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Category: mobile phones – Page 46

The global battle over microchips | DW Documentary

Computers, cars, mobile phones, toasters: countless everyday objects contain microchips. They’re tiny, unremarkable and cheap, but since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, they’ve been at the center of a political and industrial tug of war.

Against the backdrop of the trade war between China and the US, “The Microchip War” spotlights all the aspects of this conflict. In the film, the world’s most influential actors in this industrial sector weigh in.

No one is in any doubt that microprocessors are as strategically important as oil. The battle over microchips could potentially redefine the geopolitical world order. In the United States and Europe, fears over a microprocessor shortage have led to a flood of investment pledges. After ceding microchip production to Asia in the 1990s, market leaders in the West are now trying to bring production back home and thereby regain control of the production chain.

This resulted in the adoption of new legislation in 2022: the European Chips Act initiated by the EU Commission under Ursula von der Leyen and — in response to this — the American “Chip and Science Act” initiated by Joe Biden. China, the US, Europe: major global powers fighting over tiny microchips. Pandemic and resource scarcity have fueled the desire for industrial reconquest and economic superiority.

But is this reindustrialization actually possible? Can the West challenge the foundations of globalization in this way?

#documentary #dwdocumentary #usa #europe #asia.

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Huawei takes center stage in the China-US AI chip race

In an ironic twist, the Chinese government is turning to Huawei to spearhead the nation’s quest for semiconductor self-reliance.

Andrea Nicolini/iStock.

The sanctions made it so that only those with special permission could produce the chips designed by Huawei. As a result, Huawei faced difficulties in obtaining new chips for the development of more advanced smartphones.

How do noise-canceling headphones work and why are they so popular?

Noise-canceling headphones are designed to block out the ambient noise and let you focus on what you want to hear.

Wirestock, photoschmidt via iStock.

This feature used to be a niche product for a select group of users, primarily frequent air travelers. But now, with technology being more affordable, it has become more vividly seen in many of the current market offerings. Take Apple’s AirPods Pro or AirPods Max, for example, or Sony’s WH 1,000 XM5 or WF 1,000 XM5 series or, say, the Bose Quite Comfort series. There are many options, from affordable to expensive ones, and the ANC performance varies across the price range.

Utility Personal Transporter is set to be the smartphone of EVs

Remember back before smartphones existed, when you had to buy a separate cell phone, camera, music player, calculator and calendar? Well, the Utility Personal Transporter may one day do for electric vehicles what smartphones did for gadgets.

Currently in functional prototype form, the Utility Personal Transporter (UPT) is being developed by Canadian electric mobility company Envo Drive Systems. In a nutshell, it’s a four-wheel-drive electric platform that can be adapted to serve multiple purposes.

Envo unveiled the vehicle to the media last Friday, at an event that also showcased the new Veemo velomobile. That said, the UPT more closely resembles one of the company’s longer-established products, the e-ATV.

The Hydraulic Telegraph Of Aeneas: A Telecommunication Used In Ancient Greece

Telecommunication goes back a lot further than you might expect. While the word has become synonymous with television broadcasting and phone communication, it really describes any communication system over a distance, and could include smoke signals. These simple signals were used to convey messages from “the enemy is approaching” to the fact that a whale has beached itself and can be butchered for meat.

While some ancient cultures varied smoke colors to convey further information, there’s only so much you can get across with a big fire. One particularly cool ancient version of telecommunication, which aimed to convey more precise meanings, was the hydraulic telegraph, used in Ancient Greece in around 350 BCE.

The idea – thought to have been invented by Aeneas of Stymphalus, a writer on the military at the time – was simple, but neat. Each person you want to communicate with is given a jar of the same size, filled with the same amount of water. Inside the jar is a floating rod, on which was inscribed identical messages that are useful to pass along.