Solar eclipses happen every so often, but the one taking place on August 21st will be a first-of-its-kind event. That’s not because of the eclipse itself, but because of what the people in its path are doing. Various universities and scientific organizations are working to unite fans of science to collect data like temperature, photos, and even radio signals. A total solar eclipse occurs when the sun is completely covered by the moon. The eclipse on August 21st is important because it will cover the entire US from coast to coast. That hasn’t happened since 1918, and uniting people to do science was a bit harder back then.
Fear of AI and robotics is fairly common in humans. There have been ample predictions about how the robot/AI revolution will destroy an enormous number of jobs, while potentially posing an existential risk to the long-term survival of the human race. In the real world, however, our robot designs are much closer to a manufacturing robot on an assembly line than, say, Data (or even Bender). Case in point: Rodyman, the $2.9 million robot. For the past four years, Professor Bruno Siciliano and Prisma Lab in Italy have been trying–and not entirely succeeding–to teach a robot how to make pizza.
In search of an affordable desktop that has plenty of room for upgrades? Take a look at the XPS 8910 tower PC from Dell. With a sleek modern design, a quad-core CPU, space for three 3.5-inch drives, and support for up to 64GB of DDR4 memory, this PC is up for almost anything. (List price: $949.99 — Coupon code: XPS599) So, what kind of specs are we looking at here? This tower ships with a sixth generation quad-core 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-6700 processor, a dedicated Nvidia GeForce GT 730 graphics card (with 2GB of memory), 8GB of DDR4 RAM (2133MHz), a 1TB 7200RPM hard drive, a DVD burner, gigabit ethernet, Bluetooth 4.2, and 802.11b/g/n/ac WiFi support.
Smart-lock manufacturer Lockstate has egg all over its face after bricking its own customers’ locks and making them inoperable. The company has previously partnered with Airbnb to make its locks available to owners who want to remotely lock or unlock their houses before or after guests arrive, and some of these buyers got hit the hardest when the company destroyed its own hardware. The problem arose because Lockstate sent a firmware update for Lockstate 7i locks to Lockstate 6i locks. It appears to have worked fine for some of the latest models, but earlier 6i product runs were destroyed in the process.
Historically, there has been a stigma associated with budget game releases. If there wasn’t enough confidence to charge full price, there was a good chance the game was a real stinker. Thankfully, that paradigm has changed completely, and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is an excellent example of what can be achieved in a half-price game with a smaller scope. Set in medieval Europe, Hellblade tackles some heavy topics. Abuse, mental illness, death, and spirituality are all on the table here, as the main character ventures forth into an unknown land in hopes of saving the soul of her dead lover.
There’s a pair of announcements from Blizzard about their new version of Starcraft and a second name-swap. First, Starcraft Remastered is now officially available. This new version of the game is a faithful reproduction of the original as far as its playstyle and visual effects, but the original assets have been reimplemented in native 4K and the game now supports 16:9 aspect ratios, leaderboards, replays, ladder ranks, player profiles, and cloud saves. More significant changes, like offering universal autocasting across all units were not implemented, as Blizzard wanted to offer a version of the game identical to what became a worldwide sensation and practically a Korean religion back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
From the what-could-possibly-go-wrong department: Scientists have now managed to write executable code into DNA that is theoretically capable of infecting the computer that reads it. It was only a matter of time. This is bound to result in trolling law enforcement, à la Rick Sanchez trolling the galactic government with his three lines of code. It’s not quite accurate to call it a virus, even though this might be the closest to a real virus that software has ever come. It consists of replication instructions, encoded in a snippet of DNA that can deliver a payload capable of assuming control of the computer that reads the strand.
Andy Rubin has been involved in the mobile industry for years, including a role in founding both Danger (makers of the Sidekick) and Android before it was acquired by Google. Now, Rubin is heading up an effort to build new phones at his new company, . Rubin says the phone is coming soon — as soon as next week — and he has the pictures to prove it. The long-teased Essential Phone PH-1 was , and at that time Rubin said the device would be in our hands inside of a month. That didn’t happen, and Essential was silent on the reason.
Last month, we wrote about new information about the follow-up to Microsoft’s HoloLens, and how the new device would . At the time, we speculated that Intel’s Atom SoCs might not be long for this world, though we didn’t expect the hammer to drop quite as quickly as it has. Intel is killing its Atom X5-Z8100P processor, the chip that powers the Microsoft HoloLens. This chip isn’t publicly listed on Intel’s website (; useful for all CPU identification tasks), but (PDF, but with security warning) as a Cherry Trail-based part clocked at 1.04GHz. Intel’s decision to cancel its Atom-based SoCs as it exited the smartphone and tablet business has left Microsoft without a follow-up product, though the fact that Intel is exiting the market for a chip that may only have had one customer implies Microsoft and Intel have worked this issue out amongst themselves.
