November 2020
- A Femur, a Skull, and a Fight Over Humanity's Oldest Ancestor
A new look at a 7-million-year-old femur from Chad reignites debate over whether Sahelanthropus tchadensis really walked upright.
- What to Expect from .NET Conf 2020: The Great Unification
.NET Conf 2020 (Nov 10-12) should ship .NET 5, C# 9, and F# 5, finally merging .NET Framework and Core into one runtime.
- The RTX 30-Series Shortage Isn't Getting Better Anytime Soon
Nvidia's CEO says demand for RTX 3080/3090 cards is outstripping supply, with shortages likely to run through the end of 2020.
- A Fast Radio Burst, Finally Traced to a Source We Can Point To
A Nature paper confirms FRB 200428 came from the galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154, the first fast radio burst ever traced to a source in the Milky Way.
- AMD's Ryzen 5000 Chips Just Took the Gaming Crown Back From Intel
AMD's new Zen 3 architecture powers the Ryzen 5000 desktop lineup, with the company claiming double-digit gaming gains and the fastest gaming CPU title.
- Inside the Invite-Only API: What Developers Are Quietly Building With GPT-3
GPT-3's private beta API is still closed off, but a growing group of developers is already shipping chatbots, copywriting tools, and code generators on top of it.
- A Second Cable Snaps at Arecibo, and the Whole Dish Is Now on the Clock
A thicker auxiliary cable broke at Arecibo Observatory on Nov 6, gouging the dish and putting the 900-ton platform at serious risk of collapse.
- Foldable Phones Go Mainstream: Galaxy Z Flip 5G Lands in Japan
Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 5G launched in Japan on Nov 4, expanding its foldable lineup alongside the Galaxy Z Fold2.
- Apple's 'One More Thing' Event: What to Expect From Its First Mac Chip
Apple's Nov 10 virtual event is expected to unveil the first custom Arm-based Mac chip, kicking off its two-year Intel transition.
- Apple Says Goodbye to Intel, Microsoft Ships New Boxes
Apple's M1 chip debuts in redesigned Macs, ending 14 years of Intel inside, the same day Xbox Series X and S launch worldwide.
- .NET 5.0 Arrives and Finally Merges Framework With Core
Microsoft ships .NET 5.0, C# 9, F# 5, ASP.NET Core, and EF Core, unifying .NET Framework and .NET Core into one cross-platform runtime.
- A Bright Kilonova May Be Hinting at a Freshly Born Magnetar
An unusually luminous kilonova has researchers arguing that a neutron-star merger produced a magnetar rather than collapsing straight to a black hole.
- iPhone 12 mini and 12 Pro Max complete Apple's 5G lineup
Apple's smallest and largest iPhone 12 models go on sale today, rounding out the first 5G iPhone family.
- Porting Apps to Apple Silicon: What Rosetta 2 Actually Feels Like
Developers are putting Rosetta 2 and universal binaries through their paces days after Big Sur and the M1 Macs shipped.
- Crew-1 Lifts Off: Commercial Spaceflight Just Got Boring (In the Best Way)
SpaceX launched NASA's Crew-1 mission tonight, the first fully certified operational commercial crew flight to the ISS.
- GitHub Reinstates youtube-dl After RIAA's DMCA Takedown Backfires
GitHub restored youtube-dl and launched a $1M developer defense fund after the EFF pushed back on RIAA's Section 1201 takedown claim.
- PS5 vs Xbox Series X: the next-gen console race begins
Both next-gen consoles are finally out and impossible to buy, so here's what the early reviews actually tell us.
- Crew Dragon Resilience Docks with the ISS
SpaceX's Crew Dragon 'Resilience' autonomously docked with the ISS, delivering the four Crew-1 astronauts for a roughly six-month stay.
- PS5 Goes Global: Sony's Console Finally Lands Everywhere
PlayStation 5 rolled out today to Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and remaining markets, a week after its US debut.
- NSF Pulls the Plug on Arecibo's Iconic Radio Telescope
The NSF announced it will decommission Arecibo Observatory's 900-ton receiver platform after two cable failures made repairs too dangerous.
- Does GPT-3 Understand Anything, or Just Sound Like It Does?
As more developers get API access, GPT-3's fluent code and prose reignite the debate over pattern-matching versus real reasoning.
- Holiday Hardware Shortage: Consoles and GPUs Vanish Before Black Friday
PS5, Xbox Series X, and RTX 30-series cards remain sold out at major US retailers days ahead of Black Friday, squeezed by pandemic demand and chip supply limits.
- SpaceX Doubles Up: Another Starlink Batch and the Sentinel-6 Ocean Satellite
SpaceX flew two missions in two days last week, launching more Starlink satellites and then the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich sea-level satellite.
- Meet GPT-3: the New York Times brings OpenAI's language model to the mainstream
Cade Metz's NYT feature introduces GPT-3 to a mass audience, reigniting debate over AI that writes and codes.
- Black Friday in a Shortage Year: What to Actually Expect
With PS5, Xbox Series X, and RTX 30-series still scarce, this Black Friday is about restocks, not doorbusters.
- China's Chang'e 5 Is Chasing Down the First Fresh Moon Rocks in 44 Years
China launched Chang'e 5 on a Long March 5 to grab about 2 kg of lunar samples, the first attempted Moon sample return since Luna 24 in 1976.
- Black Friday 2020: PS5s and RTX GPUs Are Gone Before You Finish Your Coffee
PS5, Xbox Series X, and RTX 3080/3070 restocks vanished within minutes on Black Friday, stretching 2020's hardware shortage into the holidays.
- How a Year Stuck at Home Turbocharged Cloud-Native and DevOps
The pandemic pushed enterprises toward containers, CI/CD, and Kubernetes faster than any roadmap would have, right as AWS re:Invent looms.
- Chang'e 5 Closes In on the Moon Ahead of a High-Stakes Sample Return
China's Chang'e 5 spacecraft is en route to the Moon, aiming for the first fresh lunar sample return in 44 years.
- AWS re:Invent 2020 Kicks Off as a Three-Week Virtual Marathon
AWS re:Invent 2020 opened today as a free, three-week online conference, with Andy Jassy's keynote unveiling GA EC2 Mac instances and new ECS/EKS Anywhere tooling.