A few days ago, new chroma splash arts of different champions were revealed for the Chinese LoL servers. These high-resolution images have received many positive reactions from communities around the world. Now the reason for their unique design has been revealed. And some players might be disappointed.
In League of Legends, splash arts for skins and their chromas are sometimes the best on the skin, because it’s hard to see all the beautiful details in a match, where abilities fly left, right, and center. A few days ago, the splash arts for unique chromas on the Chinese server attracted a lot of attention and received a lot of positive feedback.
Now the reasons behind the unusual designs and why they are only available in China have been revealed.
LoL: Chromas cannot be purchased directly in China
Chromas in League of Legends are essentially skins for skins, this means that for some skins there are several other purchasable versions. So if you like the idea or design behind a skin, but can’t live with certain aspects of it, for example the color, you can get other designs for that skin.
Well, the same thing happened for some skins on the Chinese servers, where several designs were revealed that looked very different from anything we’ve seen before. Many gamers first thought these were AI-generated images – or photorealistic images of League of Legends champions. But no, those were unique splash arts for chromas.
Focused on New Chinese Chromas SplashArts Promo Arts
– Caitlyn Rose Quartz Pool Party – Syndra Pearl pool party Scrolls Shan Hai Ruby Cho’Gath – Rose Quartz Vayne Spirit Blossom pic.twitter.com/JCspJZpZ28
— Jumaralo Hex (@JumaraloHexCore) August 2, 2023
And to answer a long-standing question right away – NO, they will not be available on Western servers, or any other server other than the Chinese server. The reasons behind this have now been revealed in a video by League of Legends News YouTuber ‘Rival’.
According to Rival, he found the answer on Reddit and quotes a user by the name of “DiligentDeer6244”, who wrote:
“In China, the regular Chromas they make them for are not available for purchase directly. They are in gacha. Probably the same for event chromas like these. So China is making these new splashes to incentivize buying gacha for them. »
So if gacha was more popular in western communities, we might get some cool chromas and splatter arts as well. Or to put it in Rival’s words,
“I actually kinda like that Riot China system, I wish they had it on the western servers, so we could spend our blue essence on it or something, because I have hundreds of thousands
It’s interesting how different League of Legends regions have these specialties. Although we really wish there were similar things for skins, chromas and splash arts on our servers as well. But maybe without all that gacha stuff behind it…
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The US sanctions on China do not only prevent the arrival of the most advanced lithography equipment that ASML, Tokyo Electron or Canon have to the plants of chip manufacturers in the country led by Xi Jinping; They also hinder the arrival of the most advanced processors that have NVIDIA, Intel or AMD, among other companies. This situation has forced Chinese CPU designers to step on the accelerator and develop their own general-purpose chips and for artificial intelligence applications.
Loongson is one of the most capable Chinese processor designers. We have been tracking it for months because in the current climate of geopolitical tension it has become more relevant than ever, and there is no doubt that its cruising speed is high. At the end of December 2022, this company launched its 32-core 3D5000 CPU, a general-purpose processor with LoongArch microarchitecture implemented by this company on the MIPS architecture. But since then he has not rested on his laurels.
The LS3C6000 processor is a little beast for servers
Loongson already has its new LS3C6000 processor ready, a general-purpose CPU for servers implemented on the LoongArch instruction set and equipped with 16 LA664 cores. Nothing really surprising so far. The picture begins to get interesting if we notice that, according to Loongson, the microarchitecture of this chip allows it to deliver performance comparable to that of an AMD processor equipped with the same number of Zen 3 cores.
The LS3C6000 processor is implemented on the LoongArch instruction set and equipped with 16 LA664 cores.
It is evident that it is most prudent for us to approach this statement with some suspicion given that Loongson is an interested party. And, furthermore, at the moment no independent media has published its own analysis of this processor. Even so, it is not at all unreasonable to accept that this company actually already has a microarchitecture capable of going head-to-head with AMD’s Zen 3. In any case, we have not yet investigated the most impressive feature of this development of this Chinese company.
And the cores of the LS3C6000 CPU are interconnected using high-performance links that Loongson has named DragonChain. On paper, this technology will allow this company to scale this CPU and launch new versions in the short term. equipped with 32 or 64 cores.
Additionally, Loongson is confident that its LoongArch 6000 microarchitecture will allow it to match the IPC (instructions per clock cycle) of AMD’s Zen 3 processors. Although this is true, it will still be one step behind Intel and AMD, but there is no doubt that for this Chinese company it will be a success to reduce the distance that separates it from the most advanced designs that its American competitors have.
A China Airlines Boeing 777-200LR recorded a speed of 1,329.3 km/h on a flight from Los Angeles (United States) to Taipei (Taiwan). The fact is curious because although the sound speed barrier is 1,234.8 km/h, and that the plane arrived 58 minutes early at its destination, there was no sonic boom or danger to the passengers.
Although the aircraft’s instruments showed speed values that we could understand as sonic, given that Mach 1 was technically exceeded, it was far from equaling the iconic Concorde. This scenario can be explained if we take into account two elements: a weather pattern and the relative speed between objects. Let’s look at it carefully.
The plane that exceeded 1,329 km/h
The Boeing 777-200LR have been designed to fly at a maximum speed of 950 km/h (Mach 0.89). However, as The Washington Post reports, a strong jet stream (or) that developed over the Pacific pushed the plane beyond its theoretical limits. That is, it increased its speed to a record level.
Talking about the jet stream is not something strange in the world of aviation. Pilots have been taking advantage of it since the beginning of this industry to reach their destination in less time and, above all, to save fuel. Sunday’s current, driven by the El Niño phenomenon, appeared as a tailwind for the China Airlines plane.
But, as we say, relative speed also came into play. The 1,329.3 km/h recorded on flight 5116 corresponded to its speed with respect to the ground (Ground Speed). The airspeed, that is, the speed with respect to the air, was well below Mach 1, so there was no possibility of breaking the sound barrier.
Let us remember that the flight of an airplane does not depend on the speed with respect to the ground, but rather with respect to the air flowing over its wings. We are talking about the principle of lift that allows airplanes, for example, to take off against a headwind even with a low ground speed. We can mention an example to understand it better.
Suppose we are flying at a speed of 90 km/h and encounter a persistent wind of 90 km/h. The ground speed of our plane will be 0 km/h, but this does not mean that the plane is literally falling. On the other hand, if we had a tailwind of 90 km/h, the speed with respect to the ground would be 180 km/h.
It may seem that Xiaomi’s product catalog in Spain is extensive, but it is just the tip of the iceberg of everything it sells in China. While the arrival of some devices in Europe is a matter of time, in other cases there will be no such luck: the brand’s foreign marketing strategy is unknown. So we have to wait or travel to China to try their devices first-hand and even take one home. This is precisely what we have done with the Xiaomi Mijia Smart Skipping Rope, a smart and very cheap jump rope to jump…even without a rope.
A functional and original design
When we open the box, what we find are the two handles of the rope, a separate rope, the manual and a practical cloth bag to store everything. A rope and handles separately? Yes, because with this rope you can jump with or without a rope, one of its strong points as we will see later.
Any more of those ropes we usually see in gyms could pass as a rope.
The sleeves have a functional design that aesthetically could pass as any other rope that we usually see in gyms, although the feeling in hand is weak, both due to the quality of the material and its lightness. It seems that in the event of a potential fall, they could be easily scratched. With the classic cylindrical shape, they are made entirely of a plastic with a light matte finish, pleasant to the touch and that does not slip even when your hands are wet (for example, from sweat), so the grip is good and firm.
The edges are rounded and on one of the sleeves (let’s call it the master sleeve from now on), at the lower end we find a USB-C port for charging and a button with the usual on/off icon.
On the side, an LED panel that goes completely unnoticed when the device is off and that can be seen perfectly indoors but whose lack of brightness takes its toll on the brightness outside. It is not something dramatic, although the usual thing is to jump rope inside a sports venue. Of course, if you like to jump outdoors, you will have to put a little effort into seeing what the screen shows.
The most striking thing is that at the other end of the sleeves there is a hole where by default there is a small rope with a ball about three centimeters in diameter. These balls simulate the weight of the rope itself so that it can be used wirelessly, that is, to jump without a rope, but if we wish we can remove this element and replace it with the jump rope. As a note: the included rope is three meters long, but since there is a pin, we can play with its length depending on our height.
A setup with trick and control
The million dollar question and my big fear when I bought the rope at a Mi Store in Shenzhen was whether I could use it here with the Xiaomi Home application, since it is not sold here. It has its own, so I tell the process in case it can be of help to other people. On the sides of the ropes there is a QR code that I tried to read with my iPhone without success: it captured a series of alphanumeric characters that led nowhere.
Fortunately I had better luck with the two QRs in the manual (yes, completely in Chinese, but with some keywords in English like ‘Android 6.0’ or ‘app’), which respectively took me to a usage video showing the Mi application Fitness and the Mi Fitness website respectively. I downloaded it (free for Android on the Google Play Store and for iOS on the App Store), installed it, created an account, and started syncing.
Using this Xiaomi gadget that is not sold in Spain is possible simply by changing the profile location
Again, I had problems. The pairing process is generally very similar regardless of the device, so I just turned on the sleeves to see the Bluetooth icon flashing: good sign. However, when I went to add the device, I couldn’t find the rope. So I was searching through the settings until I found that in ‘Profile’ > ‘Settings’, I had put Spain. I changed it to Spain to try it and everything went smoothly: suddenly I saw the gadget and in a matter of seconds I had it linked to the application and my mobile phone. In short: using this Xiaomi gadget that is not sold in Spain is possible simply by changing the location of the profile, although perhaps with other devices things will change.
How does it work? With a long press we will turn the device on and off. With a specific touch we will alternate between the options, which are indicated with a very intuitive icon. Thus, it is possible to view from the LED panel:
The count of the jumps we take.
A stopwatch to be able to quantify how long we are doing this exercise.
Estimation of calories burned.
However, this same thing can be seen from the application as a whole and in more detail (it is the Xiaomi application for wearables, so there are also categories of sleep, heart rate, stress, blood oxygen) by going to the ‘Training’ section. ‘ and there entering ‘Mijia Smart Skipping Rope’.
Here we will see the record of our activity saved thanks to connectivity, but it is more interesting to scroll down to find a list of videos of different intensities and time where we find routines to get the most out of the device (although it is in Chinese, it is quite descriptive and nothing more is necessary).
Testing the rope: perfect to get started
There is a custom of calling products that are simply connected as “smart” – in this case, with Bluetooth 5.0 – but this is not the case with this Xiaomi Mijia Smart Skipping Rope. And inside it houses a series of multipoint sensors among which is an accelerometer, an old acquaintance on our phones.
This instrument consists of a mobile part that moves depending on the applied acceleration, and another fixed part capable of interpreting the voltage originated in that movement, which allows it to determine speed and orientation. In a phone they are used to measure movement in three-dimensional space and in this rope it has the mission of detecting when we jump, avoiding false counting.
Thus, every time we replicate the typical movement of jumping rope, the LED panel counter goes up one unit, something that, for example, it does not do if you shake it or if we carry it in our hand and it moves with the typical swing. of walking. Of course, you can be on the couch and turn your wrist emulating a jump and it does work, so yes, you can fool him… another thing is whether it makes sense to do so. But the important thing is that with the muff in hand, it won’t make us jump extra when we are simply carrying it.
What I liked the most by difference is being able to jump without a rope for many reasons. The first, practice this powerful and complete cardio exercise at home without having to put lamps and furniture at risk. The second, it is possible to jump just as you would with a standard rope (even cross jump or double and triple jump like you were a pro), but if you are just starting out and skill is not your thing (there are already two of us), it is considerably more easy. Come on, it won’t be the first or the last time I hit myself in the face with a rope and with this device for obvious reasons it doesn’t happen to me. Furthermore, by doing it well (that is, jumping), the physical result will be identical to doing it with a rope.
If one day you prefer to jump rope the old-fashioned way, you adjust it to the height and you will have a practical built-in counter or stopwatch, which is not bad at all. Another option: you take it to the gym to jump and discover that it has no battery. Then it won’t be a problem because you can use it like any rope. In any case, I can already tell you that it will be difficult for you to do so: I have been using it for a month, practicing several days a week for a few minutes (I am a beginner) and I have not yet had to charge it, something as simple as using the iPhone cable and plugging it into the current. Thus, the brand promises an autonomy of more than 20 days of use.
The Xiaomi Mijia Smart Skipping Rope has achieved something that not even my three months in kick boxing did: get into jumping rope with a certain frequency and intensity. Not having to go to the gym or go outdoors is essential so that I don’t get lazy and not having to deal with the rope rounds out the experience.
If the above is not a milestone for you, there are several tricks up your sleeve, such as the possibility of better controlling your exercises and having video sessions to get ideas and get out of your routine. From here, in terms of handling or design it does not differ from decent traditional jump ropes and the price is not excessive either.
It cost me 99 yuan in China, a little less than 15 euros, and although we don’t know if it will arrive in Spain, it is not too difficult to find it imported for about 20 euros. In fact, it costs less than this Adidas rope that I bought for the gym at the time. So If you have considered starting to jump or you are bored and looking for something differentit is a most interesting gadget.
There is no doubt that it is popular all over the world, and even though Akira Toriyama began building this universe several decades ago, the adventures of Goku and company continue to shine brightly. China demonstrated this with a New Year celebration, welcoming 2024 with a gigantic show 100% themed in the popular anime.
As part of the gala celebration, a performance filled with passion from start to finish was held; the stage was filled with artists wearing the iconic outfits of Akira Toriyama’s characters while they danced to songs immortalized by the anime, such as .
Dragon Ball at its best: a show seen by millions
The show was tuned in by more than 350 million live viewersand after seeing the number, we can understand the reason: the presentation served as a kind of summary of the events of , starting from the days of Goku as a child until the last battle against Majin Buu, a crucial moment in the show with lights and colors that They flooded the stage starting from the audience itself, simulating the energy accumulated by fans to complete the Genki Dama who looked more than impressive on stage.
China showing off as usual!
Before you ask: no, This show was not accompanied by any news or news about . It was just a New Year’s celebration inspired by the series, and it left a strong impression, because although it is certainly not the first time he has done something like this, it rarely attracts so much attention, to the point of talking about it! in LATAM, being something that happened in China!
2024 will be an important year for fans of , because Throughout these 365 days we will enjoy the continuation from the animeand for the players we will have more and more news about , the game that will resurrect the immortal franchise.
His name is Gregory Brudny, he is Russian and he sells second-hand cars and yachts. He has offices spread across Berlin, St. Petersburg, Milan and Monte Carlo. He claims to have been in this business in Germany since 1993. Now, Volkswagen demands that he destroy 22 cars.
This is the story that brings us from Germany. The media has had contact with Brudny, who has been reported by Volkswagen for trying to sell the Volkswagen ID.6, an electric SUV originally intended for the Chinese market, on German soil via the Internet.
Now, the judicial police have seized those 22 cars.
Brudny wants to sell his 22 cars.
Volkswagen wants to destroy its 22 cars.
End those cars
According to Brudny, he does not understand why Volkswagen is so interested in destroying the more than two dozen cars it keeps in its warehouses. She assures that, to carry out the purchase, she has complied with all her legal obligations and that there is no problem when going ahead with the sale.
Volkswagen does not see it with the same eyes, which has denounced the intentions of the Russian seller to the Hamburg Regional Court, achieving that the possible sale of the vehicles is suspended and, in addition, the threat of being destroyed weighs on them. The only good news for Brudny is that, for now, the latter is not definitive.
The problem, Volkswagen points out, is that the vehicle has been produced for the Chinese market, with the specifications and demands that the market and public entities demand to approve their electric cars. Brudny defends himself and assures that Your Volkswagen ID.6 meets all standardsplanned for import from China and that the vehicles have been adapted with components from Volkswagen itself to be able to be sold on German soil.
And the latter seems to be true. Brudny has shown the media the documents that support this part of the story. According to them, the vehicles have received approval from the Federal Motor Transport Authority and have the TÜV certificate, the equivalent of the German ITV, as a sign that the vehicles have all the papers in order.
For example, Chinese Volkswagen vehicles do not have the emergency call that is mandatory to sell in Europe, in addition to various peculiarities in their software and infotainment systems that would prevent the sale of these cars outside of China.
Volkswagen is clear about what the fate of these 22 cars should be: its immediate destruction. Although Brudny claims to have bought its cars from FAW Group, which maintains an agreement with Volkswagen for the production and sale of the Volkswagen ID.6, the Germans assure that this is not possible, since the Chinese conglomerate only has permission to sell its automobiles within China.
The company defends its position based on the European Union Trademark Regulation and German trademark law to prevent the online seller from trading in any product with the VW logo and vehicle ID.6. This defense has obtained the precautionary measure for the sale, which lasts a maximum of three years and leaves these cars in limbo, with the possibility of being destroyed.
What Volkswagen really wants with this decision is to prevent this or any other vehicle sale from putting the brand’s cars into circulation in a market for which it was not initially intended. Brudny emphasizes that what bothers the brand is that dealers can sell a product that Not even they themselves have it for sale. in the country and, in addition, make money with them.
Thousands of euros are at stake because, according to the dealer, keeping the 22 units of the Volkswagen ID.6 in storage costs him 8,000 euros per month and the destruction of the vehicles can raise his bill by another 15,000 euros per car, to which must be added the loss of money for the investment made. “The company wants to bankrupt us to dissuade us,” the Brudny company justifies, in words reported by .
What is evident is that Volkswagen wants to control the distribution of your vehicles. It must be taken into account that cars sold in other markets may be designed with characteristics, qualities or design decisions that are specific for that place. Selling that same product in a different market is not only an attack on the brand, it can also be reputational damage to your image.
To this we must add that commercial agreements between automobile companies and groups can guarantee that specific models will not be offered for sale in other markets or that one of the two parties will be exclusively responsible for their distribution and sale. In fact, according to , in the contracts with dealers, Volkswagen warns them that they are prohibited from acquiring units of this model and selling it on European soil.
The Chinese video game scene was recently shaken by a major event affecting the giants Tencent And NetEase. The combined stock market value of these two behemoths fell by $80 billion, following government discussions on the possible ban of the systems of gacha for minors. These deliberations also included proposals to limit microtransactions.
In this turbulent context, Reuters reported that Feng Shixin, occupying a key position in the public video game publishing department, was fired. This decision could signal a setback in the adoption of the planned law, leaving doubt about its future. Five separate sources confirmed to Reuters that the dismissal of Feng Shixin was directly linked to these developments.
China, for three years, has demonstrated a firm desire to limit young people’s addiction to video games and social networks, with laws already in place to restrict playing time. However, the country is faced with a dilemma, because The video game industry generates tens of billions of dollars annually.
