Month: November 2016

Enlarge (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Just after Apple proudly debuted its newest MacBook Pros, the company quietly lowered the prices of high-capacity storage upgrades for older Mac products on its website. Reports show that anyone purchasing a MacBook Air, iMac, Mac Pro, Mac Mini, and the old MacBook Pro will save up to $100 if they get the 512GB or 1TB options.

Getting extra storage used to add $300 to $400 (512GB) or even $700 to $900 (1TB) to the cost of the device, but for these older models, Apple appears to have shaved off some of the price. For example, upgrading the 256GB 13-inch MacBook Air to 512GB of SSD PCIe-based flash storage costs $200 now, instead $300. For the base model of the 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display, it now costs $400 to upgrade to 512GB of flash storage, which is $100 less than earlier this year.

Apple is still selling the 2015 13- and 15-inch models of the MacBook Pro. The 15-inch model that comes with 256GB of storage can be upgraded to 512GB for $200 and 1TB for $600, down from $300 and $800, respectively. Those are actually the same prices for the same upgrades to the new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, only the new model also has a 2TB upgrade option for an additional $1,400. The 2015 13-inch MacBook Pro is a bit trickier, since it comes standard with just 128GB of SSD: it can be upgraded to 256GB for $200, 512GB for $400, and 1TB for $800.

Enlarge (credit: Netatmo)

As a followup to its face-identifying home security camera, Netatmo is ready to release its next smart home device. The Netatmo Presence is an outdoor security camera that, like the original Welcome, boasts facial recognition as its standout feature. Looking more like a heavy-duty outdoor light, the Presence can identify people, animals, and vehicles around your home and alert you to any that are unfamiliar. Presence was announced at CES in January but is now officially available from Home Depot, Apple, and Amazon.

Since it is an outdoor camera, Netatmo designed Presence a little differently from most home security cameras. It's actually a rectangular floodlight with an IP66 rating (dust- and rain-protected), and it must be hooked up to electrical wiring like the lights that would be above your front door or garage (which also means you'll never worry about a depleted battery, either). The floodlight can be triggered by movement if you want, which will illuminate the subject of video clips. But even if you don't use the floodlight, the camera's IR lighting enables night vision. Presence captures video footage of everything in its 100-degree field of view, and it can detect movement within 65 feet of the camera. I was struck by the design at first because most security cameras, even the outdoor ones, are designed to look modern or chic. Rather than focus on style for a device that's primarily utilitarian, Netatmo decided to adapt an existing form factor.

The recognition technology in Presence is taken from Welcome but expands the technology to animals and vehicles. That means the camera will learn to identify people, pets, and cars around your household over time, and you can choose whether you want to be notified when household members are seen. More importantly, when someone or something new is detected, you'll be notified via your smartphone. Then you can go into Netatmo's app and see the footage of the unidentified movement. You can also set up to four detection zones so the camera will only notify you if movement is detected in those particular spots of its field of view.

Enlarge / The Camaro ZL1 on the toughest racetrack in the world, the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

Last week Chevrolet announced that the 2017 ZL1 Camaro ran a lap of the Nürburgring Nordschleife in 7:29.60—11.67 seconds quicker than the previous ZL1's fast lap. Tthe Nordschleife course is used by manufacturers to set lap times. The Sport Auto Lap is 14.1 miles (22.8km) long, so the new Camaro gained nearly a second per mile. In performance and racing terms, that is a huge pick-up, one which might give rise to some skepticism. So how did the new car make such a big gain?

As with all things Nürburgring, "if there's no video, it didn't happen," so have a gander at the lap first. Camaro ride and handling engineer Drew Cattell is at the wheel.

Some of the ZL1's hardware has remained the same, including wheel/tire sizes and brakes. But the 2017 ZL1 has aerodynamic differences starting with a smaller profile and extending to new underbody aero panels borrowed from the Cadillac CTS-V, which keep airflow laminar underneath the Camaro. The smaller car has tighter packaging and requires no less than 11 heat exchangers to ensure reliably cool under-hood temperatures. Above the hood a new supercharger lid improves airflow.

Enlarge (credit: The Range Productions)

Facebook has ruled out the launch of a new car insurance policy from the UK company Admiral Insurance that would have analysed a customer's posts on the social network to help set premiums.

Admiral has not responded to Ars' request for comment, but The Guardian says of the original plans: "Admiral Insurance will analyse the Facebook accounts of first-time car owners to look for personality traits that are linked to safe driving. For example, individuals who are identified as conscientious and well-organised will score well."

The voluntary scheme would have offered discounts of up to £350 a year.

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In 2007, the first-person shooter was in a rut. Games like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor had proven extremely popular on the PlayStation 2 and PC, but as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 ushered in a glorious future of high-definition graphics and online gaming, the military shooters failed to keep up. Years of focusing on the historic destruction of World War II were taking their toll. But Infinity Ward, the developer behind the first two WWII-themed Call of Duty games, took a gamble on a new direction, one that would come to define an entire generation of console gaming. For the next Call of Duty, Infinity Ward wouldn’t look to the past for inspiration, but to the gritty (approximate) reality of modern warfare, and the Hollywood films that glamorised it. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was born.

Almost a decade later, it’s easy to forget that Infinity Ward took a risk that ranks alongside that of the original iPhone. Skipping the 20th Century entirely, Modern Warfare transported players to contemporary conflicts. In the place of beach landings and frontline combat, it captured the tension of SAS infiltrations, the organised spectacle of a US invasion, and the end-of-the-world stakes of militarised ultra-nationalism. It even threw in a stray nuke for good measure.

The Modern Warfare remaster—out on November 4 only as a pack-in bonus with the futuristic Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare––not only commemorates an iconic release, it reinforces Modern Warfare’s real-world foresight. The remaster is a testament to the power of a creative idea that revolutionised a genre, and to a game that seems to have predicted, or at least understood, how the geopolitical climate of the Middle East would further destabilise throughout the succeeding decade.

Visually, Modern Warfare was always a lavish, Hollywoodesque production, but it’s surprising just how good it looks today. The technical work behind the update makes this more of a remake than a simple remaster, with a complete rebuild of its weather effects, texture work, lighting models, and character animations creating a game that looks as modern as it did in 2007.

Enlarge / Adobe's Project Felix makes it easier to mix real and rendered content. (credit: Adobe)

Adobe's annual MAX conference kicked off in San Diego today, with the company showcasing new apps, new features for old apps, and more powerful cloud services.

Project Felix is a new kind of graphical design application designed for creating things like composited product shots that are built from a mix of 3D assets, such as models of a new product, and 2D assets, such as backgrounds and scenery. It produces photorealistic renders combining these various elements using the V-Ray engine. Felix will figure out where the horizon and surfaces are in a 2D background image, ensuring that the 3D objects are placed properly in the scene. It will also identify lighting within the background so that illumination of the rendered parts is consistent with the 2D parts.

Felix is designed to be approachable even by non-3D artists, with a range of models, lights, and materials available from Adobe Stock, Adobe's cloud marketplace for graphical assets. A beta will be released later this year for Creative Cloud subscribers.