Category: News and Views

Consumers Spent Less on Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales in 2021 | Small Business Trends

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The Adobe Digital Economy Index revealed consumer spending for Cyber Monday was down 1.4% year-over-year (YoY). And for Black Friday it was down 1.3% YoY at $8.9B vs $9B (2020). Even though the numbers for Thanksgiving Day didn’t go down, spending, however, stayed flat at $5.1B.

Consumers Spent Less on Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2021

Considering the events of the past couple of years, which were primarily driven by the pandemic, the data is not as bleak.

The Adobe Digital Economy Index provides a comprehensive view of U.S. e-commerce. It does this by analyzing direct consumer transactions online covering over one trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs, and 18 product categories. According to the company, this is more than any other technology company or research organization. Based on Adobe Analytics, the data is the final online shopping figures for Cyber Monday and Cyber Week 2021.

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Ubisoft Bringing NFTs To Gaming With Ubisoft Quartz | Digital Trends

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Ubisoft has made itself the first major company in gaming to bring NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to the medium. Through a new service called Ubisoft Quartz, players will be able to earn playable NFT cosmetics in games, with the first such game being Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint.

According to a trailer posted to Ubisoft’s YouTube page, players who sign up for Ubisoft Quartz will earn Digits, the publisher’s own name for its NFTs. These Digits are unique cosmetic collectibles that make no difference in gameplay aside from changing how a player character or a player’s weapon appears. Each Digit has a serial number and carries the names of its owners for “years to come,” according to Ubisoft.

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Windows 11 May Be Slowing NVMe SSD Speeds For Users | Digital Trends

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Multiple users reported issues with the speeds of their NVMe SSDs in the past few months, and it seems that the problems can be traced back to Windows 11.

The reports have appeared on various online forums and on Reddit. Several benchmarks support the credibility of these claims.

Various users reported several different issues with their NVMe drives, and Neowin compiled a list of some of the reports found all over the internet. It seems that the nature of the problem varies from drive to drive, depending on the model, but the one common factor is that all of these systems use Windows 11.

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Pacific Ocean garbage patch is immense plastic habitat | BBC News

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Scientists have discovered marine animals living on plastic debris in an area of the open ocean dubbed “the Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. Many of the creatures are coastal species, living miles from their usual habitats, on a patch halfway between the coast of California and Hawaii. Plants and animals, including anemones, tiny marine bugs, molluscs and crabs, were found on 90% of the debris. Scientists are concerned that plastic may help transport invasive species.

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US diplomats to boycott 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics | BBC News

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The US has announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China.

The White House said no official delegation would be sent to the Games because of concerns about China’s human rights record.

But it said US athletes could attend and would have the government’s full support.

China has previously said it will take “resolute countermeasures” in the event of a boycott.

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NASA awards Blue Origin, Nanoracks, Northrop Grumman over $400M in contracts to avoid space station gap | TechCrunch

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Just two days after officially (and quietly) confirming that it intends to replace the International Space Station with a commercial station by 2030, NASA has awarded over $400 million in agreements to three companies to further develop private station plans.

The three companies, which received the awards under the agency’s Commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) Destinations program, are: Nanoracks for $160 million Blue Origin for $130 million Northrop Grumman for $125.6 million

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Malicious Google Play Apps Stole User Banking Info | WIRED

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RESEARCHERS SAID THEY’VE discovered a batch of apps that were downloaded from Google Play more than 300,000 times before the apps were revealed to be banking trojans that surreptitiously siphoned user passwords and two-factor-authentication codes, logged keystrokes, and took screenshots.

The apps—posing as QR scanners, PDF scanners, and cryptocurrency wallets—belonged to four separate Android malware families that were distributed over four months. They used several tricks to sidestep restrictions Google has devised in an attempt to rein in the unending distribution of fraudulent apps in its official marketplace. Those limitations include restricting the use of accessibility services for sight-impaired users to prevent the automatic installation of apps without user consent.

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Crops grow better in Mars soil when given good bacteria, study finds | New Atlas

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Uber Eats deliveries to Mars are going to be expensive, so the first colonists of the Red Planet will need to figure out how to grow their own food locally. A new study has shown that dosing plants with symbiotic bacteria can drastically improve their growth in barren Mars-like soil.

Extremely dry and dusty, the rocky dirt that gives the Red Planet its characteristic tinge is terrible for farming. The regolith, as it’s known, lacks the usual organic matter from plants and animals that provide nutrients for crops, meaning attempts to grow things in this dirt alone have left scientists hungry.

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Japan: Ikea is offering a tiny apartment in Tokyo for less than $1 per month | CNN

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Swedish retailer Ikea is becoming a landlord in Japan with a tiny apartment it will rent out in Tokyo.

The 10-square-meter (107-square-foot) apartment is located in the Shinjuku district and will cost just 99 yen ($0.86) per month to rent, according to details released by Ikea this week.

Only one unit is available, and it is fully furnished with Ikea furniture and accessories. The company is accepting applications from potential tenants, who must be over 20 years old, until December 3.

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TS Conductor redesigns power lines to make the electric grid more efficient | Fast Company

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Though the use of renewable energy is growing—in 2020, wind, solar, and other sources of renewable electricity accounted for nearly 20% of electricity generation in the U.S., up 90% from the year 2000—the basic infrastructure of the grid itself has been slower to change. Almost all overhead electricity lines use the same basic, inefficient design that’s been in use since 1908. The technology isn’t a good fit to accommodate the shift to renewables.

“You may have an existing grid, but if you put in over 500 megawatts of wind because you build a new wind farm, and you connect it to the grid, the grid itself may not be able to absorb that electricity,” says Herve Touati, chief strategy officer for TS Conductor, a startup making high-efficiency conductors for the electricity grid. “So you need to increase the capacity of the grid.”

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