Month: February 2022

Enlarge / The atoms (center foreground) alter a laser so it extracts energy from a membrane (blue). (credit: Departement Physik, Universität Basel)

Way back when I was still working in the lab, there was a lot of buzz about something called “coherent control.” The basic idea was to take the principles of traditional control theory—the same theory that makes things like cruise control work—and apply them to quantum systems.

Some very cool ideas and insights came out of that early work, but it has taken a while to put them into practice. Now, we might be starting to see some practical applications emerging, with researchers demonstrating in a new paper the active cooling of a membrane using coherent control.

Measurement is bad

A traditional control system has something like a desired state, such as the target speed of a car. By repeatedly measuring the speed of a car and accelerating or decelerating, the control system can bring the car to the target speed.

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Wi-Fi 6E is the latest wireless tech standard, but due to components shortages, it wouldn’t be surprising if you never end up with a Wi-Fi 6E router or other supported tech and instead jump straight to the next generation, Wi-Fi 7.

Components shortages, which have hindered the availability of everything from graphics cards to Chromebooks, monitor panels, and integrated circuits for Wi-Fi, have impacted Wi-6E availability and adoption, telecommunications analyst Dell’Oro Group said in a statement released Thursday, as reported by Tom’s Hardware on Saturday.

“Although manufacturers launched Wi-Fi 6E products in mid-2021, products are either not available or they are in very limited supply,” Tam Dell’Oro, the founder and CEO of the firm, said in a statement. Dell’Oro added that Wi-Fi shipments are “significantly limited because of supply constraints,” except in China.

Enlarge / Let’s see, you landed on my “Google Ads” space, and with three houses… that will be $1,400. (credit: Ron Amadeo / Hasbro)

Google is being sued in the European Union again over anti-competitive shopping practices.

The EU Commission ruled in 2017 that Google’s preferential treatment of its own Google Shopping product in search results was illegal, and it slapped the company with a record-setting fine of 2.4 billion euros. The penalty was upheld in an appeal in 2021. Now, price-comparison service PriceRunner is suing Google for the harm it says was caused to its business over the last 12 years. PriceRunner is starting the suit at 2.1 billion euros, but “since the violation is still ongoing, the amount of damages increases every day,” the company said. “We expect the final damages amount of the lawsuit to be significantly higher.”

In a press release, PriceRunner Chief Executive Mikael Lindahl said the company is suing Google for “the damage Google has caused us during many years.” But the company also sees the lawsuit “as a fight for consumers who have suffered tremendously from Google’s infringement of the competition law for the past fourteen years and still today,” Lindahl wrote.

Enlarge / America loves pickup trucks too much to give up burning gasoline, Nissan thinks. (credit: Nissan)

Nissan is the latest automaker to pull the plug on its internal combustion engine development. Well, mostly.

According to Nikkei Asia, the Japanese automaker has looked at the likely next set of European emissions rules and has decided it would be too expensive to design a new generation of engines that comply. Nissan is also not planning on any new internal combustion engines for Japan or China, although it will apparently keep refining existing engines and continue to work on hybrid powertrains.

However, this new policy isn’t a global one—it doesn’t apply to the US. That’s because here, the automaker expects continuing demand for internal combustion engines, particularly in pickup trucks.

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Meta says it may have to abandon the European Union.

The note was buried in the company’s annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Meta said that if officials on both sides of the Atlantic can’t reach an agreement on data transfers and warehousing, the company may have to pull its Facebook and Instagram platforms from Europe.

“If a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted… we will likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe,” Meta said in its 10-K filing.