Month: December 2015

Clad in designer jeans, black leather jacket, and white shirt open at the collar, a characteristically ebullient Sir Richard Branson bounded onto the stage inside an airy hangar at the San Antonio airport on Thursday. After scanning the audience for a moment, he turned his back to the crowd and stared up at the large 747-400 aircraft behind him. “My God,” he said. “It’s fantastic.”

For the first time, Virgin Galactic has revealed the aircraft it intends to use to boost small satellites weighting up to 450kg into orbit, perhaps before the end of 2017. Branson, the charismatic founder of the company, said he hoped that by bringing down the cost of satellite launches he could enable global satellite Internet and bring connectivity to the more than 3 billion people without access to the Web.

Ars was on hand during the reveal, which showcased the aircraft now destined to carry the “LauncherOne” rocket to an altitude of 35,000 feet before releasing it at a 25-degree upward angle. The rocket's Newton 3 engine will then blast its payload into any number of possible orbits around the Earth. Virgin Galactic assessed a variety of aircraft before settling on a 14-year-old 747 from its own fleet nicknamed “Cosmic Girl.” That airplane continued to fly normal routes until October 23, most frequently carrying passengers from London’s Heathrow to JFK in New York City to San Francisco.

An Oklahoma man has received the distinction of being the first "john" in the state to be criminally prosecuted and arrested after being caught in the act by a drone. Local police records show Douglas Blansett, 75, was arrested and released on Thursday. That's according to local anti-prostitution Oklahoma City-based activist and private investigator Brian Bates, who has run JohnTV.com for years, a collection of videos of suspected sex workers and their johns.

It was Bates' drone that earlier this year took video of what he believed was a man picking up a woman named Amanda Zolicoffer that he described as a "known prostitute." Both Blansett and Zolicoffer now face a misdemeanor charge of "engaging in an act of lewdness."

Footage of the bust, which took place in March 2015, was first posted in August 2015.

Certain third-party CPU coolers could damage Skylake CPUs and motherboards thanks to Skylake's thinner construction, according to a report by German tech website Games Hardware. In independent testing, the site found that the pressure exerted by some popular coolers caused the structurally weaker Skylake CPU to bend, thus damaging the motherboard's delicate pins and contacts.

The problems appear to stem from the substrate used in Skylake's construction, which is noticeably thinner than that of previous-generation chips. Noctua, EK Water Blocks, Scythe, Arctic, Thermaltake, and Thermalright, commenting to Games Hardware about the issue, suggested that damage from overly high mounting pressure is most likely to occur during shipping or relocation of a system. Some are recommending that the CPU cooler be removed altogether before a system is shipped.

So far, only Scythe has offered a solution to the problem. A post on its support page notes that it will be redesigning the mounting mechanism for Skylake CPUs by offering new screws to reduce the mounting pressure. The change only affects coolers that use its H.P.M.S mounting system, with the company saying that its coolers are "compatible with Skylake sockets in general." Scythe will send a set of upgraded screws for free to existing customers.

We've had a Micronesian archipelago, the African savannah, Pacific islands, fictional Himalayan peaks, and even an '80s action movie. Now we're going 12,000 years back in time to the Stone Age. Far Cry goes Primal, said a marketing whiz somewhere, somewhen.

Unsurprisingly, then, the single-player only Far Cry Primal has a distinctly rural vibe. Snow-capped mountains punctuate a skyline densely packed with forest canopy, steep cliffs, and gentle hillocks. Rivers flow at ground level, fed by waterfalls that have left deep scars in the terrain. The world of Oros could almost be a picture-postcard kind of place... if it weren't for the numerous bloodthirsty wild animals. Not that all of the local fauna is out to get you, but this wouldn't be Far Cry without a few dozen animals trying to take a chunk of your leg. There's no sign of a honey badger yet, though.

Still, animals are key to both the personality of Primal's world and how club-happy protagonist Takkar views it. Described by Ubisoft rather grandly, as a "beastmaster," Takkar is the Stone Age's very own Doctor Doolittle—able to tame and command even the most aggressive of creatures. I'm told any of the game's predators (around 14 of them) can be tamed, although that feature isn't quite ready for show just yet. Apparently, the rough idea is to sneak up on your target and pacify it gently without violence, which doesn't sound all that exciting right now, but maybe Ubi's keeping the secret sauce under wraps until a later date.