Gravitational waves communicate information in a wholly different medium than any type of radiation. What that means is that astronomers could use them to study things that were fundamentally invisible before. Black holes and dark matter come to mind as the most prominent examples of parts of the universe that are, at least, difficult to see with light. So, it can hardly be surprising, the controversy now swirling around the idea that the gravitational waves detected earlier this year, marking a watershed confirmation of Einstein’s general relativity, could turn out to contain information on both of those topics. There’s one theory of dark matter that’s a little different than most of the others, in that it doesn’t posit that the mysterious substance is made of some equally mysterious new WIMP-y particle with airy-fairy new physical attributes, but rather out of regular old black holes.
Optical discs have ruled console game distribution for decades, but recent trademark filings from Nintendo and a memory supplier report from earlier this year suggest that the company may be shaking things up with . Nintendo is rumored to be adopting cartridges instead of discs for its upcoming platform, which is currently expected to launch at the end of Nintendo’s first fiscal quarter in 2017. The most recent rumor comes courtesy of Nintendo’s trademark applications for the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. As you can see from the filing below, video game cartridges are listed as one of the goods and services Nintendo wishes to trademark.
Microsoft has confirmed that its Surface 3 tablet, already in short supply, is in the process of being phased out. Microsoft will stop distributing the device by December at the latest, with no word yet on whether the company will replace its lower-end Surface hardware. In a statement sent to press, a Microsoft spokesperson said: Since launching Surface 3 over a year ago, we have seen strong demand and satisfaction amongst our customers. Inventory is now limited and by the end of December 2016, we will no longer manufacture Surface 3 devices. The original Surface RT and Surface Pro were announced just over four years ago, but neither was a smash hit out of the gate.
The dwarf planet Pluto is proving to be a much more interesting object than we expected before the New Horizons probe finally reached it last year after a decade in space. Not only is the and the , but Pluto may even have a liquid ocean. A new analysis of Pluto suggests that the subsurface ocean that gave rise to some of its geological anomalies could still be sloshing around down there. The new work on Pluto comes from Noah Hammond and Marc Parmentier of Brown University and Amy Barr of the Planetary Science Institute. The early examination of Pluto’s surface from the data returned by showed long, deep faults running hundreds of miles.
For a limited time, Dell is offering up a massive discount on the Inspiron 3650 desktop PC. With today’s coupon in play, you’ll snag this powerful quad-core tower PC for 47% off the sticker price. (List price: $1102.99 — Coupon code: DELLBIZ579) Internally, this model has a sixth generation quad-core 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-6700 processor, a discrete AMD Radeon HD R9 360 graphics card (with 2GB of memory), 16GB of DDR3L RAM (1600MHz), a 2TB 7200RPM hard drive, a DVD burner, Bluetooth 4.0, and 802.11b/g/n WiFi support. A USB keyboard and USB mouse come along with your purchase, so you can simply hook up your existing HDTV or PC monitor over HDMI or VGA to hit the ground running.
Ford wants to get into the business of helping drivers rate their skills. An onboard plug-in module plus a smartphone apps gives you a “personal driving score.” Ford likens its Driver Behavior Project, part of Ford’s bigger Smart Mobility push, to a fitness app that tracks how many calories you burn or how long you’ve exercised. Right now it’s a trial program in London, but it could expand. Ford says it provides feedback that helps drivers self-improve and a ratings score score that enables them to qualify for cheaper car rentals or lower insurance rates. That assumes Ford’s drivers are good drivers, or the app convinces them to mend their wicked ways on the highway.
Earlier this summer, that Apple would soon retire its ancient 1440p Thunderbolt Display, only to replace it with a 4K or 5K panel. Rumors suggested that the company might even launch a display with its own built-in GPU to handle the workload, possibly based on AMD’s upcoming Polaris architecture. It would’ve been an extremely interesting way to ensure that the panel could be driven by any type of Mac, possibly freeing Apple to focus on reducing device thickness or improving battery life while pushing more horsepower into the monitor, which could more easily handle the heat from a higher-end graphics card.
For the past few weeks, there’s been a storm between Oculus and HTC Vive owners. Last month, Oculus rolled out a DRM solution as part of the Oculus Store’s software. The purpose of the patch was to make it impossible to play Oculus Store games on headsets like HTC’s Vive, even if the games in question were legally purchased. The company has now reversed course on this strategy and removed the DRM lockout. Oculus, however, hasn’t done anything to make that change public. The news came instead from the developers of the Revive project, which aimed to allow HTC Vive owners to play Oculus Store titles.
It’s been almost a decade since CPU developers began talking up many-core chips with core counts potentially into the hundreds or even thousands. Now, a recent paper at the 2016 Symposium on VLSI Technology has described a 1,000-core CPU built on IBM’s 32nm PD-SOI process. The “KiloCore” is an impressive beast, capable of executing up to 1.78 trillion instructions per second in just 621 million transistors. The chip was designed by a team at UC Davis. First, a clarifying note: If you Google “KiloCore,” most of what shows up is related to much older IBM alliance with a company named Rapport.
