DAILY TECH NEWS -- #19
50% Internet Down | World 1st Bitcoin payments | Apple AR Glasses | Microsoft Under Display camera | Realme Laptop | Adobe + Apple M1 Chip | Lithium in Seawater |
💢 World's 1st Bitcoin Payment Country ₿
El Salvador has become the first country in the world to grant legal tender status to Bitcoin. They passed a new law on Wednesday that would make the small central American country the world's first to deem bitcoin as legal by president Nayib Bukele.
The announcement was made by President Bukele on Twitter. "The #BitcoinLaw has been approved by a supermajority in the Salvadoran Congress. 62 out of 84 votes! History! #BTC. The price of bitcoin was up from $33,555 to $34,398, as per CoinMarketCap, shortly after the announcement of the approval.
💢 Global Internet Down Up to 50%
Several major websites around the world including Amazon, Reddit, Twitter, Twitch, Spotify, the U.K Government website, and multiple news outlets crashed on Tuesday morning showing "503 error" messages.
The outages' roots were traced back to Fastly - a cloud computing platform that operates a network of servers strategically placed worldwide. According to the company, engineers were able to identify the problem 40 minutes after it was discovered, and within 49 minutes, 95% of its network was operating normally. According to some reports, Amazon alone could have lost $32 million in sales during the service glitch.
Adobe has adapted its Creative Cloud apps such as Lightroom, Illustrator, and InDesign to work seamlessly on the Apple M1 SoC. Adobe also claims that through third-party bench maker testing, the updated creative cloud apps are 80% faster on M1-based Mac computers compared to Intel-based Mac computers.
Adobe Lightroom gets updates for collaboration features, new premium presets, among other feature improvements. Alongside, Adobe has also updated the Lightroom app for other platforms. Adobe Illustrator and InDesign get major performance boosts with the update.
💢 Apple's First AR headset
Apple could launch its first Augmented Reality(AR) headset in the second half of 2022, suggests a new research note from analysts Ming-Chi Kuo.
The report, first spotted by MacRumors also focuses on prospects for Genius Electronic Optical and also notes that Apple will benefit from several Upcoming VR and VR products from companies like Facebook, Sony, and Apple. The report says that, "We predict that Apple will launch AR HMD [Head-Mounted Display] devices in 2Q22. The device will provide a video see-through AR experience, so the lens is also needed, and Genius is also a key supplier".
A new patent from Microsoft has revealed a new surface device that will feature four under-display camera sensors, with the company's logo being displayed when these cameras are not in use thanks to their alignment.
According to the LetsGoDigital report, the American tech giant has opened a vacancy for a "Principal Android Camera System Architect/ Engineer for Surface Development back in October 2021. This indicates the company is aiming to improve the camera capabilities of its device. In the same month, the brand had also filed a patent with the World Intellectual Property Office(WIPO) regarding this "Logo Camera" design for the Surface Laptops.
Realme Laptop has been teased to launch in India by the company CEO Madhav Sheth on Twitter. In a style that reminds us of how Steve Jobs unveiled the First-Generation Macbook Air back in 2008.
Sheth has posted a cryptic teaser through his Twitter account that includes an image giving us a sneak peek of Realme's First Laptop. Although Sheth has not explicitly confirmed that the image is associated with the upcoming Realme laptop, he suggested the launch plans by using a Binary Code in his tweet that translates to "Hello World!" - the phrase that depicts a popular introduction in the computer programming world. And he also asked his followers to guess the product name.
💢 A new method to extract Pure Lithium in Seawater
A team of researchers has developed a new, economically viable system to extract lithium from seawater. The demand for Lithium - an extremely crucial element used in batteries that power electric vehicles - has been soaring for quite some time now and its land-based reserves are likely to be exhausted by 2080.
But a team of researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia has devised a system that's not just cost-effective but also helps extract high-quality lithium in seawater. They designed an electrochemical cell containing a ceramic membrane made from lithium lanthanum titanium oxide(LLTO). They also said that its crystal structure contains holes just wide enough to allow lithium ions to pass through but block larger metal ions like sodium, Magnesium, and Potassium that are present in much higher concentrations - the reason why extracting lithium from seawater has been such a challenge.
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