Bits: daily tech news bulletin

Lunar crater telescope moves to phase two


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Welcome to Bits, your daily tech news bulletin, for Friday, May 7, I'm Seamus Byrne.IBM has today revealed the first 2nm microchips have been produced as part of the ongoing race to shrink chips ever smaller. Using the Extreme Ultra Violet production technique has enabled the continued scaling down beyond 7nm sizes, which TSMC has dominated in recent years as it has pushed to 5nm and 3nm processes. IBM says it expects the 2nm chip to give 45% more performance at the same power level as a 7nm chip, or use 75% of the energy at the same performance levels.https://www.anandtech.com/show/16656/ibm-creates-first-2nm-chipThe Tokyo Olympics has announced it will have a Twitch channel for this year's games. In an extension of its partnership with US broadcaster NBC, a channel will run on Amazon-owned Twitch during the games, including live broadcasts, highlight shows, and Olympic-themed games and competitions featuring other Twitch creators. It doesn't seem so long ago the Olympics wanted to ban every form of streaming possible, so this effort to reach a younger audience that doesn't care about linear TV will be an interesting experiment.https://www.adweek.com/media/nbc-olympics-twitch-team-up-on-150-hours-of-content-from-tokyo-2020/Twitter is trialling a new Tip Jar feature for users to be able to add a tipping payment option to let followers to drop them some fiscal encouragement. Tip Jar supports Bandcamp, Cash App, Patreon, PayPal and Venmo, and Twitter takes no cut of the tip. The tipping option is inside a user profile view, but Twitter says it will also be available directly from within a Twitter Spaces session. Right now it's limited to certain users to switch it on but anyone will be able to send tips to those lucky folks starting today.https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-tip-jar.htmlLots of space news lately, and this latest is a big one, with news NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab is funding a phase two of research into creating a Lunar Crater Radio Telescope on the far side of the moon. As part of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program, the concept is exploring sending robots to the moon to build a telescope out of wire mesh suspended across a giant crater, which would be shielded from Earth's radiation and potentially reach back into the darkest history of the universe.https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-thinks-that-giant-moon-crater-telescope-idea-might-work/In videogames, the Epic vs Apple court case has revealed some future plans at Epic Games for its Rocket League franchise that will see the full game head to mobile. We already know about Sideswipe after its recent announcement, which is a 2D version of the game designed just for mobile play. But a 2021 planning presentation revealed in the court fight suggests a rebuild of the core game will see the main Rocket League become a full cross-play experience – Epic pulled it off with Fortnite, so it makes sense it can make it happen for Rocket League too.https://www.gamespot.com/articles/rocket-league-could-be-coming-to-mobile-in-addition-to-spin-off-game-leaked-epic-games-doc-shows/1100-6491100/In tabletop games, Magic The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons have teamed up more than once already – they're owned by the same company, of course – but we'll soon hear more about the first full D&D themed Magic set. Instead of a Core set for the collectible card game this year the game will get 'Adventures in the Forgotten Realms' in its place. We've also now heard there will be four new Commander decks designed around the new set, so there will be a LOT of ways to explore the crossover. More details are expected in late June.https://dotesports.com/mtg/news/mtg-adventures-in-the-forgotten-realms-releases-with-4-new-commander-preconshttps://wpn.wizards.com/en/products/adventures-forgotten-realmsAnd in esports, Pentanet's start to its MSI run in Iceland got off to a shaky start with losses to China's RNG and its key group rival the U...

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Bits: daily tech news bulletinBy Byteside