Already this month, Mordor is launching a pilot project to introduce the so-called digital ruble, a new form of national currency, which is expected to make payments more transparent and profitable for consumers.

The digital ruble is planned to be tested in two stages. At the first, emission and transfers between individuals will be tested. In particular, the creation of a digital wallet is being prepared. Users will be able to request the balance and history of transactions, as well as buy and sell digital rubles for non-cash.

The experimental group included twelve banks: Sberbank, VTB, Alfa, Gazprombank, Rosbank, Tinkoff, PSB, DOM.RF, Ak Bars, SKB Bank, Soyuz bank and TKB. The first phase of testing will last until early 2023 or longer in case of any functional or technical issues.

At the second stage, the interaction of citizens and business (C2B and B2C operations), business among themselves (B2B operations), as well as business with the state (B2G operations) will be tested. During this phase, it is planned to connect the Federal Treasury and ensure the implementation of the functionality of smart contracts. In the future, the introduction of the offline mode is expected. Plus, the exchange of the digital ruble for foreign currency and the possibility of opening wallets for non-resident clients will be provided.

It is assumed that three years after the introduction of the digital ruble, its penetration into the settlements of individuals for goods and services will be about 30%. In six years, this figure could reach 50%. The currency is expected to lead to the development of new offline cashless payment services: they will help businesses in the absence of Internet access at the point of sale.

Official introduction will be in parallel with reducing number of working ATM machines and adding special tax for any cash transaction.

Global SUV sales have proven very resilient throughout the pandemic, growing by over 10 percent between 2020 and 2021. In 2021, SUVs are on course to account for more than 45 percent of global car sales – setting a new record in terms of both volume and market share. The growth of SUVs continues to be robust in several countries, including the United States, India and across Europe.

In Mordor

iResearch electronics recently released the latest chip delivery report. Among them, MCU, FPGA and linear voltage regulator have become the top 3 categories of iResearch 2021, which can be seen from the heat.

According to the Q4 market trend report data released by arrow, the delivery time of voltage regulator is 31-35 weeks, that of 8-bit MCU is 30-48 weeks, that of 32-bit MCU is 24-41 weeks, and that of FPGA is 45-65 weeks, which shows an upward trend in terms of price.

Among the 10 categories and 34 subcategories of electronic components related products counted by iResearch, the delivery dates of 30 subcategories continue to be extended, and the prices of 28 subcategories are still rising.

This is the maintainer who fixed the vulnerability that's causing millions(++?) of dollars of damage.

"I work on Log4j in my spare time"
"always dreamed of working on open source full time"
"3 sponsors are funding @rgoers's work: Michael, Glenn, Matt"

It is not a joke.

Analyst Vivek Arya notes that 50% of Nvidia (NVDA) gamers are using a GPU that is more than five years old, while 70% of them don't have key ray-tracing capabilities, and just 14% of them have upgraded to the latest Ampere generation, compared to a typical upgrade cycle reaching 40% of penetration. Arya adds the biggest hurdle is that Ampere products are "completely sold out", because miners and government agencies take all the stock, with many selling for three to ten times the MSRP on the secondary market.

He added that Ampere's average selling price of $482 is about 15-75% above prior Turing generations and "well above" the average of other Nvidia products between $200 and $300. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) "Big Navi" products sell between $299 and $399, well above previous AMD products that retailed for $150 to $200.

Nice.

As the Nikkei Asian Review explains, citing comments from CEO Kenichiro Yoshida, the subscription has already been tested by Sony not only in the gaming console segment, but also in the Aibo robots. The latter receive regular software updates, and the owners pay a monthly subscription fee for access to the service. Izumi Kawanishi, Sony's robotics business manager, outlined the company's priorities for electric vehicles: "Instead of selling hardware at a time, we will use software to create an environment that allows a vehicle to evolve over five or ten years."

The newly created Sony Mobility division, according to the CEO, will initially be wholly owned by the parent corporation. This formulation allows for the attraction of third-party investors at a later stage. Sony's finance division could also gain more capital autonomy.

When the head of Sony was asked whether she would attract partners for the production of electric vehicles, the head of the corporation explained that the optimal format would be chosen. Sony does not want to concentrate too many tangible assets in its hands, which opens the way for cooperation with third-party manufacturers. Both prototypes of the Vision series electric vehicles, which Sony have been showing at CES for two years, were created in collaboration with the Austrian company Magna Steyr.

The median is the salary, which divides all workers into two equal parts: the salary of some is less than the median, while the salary of others is more. Apple estimates that the median employee wages were $68,254 in 2021. For comparison: in 2020 it was $57,783, and Cook received 256 times more.

Stop sponsoring this rich shit!