Tag Archives: emit

Technology

Razer’s $400 soundbar has a creepy camera to help emit surround sound

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Razer

Razer is using CES 2023 to expand its soundbar lineup with a top-tier model with its own subwoofer. Specs include a frequency response of 40-20,000 Hz and a max sound pressure level of 98 dB. But for those who prefer being extremely cautious with their gadgets when it comes to privacy and security, the Razer Leviathan V2 Pro’s integrated camera is disappointing to see.

Enlarge / The soundbar is 23.6×4.5×3.5 inches, and the subwoofer is 10.2×11.6×10.2 inches.

Razer

But Razer insists that the infrared camera, which exists in the front center of the speaker, is all in the name of next-level virtual surround sound. Using head-tracking AI, the soundbar can tell where the user is and create a virtual soundscape with the listener as the center point. The beamforming technology comes from Audioscenic, which discussed the feature as research at CES 2017 and demoed it at CES 2022. The tech allows the soundscape to change while it tracks you as you move.

That makes the soundbar a unique product, with Razer aiming to expand PC audio capabilities without filling home offices and gaming dens with physical speakers. The Leviathan V2 Pro uses THX Spatial Audio virtual 7.1 surround sound (Razer acquired THX in 2016) and, per Razer, focuses on “crisp, clear treble” and “deep, punchy bass” through three different audio modes, which you can toggle across through a button on top of the soundbar.

The THX Spatial Audio Virtual Headset mode is supposed to convert stereo sound into 3D audio, making it fit for listening to music on Spotify, for example.

THX Spatial Audio Virtual Speakers is the 3D mode for 5.1 and 7.1 sources, with Razer seeing users primarily using it for watching movies and gaming. In a press briefing, a Razer spokesperson said the mode uses constructive and destructive interference to position audio.

The final, non-3D audio mode is for when other people are in the room. The Leviathan V2 Pro doesn’t use the camera or beamforming and, instead, attempts to fill the entire room with audio.

But without a physical shutter, there’s no way to be certain that the camera isn’t capturing anything. It seems easy enough to forget which mode the soundbar’s in or that it’s on. And we don’t have to remind you of unexpected bugs and camera-based security threats or the inherent potential (like any gadget) for accidental hardware damage.

Enlarge / Top buttons are: an audio equalizer, 3D mode toggle, power button/volume dial, source toggle button, and a button for changing the soundbar’s RGB effect.

Razer

Still, companies like Razer continue to push cameras that use AI in consumer products and encourage people to leave them on and open to enable their features, like quick logins. Recent examples include the integrated camera in Dell’s 6K monitor announced this week and the HP Dragonfly Folio G3 laptop, which uses its webcam to automatically dim the display when it can tell you’re not looking or if it sees someone peering over your shoulder.

There are other audio products, mostly headsets, that use camera-free head-tracking. I’ve tried head-tracking PC headsets, and their effectiveness varied greatly depending on the content I listened to. Head-tracking created a shifting effect when I moved my head when listening to music, and the effect’s usefulness differed across various games. Razer’s soundbar and subwoofer have a different task ahead of them, though, as they pump audio out into the open air in various types of room setups.

The Leviathan V2 Pro will do so with a pair of 2-inch full-range drivers and a 5.25-inch down-firing subwoofer. Razer equips its $250 Leviathan V2, which lacks head-tracking but has THX Spatial Audio, with two full-range drivers (2×4 inches), two tweeters (0.75 inches), two radiator drivers (1.7×5.3 inches), and a subwoofer (5.5 inches). The lower-priced Leviathan V2’s range has a higher low-end (45 Hz versus 40 Hz) than the Leviathan V2 Pro. Both have a 10-band EQ adjustable in Razer’s Synapse software.

Enlarge / Razer’s depiction of the Leviathan V2 Pro’s internals.

Razer

The soundbar’s backside contains a subwoofer output port, a 3.5 mm jack, and a USB-C 3.0 port. Despite its price, you don’t get HDMI, as Razer designed the soundbar to live under PC monitors. You can also connect devices, such as a phone, tablet, or Nintendo Switch, to it via Bluetooth 5.0.

For those perfectly fine with camera-equipped audio, or sticking tape over it, the Leviathan V2 Pro is $400.

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Science

Something’s Glowing at The Galactic Core, And We Could Be Closer to Solving The Mystery

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Something deep in the heart of the Milky Way galaxy is glowing with gamma radiation, and nobody can figure out for sure what it might be.

Colliding dark matter has been proposed, ruled out, and then tentatively reconsidered.

 

Dense, rapidly rotating objects called pulsars were also considered as candidate sources of the high-energy rays, before being dismissed as too few in number to make the sums work.

A study by researchers from Australia, New Zealand and Japan could breathe new life into the pulsar explanation, revealing how it might be possible to squeeze some serious intense sunshine from a population of spinning stars without breaking any rules.

Gamma radiation isn’t your typical hue of sunlight. It requires some of the Universe’s most energetic processes to produce. We’re talking black holes colliding, matter being whipped towards light speed, antimatter combining with matter kinds of processes.

Of course, the center of the Milky Way has all of these things in spades. So when we gaze into the heavens and consider all of the crashing bits of matter, spiraling black holes, whizzing pulsars, and other astrophysical processes, we’d expect to see a healthy gamma glow.

But when researchers used NASA’s Fermi telescope to measure the intense shine within the heart of our galaxy about ten years ago, they found there was more of this high-energy light than they could account for: what’s known as the Galactic Centre Excess.

 

One exciting possibility involves unseen bits of matter bumping together in the night. These weakly interacting massive particles – a hypothetical category of dark matter commonly described as WIMPs – would cancel each other out as they smoosh together, leaving nothing but radiation to mark their presence.

It’s a fun explanation to consider, but is also light on evidence.

“The nature of dark matter is entirely unknown, so any potential clues garner a lot of excitement,” says astrophysicist Roland Crocker from the Australian National University.

“But our results point to another important source of gamma ray production.”

That source is the millisecond pulsar.

To make one, take a star much bigger than our own and let its fires die down. It will eventually collapse into a dense ball not much wider than a city, where its atoms pack together so tightly, many of its protons are slowly baked into neutrons.

This process generates super-strong magnetic fields that channel incoming particles into fast-flowing streams glowing with radiation.

Since the object is rotating, these streams swivel around from the star’s poles like the Universe’s biggest lighthouse beacons – so it appears to pulse with energy. Pulsing stars that spin hundreds of times a second are known as millisecond pulsars, and we know a lot about the conditions under which they’re likely to form.

 

“Scientists have previously detected gamma-ray emissions from individual millisecond pulsars in the neighborhood of the Solar System, so we know these objects emit gamma rays,” says Crocker.

To emit them, however, they’d need a generous amount of mass to feed on. Most pulsar systems in the center of the Milky Way are thought to be too puny to emit anything more energetic than X-rays, though.

That might not always be the case, however, especially if the dead stars they emerged from are of a particular variety of ultra-massive white dwarf.

According to Crocker, if enough of these heavyweights were to turn into pulsars and hold onto their binary partners, they would provide just the right amount of gamma radiation to match observations.

“Our model demonstrates that the integrated emission from a whole population of such stars, around 100,000 in number, would produce a signal entirely compatible with the Galactic Centre Excess,” says Crocker.

Being a purely theoretical model, it’s an idea that now needs a generous dose of empirical evidence. Unlike suggestions based on dark matter, however, we already know exactly what to look for.

This research was published in Nature Astronomy.  

 

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World

20 meat and dairy firms emit more greenhouse gas than Germany, Britain or France | Meat industry

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Twenty livestock companies are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than either Germany, Britain or France – and are receiving billions of dollars in financial backing to do so, according to a new report by environmental campaigners.

Raising livestock contributes significantly to carbon emissions, with animal agriculture accounting for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Scientific reports have found that rich countries need huge reductions in meat and dairy consumption to tackle the climate emergency.

Between 2015 and 2020, global meat and dairy companies received more than US$478bn in backing from 2,500 investment firms, banks, and pension funds, most of them based in North America or Europe, according to the Meat Atlas, which was compiled by Friends of the Earth and the European political foundation, Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

With that level of financial support, the report estimates that meat production could increase by a further 40m tonnes by 2029, to hit 366m tonnes of meat a year.

Although the vast majority of growth was likely to take place in the global south, the biggest producers will continue to be China, Brazil, the USA and the members of the European Union. By 2029 these countries may still produce 60% of worldwide meat output.

Across the world, the report says, three-quarters of all agricultural land is used to raise animals or the crops to feed them. “In Brazil alone, 175m hectares is dedicated to raising cattle,” an area of land that is about equal to the “entire agricultural area of the European Union”.

Across the world, three-quarters of all agricultural land is used to raise animals or the crops to feed them, the report says. Photograph: Meat Atlas 2021/OECD, FAO

The report also points to ongoing consolidation in the meat and dairy sector, with the biggest companies buying smaller ones and reducing competition. The effect risks squeezing out more sustainable food production models.

“To keep up with this [level of animal protein production] industrial animal farming is on the rise and keeps pushing sustainable models out of the market,” the report says.

The recent interest shown by animal protein companies in meat alternatives and substitutes was not yet a solution, campaigners said.

“This is all for profit and is not really addressing the fundamental issues we see in the current animal protein-centred food system that is having a devastating impact on climate, biodiversity and is actually harming people around the globe,” said Stanka Becheva, a food and agriculture campaigner working with Friends of the Earth.

The bottom line, said Becheva, is that “we need to begin reducing the number of food animals on the planet and incentivise different consumption models.”

More meat industry regulation is needed too, she said, “to make sure companies are paying for the harms they have created throughout the supply chain and to minimise further damage”.

On the investment side, Becheva said private banks and investors, as well as development banks such as the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development needed to stop financing large-scale, intensive animal protein production projects.

Responding to the report, Paolo Patruno, deputy secretary general of the European Association for the Meat Processing Industry (CLITRAVI), said: “We don’t believe that any food sector is more or less sustainable than another. But there are more or less sustainable ways to produce plant or animal foods and we are committed to making animal protein production more sustainable.

“We also know that average GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions in the EU from livestock is half that of the global average. The global average is about 14% and the EU average is 7%,” he added.

In England and Wales, the National Farmers’ Union has set a target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture by 2040.

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