simpz writes: Does anyone know of a fairly inexpensive webcam that doesn't depend on a cloud service? A few years ago, you could buy a cheap webcam (with the usual pan/tilt and IR) for about $50 that was fully manageable from a web browser. Nowadays the web interfaces are limited in functionality (or non-existent), or you need a phone app that doesn't work well (maybe only working through a cloud service). I've even seen a few cheap ones that still need ActiveX to view the video in a web browser, really people!

I'd like to avoid a cloud service for privacy and to allow this to operate on the LAN with no internet connection present. Even a webcam where you can disable the cloud connection outbound would be fine and allow you to use it fully locally. I guess the issue is this has become a niche thing that the ease of a cloud service connection probably wins for most people, and other considerations don't really matter to them.

I had a brief look at a Raspberry Pi solution, but didn't see anything like a small webcam form factor (with pan/tilt etc). Alternatively, are there any third-party firmwares for commercial webcams (sort of a OpenWRT-, DD-WRT-, or LineageOS-style project for webcams) that could provide direct local access only via a web browser (and things like RTSP)?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC An artificial intelligence system should be recognized as the inventor of two ideas in patents filed on its behalf, a team of academics says. The AI has designed interlocking food containers that are easy for robots to grasp and a warning light that flashes in a rhythm that is hard to ignore. Patents offices insist innovations are attributed to humans -- to avoid legal complications that would arise if corporate inventorship were recognized. The academics say this is "outdated." And it could see patent offices refusing to assign any intellectual property rights for AI-generated creations. As a result, two professors from the University of Surrey have teamed up with the Missouri-based inventor of Dabus AI to file patents in the system's name with the relevant authorities in the UK, Europe and US. Dabus is designed to develop new ideas, which is "traditionally considered the mental part of the inventive act," according to creator Stephen Thaler.

Law professor Ryan Abbott told BBC News: "These days, you commonly have AIs writing books and taking pictures - but if you don't have a traditional author, you cannot get copyright protection in the US. So with patents, a patent office might say, 'If you don't have someone who traditionally meets human-inventorship criteria, there is nothing you can get a patent on.' In which case, if AI is going to be how we're inventing things in the future, the whole intellectual property system will fail to work." He suggested an AI should be recognized as being the inventor and whoever the AI belonged to should be the patent's owner, unless they sold it on.

Intel's new generation of processors is nigh upon us, and it promises to be a doozy in several respects. VentureBeat: The Santa Clara chipmaker today launched 11 new 10-nanometer 10th Gen Intel Core processors (code-named Ice Lake) designed for slim laptops, 2-in-1s, and other high-end mobile form factors. In addition to capable new integrated graphics and enhanced connectivity courtesy Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 3, the chips feature tweaks intended to accelerate task-specific workloads like AI inference and photo editing, as well as gaming. Intel expects the first 35 or so systems sporting Ice Lake-U and Ice Lake-Y chips to ship for the holiday season. Several that passed the chipmaker's Project Athena certification were previewed at Computex in Taiwan, including the Acer Swift 5, Dell XPS 13-inch 2-in 1, HP Envy 13, and Lenovo S940.

No matter which processor in the 10th Gen portfolio your future PC sports, its four cores (eight logical cores) paired with a 6MB or 8MB cache will support up to 32 GB of LP4/x-3733 (or up to 64GB of DDR4-3200), and they'll sip 9W, 15W, or 28W of power while clocking up to 4.1GHz at maximum Turbo Boost frequency. Each chip has 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes for external use, and their memory controllers allow for idle power states for less intensive tasks. With respect to AI and machine learning, every laptop-bound 10th Gen processor -- whether Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 -- boasts Sunny Cove cores with Intel AVX-512-Deep Learning Boost, a new instruction set that speeds up automatic image enhancements, photo indexing, media postprocessing, and other AI-driven tasks.

According to The Planetary Society, LightSail 2 has successfully raised its orbit using solar sailing, making it the first small spacecraft to demonstrate the concept. From the report: Since unfurling the spacecraft's silver solar sail last week, mission managers have been optimizing the way the spacecraft orients itself during solar sailing. After a few tweaks, LightSail 2 began raising its orbit around the Earth. In the past 4 days, the spacecraft has raised its orbital high point, or apogee, by about 2 kilometers. The perigee, or low point of its orbit, has dropped by a similar amount, which is consistent with pre-flight expectations for the effects of atmospheric drag on the spacecraft. The mission team has confirmed the apogee increase can only be attributed to solar sailing, meaning LightSail 2 has successfully completed its primary goal of demonstrating flight by light for CubeSats.

The milestone makes LightSail 2 the first spacecraft to use solar sailing for propulsion in Earth orbit, the first small spacecraft to demonstrate solar sailing, and just the second-ever solar sail spacecraft to successfully fly, following Japan's IKAROS, which launched in 2010. LightSail 2 is also the first crowdfunded spacecraft to successfully demonstrate a new form of propulsion. The mission team will continue raising LightSail 2's orbit for roughly a month, until the perigee decreases to the point where atmospheric drag overcomes the thrust from solar sailing. During the orbit-raising period, the team will continue optimizing the performance of the solar sail.

Researchers from Tsinghua University in China and University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new kind of soft robot that looks like a bent strip of paper, but is able to move at 20 body lengths per second and survive being stomped on. The robot has been presented in the current issue of Science Robotics. IEEE Spectrum reports: This prototype robot measures just 3 centimeters by 1.5 cm. It takes a scanning electron microscope to actually see what the robot is made of -- a thermoplastic layer is sandwiched by palladium-gold electrodes, bonded with adhesive silicone to a structural plastic at the bottom. When an AC voltage (as low as 8 volts but typically about 60 volts) is run through the electrodes, the thermoplastic extends and contracts, causing the robot's back to flex and the little "foot" to shuffle. A complete step cycle takes just 50 milliseconds, yielding a 200 hertz gait. And technically, the robot "runs," since it does have a brief aerial phase.

The researchers also put together a prototype with two legs instead of one, which was able to demonstrate a potentially faster galloping gait by spending more time in the air. They suggest that robots like these could be used for "environmental exploration, structural inspection, information reconnaissance, and disaster relief," which are the sorts of things that you suggest that your robot could be used for when you really have no idea what it could be used for. But this work is certainly impressive, with speed and robustness that are largely unmatched by other soft robots. An untethered version seems possible due to the relatively low voltages required to drive the robot, and if they can put some peanut-sized sensors on there as well, practical applications might actually be forthcoming sometime soon.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: About 5,000 euros ($5,600) are set to buy your 10-year-old combustion clunker an electric makeover -- and offer a cut-price way to avoid driving bans across European cities. French startup Transition-One has developed retrofitting technology that adds an electric engine, batteries and a connected dashboard into older models of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, Volkswagen AG, Renault SA and PSA Group for about 8,500 euros, or 5,000 euros after government subsidies in France.

In the prototype Twingo, three battery packs are fitted in front and two in what used to be the gas tank. The whole pack, bought from a Tesla Inc. parts reseller, weighs 120 kilograms (265 pounds). To compare, Renault's electric Zoe has a 290 kilogram battery for a 210 kilometer driving range. Prices start at around 23,000 euros excluding battery rental battery. The transition takes less than a day, leaving the original stick shift and gear box and installing the plug behind the hatch that drivers usually pop open to refill the tank. Founder Aymeric Libeau, whose previous experiences include co-founding software company Pentalog Group, has worked on retrofitting for two years, and tested the method with a French business school. He is looking to raise 6 million euros to build a factory he says would be capable of churning out as many as 4,000 vehicles next year.

Libeau expects French and European regulator approval by the end of the year and will start pre-orders in September to test demand.

Samsung is one of the only companies still producing tablets to rival Apple's iPad. Today the company announced the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6, its latest high-end tablet, for $649. Pre-orders start August 23, and the device ships September 6. Samsung says there will be an LTE version available later. Ars Technica reports: The Samsung Tab S6 features a 10.5-inch 2560x1600 OLED display, a 2.84GHz Snapdragon 855, and a 7040mAh battery. The base version has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, with a higher tier of 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. For cameras, there's an 8MP front camera, while the rear gets a 13MP main camera and a 5MP wide-angle lens. The device is down to 5.7mm thick and weighs 420 grams. This is Samsung's first-ever tablet with an in-screen fingerprint reader. Interestingly, it's an optical reader instead of the ultrasonic tech that the Galaxy S10 uses. Somehow, on a 10-inch tablet, Samsung couldn't find room for a headphone jack. Even Apple, which ditched the headphone jack two years ago, still puts a headphone jack on iPads. Samsung is apparently declaring war on the headphone jack with this round of updates -- the Galaxy Note 10, launching next week, is expected to dump the headphone jack, too.

The S-Pen comes with the tablet but doesn't stow away inside the body; instead, a groove on the back of the tablet gives it a spot to magnetically attach to. Of course, don't expect the tablet to sit flat on a table with a big pen attached to the back. As with other newer Samsung devices, the S-Pen now comes with a battery and some Bluetooth functionality, allowing it to do things like work as a remote shutter button for the camera. A new "Air action" gesture system lets you do things like change the camera mode or scroll through pictures with a flick of the pen.

According to a recent financial report from Sony, the PlayStation 4 has become the fastest home console to reach 100 million sales. Geek.com reports: The 100 million mark is an impressive milestone for any console no matter how long it takes to reach it. Sony previous hit it with the original PlayStation and set the total sales record with the PlayStation 2's 155 million sales. Meanwhile, Nintendo also achieved this with the original Wii, the Game Boy line of handhelds, and the 154 million sales of the Nintendo DS. But after failing to hit the target with the beleaguered (albeit still successful) PlayStation 3, Sony has bounced back with the PlayStation 4. And since the PS4 has only been on the market for five years and seven months, it beat the record two months earlier than the previous fastest seller the PS2.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Baseball's future has arrived in the Atlantic League, a collection of eight independent professional teams that span from New Britain, Conn., to Sugar Land, Texas. Last week marked the introduction of the most significant innovation: an automated strike zone, shifting responsibility for calling balls and strikes from a person to an emotionless piece of technology free of the biases and inconsistencies of mere humans. And if the test goes well, the days of big-league players imploring umps to schedule an eye exam could soon come to an end.

Ducks manager Wally Backman predicted that MLB will adopt the system within five years. "It's going to happen," he said. "There have been a few pitches that are questionable, but not as many as if it was a human. The machine is definitely going to be more right than they are." Every Atlantic League stadium, including the Patriots' TD Bank Ballpark in Central New Jersey, now features a TrackMan device perched high above the plate. It uses 3-D Doppler radar to register balls and strikes and relays its "decision" through a secure Wi-Fi network to the umpire, equipped with an iPhone in his pocket connected to a wired earbud. That umpire, positioned behind the plate as normal, hears a man's voice saying "ball" or "strike" and then signals the verdict.

An anonymous reader quotes Variety: Oculus VR headset users just got one more video service to watch in their virtual living rooms: Amazon's Prime Video service went live on Oculus Go, Quest and Samsung Gear VR headsets with a dedicated Prime Video VR app Wednesday.

In addition to access to the entire Prime Video catalog, Prime Video VR will also feature select 360-degree video films. At launch, these include "Invasion!" from Baobab Studios and "Greenland Melting" from Frontline and NOVA, according to a blog post.

The app offers users a way to watch Prime Video titles in a virtual theater setting, and also comes with voice search for the entire Prime catalog. Prime Video VR is at launch only available to Prime subscribers in the U.S. and the U.K., but there does seem to be a way for users who aren't Prime subscribers to browse their Amazon Video purchases.

"RISC-V is open source, so it's much more resistant to government bans," reports Tom's Hardware: The Alibaba Group Holding, China's largest e-commerce company, unveiled its first self-designed chip, Xuantie 910, based on the open source RISC-V instruction set architecture. As reported by Nikkei Asian Review, the chip will target edge computing and autonomous driving, while the RISC-V's open source license may help Alibaba side-step the U.S. trade war altogether.

Alibaba doesn't intend to manufacture the chips itself. Instead, it could outsource production to other Chinese semiconductor companies, such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. According to Nikkei, the Chinese government has been encouraging wealthy Chinese companies from various industries to enter the semiconductor industry in recent years. The government's efforts accelerated when the trade war with the U.S. started last year. It reportedly forced foreign companies to transfer their technology and IP to Chinese companies if they wanted any chance at the local Chinese market.

"Most Chinese companies are still wary about whether Arm's architecture and Intel's architecture and technical support would remain accessible amid tech tension and further geopolitical uncertainties," Sean Yang, an analyst at research company CINNO in Shanghai, said, according to Nikkei. "It would be very helpful for China to increase long-term semiconductor sufficiency if big companies such as Alibaba jump in to build a chip (design) platform which smaller Chinese developers can just use without worrying about being cut off from supplies."
The article also notes that using RISC-V will give Alibaba "the ability to completely customize and extend the ISA of the processors built on top of it without having to get permission from any company first."

CNBC reports that to solve America's recycling crisis, "companies and municipalities are turning to AI-assisted robots." The problem began last year when China, the world's largest recyclable processor, stopped accepting most American scrap plastic and cardboard due to contamination problems, and a glut of plastics overwhelming its own processing facilities. Historically, China recycled the bulk of U.S. waste... The situation is dire for many local economies as recycling costs skyrocket. It's forced many cities and some small communities to stop recycling all together. Now more waste is ending up in landfills and incinerators.

To tackle this environmental catastrophe, U.S. companies and researchers are developing AI-assisted robotic technology that can work with humans in processing plants and improve quality control. The goal is to have robots do a better job at sorting garbage and reduce the contamination and health hazards human workers face in recycling plants every day. Sorting trash is a dirty and dangerous job. Recycling workers are more than twice as likely as other workers to be injured on the job, according to a report at the University of Illinois School of Public Health. The profession also has high fatality rates.

The way the robots work is simple. Guided by cameras and computer systems trained to recognize specific objects, the robots' arms glide over moving conveyor belts until they reach their target. Oversized tongs or fingers with sensors that are attached to the arms snag cans, glass, plastic containers, and other recyclable items out of the rubbish and place them into nearby bins. The robots -- most of which have come online only within the past year -- are assisting human workers and can work up to twice as fast.

schwit1 quotes IEEE Spectrum: In 2017, members of the mobile telephony industry group 3GPP were bickering over whether to speed the development of 5G standards. One proposal, originally put forward by Vodafone and ultimately agreed to by the rest of the group, promised to deliver 5G networks sooner by developing more aspects of 5G technology simultaneously.

Adopting that proposal may have also meant pushing some decisions down the road. One such decision concerned how 5G networks should encode wireless signals. 3GPP's Release 15, which laid the foundation for 5G, ultimately selected orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a holdover from 4G, as the encoding option. But Release 16, expected by year's end, will include the findings of a study group assigned to explore alternatives. Wireless standards are frequently updated, and in the next 5G release, the industry could address concerns that OFDM may draw too much power in 5G devices and base stations.

That's a problem, because 5G is expected to require far more base stations to deliver service and connect billions of mobile and IoT devices. "I don't think the carriers really understood the impact on the mobile phone, and what it's going to do to battery life," says James Kimery, the director of marketing for RF and software-defined radio research at National Instruments Corp. "5G is going to come with a price, and that price is battery consumption." And Kimery notes that these concerns apply beyond 5G handsets. China Mobile has "been vocal about the power consumption of their base stations," he says. A 5G base station is generally expected to consume roughly three times as much power as a 4G base station. And more 5G base stations are needed to cover the same area.

AmiMoJo quotes Reuters: Scorching temperatures across Europe coupled with prolonged dry weather has reduced French nuclear power generation by around 5.2 gigawatts (GW) or 8%, French power grid operator RTE's data showed on Thursday. Electricity output was curtailed at six reactors by 0840 GMT on Thursday, while two other reactors were offline, data showed. High water temperatures and sluggish flows limit the ability to use river water to cool reactors.

In Germany, PreussenElektra, the nuclear unit of utility E.ON, said it would take its Grohnde reactor offline on Friday due to high temperatures in the Weser river.
France's nuclear reactors supply more than 75% of its electricity, according to the article -- though their grid operator says they still have enough capacity left to meet demand.

A new report (XLSX) from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas says wind power has surpassed coal for the first time in the state. CNN reports: Wind has generated 22% of the state's electrical needs this year. It just edged out coal, which provided 21% of the Lone Star State's power, according to the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas, which manages electrical flow on about 90% of the Texan grid. Sixteen years ago, in 2003, wind made up just 0.8% of the state's power, and coal satisfied 40% of electrical needs, the council documents show. By 2010, wind accounted for 8% of the state's energy, and it steadily inched forward to 19% last year and now 22% in the first half of 2019. At the same time, coal's portion of the energy mix has declined over the past several years, from 37% in 2013 to 24% last year and just 21% this year. Yet while wind has soared and coal-generated power has cooled, natural gas still accounts for the largest share of the state's energy mix, generating 46% of its power in 2003 and staying strong at 44% last year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A new report from The Wall Street Journal shares some of the proposals for Saudi Arabia's biggest megaproject yet: a city built in the desert named Neom, where robots will outnumber humans and hologram teachers will educate genetically-enhanced students. These are only proposals, of course, dreamt up by American consulting firms like McKinsey and Boston Consulting who have no incentive to bring Saudi leaders down to Earth. But all the same, they give you a flavor of what trillions of dollars of oil wealth will do to your sense of proportion.

The whole Neom project is undeniably fascinating. It was first announced in 2017, with Saudi Arabia's de-facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, saying he wants the city to attract the "world's greatest minds and best talents." According to planning documents reported by the WSJ, bin Salman "envisions Neom the largest city globally by GDP, and wanted to understand what he can get with up to 500 billion USD investment." The project is the flagpole of Saudi Arabia's plans to diversify the country's economy away from oil. MBS and other Saudi leaders known this source of revenue can't last forever, and they're keen to develop cities like Neom as new commercial hubs. As currently planned, Neom will occupy a region the size of Massachusetts. This will include a huge coastal urban sprawl; outlying towns and villages; advance manufacturing hubs in industries like biotech and robotics; and links with international shipping routes. Early building work has already begun, with facilities including a new airport and palace. Some of the key features of the city include cloud seeding to make it rain, dystopian surveillance to keep citizens safe, genetic engineering to increase human strength and IQ, robot cage fights and "maids," flying taxis, and even a fake moon that could perhaps be created by a fleet of drones or via live-streaming images from space.

The report notes that it's anyone's guess as to whether Neom will live up to its planners' dreams. What may hinder its success is Saudi Arabia's corruption, difficult legal system, and unappealing social norms. "Alcohol is banned; women's rights are restricted; and homosexuality is illegal," the report notes. There's also the sweltering weather that'll only get worse with climate change.

MojoKid writes: AMD's new Ryzen 3000 processors can boost as high as 4.6 GHz, a notable bump over previous Ryzen models, but what about AMD's purported Instructions Per Cycle (IPC) gains? Has AMD's Zen 2 architecture finally caught up to Intel's Coffee Lake-based Core series processors in terms of IPC? To prove this out, HotHardware pitted a 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X against Intel's 8-core Core i9-9900K in an array of tests, with both chips locked at 4GHz across all cores and four of the Ryzen CPU cores (or 2 CCXs) disabled (save for a couple of instances to show MT scaling). This allowed AMD's fastest Zen 2-based CPU, with its full 64MB L3 cache complement, to compete against Intel's current fastest desktop chip at identical clock speeds. A series of single-threaded benchmarks were run, in addition to some standard games tests, which are lightly multithreaded. The Intel and AMD multi-core processors essentially traded blows across a number of tests, but Intel won more often than not. The blue team notched IPC wins in SANDRA's Dhrystone integer tests, Geekbench, POV-Ray, LAME MT, and the gaming tests. AMD stole single-threaded victories in SANDRA's Whetstone FPU tests, Cinebench, and Y-Cruncher. While not an outright win for AMD, the company has obviously worked hard to improve 3rd Gen Ryzen IPC throughput, while its multi-core scaling is downright impressive.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: In a tweet on Friday, President Trump said his administration will not grant Apple any relief on Mac Pro parts made in China. "Apple will not be given Tariff wavers (sic), or relief, for Mac Pro parts that are made in China," President Trump said. "Make them in USA, no Tariffs!" Apple asked for waivers on tariffs on the Mac Pro. Apple said it wanted to be exempt on some parts it uses for the new Mac Pro, including a power supply unit, the stainless-steel enclosure, finished mice and trackpads and circuit boards. "There are no other sources for this proprietary, Apple-designed component," Apple said in a filing. Apple shifted production of the Mac Pro to China in June, saving shipping costs for components that are supplied near Shanghai.

DRAM is just as much a commodity as oil. But manufacturers can only dream about the benefits of negotiating supply together. From a report: You've got to feel for the world's biggest suppliers of DRAM. Makers of these chips, which temporarily store information in PCs, smartphones and services, endured years of boom-bust profit swings and bruising competition long before the trade war began. The sector finally consolidated into just three companies holding 95% of global supply of DRAM. And yet earnings stability still eludes them. SK Hynix early Thursday posted an 88% drop in second-quarter net income, the lowest in three years and missing estimates. Investors cheered when the South Korean company concurrently announced that it will slow expansion.

SK Hynix supplies around 30% of DRAM. As much as manufacturers would like to tell you otherwise, these chips are all pretty similar, which is why they're considered a commodity. And with most commodities, like oil, prices shift with supply and demand. Profits, in turn, depend on balancing price and supply against the cost of the multi-billion dollar factories required to churn out these chips. It's no easy task. In fact, profitability is as much a function of game theory as capacity and cost management. If you cut supply while your competitor maintains output, prices may rise -- but most of that benefit goes to your rival and you miss out. If no one cuts supply even when demand is falling, then you're all likely to suffer lower prices, which could drag you into the red.

There's a collection of 14 nations well aware of how this works that came up with an ingenious solution: Sit down and negotiate supply together. Except they're peddling oil, not chips, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries can't always see eye to eye.

Samsung said it has made the necessary improvements to fix the Galaxy Fold and put it back on sale. The April launch of the device was postponed after early reviewers reported broken screens; it's now scheduled to go on sale in September. From a report: "Samsung has taken the time to fully evaluate the product design, make necessary improvements and run rigorous tests," the company said in a statement. Improvements include extending a protective layer to make it clear it is not meant to be removed, as well as strengthening the hinge area with new protection caps. One explanation for the broken screens appears to have been that some reviewers removed a film which they thought was a typical protective layer that came with the phone when first bought.