class by a panel of independent judges with deep industry expertise. We thank the 2019 judges for their help in identifying the best nominations.
Sharon Kimathi, editor at FinTech Futures Leslie Parrish, analyst – retail banking at Aite Denise Sleem, functional specialist at Medscheme, 2018 winner Alex Woodie, managing editor at Datanami Les Yeamans, founder at RT Insights
The winners of the FICO® Decisions Awards will be spotlighted at various FICO events in 2020 and win tickets to FICO® World 2021, the
Entries for the 2020 Awards will open in August this year.
FICO (NYSE: FICO) powers decisions that help people and businesses around the world prosper. Founded in 1956 and based in
Learn more at www.fico.com.
Join the conversation on Twitter @FICO
FICO is a registered trademark of
View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/winners-of-2019-fico-decisions-awards-announced-companies-celebrated-for-analytic-excellence-301045321.html
Greg Jawski, Porter Novelli, (212) 601-8248, firstname.lastname@example.org


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SIX SEMI-FINALISTS NAMED FOR THE NY INTERN PROJECT
Six Candidates Beat out Nearly 100 Applicants for The New York Intern Project, a Contest to Win Paid Summer Internship at Affect in NYC
NEW YORK, April 12, 2011 — Affect, a public relations and social media firm, and Strutta, an interactive promotions company offering an intuitive contest builder that enables businesses to manage fully branded online contests, today announced the semi-finalists for The New York Intern Project, a contest searching for Affect’s next summer intern. The semi-finalists include the six entrants who secured the most votes for their entries from their network and the public on the contest web sitehttp://nyinternproject.com/.
The New York Intern Project challenged prospective interns who are dreaming about starting a career in public relations, marketing and social media to submit creative and persuasive video or photo entries to The New York Intern Project site on why they would make the ideal intern. The winner will be rewarded with a three-month internship at Affect that will prepare them to start a career in the industry. The winning intern will also receive $5,000 and a housing stipend of up to $5,000 to live in New York City for the summer.
Over the seven weeks that the contest was open, 96 prospective interns entered, and marketed themselves in order to secure votes from the public. Anyone could vote on the contest Web site for his or her favorite candidate. The entries could also be easily shared with friends on Facebook and other social media sites.
The six semi-finalists include:
- Amanda Hiler, who secured the most votes out of all entrants, submitted a video offering a cartoon representation of her enthusiasm for the internship
- Vi Tran, an articulate candidate with strong experience in marketing and social media
- Danielle Cinone, a well-rounded applicant who submitted a Working Girl-themed video detailing her qualifications and ice skating abilities
- Lindsay Miernicke, who entered a photo mock-up of herself in the Big Apple
- Pat Gotham, a marketing major who boasts a very strong personal network and received 45 comments on his entry
- Andrew Lamar Davis, an advertising student in San Francisco with dreams of living and working in New York City
Notable entries that did not make it into the top six include Tiffany Lan, who detailed her experience entering the contest in a blog post for Girls in Tech, and Yusang Shyy Lee, who submitted a humorous video spoof of Rebecca Black’s viral Friday video.
“The New York Intern Project was designed to attract fresh talent who could contribute their skills to our agency. The format of the contest encouraged entrants to flex their PR and social media muscles by rallying for votes from the public,” said Sandra Fathi, founder and president of Affect. “We were impressed by the caliber of applicants and their creativity and passion for the opportunity. It’s not going to be easy to narrow down this talented pool to just three, and then select the intern who will join our team.”
The six semi-finalists will now enter a judging round, where they will be narrowed down to three finalists. The finalists will then be flown to New York City to be interviewed in person by the judges, with the winner to be selected and announced in early May. To help identify the winning candidate, Affect and Strutta tapped leaders in the public relations, marketing and social media arena as judges. This includesGuy Kawasaki, acclaimed author and founder of Garage Technology Ventures and Alltop, Erica Swallow, associate editor for social media news source Mashable, and Jessica Dickler, a careers writer for CNN Money. Sandra Fathi, Affect’s founder and president and Leslie Campisi, vice president and partner for the agency, round out the team of experienced judges. Affect’s winning intern will be immersed in day-to-day agency life and complete real public relations, marketing and social media projects for the agency.
The New York Intern Project is powered by Strutta’s Contest Builder platform, which allows companies to create a promotion where users participate by uploading content such as videos, photos, audio or text. This format allows for easy sharing and voting.
“We teamed up with Affect to create and launch The New York Intern Project because we also believe in the power of social media as a platform for cultivating young talent,” said Ben Pickering, CEO for Strutta. “We’re very impressed with how the entrants leveraged our technology to showcase their qualifications, and can’t wait to see who snags the coveted internship.”
Affect is a public relations and social media firm located in New York. Established in 2002, the company combines strategy, creative and intelligent program development, impeccable execution and exemplary customer service to help its clients achieve their specific business goals. Specializing in technology and communications, Affect has also applied its marketing prowess to consumer goods and professional services. As year-round public relations counsel, or a single project resource, Affect leverages its business acumen and service excellence to achieve the precise results that its clients seek. For more information, web: www.affect.com; blog: www.techaffect.com; Twitter: www.twitter.com/teamaffect.
Strutta is a technology company that helps brands connect with consumers through social media promotions. The Strutta platform allows agencies, brands, Web publishers, and developers to easily create and manage contests and sweepstakes. Since launching its contest platform in 2009 and API in early 2010, Strutta has hosted and supported campaigns for companies including Crate and Barrel, Adidas, Land Rover and Johnson & Johnson. Its intuitive self-serve software has also enabled hundreds of smaller companies to run contests of their own. Strutta.com Media Inc is a privately held company headquartered in Vancouver, BC. For more information, or to get started creating your own contest, please visit www.strutta.com.


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Andrew Simpson, National Commercial Director Hanson Cement is BMBI’s Expert for Cement & Aggregates.
The latest Mineral Products Association report shows sales for heavy-side construction products grew marginally in Q4 2017 compared to Q3 2017 and from a low base. Aggregates sales volumes were up by 2.3%, ready mixed concrete (RMC) 1.6% and asphalt 0.8%. Mortar sales continued to grow strongly, up 6% over the quarter. Looking at the full year, we saw sales volumes of RMC decline by 2.6% compared to 2016, whilst asphalt (0.1%) and aggregates (-0.4%) remained broadly flat. Mortar sales enjoyed another year of strong growth, up 11.1% in 2017.
This strong performance in mortar indicates continued activity in housebuilding, but weaker sales across the mainstream materials points clearly to an overall downturn in construction activity. A particular concern for ready mix concrete suppliers is five consecutive quarters of decline in the London RMC market. This is inevitably having an impact on cement and aggregate volumes and could hit merchant sales further down the line.
It looks like 2018 will be a challenging year for builders’ merchants who are reliant on the Repair Maintenance and Improvement sector, given the pressure on consumer finances created by rising inflation combined with low wage growth. Brexit negotiations will no doubt continue to cause uncertainty and inhibit investment in our sector.
Throughout 2017 the BMBI expert reports and panel debates have highlighted key issues that our industry faces such as Brexit, increased legislation, lack of investment, material availability, skills shortages and attracting young people to our industry. Hanson UK is addressing these issues by making significant investments in raw material reserves and increased capacity and focusing clearly on recruiting and training craft and higher apprentices and the graduates who will become the business leaders of the future.
The investment of over £80m in two new marine aggregate dredgers and a vertical mill at our Padeswood works to increase cement capacity demonstrates the confidence our parent company HeidelbergCement has in the UK business.


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Four years ago, Kurt Koppelman, Ben Jordan, and Patrick Frimat met at a bar to gameplan new business ventures. The friends weren’t even sure which industry to pursue; the sexy world of water irrigation was proposed, among other non-starters.
“We love to drink strong IPAs, and after two beers I’m barely legal to drive,” Frimat remembers. The crew started griping about how enjoying good beers gets you hammered too fast, prompting a fortuitous light-bulb moment: “Ben said, ‘Oh, it’s funny, I have the technology and the idea to make a machine that would remove alcohol from beer without affecting the taste.'”
In 2018, the biz partners launched ABV Technology, a St. Paul-based company founded to capitalize on the booming non-alcoholic (NA) beer sector, but within the craft-beer world.
“NA beer has been around forever, and it used to suck. Nobody wanted to touch it,” Frimat says. “We realized the big boys, the evil empire—InBev, Heineken, Miller-Coors—had been investing massively in the NA segment.”
ABV’s bet on that early market analysis—plus their own desire to guzzle good beer without getting wasted—has proven to be a winning one.
Non-alcoholic beer sales surged 38% in 2020, according to market research company IRI. The sector still represents a sliver of the overall beer industry (1.9%, Forbes reports), though its profit potential is obvious to macros and micros: Global NA sales are expected to jump by 10.3%, one recent study found, from $15.09 billion in 2020 to $16.65 billion in 2021.
Today, 30 Minnesota craft breweries utilize ABV’s tech, including Bauhaus Brew Labs, Dangerous Man Brewing Co., and Utepils Brewing. Nationally, the company has placed its “Equalizer” machine in Colorado, California, Nevada, Michigan, and soon, North Carolina. The $250,000 machine is cost prohibitive for most brewers to buy outright, Frimat says, so ABV partners with breweries in other parts of the country who serve as regional hubs for nearby competitors, allowing the host brewery and ABV to profit-share via per-barrel charges. Each machine can process 6,000 barrels per year.
Here’s our non-scientific explanation of the vacuum-separation process: Brewers bring their own special recipes, pour ‘em in the Equalizer, evaporation and low-level heat join forces to squeeze out the booze, and two streams come out the other end. One is a mixture of ethanol and water. The other is NA beer.
"I was expecting something like a lot of the macro NAs you see out there, that have a bad reputation for a good reason: They're not very good," Matt Schwandt, Bauhaus's co-founder/president, says in a promo video. "ABV's NA beers taste really, really good."
Schwandt helped ABV stumble into another lucrative industry. He noticed ABV dumping the water/ethanol output down the drain; the company hadn’t figured out how to monetize that (literal!) potential revenue stream. Schwandt asked to taste it, Frimat recalls, and dropped some highly profitable knowledge on the ABV guys: That’s hard seltzer.
“Not being the hip, young crowd, we had no idea what hard seltzer was two and half years ago,” Frimat says with a laugh. “But it’s basically a perfect hard seltzer base, ready for breweries to add flavors to.”
Following a massive spike in recent years, hard seltzer sales are beginning to wane. The sickos at Goldman Sachs still project global seltzer sales to hit $30 billion by 2025, Forbes reports.
Servicing two growth industries has been good business for ABV Technology. The 14-person company raised $1.3 million during its last round of private investment, and Frimat reports the current round is shaping up even better, even with COVID-19 dealing a brutal financial blow to Minnesota's 183 craft-beer producers.
“During COVID, the craft industry shrunk by 30 percent,” Frimat says. “But since this summer it’s been going gangbusters. It’s exciting.”
Not sure where to begin in the NA world? An exhaustive Growler blind taste test found 7 solid NA beers out of a field of 31. We can attest that the OG NA brew—O'Douls Amber—actually rips, as does the fancier Athletic Brewing Co. Check out Minnesota picks from local Redditors here.


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The tourism industry in Malaysia has been booming, but what does this mean for tourists in the country?
The Malaysian government has launched a national tourism campaign dubbed “Malaysia is your home” in an effort to help boost tourism in the kingdom.
The campaign will launch in the capital Kuala Lumpur on March 20, and includes advertisements that will feature Malaysian stars in a series of photographs.
The advertisements will also feature a Malaysia flag on display, a new national emblem and a guide to Malaysia.
Malaysian officials say the campaign will help promote tourism in Malaysia, where tourism is growing at a fast pace.
Tourism in Malaysia is estimated to be worth about $2.4 billion, according to the Tourism and Convention Authority of Malaysia.
But tourism experts say the number of tourists coming to Malaysia from abroad is much lower than what it used to be.


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Crystal Dynamics has announced that Marvel’s Avengers will be coming to Xbox Game Pass for console, PC and cloud on September 30.
The online action game just celebrated its one-year anniversary, having received plenty of updates and expansions during that time. The Game Pass version will be complete, including the Kate Bishop, Hawkeye and Black Panther playable characters, as well as their corresponding story expansions, with War for Wakanda being the most recent.
Being a live service, Avengers will continue to be updated and expanded, so Game Pass subscribers can look forward to an evolving game if that’s something that floats your boat. We gave Avengers a 7.5 on release, stating that “The technical issues and repetition of Marvel’s Avengers are a drag, but they don’t eclipse the deep combat and exceptional campaign”.
Have you played Avengers? Will you be playing it now that it’s coming to Game Pass? Let us know in the comments or on our social media.


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Energy giants AES partner with Measure to improve worker safety with drones
A major power producer The AES Corp. is ramping up the use of drones with an eye towards shielding workers from industry hazards. Rather than buy all their own unmanned aerial systems they’ve engaged D.C.-based drone services provider Measure to get access to a more extensive fleet. Measure recently raised $15 million in venture funding.
According to its Vice President and Chief… Read More
via Startups – TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2lk9DZF


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Internet users prepare: IP address changes are coming
- Margie Manning
- Senior Staff Writer
There’s something unique about the computer, the smartphone or the tablet you are using to read this blog.
It has its own unique Internet address — a numerical label assigned to every IT device that allows that device to communicate with others.
There are some 4.3 billion Internet addresses available under the current Internet Protocol Version 4, which creates addresses by using four sets of digits, separated by dots.
But our appetite for gadgets has exceeded the supply of addresses, and by early next year, we’re going to run out of them. Not having an IP address is the equivalent of having a phone without a phone number, according to Infoblox Inc., one of dozens of organizations urging businesses to gear up for the change ahead.
There’s a new system of assigning addresses, called IPv6, which uses six sets of alphanumeric characters, for a possible 340 undecillion addresses. That’s such a big number, I had to look it up, but Stefan Lowrie, director of technology and engineering at data center Peak 10 in Tampa, told me it translates into 51.6 octillion IP addresses for every person in the world.
IPv4 and IPv6 addresses don’t communicate with each other, so exchanging data between the protocols requires special engineering techniques and a transition plan.
“Some clients are contacting us now so they can set up networks to be compliant on both [IPv4 and IPv6],” said Richard Nicholas Jr., vice president and chief operating officer of Tampa data center E Solutions Corp.
To highlight the situation, Wednesday, June 8 has been designated World IPv6 Day. For 24 hours, network and Internet service providers, content delivery networks, website owners, hardware and software manufacturers and others will enable IPv6 on their main services and test its readiness. It’s the first global-scale production trial of IPv6, according to a press statement from Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ: VZ).
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View the article online at http://citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/article/a638877
UK consumer confidence rises to a surprise 18 month high
by James Phillipps on Nov 30, 2012 at 11:13
UK consumer confidence unexpectedly rose to an 18 month high this month, rising way ahead of economists’ consensus which was that the reading would be flat.
The GfK sentiment index rose to -22 from -30 in October, the strongest reading since May 2011 and the seventh largest monthly rise since the survey was started in 1974.
All five measures within the index rose with consumers’ view on the general economic situation over the next 12 months rising the sharpest, up from -44 to -61.
‘One possible explanation for the surprise increase could be that consumers, arguably naively, feel the current situation can’t get any worse,' said Investec’s Lee McDarby.
Retailers will take heart from the survey with the personal financial situation over the next 12 months measure rising from -13 to -7 and the climate for major purchases metric jumping from -33 to -26 month-on month.
‘The direction things head in the New year will be crucical in determining whether this is a short-term spike or the start of a long-term improvement in people’s spending habits,’ said Nick Moon, managing director of social research at GfK. ‘When we saw a significant improvement like this May 2011 the surge ebbed away over the following months as the country returned to recession. Hopefully this spike is built on firmer foundations.’
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As the UK coalition government strives to rebalance the national economy, so called 'reshoring' looks set to play an increasingly important role in economic recovery.
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THE RISE OF veganism
The number of people taking part in Veganuary - where people eat a vegan diet during January - is soaring
There are more than three million vegans in Great Britain, a number that looks likely to rise.
Research from Compare the Market shows that 7% of the UK population classed themselves as vegans in 2018 - working out as around 3.5 million people.
Vegans shun all animal products including milk, eggs, and meat, usually for environmental and animal rights reasons, and instead eat a plant-based diet.
Veganism has been on the rise in recent years with celebrity advocates such as Paul McCartney and viral documentaries like Cowspiracy promoting the trend - and it’s one that looks set to continue in popularity.
Earlier this month the high street bakery Greggs rolled out a vegan sausage roll across 900 of its stores, with some shops selling out in a matter of hours.
And ever more restaurants like Pizza Express and Wetherspoon are offering vegan menus, while supermarkets stock up on their free-from selections.
In fact, seven out of 12 UK train companies now offer vegan options to passengers.
Veganuary is a trend that takes place every January, during which participants attempt to follow a vegan diet.
Figures go back as far as 2014 when 3,300 participants took part.
By 2016 that had risen to 23,000 participants, and as of 2018 some 168,500 people took part.
Participants in 2018 were asked to select the main reason for signing up to Veganuary, with 43% saying that a concern for animal welfare was at the top of their list.
Health motivations inspired 39% of the participants, and a concern for the environment was the primary reason for 10% of participants. The remaining 8% had other motives for signing up. The NHS says that people can still get most of the nutrients they need by eating a healthy diet. According to the Vegan Society, almost half (42%) of UK vegans made the switch in 2018, suggesting a rapid rise in the popularity of veganism. Dominika Piasecka, spokesperson for The Vegan Society, said: “The image of veganism is undergoing the most radical change in its history, while shedding some tired, old stereotypes.
“It’s no longer portrayed as an unusual lifestyle, it’s easy and accessible - you can walk into any supermarket and be greeted by a huge range of vegan-friendly products or walk into any restaurant and be presented with an exciting vegan menu.
“There has never been a better time to be vegan.
“Most people in the world have access to an abundance of vegan food - it’s just the case of making the choice.
“Eating vegan food certainly doesn’t have to be expensive, and it is a huge misconception that plant foods are more expensive than animal products.”


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Fortnite Season X is just hours away; it's set to drop tomorrow, the 1st of August.
Earlier today, the official Fortnite Twitter page released a brief (six second) teaser for Season X, with the headline reading "Zero In".
The video showed the anticipated Zero Point explosion. Just hours later, a longer story trailer for Season X has been uploaded to YouTube, with the text confirming that "the Zero Point is exploding":
In this longer trailer, we see a little of the aftermath of the explosion, as a confused Jonesy floats through a strange purple void to a cheerful tune. He's then dropped back to earth, and looks up to see a meteor inches away from crashing into him. The video then ends with the line "Out of Time".
You won't have long to wait to find out what's going on— Fortnite Season X will be out tomorrow. Will you be playing? What do you think of the teaser? Let us know in the comments!
We've got the full list of Fortnite achievements - check the list for guides to unlocking them.
Check out our Best Xbox One Third-Person Shooters Available in 2019 article for a compilation of other great games in this genre.
Get the biggest Xbox news delivered straight to your inbox every week.


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San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 25, 2012
Move over StarCraft II and League of Legends – Ubisoft’s upcoming PC online multiplayer first-person shooter ShootMania Storm will join the tournament line up at IPL 5, the next major tournament event of the IGN Pro League (IPL), taking place November 29-December 2 at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
The prize pool for IPL 5’s Shootmania Storm tournament will total $100,000, with online qualifiers beginning Monday, October 1st. Leading up to the event, there will be four open online qualifiers for North America and two online qualifiers for Europe, with a best-of-three format throughout. The winning team for each qualifier will earn free flights and hotel stays for the event. The online qualifiers will be covered via live stream at http://shootmania.ign.com.
IPL 5 will also feature the top League of Legends and StarCraft II players from around the globe battling for world domination and prize pools totaling more than $200,000. The addition of a first-person shooter into the IPL 5 tournament mix marks a return to the roots of competitive gaming, which originated with iconic first-person shooters like Quake and Unreal Tournament.
“IPL is looking to build ShootMania Storm as the FPS standard for eSports,” said David Ting, General Manager of eSports and Vice President of Research & Development at IGN Entertainment. “With the addition of a first-person shooter game, we’re taking IPL 5 to a whole new level.”
”We’re excited for ShootMania Storm to be part of IPL’s line-up,” said Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing, Ubisoft. “The team at Nadeo has done a tremendous job in creating a fun and competitive game and players in the upcoming IPL tournaments will validate ShootMania as the next big tournament-tested shooter.”
Developed by Ubisoft’s Nadeo studio, ShootMania Storm follows the footsteps of TrackMania, Nadeo’s successful arcade racing game, to present a new dimension in first-person shooter. As part of the ManiaPlanet system, ShootMania Storm puts players at the center of their gaming experience. To date, players have created more than 15 game modes and, already, more than 20,000 maps have been created by players using ManiaPlanet’s proprietary map editor.
The title has already received acclaim on the competitive gaming circuit, with appearances in many tournaments, most recently at the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo, DreamHack Summer and Gamescom. ShootMania is currently in beta phase and available for pre-order on http://www.ShootMania.com giving instant access to the beta.
The IGN Pro League, the professional video games league presented by IGN Entertainment, has become a major contender in the North American eSports market since its launch in April 2011. Its last major tournament event, featuring StarCraft II and League of Legends, drew in more than 10,000 spectators and logged a record-breaking 346,000 concurrent online viewers. With the IGN Pro League franchise, IGN’s goal is to help legitimize video gaming as a profession that can produce the next generation of sports celebrities.
About IGN Entertainment:
IGN Entertainment is the leading Internet media and services provider focused on the video game and entertainment enthusiast markets. Collectively, IGN's properties reach more than 57 million unique users worldwide, according to Internet audience measurement firm comScore. IGN's network of video game-related properties (IGN.com, 1UP.com, GameSpy and others) is the Web's #1 video game information destination. IGN also owns the world's largest men's lifestyle website, AskMen.com, and men's entertainment site UGO.com. IGN is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices across North America, Europe and Australia.
Ubisoft is a leading producer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment products worldwide and has grown considerably through a strong and diversified lineup of products and partnerships. Ubisoft has offices in 26 countries and has sales in more than 55 countries around the globe. It is committed to delivering high-quality, cutting-edge video game titles to consumers. For the 2010–11 fiscal year Ubisoft generated sales of 1.039 billion euros. To learn more, please visit http://www.ubisoftgroup.com.


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tiptap: Revolutionizing Payments & Donations with a Simple Tap
In a world increasingly moving towards a cashless society, charitable organizations have faced significant challenges in collecting much-needed funds. However, innovative solutions are emerging to bridge this gap. tiptap offers the world’s simplest way to accept touchless payments for charitable donations and tips. IDG’s Yolande Lougheed had the pleasure of interviewing tiptap CEO Barry Hildred to discuss the company’s mission, technology, and future plans.
The Innovative Solution
tiptap’s innovative solution is a fully autonomous, mobile device that accepts fixed denomination payments, through various methods, including credit cards, debit cards, and digital wallets like Google Pay and Apple Pay. The device operates over a cellular network, eliminating the need for complex network integration, making it accessible virtually anywhere. Notably, the device does not store any personal information, making it secure even if stolen.
tiptap’s Impact on Charitable Giving
One remarkable initiative involving tiptap is its partnership with The Salvation Army. The Salvation Army’s iconic kettle campaign, a long-standing tradition during the holiday season, was facing a challenge as people carried less cash and coin. tiptap retrofitted The Salvation Army’s kettle by adding their devices, allowing donors to make contributions through various payment methods. The result has been a year-over-year increase in the funds raised, addressing the issue of declining cash donations.
The Future of tiptap
tiptap aims to expand its product suite, with plans to launch a multi-denominational device in 2024. This device will provide more flexibility to users when making contributions. Furthermore, tiptap is open to new partnerships, much like their current partnership with Visa in the US. These partnerships will be instrumental in expanding their presence, primarily targeting the US market.
Simplifying Charitable Giving
tiptap is simplifying charitable giving and tackling the challenges presented by an increasingly cashless society. As tiptap continues to grow and innovate, it holds the promise of making a substantial impact on the world of charitable giving and tipping.
If you’re interested in learning more about tiptap, please visit their website.


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Howick residents walk kilometres for basic food items
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RESIDENTS living in Howick, a small town outside Pietermaritzburg, have been forced to travel kilometres in search of a store selling groceries after the town’s Spar was looted last week.
The Merrivale Spar was the closest and most convenient food retailer in the area for many families living in Howick.
The Merrivale Spar, in Howick, was looted and destroyed in the last week. Video: Kailene Pillay/ IOL Political Bureau
Andrew Kalika, an elderly man who is only aided by his walking stick, said he had to walk more than 5km to find bread and meat.
He said he managed to buy a tray of sausages and a few other items such as potatoes and other vegetables, but the prices have increased due to the limited stock.
"Its really terrible what happened. This Spar was so close to us and affordable. Now we walk so far to buy a few things and it's expensive. We can't even find bread," Kalika said.
He added that when the attack on local stores began earlier in the week, his children who lived out of town, warned him not to leave home.
"I just stayed inside. My children were worried about us," he said.
Howick resident Andrew Kalika has to walk more than five kilometers, only aided by his walking stick, in search of bread and meat. Video: Kailene Pillay/ IOL Political Bureau
The smaller towns in the Midlands have been hard hit by food shortages after their stores were looted and damaged. Trucks transporting food could not reach them due to the violent unrest in KwaZulu-Natal.
The N3 has since been opened and while some normality has returned on the roads, private security vehicles have been spotted escorting trucks between Durban and Mooi River.


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A new bill introduced in New York could force Chick-fil-A to operate rest stops along the state’s Interstate 90 on Sundays.
Chick-fil-A is known for its delicious chicken and waffle fries, which unlike other chain restaurants are only served Monday through Saturday because they close their doors on Sundays.
However, a new bill in New York could jeopardize the company’s decades-old legacy.
Bill A08336, introduced in New York, requires all food services in transit facilities and rest areas to be open seven days a week. New York State Assembly.
Why is Chick-fil-A closed on Sundays?
Chick-fil-A opened its doors in 1946And its founder, S. Truett Cathy, decided to close its doors on Sundays for his employees to worship or rest.
Closing its doors on Sundays is not the only religious policy Chick-fil-A has implemented. The company came under fire in 2012 after donating to ANTI-LGBTQ groups. The company did not stop sending donations until seven years later in 2019.
What does Chick-fil-A do?
According to Thruway spokeswoman Jennifer Givner, the New York State Thruway Authority has given travelers more options for the Chick-fil-A closure Sunday by offering other restaurants at rest stops.
“Our requirement is that we have at least one hot food option,” Givner said. “If Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays, our customers have other alternatives.”
Seven Chick-fil-A locations are located at several New York State Thruway rest stops, and three more are planned. WRGB Albany.
The bill would also require New Jersey to enact a similar law for food services at the Port Authority, which would take effect after New Jersey passes the law in New York.
USA TODAY has reached out to Chick-fil-A for comment.
“Friend of animals everywhere. Devoted analyst. Total alcohol scholar. Infuriatingly humble food trailblazer.”


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Five strategic ways in which marketers can use voice to enable conversational commerce
The popular food delivery app, Swiggy has already implemented App Actions, so users can check on their order status by querying the Google Assistant, without opening the Swiggy app and clicking on the status of their order manually.
CherishX CEO can't live without his PC and Kindle, plans to buy a VR Headset soon
Mudit Jaju shares the technology he finds a great part of l...
It's time to reward yourself for putting up a good show in 2020
The all-in-one premium lifestyle membership gives you 15+ complimentary subsc...
Say 'Ok Google, talk to Malaria No More' on Android devices to get info on disease
The feature will be available in Hindi and English, and will answer questions like 'What is malaria fever?', 'What are the types of malaria?', 'How does malaria spread?' and 'How to test for malaria?'.
Next is, an Indian Alexa for farmers
Acceleration in digital adoption due to Covid is now spurring policymakers to not just strengthen the physical infrastructure that supports connectivity, but also align future initiatives with new realities
WFH made easy! Now get reminders to drink water, stretch and walk daily, courtesy Google Assistant
The idea behind the new workday routine is to ensure productivity during WFH with enough self-care in between.
Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan is the new voice of Amazon’s Alexa
Bachchan, 77, is often described as India’s answer to Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro combined. His star wattage and deep voice have featured in hundreds of commercials peddling everything from PepsiCo Inc. colas, Cadbury Ltd. chocolates and even a UNICEF-backed polio vaccination campaign.
Realme Smart TV review: A quintessential budget TV with good picture quality and sound output
Ample and conveniently placed ports and a friendly interface make this TV a bright choice.
Thomson 55 OathPro 0101 review: Executes voice commands accurately, runs all apps smoothly
The 4K, 55-inch TV is more of an average all-rounder.
Google extends Lens capabilities to KaiOS; JioPhone users can now translate words in real-time
Users will need to long press the centre button from the home screen to get started with the assistant.
Aditya Birla Mutual Fund launches voice-based services with Google Assistant
Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC has launched voice-based services for its investors with Google Assistant, a release from the fund house said. The voice assistant acts as a 24X7 interface for investors to interact with the fund house.
Google adds new feature to Search, Assistant and Maps, update will show Covid-19 testing labs
The new feature is available in English along with 8 Indian languages.
Coronavirus warriors: Use Google Maps to find locations of food, night shelters in India
The company is working closely with authorities to surface the locations of relief centres.
LG unveils new soundbars with built-in Google Assistant & AI sound calibration
The new soundbars will be launched at CES 2020.
Lenovo Smart Clock review: Cheapest in the category, comes with Google Assistant
It includes touchscreen, but has some limitations compared to Google Nest Hub and Amazon Echo Show 5.


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Last weekends Wonder Festival [Winter] something was lurking at Unbox Industries booth! Artist Ryo Taniguhci “Taniguchi cat” prototype to be exact and today Unbox has confirmed a vinyl figure of Taniguchi cat will be launched soon. Although not much official information floating around, we are guessing this is just the first one of many Taniguchi cat’s going to be released further down the line. Well, that’s what we are hoping for.
Miniseries, please! Stay tuned for further info.
http://store.unboxindustries.info/ for to hold down your vinyl craving.
If you want to get your Designer Toy news first, you should look to download our new TTC Mobile App. Designer Toy news direct to your smartphone. No dealing with social media algorithms.


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14-JAN-2018 by Algae Industry Magazine
Triton Algae Innovations, a San Diego-based startup company focused on new food and nutritional products derived from algae, has announced that it has achieved Independent Conclusion of GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status for its wild-type algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (c. reinhardtii).
12-JAN-2018 By Hank Shultz in Nutraingredients-usa.com
Startup Triton Algae Innocations is betting on a whole-cell protein positioning for an algae species that has been researched for years for it nutraceutical and pharmaceutical ingredient production potential
17-JAN-2018 By. Jim Lane in Biofuels Digest
News arrived this week from Triton Algae Innovations, which is now focused on food and nutritional products derived from algae, the company has achieved GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status for its wild-type algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (c. reinhardtii). Triton’s algae will be used as an ingredient in foods and beverages, such as snack or nutritional bars, cereals, yogurts, fruit and vegetable juices, smoothies, and sports or energy drinks. Triton plans to introduce its algae into the consumer market in 2018.


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The Nintendo Switch is available globally now. The video also revealed many other indie games coming to Nintendo Switch , including retro-inspired action-RPG CrossCode (Deck13 Interactive / Radical Fish Games), explosive metal rhythm game Double Kick Heroes (Plug in Digital / Headbang Club), story-driven puzzle-platformer Inmost (Chucklefish / Hidden Layer Games) and 2D open-world game Forager (Humble Bundle / HopFrog).
The new Galaxy M-series will be replacing the existing Galaxy J-series and On-series smartphones. Both the smartphones-Galaxy M10 and M20 will feature water drop notches which Samsung, otherwise, likes to call " Infinity V" display. It will run Android 8.1 Oreo. Could this mean, they'll all have in-display fingerprint sensors or will they just rely on face unlocks? The M20 on the other hand will start at INR 12,990 ($182 or 160).
However, it now appears as if this tech will have drawbacks, particularly for those anxious about protecting their new investments from scratches and other similar defects. Rumoured to be called the Galaxy F or Galaxy Fold , the phone has been spotted passing through the CMIIT (China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology), which most certainly means the phone will launch in China.
But a regional court in the city of Mannheim dismissed the Qualcomm suit as groundless in an initial verbal decision , saying the patent in question was not violated by the installation of its chips in Apple's smartphones. However, Williams' comments appear to contradict testimony from Qualcomm's CEO Steven Mollenkopf. Also, Apple won't be able to launch 5G iPhones this year because Intel's 5G chips won't be ready until 2020.
Meanwhile, as President Donald Trump considers an executive order that would bar U.S. companies from using equipment made by Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese telecommunications firms, a group of lawmakers have introduced a bill that would ban Chinese telecommunications companies from buying chips and components made in the U.S., Reuters reports .
While Tesla may have the crown for most well-known EV maker, there are lots of brands creeping in to take a share of the market. Available upgrades include an ST Street Pack and an ST Track Pack. A flat-bottomed heated steering wheel embossed with an ST logo, as well as unique floor mats, are subtle ST-exclusive cues. The ST replaces the Explorer Sport in the new sixth-generation lineup gaining a punchier engine, tighter chassis tuning and exclusive styling.
In the invite the company said, "On February 20 , Samsung Electronics will unveil new devices that promise to usher in new Galaxy experiences based on 10 years of innovations". As you can see in the photos provided by Business Insider, the phone was there, in full view, somewhere on the Samsung booth at CES 2019 in Las Vegas.
Hotel bookings are also limited to just United States right now. The new interpretation tool will launch when users say phrases such as "Hey Google, be my French interpreter", and will give real time spoken and written translation to aid conversation, Google says.
Bixby now provides a new level of connectivity and intelligence created to make everyday tasks much easier. Samsung in this year's CES shared some exciting new technology in the field of smart TVs , smart appliances, laptops, and robots.
Sadly, there's no indication that the most popular version of Microsoft's OS-Windows 10 Home-will see any changes to its install process, so if you want Cortana to pipe down, you can do what I do and do not forget to turn the volume down prior to a wipe or install, or just plug in a pair of headphones.
We've reached the halfway point for Fortnite: Battle Royale's season seven challenges, so expect a good mix of tasks to do this time. The third and final stage includes the air traffic control tower in the new snow biome added by Epic Games in Season 7.
After the update users now had to swipe left (or right) or tap through the posts in the app, like a modified horizontal scroll. With the new layout, it was not so easy to quickly fly through the feed. It remains to be seen whether Instagram will try to roll out this now-controversial feature again, considering the hostile feedback the test received.
As of 3:30 Friday morning, CenturyLink tweeted that it was still working to restore service. 911 callers across the United States found themselves on hold this week as telecom giant CenturyLink experienced a national outage. Idaho Emergency Office Management Director Brad Richy says he didn't receive any reports of 911 service failures, but some state offices lost phone service.
Tamil Nadu Industries Minister M C Sampath told Reuters that Foxconn had lined up a Rs 25 billion ($356 million) investment at its Sriperumbudur plant. Moving iPhone production to India mitigates that risk and also helps Apple improve its relations in the critically important Indian market where the middle class is soaring and import taxes on products companies want to sell there are still quite high.
Twitter user Jeffree Star lamented "this #instagramupdate nearly ruined my morning!" while journalist Alex Heath of the online service Cheddar remarked that it "seems maybe meant to reduce mindless vertical scrolling?" The tap-to-advance method to browse your friends' content more closely resembles the interaction within the popular "Stories" feature on Instagram .
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump also participated in phone calls in 2017. If you thought the government shutdown meant you could work in secrecy today (Dec. Trump usually celebrates Christmas at his Florida estate. Trump said, captured on video . "I was like, 'wow.' I was shocked", Collman told the Charleston newspaper.
It seems like the issue is affecting both brand new iPad Pros and regular devices. It is unclear if the problem will impact the new 11 and 12.9-inch 2018 iPad Pro models, as these devices are too new and the problem appears to surface after several months of usage.
PUBG Corp has confirmed the launch date and time of the new snow map Vikendi . Vikendi measures 6x6 on the scale, which is bigger than the previously released Sanhok map. The Vikendi Survivor Pass lasts 10 weeks total, giving PUBG players the ability to complete special missions to unlock extra rewards. Bluehole has now released the update on the live servers, and the update comes with some interesting additions.
However, this raised some questions about the Galaxy S10, which is also expected to feature an Infinity O display. Aside from the rumored 5G capabilities, this handset will also reportedly ship with hardware features not found in other variants of the Galaxy S10 series.
Ultimate has nudged Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption II into second spot, which has been top dog for most weeks since its release. Nintendo has sold 8.7 million Switch consoles since its launch 21 months ago, making it the fastest-selling video game systems in the USA during that time, according to data from the NPD Group .
The company says that it has used the new Integrated Circuits in both the charger and the phone . OnePlus has launched the OnePlus 6T McLaren edition in collaboration with McLaren. The 5G phone should cost $200 to $300 more than the OnePlus 6T, which starts at $550 in the United States, but that's something we already knew. In this new and even faster wired charging technology, 30 Watts of power flows through the smartphone while charging.
Google said the bug allowed apps -which were granted permission to view Google+ profile data- to incorrectly receive permission to view profile information that the user had set to "not-public". "We discovered this bug as part of our standard and ongoing testing procedures and fixed it within a week of it being introduced". No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the developers who inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any ...
Then, what appears to be the sound of a slap can be heard off camera. " No computer, I'm sick of this shit ", a woman's voice is heard to respond. "Don't hit me in the face", she said. The wife, a 21-year-old woman from western Sydney , later tells her husband she isn't going to leave until she makes her point and he apologises to her.
See the map and detailed images of each location below. Battle Pass owners will have early access to their own Creative island for one week, then all players will receive islands on December 13, 2018 . From there the camera zooms out to a room of the cartoonish, now-iconic Fortnite characters watching it all unfold on their TV, when they get shocked out of their reverie by the major addition to Fortnite's new season: Christmas.
The company has now confirmed us the date for the unveiling of Samsung Galaxy A8s to be December 10th. To give the Galaxy S10 + a fresher look, it appears to come in a variety of gradient colours that flow not only on the glass panel but on the aluminium frame as well.
Apart from that, Epic also promises that developers will own their game page and newsfeed and there won't be any store-placed ads, cross-marketing of other competing games or paid ads in search results. The Battle Pass typically costs around $10 worth of the in-game V-Bucks per season, but it's possible to amass that many V-Bucks without spending a dime.
According to the leaks, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 will be the first mobile processor to support multi-gigabit 5G connections. The Snapdragon 855 platform will come with a Cat-20 4G modem offering up to 2Gbps download speeds, called the X24.
A case in point was in 2016, when Apple refused a United States government demand to unlock an iPhone used in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, in which 14 people were killed and 22 people were injured. The old app will be available for download and use by 5pm on December 4, said India's second-largest private lender by assets. The two applications can be put back on the Play Store, after providing Google all evidence of having removed all traces of malicious software.
Whether or not that holds up remains to be seen, and Google isn't officially saying anything about the app's future, but the writing has been on the wall since. While Hangouts Chat, much like Slack, was meant for easy conversations between the team and the organization, Hangouts Meet was introduced as a video-calling platform for fast, easy and convenient meetings.
This includes the recently released Pokémon: Lets Go, Pikachu! and Pokémon: Lets Go, Eevee! games, as well as the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Year-over year, sales of the console over those five days were up by 115%. Black Friday and Cyber Monday might be in the rearview mirror, but that doesn't mean the deals are entirely behind us. eBay just launched a staggeringly good discount code that slashes 15% off nearly everything on its auction site.
When software developers offer their products, Apple reviews them for compatibility and malware and, once they are approved, charges the developer a 30 percent commission. If so, the consumer is a direct purchaser and should therefore be permitted to bring an antitrust claim. Apple's routine sales of tens of millions of iPhones and billions in App Store revenue certainly point to the idea that developers are being gouged on sales fees.
Red Dead Online will be in early access and beta phase for now. We're getting started with the Red Dead Redemption 2 multiplayer mode, and right out the gate your first task is to create a character. "The launch of the Red Dead Online beta is the first step in what will be a continually expanding and dynamic world, and the beta period will allow us to deal with the inevitable turbulence of launching any online experience of this size and scale", Rockstar Games said in a statement .
Numerous retailers have started their Black Friday discounts early, giving gamers the opportunity to save some cash without having to fearless the weekend crowds. For the same price you can also get a 1TB One S Battlefield V bundle on the same eBay store. You get the purchase price back via mail-in rebate. Online retail giant Amazon has joined in on the early Black Friday craze, with multiple video game deals now live.
San Francisco: Just days after photo-messaging app Instagram rolled out the feature to track users' time spent on the app, Facebook has now released "Your Time on Facebook" tool that counts how many minutes people spend on the app. "We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can". It is not known if the outages for both platforms are connected. In the meantime, Twitter is popping today and it's mostly because people can't write lengthy diatribes on Facebook or goof off in ...
Finally there in an enviromental test to test the handsets in different environments, you can find out more details at the link below. Samsung Galaxy A9 has a Full HD+ 6.3-inch Super AMOLED Infinity display . The S10 setup will probably be similar. The WSJ suggests that all of these models will likely be revealed in the Spring of 2019, while the Beyond X model will be released when 5G is ready to launch (presumably with one or more major carriers in the U.S., but maybe just South ...
Black Friday is fast approaching and it's the season for holiday deals on video games. So, grab your wallet and get ready to spend some more of your hard earned cash on awesome games. We might not see anything better than this the rest of the year, so act soon if you want to save yourself a couple of bucks. All orders over $35 will have free shipping, so make sure you take advantage of that and get ready for the holidays.
Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu andEevee is available now, and we're helping people with a series of guides. Stats are influenced by the stats over in Pokemon Go , too, so you can predict roughly how good a transferred Pokemon will be. To transfer Pokemon , you need to reach Fuchsia City in Pokemon : Let's Go, Pikachu & Eevee! " Let's Go , Pikachu!" and " Let's Go , Eevee! " are user-friendly enough to do just that.
Until now, nearly every smartphone was having the issue of bad quality photos taken in the night time or in low light environments. Even without Night Sight , the Pixel family of phones-like the Nexus 5X and 6P before them-already excel in low-light photography.
Windows 10 takes a leap forward for UI fanatics today as Microsoft introduces a brand new system-wide theme that turns the Windows Shell, which includes the Start menu, Taskbar, and Action Center from dark to light . This doesn't really give many details and, of course, the real tests will all come about when users get to play and see if the reality lives up to the hype.
The biggest addition of the Xbox One November Update is the introduction of mouse and keyboard support , which will allow developers from now on to add support to their games. PUBG was part of the Xbox Free Play Days program as well and was free to play for all Xbox One users until Sunday, November 11. It's not so good for racers, beat'em ups, or sports titles, where the nuance of analog sticks and triggers can be more impactful.
In terms of design, the Sport will come in six different colors (silver, blue, red, gold, rose gold and grey) over two case sizes of 41mm and 43mm. It also has Qualcomms latest Snapdragon Wear 3100 chip that replaces the far-outdated 2100 chip.
If your iPhone X's screen is, say, cracked, and it prevents the fix from being performed without further damage, it's highly likely you will need to get that fixed first. Two of Apple's most popular products over the past year could be subject to some rather nasty malfunctions according to the company. If you have had either of these issues repaired by Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider then you should get in touch with Apple to arrange a refund.
The anchor's machine learning programme is able to synthesise realistic-looking speech, lip movements and facial expressions, Xinhua said , to deliver news with "the same effect" as a human. "I look forward to bringing you brand-new news experiences". The anchors - the Chinese one is modelled on real-life newsreader Qiu Hao and sports a black suit and red tie - are part of a major push by China to advance its prowess in AI technology, from surveillance equipment to self-driving cars.
But that's still speculation at this point, and it's worth betting that at least one Samsung phone will be launched in 2019 with a display notch. When folded, such a phone can be used as a small tablet. In an afternoon session at the conference, Samsung revealed some specs for the concept device. Sagar Kamdar, Android director of product management, told The Verge there are different ways to cut down on fragmentation among foldables devices and experiences, but that Google doesn't have ...
This weapon is available in Rare, Epic , and Legendary variants, and packs 44, 46, 48 damage, respectively. Epic announced on Monday it's also bringing National Football League outfits to " Fortnite " this week. As with every other week, all players will be able to complete the top three free challenges while only those who have elected to purchase the Battle Pass being granted another four challenges to complete.
While we would've loved to see a new game in the franchise, Warcraft III is a classic that never gets old. "Play with the conveniences of modern Blizzard Battle.net and WoW technology such as Blizzard friends lists; select UI improvements; enhancements created to ensure stability and fair play; and all the latest under-the-hood engine updates to support players' current hardware".
Apparently capable enough to envy the OnePlus 6 users about all the new software features on the OnePlus 6T . The 6T now gets a new build number with this software update which goes by A6010_41_181024 . As promised, OnePlus has released new OxygenOS features announced with the OnePlus 6T for OnePlus 6. The new OnePlus 6T is finally available and its price starts at $549 for the basic model that has 6 GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
In 2019, Samsung is expected to release one new flagship phone that costs almost $2,000. According to South Korean publication ETNews , Samsung will rely exclusively on a Qualcomm-based in-display fingerprint scanner. The foldable-screen device is codenamed "Winner" and has been under development for years, the people said . The fingerprint scanner was unable to incorporate under this display via technical complexity.
Today is also the day that you can pick up the GameStop exclusive Diablo III: Eternal Collection Nintendo Switch bundle for $359.99 with free shipping. Now sure, people are entitled to take interest on what they please, but this seems like a full Diablo experience, albeit on a mobile platform. As of the writing of this article, the game's cinematic launch trailer has 2k likes and 54k dislikes on YouTube .
The dual-SIM functionality for iPhone "XR", "XS" and "XS Max" will go live when the iOS point update sees release. Also, it is recommended to back up your data, and ensuring your device has over 50 percent of charge or connected to a power source before beginning the update process.