Month: December 2015

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

The man believed to be Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht’s closest adviser has finally been apprehended.

In a statement published Friday, the FBI said that Roger Thomas Clark, known online as “Variety Jones,” “VJ” and “Cimon,” was arrested in Thailand. The suspect is pending extradition to the United States.

“Clark may have thought residing in Thailand would keep him out of reach of U.S authorities, but our international partnerships have proven him wrong, FBI Assistant Director Diego Rodriguez said in a statement. “We thank our law enforcement partners who have worked with the FBI on this case.”

Final Fantasy VII Remake certainly looks more like a remake than a remaster. (credit: Square Enix)

Last year's inaugural PlayStation Experience closed 2014 with a surprising number of game and product announcements, and Sony appeared ready to double-down on this new end-of-year tradition with a follow-up, fan-focused convention full of playable demos and new products, and its two-hour keynote led off with the big Final Fantasy remaster that Sony announced at this past summer's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Final Fantasy VII Remake—the classic remaster's official name—had a gameplay-trailer reveal that showed less of a remaster and more of a total overhaul. For starters, the new version of FF7 includes a third-person, over-the-shoulder camera as its default viewpoint. That'll certainly show off the new, fully 3D content better than the original version's pre-rendered, top-down environs. The trailer's dialogue was entirely spoken aloud, as well, and its combat showed off an apparent active-battle twist, though it was hard to tell whether players will gain as much active control of Cloud Strife and other characters as the trailer appeared to show, or whether the footage simply looked more dynamic from a new perspective.

Final Fantasy big-wig Tetsuya Nomura took the stage after the presentation, but not with news of a release date or when fans can expect any playable access to the remaster. Instead, he announced that the PC version of Final Fantasy VII had already launched on PlayStation 4 via its online store.

(credit: OpenALPR)

We now live in a world where if you have an IP-enabled security camera, you can download some free, open-source software from GitHub and boom—you have a fully functional automated license plate reader (ALPR, or LPR).

Welcome to the sousveillance state: the technology that was once was just the purview of government contractors a few years ago could now be on your own street soon.

For years now, specialized LPR cameras have been used mounted in fixed locations or on police cars. These devices scan passing license plates using optical character recognition technology, checking each plate against a "hot list" of stolen or wanted vehicles. The devices can read up to 60 plates per second and typically record the date, time, and GPS location of any plates—hot or not.

Behold: the mountainous shoreline of Sputnik Planum. (credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

Finally, the highest resolution images are in from the edge of the solar system. Late Friday NASA released pictures of Pluto's varied terrain with a resolution of 77 to 85 meters per pixel, and these eye-popping images bring us even more detail about a complex world with cratered, mountainous terrain.

The photos of Sputnik Planum show a range of mountains crammed together, before abruptly running into the relatively flat left side of Pluto's heart. "The new details revealed here, particularly the crumpled ridges in the rubbly material surrounding several of the mountains, reinforce our earlier impression that the mountains are huge ice blocks that have been jostled and tumbled and somehow transported to their present locations," said New Horizons science team member John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute.

The higher resolution photos will allow scientists to better understand Pluto's puzzling geology, which has surprised with an active surface that indicates the presence of interior heating. For example, in the photo below, features such as layering and the interior of crater walls can be seen. With additional analysis, this should provide a snapshot of Pluto's geological history and provide some answers about the dwarf planet's curious evolution.