Google is adding more fuel to the AR fire burning inside the company. The Information reports Google has struck a deal to buy Raxium, a “five-year-old startup that develops tiny light-emitting diodes for displays used in augmented and mixed reality devices.”
Raxium hasn’t released a commercial product, but its work revolves around Micro LEDs, which can make the kind of tiny displays AR devices need. Today, pretty much everyone buys their OLED display technology from Samsung, but Micro LEDs are expected to be the next big thing, and there’s no clear winner in that market yet. Apple has been investing in the technology for some time and bought a Micro LED startup in 2014, while Meta is partnering with a company called Plessey for Micro LED tech. The juggernaut Samsung is also interested in the market and is already selling Micro LED TVs.
Google’s latest wave of AR development involves job listings for an “Augmented Reality OS” that promises to reach “billions” of people and a “Project Iris” AR headset. The hardware division also bought a company called “North,” which made AR glasses that actually looked normal. That “Project Iris” headset is supposedly due out in 2024.
VR and AR contribute a lot to the Google Graveyard
Comparing Google’s AR gear to the company’s VR efforts over the past few years is fair, especially since VR was spearheaded by same team with the same leader, Clay Bavor, who is now VP of the “Google Labs” division. Google’s VR efforts from ~2014 to 2021 involved several acquisitions and hirings and a ton of rumors. Google met with chip vendors to make sure the features it needed would appear on future phones and laid out hardware requirements for OEMs. The company built VR support into Android with lots of hardware support and what you could call a “VR OS,” with a VR UI for the settings pages, a VR launcher, and a VR Play Store. Google brought VR support to YouTube and built the world-class “Tilt Brush” VR painting app.
But the result of all that work and a million years of rumors were a bunch of products that are no longer around today. Google Cardboard, a phone-powered VR headset made out of literal cardboard, lasted from 2014 to 2021. Google Daydream, a phone-powered plastic VR headset with a small controller, lasted from 2016 to 2019. Fully standalone Daydream VR headsets came out in 2018 and died with the rest of Daydream a year later. VR support was stripped out of Android in 2020, and Tilt Brush lasted from 2016-2021. Daydream and Cardboard were both initially rather well-received, but Google’s bar for product survival is very, very high.
There’s also the wave of AR/VR development that happened before all the Daydream/Cardboard stuff. Project Tango, which first brought AR to phones via myriad specialized sensors, lasted from 2014-2017. Tango eventually morphed into Android’s ARCore, which does similar AR effects using standard hardware. That effort is still up and running. Before all that, there was Google Glass, which wasn’t ever 3D augmented reality. Glass was more of a 2D smartphone-style interface that projected into a transparent lens in front of your eye. Glass insists it is still alive and still sells to enterprise consumers, but the consumer wing lasted from about 2012 to 2015.
For nearly 30 years, Square Enix’s Chrono Trigger has stood tall as one of the defining releases of the SNES era and JRPG genre. In a medium that has dramatically evolved over the past three decades, it’s one of those rare games that still feels as fresh and vital today as it did in 1995. And now there’s even more of a reason to revisit this gem if you own an ultrawide monitor.
Earlier this week, Square Enix the Steam version of Chrono Trigger for the first time in four years. Spotted by , the update adds support for 21:9 resolutions, “improved” d-pad controls, and a handful of user interface improvements among other quality of life changes. The addition of ultrawide screen support is particularly notable since it’s a feature that’s rare to find on retro ports and even some modern games – , for instance, doesn’t come with native 21:9 support.
The PC version of Chrono Trigger has come a long way since Square first released it in 2018. At the time, the company was rightfully criticized for releasing a lazy port. At launch, it included interface elements that were directly lifted from the Android and iOS releases. To its credit, however, Square spent the next year polishing the release, and following this week’s update, you can safely say the PC version is one of the definitive ways to play the classic.
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Google’s Android messaging app is getting an interesting new update today. Messages by Google, which is the name the app goes by these days, can now show reactions from iPhones as emojis, “just like when you’re messaging with someone who’s using an Android device”, Google says. This will initially be available for devices set to English.
Next up, videos shared via Messages by Google can be sent as Google Photos links right inside the conversation. This means iPhone users will be able to watch a high quality version of the video through Google Photos, instead of the blurry mess that normally gets sent to them via MMS. In the near future, you’ll also be able to send photos in a similar fashion.
Google didn’t waste any time in condemning Apple for ignoring RCS, the standard which today “lets people with Android devices share beautiful, high-quality photos and videos with one another”. Google outright says it encourages “Apple to join the rest of the mobile industry and adopt RCS” so that it can “make messaging better and more secure, no matter what device you choose”.
Messages by Google has some other new features too, like Organized inbox which automatically sorts your messages into Personal and Business tabs. One-time password messages can be set so they get automatically deleted after 24 hours to reduce clutter. This feature is landing in the US after initially launching in India.
Gentle nudges remind you to reply to messages you may have missed or simply forgotten about (Gmail does this too). This is rolling out first to English users across the globe.
Finally, if you save someone’s birthday in your device’s contacts app, you’ll get a gentle reminder on that day, when you open Messages or jump into a conversation with them.
All of these updates are rolling out “over the coming weeks”.
MOSCOW/BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been accused of weak leadership in the Ukraine crisis and being soft on Russia. Yet on his visit to the Kremlin on Tuesday, he not only stood up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, he seemed to relish it.
Political pundits wondered how the mild-mannered Scholz, who took office in December, would fare treading into “the lion’s den”. Russian officials have been known to publicly taunt or seek to outplay their visitors in a test of their mettle.
Putin invited his black Labrador into a meeting with former Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2007 despite her well-known fear of dogs.
But Scholz was unexpectedly combative in his joint news conference with Putin during a day-trip to Moscow that was part of frantic diplomacy to avert a Russian invasion of Ukraine – even while maintaining his trademark quiet, measured tone.
When Putin criticised NATO, saying it had launched a war in Europe by bombing the former Yugoslavia in 19999, Scholz hit back, saying this was done to prevent genocide, a reference to the persecution of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
Putin countered that Russia considered the treatment of ethnic Russians in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine to be genocide. In a solo news conference later, Scholz said Putin’s use of the word genocide was wrong.
Scholz even poked fun at Putin’s fears of NATO’s eastern enlargement given it was not on the agenda any time soon and his lengthy time at the helm of his country.
“I don’t quite know how long the president plans to stay in office,” he said, with a grin towards Putin. “I have a feeling this could be a long time, but not forever.”
Some analysts praised him for also voicing concerns about civil rights issues and meeting with various activists.
When asked later by reporters about the jousting with Putin, Scholz smiled, saying this gave a flavour of what had been “intense” four-hour talks.
Some critics still complained he had ceded too much to Russia by minimising the possibility of Ukraine gaining NATO membership.
His more assertive tone though could go some way to restore his credibility as one of the top political players in Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron had taken the lead lately on the Ukraine crisis in Europe with a Moscow visit, albeit with mixed results.
And the French leader did not even attempt a rebuttal when Putin last week in a joint news conference questioned NATO’s claim that it was strictly a defensive alliance, citing the bloc’s offensive campaigns in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Serbia.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh in Berlin, Madeline Chambers in Berlin and Mark Trevelyan in London; Editing by Sam Holmes)
The “Stephen Hawking at Work” free exhibition opened at the Science Museum in Britain’s capital Thursday, displaying notable items from his office, where much of his research took place.
Hawking, who lived with a degenerative motor neuron disease for decades, helped bring advanced science into popular culture and met with world leaders, becoming a household name internationally before he died in 2018 at age 76.
Hawking’s daughter, Lucy, said it was “wonderful to see my father’s working environment recreated.”
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“It was such a unique and fascinating environment, and I am delighted his office has been recreated in order to inspire scientists of the future,” she said in a statement.
The blackboard in the exhibit illustrates Hawking’s playful sense of humor and was used during a “Superspace and Supergravity” conference in 1980. Delegates covered it in equations, cartoons and jokes about one another. Hawking had the souvenir framed and hung in his office.
Because even small vibrations could cause the blackboard to lose chalk, Juan-Andres Leon, curator of Stephen Hawking’s Office, said in an email, “the museum applied a starch-based material to stabilise the chalk dust and enclosed it in a frame.”
The Science Museum said the items “provide insights into a scientist who challenged perceptions of theoretical physics with a playful, imaginative and social approach to work.”
The Cambridge University professor probed the greatest mysteries of the cosmos and became a globally celebrated symbol of the power of the human mind.
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Hawking was diagnosed at the age of 21 with a degenerative disease similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, that left him unable to move nearly any of his muscles or speak. Initially given two years to live, a prognosis that threw him into a profound depression, he completed his doctorate and rose to the position of Lucasian professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge — the same post held by Isaac Newton 300 years earlier.
His life was the basis of the award-winning movie “The Theory of Everything” in 2014, with Eddie Redmayne playing the young Hawking alongside Felicity Jones as his first wife, Jane.
Hawking also played himself on TV programs, speaking with the aid of a voice synthesizer controlled by his fingers on a keyboard. He was featured in shows such as “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “The Simpsons,” the latter featuring Hawking telling the show’s lazy animated patriarch: “Your theory of a doughnut-shaped universe is interesting, Homer. I may have to steal it.”
Hawking spent much of his career searching for a way to reconcile Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity with quantum physics and produce a “theory of everything.” His scientific achievements included breakthroughs in understanding the extreme conditions of black holes, objects so dense that not even light can escape their gravity.
Although he never won a Nobel Prize, he wrote an international bestseller, “A Brief History of Time” (1988), that delved into the origin and ultimate fate of the universe, deliberately setting out to provide a mass-market primer on an often incomprehensible subject.
In a statement, Britain’s Culture Minister, Nadine Dorries, welcomed the exhibition and called it an “exciting new display … honouring one of the greatest British scientists ever to have lived.” She added that she hopes the items “inspire a new generation of thinkers and scientists.”
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The exhibition also contains one of only five known copies of Hawking’s PhD thesis, which examined possible solutions to Einstein’s equations of general relativity to demonstrate that the universe must have originated in a singularity, or single point of infinite density.
After London, the exhibition will go on tour to other British cities, including Manchester, Bradford and York. Global audiences will be able to explore the items from Hawking’s working life in an online collection later this year, the museum said.
We recently reported that the HDMI Licensing Administrator stopped labeling newer HDMI displays with the 2.0 version, and allowed manufacturers the ability to utilize the HDMI 2.1 moniker, as long as it fits the standards already set. This potentially can cause a manufacturer to label an HDMI 2.0 display as the 2.1 version to falsify claims to consumers and was seen by a Chinese seller practicing that exact scenario.
Now, there is a new HDMI 2.1 variant about to be released at some point in the future with the moniker of “HDMI 2.1a.”
MSI Says No To Fake Marketing, Launches ‘Real’ HDMI 2.1 Ready Optix MAG281URF 4K Gaming Monitor With 144Hz Refresh Rate
The HDMI Licensing Administrator confirms new standards for HDMI 2.1 with the addition of SBTM
What is currently odd is the information about HDMI 2.1a, as it will be soon called, was appearing on the Licensing Administration’s page but has since mysteriously disappeared with no explanations. It is possible that there are a few last-minute decisions to finalize the new standard for use, but that in and of itself is pure speculation. VideoCardz has mentioned that the information can be found via Google Cache. One of the newest additions to the HDMI 2.1a is the use of Source-Based Tone Mapping or SBTM.
Source-Based Tone Mapping (SBTM) is a new HDR feature that allows a portion of the HDR mapping to be performed by the Source device instead of the Display device. SBTM is especially useful in cases where HDR and SDR video or graphics are combined together into a single picture, such as picture-in-picture or a program guide with an integrated video window. SBTM also enables PCs and gaming devices to automatically produce an optimized HDR signal in order to maximize the utilization of the display’s HDR capabilities without manual user configuration of the Source device.
— HDMI.org
Gamers and PC enthusiasts will see the most use of the new technology, due to the ability for multiwindowed environments. The source device, in essence, controls the tone mapping. This process allows separate windows to display either SDR or HDR optimized content simultaneously. TFTCentral states that the new SBTM is not a replacement for the current HDR technology (HDR10 and HLG, as well as other offerings). SBTM is set to deepen the HDR experience by offering more capability for optimization with HDR-capable devices.
Samsung has announced its first displays that will support the HDR10+ Gaming standard, an expanded games-focused version of HDR10 that can also calibrate automatically. HDR10+ Gaming was initially announced in October, but now Samsung reveals that its new 2022 lineup of QLED TVs (Q70 and above) and gaming monitors will be the first to support the standard.
Samsung partnered with Saber Interactive to bring support for HDR10+ to Redout 2 and Pinball FX, which will both be showcased at CES 2022 (as long as the game developer doesn’t drop out). Also, Game Mechanic Studios will have its HDR10+ gaming title Happy Trails and the Kidnapped Princess on the floor.
The games Samsung is touting are in contrast to major games available on the competing standard: Dolby Vision gaming — including Halo Infinite, Gears 5, and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. The Xbox Series X and S already support at least ten games on Dolby Vision.
An unnamed Samsung Odyssey-like curved gaming monitor with the new HDR10+ gaming compatible Pinball FXImage: Samsung
HDR10+ Gaming has more visual metadata than regular HDR10 (targets four times its peak brightness), supports variable refresh rate (VRR), and auto low latency mode (ALLM) for better looking and performing game visuals. Samsung also says the standard will work “over 120Hz” but does not go into detail.
The competing standard, Dolby Vision gaming, is already doing all of this (save for the 120Hz plus claim). Also, Samsung’s rival LG announced its C1 and G1 OLED displays with the Dolby Vision gaming standard in June of this year.
The whole experience of HDR10+, much like Dolby Vision, is only executable if the whole setup is vertically integrated to support the format. This means that in order to experience HDR10+ Gaming, your PC will need an Nvidia graphics card (with support coming for GeForce RTX 30 Series, RTX 20 Series, and GTX 16 Series GPUs), a game that is programmed with the extra visual metadata, and one of Samsung’s new displays that can output it.
Apple has filed a patent that details designs for an all-glass iPhone which would have a wrap-around display for images on both the front and back sides.
Glass appears to be the new black with the company also coming up with bold designs for its Watch and Mac products alongside the iPhone.
The design patent was filed last week, although that does not necessarily mean any of the ideas will come to fruition.
Apple has filed patents for an all-glass iPhone which could see screens on sides
Illustration of the all-glass iPhone is the most detailed, with displays on both the front and back together with functional touchscreen buttons on the side
The design is essentially an iPhone ‘within a glass enclosure’ with the buttons overalapping from the screen on the front
The glass iPhone is described as an, ‘Electronic device with glass enclosure’ although 9to5Mac dryly notes ‘It’s almost as if Apple has patented a glass box.’
The patent filing also include drawings which see some of the screen’s buttons curved along the edge of the phone including ones to activate airplane mode, Wi-Fi enabling, and controls for volume.
But the highlight is the filing which suggests the product would also have a display on the back of the phone, and not just the main screen on the front.
The lengthy patent filing goes into detail suggesting the device will have screens that run over the edge of the phone so that all six sides will have the capability to display something, or at the very least will be glass encased, with room for microphones and speakers.
Artist impressions over how the phone might look show it to have screens on all six sides
The back of the phone may also have a display which could show other people you are on a call
The glass iPhone looks familiar with its curved sides and rounded shape that fit in the palm of one’s hand
In the design patent illustration, buttons are seen to spill over the sides for ease of use
It might be hard to know which way is front and which is back with screens on both sides
The filing noted the challenges inherit in producing, ‘a device with multiple displays viewable through multiple transparent sides–including embodiments where displays are visible through each of the six main sides of the device.’
Apple’s filing also includes a drawings of an all-glass cylindrical Mac Pro tower through which the components would be able to be seen and owners would witness the processors in action.
The filing also shows pictures of how an Apple Watch may appear featuring glass enclosures with the curved edge of the screen blending seamlessly with the watch’s casing.
The filing also shows pictures of how an Apple Watch may appear featuring glass enclosures with the curved edge of the screen blending seamlessly with the watch’s casing
Apple’s filing also includes a drawings of an all-glass cylindrical Mac Pro tower through which the components would be able to be seen
Ideas such as a glass iPhone may never actually come to market with the design being more conceptual in nature.
Nevertheless, the fact such patents have been filed give some insight into what lines the company maybe thinking along when it comes to future products.
‘Apple will definitely head in this direction at some point, the questions being when and how far…’ tweeted tech Ben Lovejoy who looked at the patent.
Plans were also released for a glass encased tower for a Mac computer through which the components could be seen
The iPhone 13 just hit stores in September and has been so popular the phone needs to be ordered in advance.
Experts are already looking ahead to what the next iteration of the world’s most popular smartphone will look like.
In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman predicted the incremental tweaks to the iPhone 13 were to give Apple a chance to focus on a overhauling its design for the iPhone 14, expected in 2022.
Gurman was light on details on this overhaul but did say consumers should expect ‘new entry-level and Pro models and a complete redesign.’
Apple tipster Jon Prosser predicted the iPhone 14 is also going to see the iPhone’s notch ditched in favor of a room-saving punch-hole selfie camera.
Prosser, who hosts the YouTube channel Front Page Tech, claims to have seen renderings of the iPhone 14 Pro Max with the punch-hole design.
Earler this year Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted the top-tier iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max would lose their ‘notch’ in favor of a punch-hole camera
Days after the iPhone 13 went on sale, Apple prognosticator Mark Gurman said the Apple iPhone 14 would see a ‘complete redesign’
ATLANTA — Watching a blockbuster action movie on your phone. Driving a tightly tuned sports car with a donut spare tire. Listening to the Vienna Philharmonic on cheap headphones. Watching what has become of baseball and its starting pitching.
The thrill is gone.
We are kings of convenience. The Braves beat the Astros in World Series Game 3 Friday night, 2–0, in what might have been an all-time classic, what with a no-hitter in place through seven innings on a dank, Dickensian kind of evening. Instead, two runs scored. Eleven pitchers were used. No history was written. Unless you are into infamy.
This was the 47th regulation World Series game in which only one or two runs scored. It took the longest time (3:24) among all those without a bottom of the ninth.
There have been 681 World Series games played. This was the first one with so many pitchers and so few runs.
Braves manager Brian Snitker pulled his starting pitcher, Ian Anderson, after only five innings and 76 pitches with a World Series no-hitter in place. Anderson is not some back-of-the-rotation starter or opener. He is a gifted, ace-level pitcher who owns a postseason ERA of 1.26 in eight starts. In another time he would be Eddie Plank (1.32) or Madison Bumgarner (2.11), an October legend.
Baseball no longer allows such legends. Even a baseball lifer like Snitker, who is 66 years old and spent 28 years paying dues in the minors, knows how the game is played today. Snitker was not wrong to remove Anderson and hand the ball to A.J. Minter, and then to Luke Jackson and then to Tyler Matzek and then to Will Smith.
It’s just that the right way to play today is wrong for baseball’s tomorrow. Soon the players and owners will renew their usual squabble over economic issues as they attempt to reach a new collective bargaining agreement. Meanwhile, the true threat to baseball is the aesthetics of the game—pace of play, including the enormous influence of pitching changes on declining offense and length of games. It is the climate change issue of baseball.
Scott Taetsch/USA TODAY Sports
Once upon a time, starting pitchers were stars who drove interest and attendance. Shea Stadium attendance jumped when the morning newspaper said Dwight Gooden was pitching that night. But you don’t need to tell stories that go all the way back to Old Hoss Radbourn or Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax and Jack Morris when you lament the loss of baseball’s leading men.
You need only go back to Stephen Strasburg in 2019. Exactly two years ago from Friday night, Strasburg took the ball into the ninth inning of World Series Game 6 for the Nationals. None of the last 20 World Series starters since then have thrown even seven innings.
It has happened that fast. The bull-penning of baseball jumped the shark last year when Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash removed an effective Blake Snell just because the lineup turned over a third time. The Rays lost. Snitker removed Anderson at the same point—after two turns through the lineup. This time it worked, or else Snitker would have been Cashed.
“He still had it,” catcher Travis d’Arnaud says of Anderson. “He only went through the order two times and I don’t think [leadoff batter Jose] Altuve had a comfortable at-bat, neither did [Michael] Brantley, neither did [Alex] Bregman, neither did [Yordan] Alvarez … I don’t know what his pitch count was.”
Seventy-six.
“Either way,” d’Arnaud says. “I trust our bullpen, so either way is good.”
If this is not the postseason that killed starting pitching it is the one that made it less interesting. The NFL thrives because of quarterbacks. The league constantly changes its rules to cater to their health and the completion rate of passes, which facilitates comebacks—the true appeal of sports—and turns the quarterbacks into stars.
Baseball has taken the stars that starting pitchers used to be and turned them into game managers. Their task: just don’t lose the game. Here are the lagging vital signs from this postseason:
• Starters are 13—20 in 34 games while averaging 3.97 innings per start.
• Starters have thrown 100 pitches only three times out of 68 starts.
• Relief pitchers account for 62% of the wins and 55% of the innings.
•The pitching duel is dead. Not once in 34 games has each starter pitched seven innings.
Let’s be clear again: Snitker managed correctly in Game 3. It’s not his job to worry about aesthetics. It is his job to win. The problem is not the managers. It is the relief pitchers. There are too many who are too good. Pitching labs have figured out that spin and velocity can be taught and crafted.
Take Phil Maton, for instance. He went undrafted out of high school and undrafted after three years at Louisiana Tech. The Padres finally drafted him in the 20th round in 2015 as a college senior. Maton had always been taught to keep his fastball down. Upon being drafted, the Padres sent him to their short season team, the Tri-City Dust Devils in Pasco, Wash. That’s where he heard about spin rate for the first time. The Dust Devils measured his fastball with TrackMan technology. They found this 20th round pick who was told to keep his fastball down had major league spin rate.
“Throw your fastball high in the zone,” said the pitching coach there, Nelson Cruz.
Maton promptly rocketed up the system, reaching the big leagues two years after getting drafted in the 20th round. The Padres traded him to Cleveland, which traded him to the Astros this year. His fastball generates the third-highest whiff rate in baseball, even at 91.5 mph.
These Maton stories are happening with every team on every level every year. The inventory is what has changed baseball. Managers were once reluctant to go to more than two or three arms deep in their bullpen with a lead. Now they happily go five or six deep.
Bullpens kill starting pitching legends, and they kill comebacks. The team that scores first is 3–0 in this World Series and 27–7 in the postseason. Score first and you win almost 80% of the time in this new postseason world. Where is the drama in that?
Offense disappears when the best arms form their late-inning relay race. Batters in this World Series are hitting .182 after the sixth inning.
Two years ago, Anderson stays in the game, and phones everywhere buzz with news that he has a chance to join Don Larsen as the only pitchers to throw a World Series no-hitter. TV sets that had been off are turned on. This time Snitker would have none of it.
The Astros had looked bewildered by Anderson’s changeup. In the fourth, Anderson tripled up on his changeup to Michael Brantley. Even though Brantley saw three in a row in nearly the same location, he swung and missed on the third for a strikeout. Anderson obtained nine of his 15 outs on the changeup.
In his career, which began last year (he is technically still a rookie), Anderson has allowed a .157 batting average on his changeup. If you take all the pitchers and all the pitches they have thrown over the past two years (minimum 1,000 pitches, postseason included), Anderson’s changeup is the fourth-toughest pitch to hit in MLB, behind only the curves of Framber Valdez (.128) and Charlie Morton (.148) and the splitter of Kevin Gausman (.130).
Brett Davis/USA TODAY Sports
Most impressively, would-be October legend Anderson has held hitters on his changeup in his postseason career to an .074 batting average.
“Yeah, I knew I had good stuff,” Anderson says. “[Martin] Maldonado hit that ball up the middle [for a groundout], but other than that there wasn’t much hard contact.”
I ask Anderson, “You had a no-hitter in the World Series—with 76 pitches. Honestly, how did you feel to be taken out?”
“I did fight it,” he says.
To what level did you fight it?
“I was just holding on to his hand pretty tight in that handshake,” Anderson says, “You have to trust those [bullpen] guys. Those guys are so good.”
Specialization is the name of the game. Minter this postseason has allowed a .100 batting average on his cutter (0-for-3 in Game 3). Jackson has the most movement on any slider in the game (0-for-3 in Game 3). Matzek has allowed one hit on his slider since June 24 (0-for-1 in Game 3). Smith has allowed a .188 batting average on his two breaking pitches (0-for-2 in Game 3).
Sorry, once Anderson was lifted, the idea of a no-hitter lost its appeal. A combined no-hitter is to baseball fame what “Four Dogs Playing Poker” is to the art world: quirky, but there’s no prestige in ownership.
On Thursday, the animal rights group PETA released a statement, on behalf of the cow kingdom, advocating the banishment of the term “bullpen.” PETA, in apparent all seriousness, suggested “arm barn” as a replacement. We could go to “Kings of Convenience” to refer to relievers if it wasn’t already the property of a Norwegian indie folk-pop duo. Kings of Convenience released an album in 2009 called “Declaration of Dependence.” When it comes to how managers treat relief pitching, that can also stand as the title of this postseason
More MLB Coverage:
• How Does Atlanta Handle Its Pitching Going Forward? • Jose Altuve Snaps His Slump With the Help of a Playoff Legend • The Braves Shut Down Baseball’s Best Offense to Earn World Series Edge • Why Does MLB Still Allow Synchronized, Team-Sanctioned Racism in Atlanta?
If a pair of screen protectors for the Samsung Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+ give a legitimate look at the display on both models, the 2022 Samsung flagship phones will have a screen that is less tall and thin and will be shorter and wider. Twitter tipster Ice universe (@UniverseIce) posted a tweet comparing the screen protectors on the Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+ with screen protectors for the Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21+.
Even taking into consideration the different angles of both images, the 2022 models sport more rounded corners than last year’s models, and the bezels remain razor-thin. Since companies that make accessories such as tempered glass protectors are first to obtain the dimensions of new phone models from the manufacturer, checking out this product is a good way to see what Samsung has in mind for its upcoming flagship models.
The aspect ratio on the Galaxy S22 series is rumored to drop to 19.5:9 from the previous year’s 20:9
There has been a tendency for larger-screened phones to be equipped with a larger aspect ratio which produces a taller and thinner screen making the device easier to use one-handed. Perhaps Samsung is saying that enough is enough. The aspect ratio on the Galaxy S21 line is 20:9. Ice Universe, in a subsequent tweet, says that the aspect ratio on the Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+ will be 19.5:9 which would dovetail with the idea that the screens will be shorter and wider in 2022.
Alleged tempered glass protectors for the Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+ show a shorter and wider display compared to last year’s models
The Galaxy S22 line, which includes the Galaxy S22, the Galaxy S22+, and the Galaxy S 22 Ultra, is expected to feature hole-punch front-facing selfie snappers on all three models instead of an under-display camera. Speaking about cameras, the Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22+ could sport a 50MP primary camera with both models equipped with Samsung’s ISOCELL GN5 sensor with all-directional autofocus and big 1.0µm pixels.
The phones will be powered by the 4nm Samsung Exynos 2200 chipset built by Samsung Foundry. In the states, the series should carry the 4nm Snapdragon 898 SoC, also built by Samsung Foundry. Not that long ago, the U.S. carriers were happy to have the Snapdragon chips powering their version of the Galaxy S models. But this year, Verizon reportedly asked Samsung about having the Exynos 2200 installed inside the Galaxy S22 series units it will be selling in the U.S.
This year the Exynos 2200 will feature a GPU produced by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
Negotiations between Verizon and Samsung are supposedly taking place. Part of the reason why Samsung might be more stingy than usual with its Exynos APs could have something to do with the global chip shortage. In addition, there have been some issues with low yield and other production problems. Samsung Foundry is the world’s second-largest independent foundry behind only TSMC which is the largest contract foundry on the planet.
The reason for Verizon’s demand could have something to do with the Exynos 2200’s use of a GPU made by AMD. The Snapdragon 898 will be using Qualcomm’s latest Adreno GPU. Last year’s Exynos 2100 SoC featured the Mali-G78 MP14 GPU designed by ARM Holdings.
The Galaxy S22 is rumored to carry a smaller 3700mAh battery compared to the 4000mAh battery on the Galaxy S21. The Galaxy S22+ is rumored to sport a smaller 4500mAh battery compared to the 4800mAh component on the Galaxy S21+. The only one of the three models not losing any battery capacity this year is expected to be the Galaxy S22 Ultra with its 5000mAh battery matching that belonging to the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
The Galaxy S21 line was introduced on January 14th, 2021, and released on January 29th of this year. We could see a similar unveiling and release dates for the Galaxy S22 series.
