Technology

Microsoft is starting to submerge its servers in liquid to improve their performance and energy efficiency. A rack of servers is now being used for production loads in what looks like a liquid bath. This immersion process has existed in the industry for a few years now, but Microsoft claims it’s “the first cloud provider that is running two-phase immersion cooling in a production environment.” The cooling works by completely submerging server racks in a specially designed non-conductive fluid. The fluorocarbon-based liquid works by removing heat as it directly hits components and the fluid reaches a lower boiling point (122 degrees Fahrenheit or 50 degrees Celsius) to condense and fall back into the bath as a raining liquid. This creates a closed-loop cooling system, reducing costs as no e...

Tech companies don’t just want to identify you using facial recognition — they also want to read your emotions with the help of AI. For many scientists, though, claims about computers’ ability to understand emotion are fundamentally flawed, and a little in-browser web game built by researchers from the University of Cambridge aims to show why. Head over to emojify.info, and you can see how your emotions are “read” by your computer via your webcam. The game will challenge you to produce six different emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, and anger), which the AI will attempt to identify. However, you’ll probably find that the software’s readings are far from accurate, often interpreting even exaggerated expressions as “neutral.” And even when you do produce a smile that con...

YouTube wants the world to know that it’s doing a better job than ever of enforcing its own moderation rules. The company says that a shrinking number of people see problematic videos on its site — such as videos that contain graphic violence, scams, or hate speech — before they’re taken down. In the final months of 2020, up to 18 out of every 10,000 views on YouTube were on videos that violate the company’s policies and should have been removed before anyone watched them. That’s down from 72 out of every 10,000 views in the fourth quarter of 2017, when YouTube started tracking the figure. The figure measures enforcement of YouTube’s own rules But the numbers come with an important caveat: while they measure how well YouTube is doing at limiting the spread of troubling clips, they’re ultim...

Google has started rolling out the April Android security update for Pixel phones, and it looks like it’s brought some performance improvements to the most recent devices. Google says the update includes “performance optimizations for certain graphics-intensive apps and games” on the Pixel 5 and 4A 5G, and, as noted by XDA Developers, some testers are noticing substantially improved GPU performance on the Pixel 5. Anandtech previously found that the Pixel 5 turned in much worse GPU results than other phones using the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G chip. Now, the site’s reviewer Andrei Frumusanu says that performance on his Pixel 5 has been “essentially doubled” from the review’s initial figures and is now “in line or better than other 765G phones.” Benchmarks don’t necessarily translate int...

Yelp is rolling out a new tool that will allow businesses the option to identify themselves as Asian-owned, chief diversity officer Miriam Warren announced today. The new optional attribute will make it easier for Yelp users to find and support Asian-owned businesses easily. Business owners will be allowed to edit their existing listing on Yelp and select the attribute that notes they are an Asian-owned business. The feature will be available when a business owner logs in to their Yelp for Business account. Once enabled, users who filter by “Asian owned” restaurants will find a list of businesses near their location that have self-selected that attribute. Yelp previously rolled out similar attributes for businesses to display, such as the option to identify as Black– or women-owned. ...

By now, you have probably heard of the huge Facebook data breach, in which upwards of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries had personal data leaked online, including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, birthdates — you name it. Your first question will be, of course, how to check whether you are part of that breach. There are a couple of places out there where you can find out whether your data has been compromised. One well-known site that tracks data breaches is Have I Been Pwned. Just follow the link to the site and put in your email address or phone number. You will find out not only if you’ve been part of the Facebook breach, but also any other breaches in which your data may have been compromised. Troy Hunt, creator of Have I Been Pwned, was considering whether to include a phone n...

TikTok creators will soon be able to add automatically-generated captions to their videos as the app attempts to make itself more accessible. The option to add auto captions will appear in the editing page after a video has been uploaded or recorded. TikTok says the feature will be available in American English and Japanese at first, but that it plans to add support for more languages “in the coming months.” The platform is adding the feature to make TikTok videos easier to watch for deaf and hard of hearing viewers. However, a TikTok dialogue box also says the feature is useful for anyone watching videos “when it’s difficult or inconvenient for them to listen to audio.” Creators can edit their captions after they’ve been automatically generated to fix any mistakes, and viewers can turn ca...

If you had to choose: would you choose a sharper screen on your smartphone, or a smoother-scrolling one? This year, budget phone buyers may be asking themselves that question: the OnePlus Nord N100, Moto G50, and the new Samsung Galaxy F12 and M12 all refresh their screens 90 times per second (which is good!) but with a lower-than-optimal screen resolution of 720p. That’s the same resolution as a Galaxy Nexus from 2011. Compared to your average iPhone, that’s a paltry number of pixels. Since the iPhone 4 debuted in 2010, every Apple handset has offered at least 326 pixels per inch (PPI), enough so you can’t make out those individual pixels with the naked eye at typical viewing distances. (The marketing term is “retina display.”) Here, the PPI would be more like 270. [embedded content] And ...

The founders of Hipmunk are launching a new startup today that’s aimed squarely at taking on their own former product. Called Flight Penguin, it’s a Chrome browser extension that simultaneously searches a bunch of airline websites and then presents the results in a familiar format. Rather than taking a commission or affiliate fee, Flight Penguin will instead charge its users $10 per month — it’s designed for people who travel a lot (or, since there’s still a pandemic on, people who will imminently travel a lot). Flight Penguin is also not pulling any punches when it comes to its rhetoric: it promises that there will be “no collusion” with the airline industry, specifically noting that “Some of the largest travel sites hide flights from you in exchange for special favors from airlines.” The...

Over a year into the pandemic, we’ve seen a wide variety of masks, from totally unsafe fashion pieces, to RGB nightmares, not to mention a bunch of other stylish options. But if you think you might have an idea for a better mask that more people might want to wear, the US government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) has announced a competition to design “the next generation of masks” — with a potential $500,000 total prize waiting for the winners. The Mask Innovation Challenge was created in partnership with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH, an organization under the CDC) to address some of the common complaints leveled at masks, like the fact they can fog up glasses, irritate your skin, become uncomfortable to wear, get in the...

The Apple TV 4K hasn’t been updated for more than three and a half years, which is an eternity in technology. But 9to5Mac reports that the new tvOS 14.5 beta references support for 120Hz refresh rates — a capability that no currently available Apple TV models have — which could indicate Apple is working on a new version of its set-top box. While it’s not clear what Apple may use a 120Hz refresh rate for in a new Apple TV, one of the more intriguing possibilities is for smoother gaming, like what’s offered with 120Hz support on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Apple has been showing increased interest in gaming as of late, so it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise if the new Apple TV had more gaming-focused features. For example, Apple just added a bunch of new games to its Apple Arcade ...

Amazon’s bringing Zoom compatibility to more devices. The company announced today that it’s making the Echo Show 10 devices in the US compatible with the popular video calling software. Users who have their calendars linked up to the Alexa will have their meetings started automatically while people who haven’t done that can say, “Alexa, join my meeting” or “Alexa, join my Zoom meeting” to join one. This is the second Echo Show to gain Zoom access; the Echo Show 8 started supporting the videoconferencing platform in the US in December. The Echo Show 10’s camera tracks users as they move throughout a room, meaning callers can see the screen no matter where they sit or stand. Presumably, this functionality will work with Zoom, putting it on par with other competitor devices like the Facebook ...