Month: April 2016

At its Build developer conference a few weeks ago, Microsoft announced the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, a major update for Windows 10 due this summer. One of its biggest aspects was substantially reworked and improved pen support ("Ink" in Microsoft terminology) intended to make pen applications easier to find and use and to make stylus use more powerful. A new Windows build that provides the first access to these new features, version 14328, has just been promoted to the fast ring.

The core of this new support is the Windows Ink Workspace, a panel that provides instant access to pen-powered apps. Pressing the eraser button on a Surface Pen will show the panel instead of its current action (which opens OneNote). The Anniversary Update also comes with a trio of new pen apps: Sketchpad, a sketching app; Screen sketch, a screenshot annotation app; and a new Sticky Note app.

The new build contains a lot more than just Ink improvements. The Start menu has been revised to make All Apps permanently visible, and in tablet mode, All Apps is now full-screen. Also in tablet mode, the taskbar can autohide without being autohide in desktop mode. The taskbar clock now shows on all monitors on multihead systems, and the calendar now shows your appointments. The Action Center notification system has had its layout refined to show more notifications and now includes rich Cortana notifications.

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This week, the US Senate's Appropriations subcommittee overseeing spaceflight put forward its blueprint for NASA's FY2017 budget. The top-line number looks promising at $19.306 billion—a $21 million year-over-year increase.

Yet the Senate plan exposes two potentially fatal flaws with NASA's Journey to Mars. Namely, the US Congress continues to place funding for the Space Launch System rocket and Orion space capsule before all other elements of NASA's exploration program. And by raiding other areas of NASA's budget, notably Space Technology, it is hamstringing the agency's ability to carry out the journey.

There is an old-time expression to characterize what is happening here: eating the seed corn. In a different era, a farmer's family might be forced to eat its seed corn for the next growing season to survive a long winter. This few weeks of sustenance would then doom the family during the next planting season, leaving them with no seeds to put into the ground. This sort of budget eats NASA's seed corn for the Journey to Mars.

Microsoft has withdrawn its regulatory complaints against Google across the globe—a matter of months after Redmond retreated from its fight over the ad giant's alleged abuse of dominance in the search market in Europe.

A spokesperson for the European Commission's competition chief Margrethe Vestager confirmed to Ars that her office was aware of Microsoft's decision to back out of the case.

“The Commission takes note of the announcement. We continue to investigate the conduct of Google as part of our ongoing formal probes, based on the facts, the evidence and EU law. The substantive analysis in an antitrust case is not affected by the number of complainants nor their identity,” Brussels' spokesperson Ricardo Cardoso told Ars.

The UK government has confirmed that it wants to bring in legislation increasing the maximum sentence for online copyright infringement to 10 years of imprisonment, despite widespread objections and doubts about its feasibility.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe, parliamentary under-secretary of state and minister for intellectual property, writes in her foreword to the document responding to the consultation held at the end of last year: "we are now proposing changes that include increasing the maximum sentence, but at the same time addressing concerns about the scope of the offence. The revised provisions will help protect rights holders, while making the boundaries of the offence clearer, so that everyone can understand how the rules should be applied."

As the UK government's summary of responses reveals, 1,032 submissions were received, of which 938 came through the Open Rights Group. Concerns raised included the fact that there was no requirement to prove that an infringer had intent to cause harm for them to be considered guilty. That meant the proposed offence had an element of "strict liability," which would result in somebody being held liable even if they had no intention of causing harm.

Say what you will about Valve's Steam Machines and Steam OS—they're not great—but at the very least they have encouraged PC makers to rethink PC design for the living room. And now, with HTC wanting to turn front rooms into VR labs with its excellent Vive VR headset, there's a small but growing demand for sensibly sized PCs that'll slot in next to a PlayStation or an Xbox. Acer's new Predator G1 gaming desktop doesn't quite manage to slim down to PlayStation 4 proportions, but it does cram Nvidia's monster Titan X graphics card into a chassis just bigger than briefcase. Compared to a typical gaming desktop, or Acer's own Predator G6, it's positively tiny. The question is: how has Acer done it?

The Tardis effect

Acer says the Predator G1's case was built a bit more like a games console than a regular tower PC, with a clear airflow path through the case that helps cards like the Titan X stay cool under load. However, taking off the side panel, there's nothing too mad going on. It has a metal cage around the GPU, designed to function as a heatsink and as a way to protect the card during transit, but the Predator G1 uses conventional fans rather than water-cooling or any other comparable "next-level" antics.

While there's an obvious appeal for people who want a VR setup suitable for a living room environment, Acer's also pitching the G1 at those after a semi-portable system. Indeed, the first 1,000 buyers will receive a matching piece of luggage designed with the signature Predator series armoured look. No, it's still not small enough to get past Ryanair's draconian hand luggage restrictions thanks to the extra cushioning inside it to protect the PC—and I wonder how much room is actually left for clothes in the thing afterwards—but hey, if you're in the market for a small gaming PC anyway, it's a nice bonus.