discipline – Page 5 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

No longer virtual: First impressions—and many hours—with HTC’s Vive Pre

The HTC Vive Pre comes with everything seen here. Some assembly required. Your parents help you put it together. From HTC! (credit: Kyle Orland) For about a year now , we’ve been absolutely wowed by short, controlled demos of the virtual reality tech in the SteamVR-powered HTC Vive. But enjoying a slick demo in a curated show floor booth is one thing. Having a Vive in your house to play with at your leisure is another. Ahead of its upcoming consumer launch, Valve has sent us loaner units of its near-final HTC Vive Pre to test in the Ars Orbiting HQ . I’ve spent a large portion of the past few days immersed in Valve’s room-scale vision of virtual reality, whiling away hours blind to the real world around me and trying not to kill myself walking around my office (which has never been cleaner, to make sure there are no tripping hazards about). We’ll have fuller reviews of the hardware and the most interesting VR experiences as we get closer to the Vive’s early April 9 release. For now, here are some scattered impressions of what it’s like having room-scale virtual reality in your very own room. Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Whole lotta onions: Number of Tor hidden sites spikes—along with paranoia

Two sudden leaps in the number of advertised “hidden services” on Tor have led to rampant speculation about the cause of them. (credit: The Tor Project ) In recent weeks, the number of “hidden services”—usually Web servers and other Internet services accessible by a “.onion” address on the Tor anonymizing network—has risen dramatically. After experiencing an earlier spike in February, the number of hidden services tracked by Tor spiked to 114,000 onion addresses on March 1. They then dropped just as quickly, falling to just below 70,000 hidden services seen by Tor on Thursday—still twice the number that Tor had held steady at for most of 2015. “We don’t know what’s causing this,” said Kate Krauss, the director of communications and public policy for the Tor Project. “But it’s not difficult for even one person—a researcher, for instance—to create a lot of new onion addresses—which is not the same as actual websites or services. In fact, we want the process of creating onion addresses to be as easy as possible to encourage the creation of more onion services. These spikes are typically temporary—and as you see from the chart, this one is already going away.” Still, there has never been this sort of wild gyration in their number in recent times—or at least as far back as the Tor Project has kept metric data. So what caused the sudden near-tripling of the size of Tor’s hidden Web and its rapid contraction? Based on a deeper look at Tor’s metrics and discussions with both Tor developers and security experts, the huge spike in the “size” of the hidden Web within Tor was likely caused by a perfect storm of coincidences: major Internet censorship events in at least two countries, the relatively rapid adoption of a new messaging tool, a malware explosion, and ongoing attempts to undermine the privacy of the network. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Whole lotta onions: Number of Tor hidden sites spikes—along with paranoia

“Problematic” fossil turns out to be oldest known example of life on land

Martin Smith Detail of the Tortotubus fungus, which lived 440 million years ago in Sweden. 4 more images in gallery Life oozed out of the seas onto land somewhere between 450 and 500 million years ago, but we have almost no fossils from this period on land. That may be about to change. A scientist in the UK believes he’s identified the oldest terrestrial organism yet discovered, after careful analysis of 440-million-year-old microfossils gathered in Scotland and Sweden in the 1980s. Durham University Earth scientist Martin Smith suggests in a new paper published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society that a few fossilized filaments discovered in Scotland and Sweden are actually part of a root-like system used by fungus to gather nutrients from soil. They were long known as “problematic” fossils because nobody was sure what they were, nor where they fit into fungal evolution. Smith identified the filaments as part of an ancient fungus called Tortotubus, which bears some resemblance to modern mushrooms—though we have no fossils that could prove that the fungus had fruiting bodies like mushrooms do. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Problematic” fossil turns out to be oldest known example of life on land

Much more than Mario Kart: The history of kart racers

No video game genre divides and unifies us like the kart racer. For every Mario Kart there are a dozen by-the-numbers cash-ins, and even that hallowed series receives regular criticism as too derivative. But while we all breathe a collective sigh of disappointment with each kid-friendly license that predictably goes the generic kart-racing route, it’s hard not to get excited by that rare entry that feels fresh and new. A great kart racer is a joyous thing. It’s accessible yet deep, fun yet primed for oh-so-serious competition between friends, and full of colorful, wacky charm. It is a game for everyone. So in keeping with the spirit of the genre—and as the latest edition in our gaming genre history series that includes city builders , graphic adventures , and simulation games —it’s time to ride through the ups and downs of kart racing. (Before we start, a quick note: I’ve omitted go-kart racing sims such as Open Kart and Michael Schumacher Racing World Kart because they are essentially conventional racing games and not what we normally think of as kart racers.) Read 33 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Much more than Mario Kart: The history of kart racers

Ars talks self-driving car technology with Ford at CES

Wayne Williams from Ford shows us one of the company’s fully autonomous Fusion research vehicles. Video shot/edited by Nathan Fitch. (video link) LAS VEGAS—As we’ve noted elsewhere, CES has now evolved to be part car show. But not just any car show—the focus is on how technology is transforming the car, and nowhere is that more evident than in autonomous driving. The goal is to get to “level four”—the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s highest level of self-driving vehicle, capable of getting from point A to point B without any human driver intervention. We’re not there yet—no one in the industry Ars has spoken to recently thinks the tech challenges are quite solved yet—but research vehicles from companies like Google , Delphi , Audi , and Ford are testing out the hardware and software necessary to get us to that point. With that in mind, we spoke to Wayne Williams, who gave us a quick tour of one of Ford’s fully autonomous hybrid Fusions. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Ars talks self-driving car technology with Ford at CES

Intel’s new Atom and Core M Compute Sticks get faster and look better

Andrew Cunningham Intel’s new Compute Stick has a better-looking design. 7 more images in gallery Intel’s original Compute Stick was an neat idea that ultimately wasn’t executed very well. Any system based on one of Intel’s Atom processors is going to be a little slow, but flaky wireless, inconsistent performance, and a clunky setup process all made it less appealing than it could have been. It had all of the hallmarks and rough edges of a first-generation product. Today Intel showed us its next-generation Compute Sticks, and it’s clear that the company is taking seriously the criticism of the first model. There are three new versions to talk about: the lowest end stick uses a Cherry Trail Atom CPU and is the closest relative to the first-generation Compute Stick. The other two use more powerful Skylake Core M processors—one has a Core m3-6Y30 processor, and another has a Core m5-6Y57 CPU with Intel’s vPro management features enabled. All three sticks share the same basic design. The first-generation stick used a bulky, glossy plastic housing that made it look and feel more like a reference design than an actual shipping product, but all three new models switch to a softer, curvier case that looks more refined. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel’s new Atom and Core M Compute Sticks get faster and look better

AMD’s new graphics architecture is called Polaris

The rumours were true: AMD’s new graphics architecture is called Polaris (it previously went under the codename Arctic Islands), it’s based on a 14nm FinFET process, and it’ll ship in “mid-2016.” Given that AMD’s GPUs—and indeed Nvidia’s—have been stuck at the larger 28nm process node for several years, the move to 14nm should bring huge improvements in power consumption and performance per watt. Details are thin on the ground—AMD has promised to go into much greater detail at a later date—but for now the company has confirmed that Polaris is the fourth generation of its Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. The current GCN architecture, GCN 1.2, is used by the likes of the Radeon R9 285 and R9 Fury. Improvements to the command processor, geometry processor, L2 cache, memory controller, multimedia cores, and display engine are promised in fourth-gen GCN, as well as to the all important compute units at the heart of the GPU. Polaris will support hardware 4K h.265 encoding and decoding at 60 FPS, DisplayPort 1.3, and, at long last, HDMI 2.0a. The latter was missing from AMD’s recent Fury and 300-series of GPUs, which instead featured HDMI 1.4a that limited 4K signals to 30 FPS at 60Hz, making them less than ideal for use in the living room with 4K TVs. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AMD’s new graphics architecture is called Polaris

Using the new Apple TV to emulate classic game consoles

Enlarge / The Apple TV and the Horipad Ultimate MFI controller. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) For those of us fortunate enough to have the privilege, late December and early January bring two things: new toys and a bit of vacation time. That makes it a great time to tinker with little tech projects, things that are inessential and maybe a bit time-consuming but fun enough and useful enough to be worth doing. One of my projects was to experiment with classic console emulators on the new Apple TV . There aren’t many of them yet, and installation takes a little work (Apple doesn’t allow emulators in the App Store), but new capabilities introduced in iOS 9 and the iOS-based tvOS make it possible to install them. Emulation and the Apple TV Right now there are two notable emulation projects targeting tvOS. One is a distant relative of the MAME arcade emulator , though it doesn’t seem as though it’s being maintained. Another, Provenance , is the one we’ll be spending the most time with. It’s a multi-system emulator that supports most major 8- and 16-bit consoles, including the NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, Game Boy, and Game Boy Advance. Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Using the new Apple TV to emulate classic game consoles

Raspberry Pi Zero sells out within 24 hours

(credit: Wired) The Pi Zero—the new £4 Raspberry Pi —has sold out in under 24 hours. The Raspberry Pi Foundation says that around 20,000 individual Pi Zeroes have been sold in the last day, along with a further 10,000 copies of the MagPi magazine which had a Pi Zero on the front. “You’d think we’d be used to it by now, but we’re always amazed by the level of interest in new Raspberry Pi products,” said Eben Upton, the founder of the foundation. “Right now it appears that we’ve sold every individual Zero we made… people are scouring the country for the last few Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury and Smiths branches that haven’t sold out [of the MagPi magazine],” Upton told Wired . Upton said they are producing more Zeroes “as fast as we can” at its factory in Pencoed, Wales, but didn’t specify when more stock would be available. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Raspberry Pi Zero sells out within 24 hours

AMD Radeon Software Crimson: A new name and a new look for Catalyst

AMD’s Radeon Software Crimson replaces Catalyst. 16 more images in gallery AMD is taking the fight directly to Nvidia with the long-overdue launch of a new driver software package and UI. Called Radeon Software Crimson, the new software replaces the old AMD Catalyst Control Center (CCC) with a flat modern UI, and simplified menus. Most importantly, AMD is promising that a new major version of the software will be released every year, with minor versions arriving every month. Each new major version will have a different, colour-themed name. The software is due to roll out later this year. Crimson has been developed in QT, a cross-platform application framework that AMD says is much quicker than the old .NET framework CCC used to use. It claims that start-up time has been reduced from eight seconds to 0.6 seconds on a mid-performance AMD E-350-based laptop; high-end desktops will be even faster. Crimson is the first in a number of software changes that AMD is implementing following the restructuring of its graphics group into the Radeon Technologies Group under the leadership of Raja Koduri. For now, AMD is only talking about the UI changes in Crimson, which is dramatically different from the old CCC. (More will be revealed about underlying driver changes at a later date, but AMD was vague about when that might be.) The new flat design features five tabs at the top for Gaming, Video, Display, Eyefinity, and System, while then buttons at the bottom for Updates, Preferences, and Notifications. In the middle, taking up the lion’s share of the window, there’s a carousel that displays announcements and promotions about games when not being used to display settings. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AMD Radeon Software Crimson: A new name and a new look for Catalyst