Laptops have come of age in the last few years. Their processing power and memory have increased to where they can rival most desktop computers. The only problem is that they are made to be thin and portable and there are few ports to support peripherals. There are a lot of connection docks out on the market for both windows-based and Apple laptops. Today I want to share one that, while it's pricier than many, is not only a quality product but delivers on making your laptop into a desktop unit.

Sandberg now has a USB-C All-in-1 docking station that I think stands apart from its competition. First is its design. It is made to fit under the back of your laptop, providing an ergonomic tilt to the keyboard and conserving the limited space you have (think airline fold-down tables.) It also helps if your laptop is running hot by allowing better airflow.
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Here are the specifications:

• Aluminum construction, 11.6 ounces, 10.6” X 2.9” X .8”
• 1 x USB-C (power supporting up to 100W), 1 x HDMI, 1 Mini DisplayPort, 1 x VGA female, 3 x USB 3.0 A, 1 x RJ45, 1 x audio output, 1 x security lock slot
• 1 x SD card reader slot supporting SD/SDHC/SDXC/MMC
• Micro SD/TF card reader slot
• RJ45 connector supporting 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
• 3.5mm audio jack supporting audio sample rate at 192KHz/24bit
• HDMI Resolution up to max 4K/2K @ 30Hz (1920 x 1080P @ 60Hz)
• DisplayPort resolution up to 4K/2K @ 30Hz (1920 x 1080P @ 60Hz)
• VGA resolution up to 1920 x 1080P @ 60Hz
• Supports simultaneous output at DisplayPort+HDMI and DisplayPort+VGA
• Automatic recognition of monitor type, resolution, and features

Regardless of the business you work for, networking is a key skill for success. But in the contemporary environment we live in, creating and distributing business cards doesn't really make sense.

An alternative that is more environmentally friendly is a new electronic card called the Linq card that digitally sends your contact information to someone else's phone. 

The Linq business card looks exactly like a standard business card, but it has a significant difference: it can instantly share your contact information with others by tapping it on a smartphone.

The card makes use of a near-field communication (NFC) chip, the same technology that powers regular activities like using your smartphone to make in-store purchases, to enable the tap-sharing feature. Most devices have NFC reading capabilities, but if the person you want to share with doesn't have NFC, you can still easily share your information by having them scan the QR code on the back of the card.

The Linq profile is displayed once the person taps the card or scans the QR code. When you first activate your card, the Linq app prompts you to create your unique profile. The best feature is how customizable it is—from the design of your bio page to the social media platforms and links that are displayed, right down to the reference profile picture and even an included video.

If you meet regularly with new businesses and individuals, they offer an option for you to save the contact information on those with whom you share your information. The recipient has the option to add your contact information automatically to their default messaging app when it is scanned.

The traditional white card is the least expensive option in terms of price, coming in at $12 on Linq’s website; prices rise as you choose different color options, finishes and additional custom features.
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Regardless of age, these cards make wonderful stocking stuffers or presents for everyone who works.

New chips are being released by Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud computing division to power the most advanced computing, supporting tasks like gene sequencing and weather forecasting.

The largest provider of cloud computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced recently that it will allow users to rent processing capacity that uses a new generation of its Graviton chips. The product, according to Peter DeSantis, senior vice president and manager of most of AWS' technical teams, is a platform for expanding access to high-performance computing.

The newest chip is Amazon's most recent push to produce more of the hardware for its large data centers that power AWS. Making its own chips, according to Amazon, will provide clients access to more powerful computers at a lower cost than they could by renting time on processors made by companies like Intel Corp., Nvidia Corp., or Advanced Micro Devices Inc. These businesses, which are also some of AWS's biggest suppliers, are now in direct competition with it because of the new chips. According to DeSantis, the chipmakers are still "excellent partners," and AWS intends to keep providing high-performance computing services based on their chips.

To kick-start its in-house chip designs, which initially were concentrated on basic computing activities like serving as the foundation for websites, AWS bought chipmaker Annapurna Labs in 2015. The high-performance computing initiative, which was unveiled at the opening of the AWS re:Invent trade conference, aims to show that Amazon's proprietary technology can compete head-to-head with chips from leading manufacturers.

The Inferentia chip, which is made to make deductions from enormous volumes of data, has undergone an update, according to AWS Chief Executive Officer Adam Selipsky, who made the announcement the second day of the re:Invent conference. According to Amazon, Inferentia2 handles larger data sets than its predecessor, making it possible to perform tasks like software-generated graphics or speech recognition and interpretation.

Among the most sophisticated systems powered by cutting-edge semiconductors are computers that forecast weather patterns and simulate the aerodynamics of race cars. Usually, enterprises, government agencies, and academic institutions have created pricey computer systems in their own data centers using components from Intel, Nvidia, and AMD.

According to DeSantis, the Graviton3E, the most recent model in AWS's line of Graviton processors, will be twice as capable as earlier models in one category of calculations used by high-performance computers. When combined with other AWS technology, the new offering will be 20% better than the previous one. Amazon didn't say when services based on the new chip would be available.
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“The reason that high-performance computing isn’t big is it’s hard,” DeSantis said. “It’s hard to get capacity, it’s hard to get time on that supercomputer. What we’re excited about is bringing the capabilities of high-performance computing to more workloads.”

There is a device from a small company named Edge that could be that standout stocking stuffer for that special someone who works from home or a deserving college student. The EDGE® Kit attaches to the back of any device with a suction cup. A variety of devices can then be attached to the swing-out arm: a light for online conferencing, a smartphone to add a second screen to the work mix or a wireless Qi charger for the side of your desktop’s monitor.

Attach a Phone. Most users will attach the EDGE® Kit to their display monitor. It's attached with a suction cup on one side of its bending arm. Watch that podcast or a movie from the side of your monitor, or put the Kit on top of the screen and use your phone as a camera for video conferencing.

Wireless Charging. The EDGE® Kit includes a wireless Qi charging coil that’s compatible with iPhone MagSafe devices (iPhone 8 and above) or any Android device that supports wireless charging. You can also kill two birds at once by putting the phone on the charger and then watching that movie or podcast!

The speed record for data transmission using only one light source and an optical chip has been shattered. 1.84 petabits per second (Pbit/s), or nearly twice the volume of all internet traffic per second, was the blazing rate at which engineers transported data. The team published their findings in the journal Nature Photonics.

It's difficult to emphasize how quickly 1.84 Pbit/s actually is. If you're lucky, you might get a 1-gigabit or 10-gigabit connection at home, but 1 petabit is equal to one million gigabits. Your average home internet connection receives a few hundred megabits per second. The new chip is 20 times quicker than the forthcoming ESnet6 update to the scientific network used by organizations like NASA.

The fact that this new speed record was achieved with only one light source and one optical device is even more amazing. Infrared laser light is split into hundreds of various frequencies, or colors, by a device known as a frequency comb. Data can then be encoded into the light by modulating the amplitude, phase and polarization of each of these frequencies, before recombining them into one beam and transmitting it through optical fiber.

The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Chalmers University of Technology researchers used the system in experiments to transport data at 1.84 Pbit/s, encoded in 223 wavelength channels, down an optical fiber with 37 distinct cores that was just under 5 miles long. This system could manage the whole bandwidth of the internet, which is predicted to be just around 1 Pbit/s, at once and still have capacity for expansion.

Historically, the first big test was in mid-2020 when a similar photonic chip managed a transmission of 44 terabits per sec (Tbit/s). That record was broken this past May at a speed of 1.02 Pbit/s.

According to the team behind the new microprocessor, though, smashing records is far from over. Using a computer model, the researchers predict the device will eventually be able to transmit data at eye-watering speeds of up to 100 Pbit/s.
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“The reason for this is that our solution is scalable—both in terms of creating many frequencies and in terms of splitting the frequency comb into many spatial copies and then optically amplifying them, and using them as parallel sources with which we can transmit data,” said Professor Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe, lead author of the study. “Although the comb copies must be amplified, we do not lose the qualities of the comb, which we utilize for spectrally efficient data transmission.”

When you travel, unless you are proficient in the native language, you are at a disadvantage. In this newsletter, we have covered five different translation devices starting back with Issue 2-50 in 2016. So I was a little skeptical of another tech device that is the international traveler’s best friend. But the Indiegogo-funded NEWYES Scan Reader Pen 3 has so many other uses that I couldn’t ignore it.

The device supports 9 UI languages, 55 OCR languages, 112 text translation languages, and 112 voice translation languages. You can scan written material, record your voice or someone else’s voice and translate that voice into any of a 112 languages. If you use the OCR scan, you can either read the text in another language or hear it pronounced orally. This means that not just translators can benefit from the device. Second-language learners can use it to get professional pronunciations of difficult words and use it to help with memorizing coursework. While scanning text, it recognizes up to 3,000 characters per minute and has a 0.3-second translation speed with up to 98% accuracy.

Individuals with dyslexia can use the device to read materials to them so they hear the material. When your child is eager to read independently but always comes across new words, the Scan Reader Pen 3 can help with both the pronunciation and the definition of the word.

The device also has a built-in dictionary. You can even save audio to listen to or view a translation later. Transfer your audio files directly to your Mac or PC via a USB port. It also supports Bluetooth, so you could connect your earbuds and listen in private.
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The company produced a YouTube video showing how the device works. The NEWYES Scan Reader Pen 3 is available for $159 from Amazon.

For years, each cellphone included a tiny smart card called a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) that contained the “identity” of that device so that it could connect to a specific cellular network.

Data on SIM cards includes user identification, location, and phone number, network authorization information, personal security keys, contact lists, and saved text messages.

When Apple introduced the new iPhone 14, they repeated something they had done years before. They removed a piece of hardware from the phone. First, it was the earphone jack and now it was the removable SIM card and tray. Just like the earphone jack, Apple is touting this change as a boon for consumers. Now, all iPhone 14s sold in the US will use eSIM technology.

"I think it's transformational," Ahmed Khattak, founder and CEO of US Mobile, a mobile virtual network operator that offers service on Verizon and T-Mobile's respective networks. "I think the fact that it even happened ... I'm shaking my head ... because it really democratizes connectivity." 

A type of programmable SIM card known as an eSIM (embedded-SIM) consists of software put onto a chip permanently installed in a device, as opposed to an integrated circuit on a releasable universal integrated circuit card, which is commonly constructed of PVC.
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Once an eSIM carrier profile has been installed, it operates the same as a physical SIM, complete with a unique integrated circuit card identifier (ICCID) and network authentication key generated by the carrier.
So, why is this change so important? For users, there are three advantages to eSIMs over physical SIM cards:
     •  It’s more secure, because no one can remove it from the phone and use it to intercept phone calls or text messages. (This isn’t the most common form of SIM card hijacking, but it is still possible for someone with physical access to the phone.)
     •  Switching carriers is easier, because you don’t have to wait for a SIM card to arrive or pick one up at a store.
    •  Adding extra lines is easier, because you no longer need a phone with dual SIM card trays. (On the iPhone, Apple supports up to two phone numbers and eight data lines with eSIM.)

An eSIM also benefits phone manufacturers and wireless carriers.
    • By getting rid of the SIM tray, Apple will gain more valuable interior space it can use to install more technology.
     • For carriers, it's a money-saver because they no longer must spend between $10-$20 per physical SIM card.

Like almost every change, there are going to be some growing pains. Not all US carriers are eSIM compatible. Some alternative providers that lease capacity from the major carriers–known as Mobile Virtual Network Operators, or MVNOs, in industry jargon–don’t support eSIM today, which means you can’t use an iPhone 14 on their networks. Some notable examples include Ting, Walmart Mobile, US Mobile, Net10, and Tello.

Conversely, there are small carriers like Mint Mobile, US Mobile and Boost Mobile in the US who have been preparing for this change for some time.
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"Mint has always believed in digital technologies that enhance and ease wireless services," Aron North, Mint Mobile's chief marketing officer, said in a statement. "Mint has been supporting [the] eSIM for almost two years because we knew, even back then, this innovation would allow users to switch faster and easier."

According to the head of the European Space Agency (ESA), Europe is exploring the development of space-based solar power to boost its energy independence and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

"It will be up to Europe, ESA and its Member States to push the envelope of technology to solve one of the most pressing problems for people on Earth of this generation," said Josef Aschbacher, director general of the space agency, an intergovernmental organization of 22 member states.

In the past, the space agency hired British and German consultancy companies to do studies on the costs and advantages of creating space-based solar power. To give European policymakers technical and programmatic knowledge, the ESA published the studies this past August.

Aschbacher will propose his Solaris Program to the ESA Council in November. Aschbacher has been trying to increase support for solar energy from space in Europe as a route to energy de-carbonization. This council determines the budget and priorities for ESA. The construction of the solar power system would start in 2025, according to Aschbacher's proposals.

The Positives. Space-based solar energy is simple to understand conceptually. Solar energy is captured by satellites orbiting high above the Earth's atmosphere. The satellites would then transform that energy into current and transmit it back to Earth via microwaves, where it is captured by photovoltaic cells or antennas and transformed into electricity for homes or businesses. There is no night or cloud cover to impede collection, and the solar incidence is significantly higher than in northern latitudes of the European continent, which are the main advantages of collecting solar energy from space as opposed to the ground.

The program proposes enormous installations in geostationary orbit that could supply between 25% and 30% of the yearly electricity demand for Europe, which is now estimated to be over 3,000 TWh. These technologies would be expensive to develop and implement, costing hundreds of billions of euros.

Why will it cost so much? Because it would take a constellation of many enormous satellites situated 36,000 kilometers from Earth to enable space-based solar power. Each of these satellites would be 10 or more times heavier than the 450 metric ton International Space Station, which took over a decade to build in low Earth orbit. The final launch of these satellites' components would need hundreds or, more likely, thousands of heavy lift rocket missions.

"Using projected near-term space lift capability, such as SpaceX’s Starship, and current launch constraints, delivering one satellite into orbit would take between 4 and 6 years," Frazer-Nash, the British Firm involved in the study states. "Providing the number of satellites to satisfy the maximum contribution… to the energy mix in 2050 would require a 200-fold increase over current space-lift capacity."

The Negatives. Although the idea of solar energy generated in space is intriguing, it is not without its detractors. Elon Musk, who one might expect supporting a system that is in space and produces solar energy, is one of the biggest opponents.

"It's the stupidest thing ever," he said, several years ago. "If anyone should like space solar power, it should be me. I've got a rocket company, and a solar company. I should be really on it. But it's super obviously not going to work. It has to be better than having solar panels on Earth. With a solar panel in orbit, you get twice the solar energy, but you've got to do a double conversion: Photon to electron to photon, back to electron. What's your conversion efficiency? All in, you're going to have a real hard time even getting to 50%. So just put that solar cell on Earth."

He is not alone either. Physicist Casey Handmer identified four cost drivers in an online analysis that will render space-based solar power unaffordable: transmission losses, heat losses, logistics expenses, and a space technology penalty. According to Handmer, the cost of space-based solar energy is at least "three orders of magnitude" more than energy sources on Earth.

"I can relax assumptions all day," Handmer wrote. "I can grant 100 percent transmission efficiency, $10/kg orbital launch costs, complete development and procurement cost parity, and a crippling land shortage on Earth. Even then, space-based solar power still won’t be able to compete. I can grant a post-scarcity fully automated luxury communist space economy with self-replicating robots processing asteroids into solar panels, and even then, people will still prefer solar panels on their roof."

Perhaps the conflict in Ukraine and the dearth of Russian natural gas will spur this project along. A major space agency trying out a technique that has been considered science fantasy for literally decades would be good. But there are many obstacles to overcome and a lengthy time frame.
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The Earth will probably get its energy from space in the future. But will that happen in the next century or even later? Without a doubt, the most comprehensive and ambitious project the European Space Agency has ever done would be space-based solar power. It would undoubtedly be the Apollo program of the twenty-first century. Only much bigger.

One of the most plentiful elements on Earth, silicon has been used as the basis for most contemporary technology, including solar cells and computer chips. The characteristics of silicon as a semiconductor, however, are not perfect.

One reason is that while silicon allows electrons to flow easily through its structure, it is far less tolerant of "holes," which are positively charged electrons' opposites, and harnessing both is crucial for particular types of devices. Silicon also does a poor job of transporting heat, which contributes to the frequent overheating problems and pricey cooling systems in computers.

Now, research conducted by a group of scientists at MIT, the University of Houston, and other institutions has been published in Science and it shows that a substance known as cubic boron arsenide overcomes both of the negatives of silicon. It has great thermal conductivity and gives both electrons and holes high mobility. According to the experts, it is the best semiconductor material that has ever been discovered and might be the best one.
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Until now, cubic boron arsenide has only been produced and examined in small, uneven lab batches. To examine specific small portions of the material, the researchers had to apply unique techniques that were initially created by former MIT postdoc Bai Song. If cubic boron arsenide can be produced in an efficient, practical form, much less take the place of silicon, more research will be required. However, the researchers think that soon, the material might find some applications where its special features would make a big impact.

In the decarbonization era, solar power is, by far, the leading technology both in scale and in cost. Lunar energy is taking a lot longer. One only needs to walk into the surf on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii, to understand the enormous power in the ocean. One of the biggest differences in wave technology is the harsh and punishing environment in which this new energy generation will have to operate.

Even though it’s a tough place to extract energy, several research start-ups have tried over the past decade to harness the immense lunar power of the oceans.

Wave Swell Energy's unusual UniWave 200 is an on-shore sea platform that uses an artificial blowhole formation to create air pressure changes that drive a turbine and feed energy back to shore. In July, after a year of testing, the company reported excellent results. 

Sweden-based Eco Wave Power announced in February, that the first of 10 floats has been successfully installed on the sea wall at Jaffa Port in Israel, marking an important milestone for the company's second grid-connected wave energy harvesting project.

In late August, another startup has announced the results of a 10-year set of tests on wave energy generation. The company, Sea Wave Energy Ltd (SWEL), is making some amazing claims as to the cost and scaling of their invention—Waveline Magnet. 

In the simplest terms, the Waveline Magnet is a long, modular chain of plastic floats designed to sit on top of the water, lined up pointing directly into the waves.

These chains of floats move in a serpentine motion when waves pass through, following the movement of the water. The floats are connected by lever arms to inflexible, non-buoyant spine parts rather than directly to one another. The spine is relatively stationary while the floats move with the waves, and the lever arms move the electrical generators inside the spine units both upward and downward.

As a wave first hits the Waveline Magnet, the system gets a read on the size and speed of the wave, allowing it to fine-tune the power extraction at each generator as the wave moves down the line. SWEL says this machine can work in "all wave heights," and that "harsh wave conditions do not negatively affect the device's performance, but in contrast, enhance it, without survivability complications."

Over the past ten years, SWEL has built prototypes both in wave tanks (University of Plymouth and University of Cyprus) and also open ocean deployments. Now comes the company’s claim of energy generation volume and cost. Much of this information will have to be proven over the next year or two, but if they are right, we could be in for some revolutionary developments in the carbonless generation of energy.

The CEO of SWEL, Adam Zakheos, is quoted in a press release as saying "... we can show how a commercial-sized device using our technology will achieve a Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) less than 1c€(US$0.01)/kWh, crushing today's wave energy industry reference value of 85c€(US$0.84)/kWh." SWEL claims that "one single Waveline Magnet will be rated at over 100 MW in energetic environments." The company has produced a video to show how the Waveline Magnet works.

LCoE, of course, is a financial statistic that takes into account all initial capital and continuous operating costs throughout the project's duration. It would be utterly revolutionary if these devices had an LCoE of one penny per kWh (US$10/MWh). They would create power for less than half the price of solar and wind. If that LCoE is accurate, according to Lazard's statistics, it'd even outperform gas, coal, nuclear, geothermal, or pretty much any other known energy generation source.

If SWEL lives up to its promises, the world is in for nothing less than a clean energy revolution. However, there are plenty of bad-faith operators, wishful thinking, and unrealistic expectations in the market as investors line up to take part in green energy moonshots. And if the many tests conducted by SWEL had produced the kinds of results that could have predicted some of the cheapest and cleanest energy in the world, then, yeah, we'd expect to see some Gates-level investment coming in, and many more people working on projects of increasing scale.
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So, for now, we'll remain skeptical, hoping that this is the one that surprises us, and inviting SWEL to make us eat our words as soon, and as hard as possible. We’d love this to be one of the good news stories of the 21st century.