Snap-Spectacles 3; Apple Card- Handcuffs to iPhone; Verizon Selling tumblr to WordPress; Cray’s Hyper Fast El Capitan Supercomputer

Snap has announced Spectacles 3, a new version of its augmented reality sunglasses…they will sport a new design and get an HD cam to create depth perception. According to theverge.com, the limited release glasses will go on sale in November for $380 at spectacles.com. That’s double the price of last year’s model. Along with the 2nd cam, this model will get a suite of new 3D effects to take advantage of it. There will be 2 colors, ‘carbon’ (black) and ‘mineral’ (a sort of blend of gold and beige.) The Spectacles 3 will have a lightweight steel frame, adjustable tips, and tinted lenses. Battery life is better…Snap says you will be able to shoot 70 or 200 photos on a charge, and the 4 gigs of storage will hold 100 videos or 1200 photos. A full charge in the charging case takes an hour and 15 minutes.

A lot has been made of the word that Apple’s partner Goldman Sachs has taken people with less than stellar credit ratings for the new Apple Card (albeit with small credit lines…some as low as $750.) It is probably worth pointing out that, since you have to apply and use the card over an iPhone, there are very few people who haven’t bought a $700 phone applying! Businessinsider.com also notes that since the card is tied to iPhone, it is a great ‘hook’ for keeping people from leaving the Apple ecosystem, and to keep ‘em buying iPhones…still Apple’s #1 product and profit center. Switch to Android, and it’s bye, bye Apple Card. The Apple Card DOES come with a physical card, and it’s metal, so has that premium, upscale look to it…but since you can only manage the card via the phone, the credit account requires an iPhone. The Card is a pretty slick way to keep the 900 million or so iPhone users hitched at $750-$1100 a phone, even though Samsung sells some great Android phones starting at only $400. Apple didn’t get to be one of the world’s largest companies by doing dumb things!

Over 6 years ago, Yahoo bought Tumblr for more than a billion dollars. Now, it’s present owner, Verizon, has gotten WordPress owner Automattic to take it off their hands at what’s called a ‘nominal’ price. TechCrunch.com says Automattic will continue the no porn policy…one that knocked down Tumblr’s traffic by 33% last quarter compared to the previous year. Considering Automattic’s size and reach in the blogging world and as a supplier of publishing tools, it is probably a much better fit than either Yahoo or Verizon was. They will keep 200 Tumblr staffers in the deal.

Cray has landed a contract to build a $600 million super computer for the Department of Energy to conduct 3D simulations at ‘unprecedented speeds’ to better assess and maintain the US nuclear weapons capability. Geekwire.com reports that the ‘El Capitan’ will be an ‘exascale’ supercomputer, which means it can do one quintillion (a billion billion) calculations per second….approximately simulating the human brain. The computer will even exceed that and do 1.5 quintillion per second for advanced AI and modeling capabilities. It will be faster than the top 100 fastest systems on earth right now…COMBINED!