Business Articles

CheckMag Opera Mini is not done yet. In fact, the browser boasts several hundred million users in developing and emerging countries, a number is expected to rise even more with the introduction of free Internet access. Notebookcheck spoke with product manager Tim Lesnik about a largely overlooked target group.

Chinese researchers have developed a new cooling coating for buildings that operates without electricity, is environmentally friendly, and automatically adjusts its cooling capacity based on sunlight intensity. In a practical test, a 20 percent reduction in temperature was observed compared to an uncoated concrete roof.

Sony's latest corporate report reveals that the company will rely more heavily on artificial intelligence and machine learning in game development. While this is expected to streamline development and reduce costs, it also sparks ethical concerns.

Unlike solar cells, which generate energy from sunlight, a new smart window can not only generate large amounts of electricity from raindrops. It also offers amazing energy-saving advantages that can be of great benefit in times of climate change.

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute are turning CO₂ and sunlight into synthetic fuels. Using an innovative process in a solar tower, water and CO₂ are turned into sustainable fuel that can be used, for example, in cars and aircraft.

Certified as compliant with the IP66 and MIL-STD-810H standards, the 11.6-inch Darveen RTC-I116 rugged tablet has a dual hot-swappable battery design, a rich set of connectivity options, and employs 12th-generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors. On request, it can ship with either Windows 10/11 or Linux.

Scheduled to open its doors to the public on October 2nd, the Nintendo museum in Uji, which is located near the company's Kyoto HQ, is already fully booked for the first two months. The list of items on display includes the iconic Game Boy handheld and the Wii console, but also baby strollers and printers made by Nintendo.

HP's Imagine 2024 event has introduced the OEM's latest AI tools, touted to streamline and optimize the use of its PCs and peripherals for home, office and industry customers worldwide. Some of them are even for the company's printers, such as the new Perfect Output feature rated to stop the waste of ink on things like ads in webpages as well as the automatic formatting of jobs such as spreadsheets.

HP has unveiled four Poly Studio video bars for remote office conferencing. The AI-powered video bars allow office workers worldwide to join Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom video meetings. The new bars cover small and large conference rooms with 4K cameras, dual speakers, and beamforming microphones.

HP has announced a bunch of new monitors today under the HP Series 5 Pro umbrella. They all have a refresh rate of 100 Hz and come with DP, HDMI, USB-A and USB-B ports.

HP has launched five new USB-C monitors to go with its new laptops. Three come with an integrated webcam/speakers, while compensate for it with better I/O choices.

Video generator is the latest AI-powered feature to be added to Amazon Ads, and its name should be self-explanatory. In addition to the beta-stage video generator, a new live image capability has been introduced to help create short animations for use in marketing campaigns.

The launch of Apple's iPhone 16 was marked by protests outside Apple stores around the world. Demonstrators used the day to draw media attention to a range of issues, including the environmental threat posed by the mining of minerals for mobile phone batteries, social injustices in mines in the Congo and Apple's stance on the war in Gaza.

Epson has released two fast EdgeLink document scanners that can save to cloud services, email, flash drives, and network folders – the DS-800WN and DS-900WN. The scanners are designed for rapid office document digitization at up to 70 duplex pages per minute. The included Document Capture Pro software can convert scans into PDFs with searchable text.

Ram Gopal Varma, the Indian filmmaker known for movies such as Company, Sarkar, and Satya, has launched RGV Den Music, which will only handle AI-generated music. He also confirmed that his future projects will only use such music and predicted that all humans involved in the music industry will be replaced by AI.

In its quest to tackle an impressive amount of scientific data, Genmab has provided ChatGPT Enterprise access to about 1,000 employees less than a year ago. Now, the "AI Everywhere" initiative comes to provide the power of OpenAI's solution to "almost everyone" by acquiring more than 2,000 additional licenses.

Nintendo officially announced that it, along with The Pokémon Company, had filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, the developer behind the smash-hit game, Palworld. The lawsuit comes as a surprise to absolutely no-one, but Pocketpair has feigned ignorance in its response.

TSMC, one of the most popular chip manufacturers in the world, has apparently fired up fabrication in the United States. Its first chip is somewhat surprising: the Apple A16 SoC, which powered the iPhone 14 Pro. This may point to the specifications of the upcoming iPhone SE 4.

USB-A belongs among the "legacy" ports. This means: It is an outdated standard only maintained for legacy reasons, to be replaced by USB-C. With the affordable ThinkPad L14, Lenovo takes a step into the opposite direction: Instead of two USB-A ports, the budget business laptop has three USB-A ports.

The three main priorities for Intel right now include a more streamlined product portfolio that focuses on X86 first and AI second, securing more customers for the angstrom-era nodes, as well as establishing the foundry division into an independent subsidiary.

Confirmed to run for 48 hours, starting at 12:01 AM PT/3:01 AM ET on October 8th, this year's second Amazon Prime Day event, called Prime Big Deal Days once again, has just been officially confirmed. The list of brands that will get generous discounts includes Barbie, Play-Doh, Disney, KitchenAid, JBL, LEGO, Cider, Lenox, and more.

Intel has announced it will make custom chips for Amazon Web Services on its 18A node, along with special Xeon chips on Intel 3.

A new report says Intel and AMD were the final two bidders for Sony's PlayStation 6 chip. AMD won the contract because Intel was unable to negotiate a mutually beneficial deal, which could have generated up to $30 billion for Intel.

The Biden administration has finalized huge tariff hikes on Chinese-made electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar panels, and other imports. The tariffs include medical masks and syringes, raising already expensive medical costs in America.

Until now, Tesla's Robotaxi was only known from concept drawings. Now the first prototype of the self-driving electric car has been spotted. A photo shows it at a junction in front of a Tesla Model Y - albeit completely covered in yellow foil.

Microsoft has officially announced its intent to move security measures out of the kernel, following the Crowdstrike disaster a few short months ago. The removal of kernel access for security solutions would likely revolutionise running Windows games on the Steam Deck and other Linux systems.

The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) has announced an action calling to end what it calls “unfair practices” relating to in-game purchases. It doesn't dance around the issue, either, calling game companies out for their claims that gamers prefer in-game currencies and subtly accusing game developers of manipulating the whims of children for monetary gain.

United will be retrofitting its planes with bigger seatback displays and charging outlets as it provides free high-speed Starlink Internet on all of its planes, starting in 2025.

After a few game studios ceased their activity, including Redfall developer Arkane Austin, Microsoft has laid off an additional 650 employees who worked in the company's gaming division. This move comes not long after almost 2,000 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees had been fired.

It looks like Unity's controversial Runtime Fee pricing structure has been less popular than the maker of the game engine had anticipated. Effective immediately, the Runtime Fee has been cancelled for all versions of Unity ahead of the anticipated 2024 launch of Unity 6.

Although there is no official confirmation yet, it seems that OpenAI is on the way towards raising an impressive $6.5 billion, with the help of a new estimated value of no less than $150 billion. Earlier this year, Sam Altman's startup had managed to raise $1 billion and was valued at $86 billion.

With over 1,440 titles per USD and a catalog of over 17,000 items, Amazon's Prime Video provides the best value currently available in a video streaming service. Since its introduction, Prime Video has had an average yearly price increase of 3.8%, while Crunchyroll is the only one in the top 10 with the same price since its release.

The US pre-owned EV market has recorded a sharp decline in prices as an average used EV now costs 25% less than a year ago. As a result, the average price of a used Tesla Model 3 has crashed by more than $8,000 and the car now sits below $26,000.

As revealed by three anonymous sources familiar with the tech giant's inner workings, Samsung Electronics is planning to cut up to 30% of its employees at some undisclosed overseas divisions. The staff usually targeted belongs to marketing (up to 15% to be fired) and administrative departments (up to 30%).

During the company's last earnings call, Oracle co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison unveiled that the company has already received the building permit for no less than three next-gen small modular nuclear reactors. With an expected output of over one gigawatt, this nuclear trio will power one of Oracle's upcoming data centers.

If everything goes as planned, Nevada will soon become the first administration to use a generative AI system to process appeals hearings transcripts and issue a recommendation regarding the ruling. However, it should also be taken into account that the final decision (and accountability) will remain in human hands.

Ford has patented a new system that records conversations, location and destination and even takes the weather into account to deliver targeted advertising to drivers.

The U.S. Commerce Department is now focusing on both AI and cloud computing service providers with a new proposal, which involves requiring additional reporting from these companies. The goal of these new requirements is to ensure the safety of the technologies developed, such as their ability to handle cyberattacks.

After the recently released trailer for the Minecraft film with its mixture of real film and animation was not very well received, animator Alumio quickly developed his own, completely animated version - and it seems to be much better received by fans.

Hydrogen is an energy source with great potential, but its explosive nature has made it difficult to control. A German company has now found a solution that could revolutionise the use of hydrogen and is being funded to the tune of €72.5 million.

As X/Twitter remains banned in Brazil, new users from this country helped Bluesky exceed 9 million subscribers while also recording almost 5 million monthly active accounts. Founded in early October 2021, this US-based decentralized microblogging social platform opened signups for everyone this year, in early February.

The well-known audio company Sonos had been planning a new product to take on the likes of Roku and Google Chromecast - however, it may have to delay the release of the brand-first product. The OEM is now reportedly shedding employees, not to mention the production of its inaugural Ace wireless headphones compared to in-house projections. The source of all this adversity is said to lie in the furore caused by what should have been a simple update to its smartphone app.

After Ubisoft was unable to celebrate a major success this year and the sales figures for Star Wars: Outlaws also fell short of expectations, the Ubisoft share price fell to a record low.