Tag: technology

Lexus, Mazda, and Yamaha wow Tokyo with stunning concept cars

Mazda The RX-Vision. Mazda calls this design language KODO. 11 more images in gallery We make no apologies for our love of the concept car at Ars Technica, and this year’s Tokyo auto show has just delivered another fix. Home turf for companies like Mazda, Toyota, and Yamaha means they usually push the boat (or in this case the car) out with something special, and 2015 is no exception. First up is Mazda’s RX-Vision, which announces to the world that the company has not given up on the rotary engine. The RX-Vision is a front-engined, rear-wheel drive sports car that has RX-7 fans salivating at the prospect of a replacement for the iconic car. Although Mazda says it has no plan to put the car into production, we wouldn’t be surprised if a groundswell of popular opinion eventually changed its mind. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Lexus, Mazda, and Yamaha wow Tokyo with stunning concept cars

A Tiny Silicon Disc Is the World’s Fastest Nanoscale Optical Switch

With the future of computing looking increasingly likely to become light-based , it pays to work out how to make the switching of light as efficient as possible. Enter tiny silicon discs, which have now been shown to be the fastest ever optical switches at the nanoscale. Read more…

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A Tiny Silicon Disc Is the World’s Fastest Nanoscale Optical Switch

Ancient Greek Warrior’s Tomb Yields Eye-Popping Treasures

An American husband-and-wife team working in Greece has uncovered the 3, 500-year-old remains of a prominent ancient warrior who was buried alongside an assortment of riches. It’s being called the most important discovery made in continental Greece in over 65 years. Read more…

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Ancient Greek Warrior’s Tomb Yields Eye-Popping Treasures

Immersion Cooling Drives Server Power Densities To Insane New Heights

1sockchuck writes: By immersing IT equipment in liquid coolant, a new data center is reaching extreme power densities of 250 kW per enclosure. At 40 megawatts, the data center is also taking immersion cooling to an entirely new scale, building on a much smaller proof-of-concept from a Hong Kong skyscraper. The facility is being built by Bitcoin specialist BitFury and reflects how the harsh economics of industrial mining have prompted cryptocurrency firms to focus on data center design to cut costs and boost power. But this type of radical energy efficiency may soon be key to America’s effort to build an exascale computer and the increasingly extreme data-crunching requirements for cloud and analytics. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Immersion Cooling Drives Server Power Densities To Insane New Heights

Xbox One gets Xbox 360 backwards compatibility with November 12 update

The new Xbox One dashboard, as originally shown off in June. The new Xbox One dashboard, which will usher in a bunch of new features including Xbox 360 backwards compatibility, will be released on November 12. Confirmation came via a tweet by Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb very early this morning. Microsoft first showed off the “New Xbox One Experience” (that’s its official name) back at E3 in June. The dashboard interface has been completely overhauled: now, instead of looking like the Windows 8 Start screen, it looks a bit more like a Windows 10 app. The interface is very flat, with a heavy focus on typography. Perhaps most importantly, settings, games, social updates, and all of the good stuff is much more easily accessible with a gamepad. The primary focus of the new dashboard, you’ll be happy to hear, is to make it faster and easier to do things. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Xbox One gets Xbox 360 backwards compatibility with November 12 update

The IRS has used Stingray phone-tracking tech

This year, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice have thankfully put into place more stringent regulations on how government agencies can use ” Stingray ” cellphone-tracking devices. However, we’re also learning more about how widespread usage of such tools was within the government: Today, The Guardian reports that the Internal Revenue Service made purchases in 2009 and 2012 of Stingray equipment from manufacturer Harris Corporation. The documents it received as part of a Freedom of Information Act request were heavily redacted but still revealed that in 2012, the IRS paid more than $65, 000 to upgrade previous Stingray equipment to a newer version called the HailStorm. Source: The Guardian

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The IRS has used Stingray phone-tracking tech

How Microsoft Kept the Surface Book’s Coolest Feature a Secret

The jaw-dropping new Surface Book arrived with a splash of glitter and surprise . It’s so beautiful, so powerful, so— Oh wait holy shit the screen comes off?! Nobody expected this, and that’s exactly how Microsoft wanted it. Read more…

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How Microsoft Kept the Surface Book’s Coolest Feature a Secret

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Is Giving $200M of His Twitter Stock to Staff

Twitter’s new CEO Jack Dorsey has enough cash to go round. So much so, in fact, that he’s announced that he’s giving one-third of his stock holdings in the social media company to his employees. Read more…

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Is Giving $200M of His Twitter Stock to Staff

Pandora Has to Stump Up $90M For Its Use of Pre-1972 Songs

Earlier this year, the Record Industry Association of America began to pursue Pandora on behalf of record labels to seek royalties for the use of tracks recorded before 1972. Now, it’s reached a settlement that will see Pandora stump up $90 million for using the songs. Read more…

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Pandora Has to Stump Up $90M For Its Use of Pre-1972 Songs

Descent Underground recaptures that Descent multiplayer magic [Updated]

Video: the Descent Underground Early Access gameplay trailer. AUSTIN, TX—About a month ago, we called the retro-themed Descent -style shooter Sublevel Zero an awesome Descent -like experience  but lamented its lack of multiplayer. Well, good news this morning for folks who are still craving multiplayer tunnel-shooting: as of 11:00 EDT, Descent Underground is available on Steam Early Access for $29.99. Players will be able to jump in and fly three classes of ships in five maps and a few different game modes. The product of a small Austin company called Descendent Studios founded by former Star Citizen Austin studio head Eric “Wingman” Peterson, Descent Underground was originally envisioned as a Descent clone under the working title “Ships That Fight Underground” (abbreviated as “STFU” ). However, the game changed course when an encounter with an Interplay shareholder led to a licensing agreement with Interplay, the studio that controls the bulk of the Descent intellectual property. The licensing deal meant that the game could be re-envisioned as an actual branded Descent game—though because the licensing agreement doesn’t include the character models or sound assets from the original trilogy, some creativity had to be applied. The result is Descent Underground, a prequel to the original Descent series. In it, the player takes on the role of a miner who remote-pilots drones through mines, blasting other drones and occasionally doing some actual mining to collect resources. Lead designer Peterson explained to us that the eventual goal is to have a metagame that has some hints of Dune about it: players will fly around in a large mothership, cruising through asteroid fields and looking for choice places to mine. A nice asteroid might already have another player group’s ship docked on it, and you can fly up next to it and deploy your own drones to try to fight them for the asteroid. (This is what’s going on in the launch trailer at the top of the page.) Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Descent Underground recaptures that Descent multiplayer magic [Updated]