As the world tries to grapple with the implications of 5G, the race for 6G supremacy is already heating up. As first appeared on Bloomberg, Apple is already in plans to work on 6G technology. Last year, Apple unveiled its 5G iPhones. “This is a huge leap for the iPhone, bringing the best 5G experience in the market and delivering our most advanced technologies to users,” said Greg Joswiak of Apple during the launch. As users warm up to the new 5G phones, Apple is already working on 6G tech. According to reports, Apple this week posted job ads seeking wireless system research engineers for current and next-generation networks. The job postings listed “research and design next generation (6G) wireless communication systems for radio access networks” and “participate in industry/academic forums passionate about 6G technology” as requirements.  6G devices and applications are expected to be heavy on personalisation and privacy without trading efficiency, which is really crucial as the world moves towards ML powered edge devices.

Facebook Cuts Off News in Australia 

On Thursday, Facebook blocked its users in Australia from sharing news stories and stopped users globally from sharing articles from Australian publishers. This move by Facebook comes as a response to the government’s push for a ruling that might require Facebook to pay to the publishers. “Facebook needs to think very carefully about what this means for its reputation and standing,” Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said in an interview. 

In a follow up to the news of FB trying to bully the Aussies, the EU, which has been mulling a similar legislation for a while, might now consider to copy parts of the proposed law in Australia that will force the tech giants to pay for snippets of articles shown on the platforms. However, Facebook argues that its initiatives are “fundamentally misunderstood”. “The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content,” William Easton, MD for Facebook in Australia and New Zealand, wrote in a blog post.

NASA Lands On Mars, Again!

On Thursday, NASA announced that its largest, most advanced rover yet has touched down on Mars after drifting in space for 203-days and nearly 472 million kilometers. Launched on July 30, 2020, the Perseverance rover is tasked with collecting rock samples from Mars and returning them to Earth. Shown above is the first image NASA’s Perseverance rover sent back after touching down on Mars. The rover, which is about the size of an SUV, is actually a robotic geologist and astrobiologist on a two-year science investigation of Mars’ Jezero Crater in search for signs of ancient microbial life. The $2.7bn (£1.9bn) robot is the fifth rover to be put on Mars by NASA. Since the rover successfully completed the harrowing entry, descent, and landing phase of the mission, it will now begin searching for traces of microscopic life from billions of years back using a precision X-ray device powered by artificial intelligence.

Bad UI Costs Citibank $500 Million

Source: ArsTechnica

A poorly designed user interface has cost Citibank dearly. The interface of Flexcube(shown above), the software which Citi used to transfer interests to the creditors of Revlon was so confusing that the employees accidentally paid back the principal amount of $900 million instead of the $7.8 million interest they were supposed to send. Though few creditors returned back wrongly sent money, others refused; burning a $500 million hole in Citi’s pocket. Citi pursued the case legally but a federal judge has ruled that Citibank won’t’ be getting the money back. 

AWS Bags Daimler

Daimler’s Torc Robotics said on Wednesday it has selected Amazon Web Services(AWS) to handle the petabytes of data that Torc’s test fleet in New Mexico is already generating. According to Torc, the raw data comes from multiple sensors such as lidar, radar and cameras. “In addition to the expansion of routes and fleet size, the next generation of test trucks has integrated more sensors at higher resolutions to enhance object detection at longer ranges — further increasing the magnitude of data for analysis, simulation, and machine learning,” said the company. Whereas, AWS which has been reigning supreme in the cloud markets will offer its extensive services that are designed to provide rapid, secure data transfer, intelligent tiered storage, managed orchestration and analytics tools, and high-performance multi-core CPU and GPU compute that will help Torc rapidly scale its agile and cost-efficient development platform and accelerate its testing and commercialization of the technology.

“Our next generation fleet of test trucks will help us rapidly grow our capabilities and accelerate the commercialization of Level 4 self-driving trucks,” said Michael Fleming, Torc’s CEO.

NVIDIA Launches Crypto Hardware

NVIDIA wants gamers to game and miners to mine. So, they have decided to limit the hash rate of GeForce RTX 3060 GPUs so they’re less desirable to miners who have been on the rise thanks to crypto’s tremendous run. Furthermore, to satiate the needs of miners, NVIDIA has now launched NVIDIA CMP, or Cryptocurrency Mining Processor, for professional mining. Nvidia also stated that their CMP products don’t do graphics and they don’t meet the specifications required of a GeForce GPU and, thus, don’t impact the availability of GeForce GPUs to gamers. In other news, this week, Bitcoin hit a record $50,000 for the first time as the news of major players embracing it keeps coming!

SpaceX Raises $850 M

According to CNBC, SpaceX raised a handsome $850 million last week in the latest funding round, which rocketed the company’s valuation to about $74 billion; a 60% jump from its previous round in August. The funding news comes at a crucial moment as it will fuel Elon Musk’s highly ambitious Starship and Starlink projects.