Month: November 2016

See how quickly this changes in eBay listings from "bargain bin item" to "collector's edition." (credit: Nintendo)

The Wii U's early death, rumored back in March, now appears to be coming true—and, according to Eurogamer, it's happening this week.

Citing "multiple sources," the gaming news outlet has come to learn that Nintendo's Wii U production line will crank out its final run of consoles and shut that specific line down this week. Specifically, the sources indicated on Tuesday that the order deadline for Wii U consoles expired yesterday, and a "small number" of systems were ordered in that run—meaning that Nintendo will almost certainly print and assemble that small number by the end of this week.

The story matches up with a report from Japanese financial news outlet Nikkei saying that Nintendo would shut down Wii U production by year's end—a report that Nintendo was quick to officially and publicly deny at the time. When reached for comment on Tuesday, Nintendo declined to respond to Eurogamer.

Enlarge / Finding tiny islands like this didn't just require navigation skills; you had to know when to travel. (credit: US Air Force photo by Osakabe Yasuo/)

The prehistoric colonization of the remote Pacific was arguably the most ambitious migration in human history. Though there is archeological data available for the colonization of many of the major islands, there is still debate about where various settlers originated and the routes they may have used to reach habitable land.

A recent study published in PNAS harnesses the power of high resolution climatic and oceanographic datasets to argue that seasonal and semiannual weather changes were influential in structuring ancient Pacific voyaging. Based on this model, Samoa was the likely staging area for the colonization of east Polynesia, and the success of various colonization ventures to New Zealand and Easter Island depended heavily on the season.

The authors used a Seascape computerized model that randomly selected frequency-weighted monthly current and wind data collected by the US Navy’s Marine Climatic Atlas of the World. It combined these probabilistic weather patterns with the speeds for small seafaring vessels, although the precise type of ship used for various migrations is not known. The sailing patterns the model produced were combined with land distribution data to determine the most likely short-hop trajectories between islands. Trajectories started in the eastern Philippines and Solomon Islands.

iFixit

The teardown and repair gurus at iFixit got their hands on one of the new $1,499 MacBook Pros today—the model with function keys instead of a Touch Bar—and they wasted no time in tearing it down and figuring out what makes it tick. Surprising no one, the laptop is not very easy to open up and work on, and few components will be easy for end users to replace. The battery is still glued in, and the one system component that users can actually remove and replace—the SSD—is a proprietary module that's much different from the proprietary modules in MacBook Airs and Pros from years past.

Aside from commentary about repairability, iFixit's teardowns are valuable because they can tell us more about what makes devices tick. For instance, iFixit says that the new speakers include vibration-dampening rubber gaskets around their screws to keep them from vibrating, which is apparently a concern since the speakers are larger and more powerful than those in the old Pros. The bottom of the laptop is still secured with pentalobe screws, but there are also some retention clips you'll need to pop open. And dome switches under the keys have been improved, helping to provide that greater sense of travel that Apple talked about in its presentation.

Enlarge / Moon Express would like to deliver scientific experiments to the surface of the Moon. (credit: Moon Express)

NASA on Tuesday took a tentative step toward contracting with private companies to send scientific payloads to the surface of the Moon, beginning as early as next year. The space agency hasn't committed to funding these projects yet, but this may be a signal the agency is interested in a wider program to explore the Moon.

The agency released a request for information (RFI) for a "Small Lunar Surface Payload" program that recognizes the ability of several US companies to develop robots to land on the Moon. The timing coincides with the Google Lunar XPRIZE, which requires entrants to land a small spacecraft on the surface of the Moon by the end of 2017.

"NASA is asking for information about small instruments that could be placed on small lunar landers, and our interest is that we want to address our strategic knowledge gaps," said John Guidi, deputy director of the advanced exploration systems division within NASA's human spaceflight division.

Enlarge / Just a simple tale of a boy and his giant war mech.

As much as I enjoyed the multiplayer mechs-meet-parkour gameplay of the original Titanfall, I was skeptical that the basic concept would be able to carry over to an explicitly single-player campaign in Titanfall 2. That campaign does hold together over its short length, however, thanks largely to some clever gameplay gimmicks and impressive environmental design. When all is said and done, though, the campaign feels like a mere appetizer to the main meal of fighting some actual humans online.

Titanfall 2's campaign tells the tale of Jack Cooper, a lowly rifleman for an interplanetary frontier militia that is fighting against the hegemonic control of the antagonistic IMC and its mercenaries. Cooper has just started down the path of his dream job—becoming one of the rarified pilots that gets to take control of a massive mech-like Titan. Following him through that entire career path would be too time-consuming for our purposes, though, so in short order Cooper finds himself thrust into the seat of Titan BT-7274 (BT, for short), forced to fill in for a pilot that is tragically cut down before his eyes.

As thrown-in-the-deep-end, fish-out-of-water tales go, it's about as cliché as it gets. The paper-thin plot driving things forward is a cookie-cutter tale involving a band of utterly amoral mercenaries working to secure an ultimate power source that, in turn, will be used to power the kind of planet-destroying weapon that you've doubtless seen as the Macguffin in countless sci-fi tales at this point.

The few mercenaries with speaking parts (who mostly serve as Titan-driving, level-ending bosses) are scenery-chewing, mustache-twirling villains down to the last person. While the game makes a perfunctory effort to grant them some meaningful character through bits of dialogue, none of these antagonists sticks around long enough for you to really feel any connection to them, good or bad. The random friendly militia members who aid you in your efforts are equally disposable, character-wise.

Enlarge / But what will Trump/Clinton/Stein/Johnson think of the Cubs?

Twitter officially launched in 2006, but Presidential tweets didn't come into vogue until after Barack Obama took office in 2008. Today, the account for @POTUS (and the equally blue-check-official @FLOTUS) posts regularly and carries millions of followers. And just like every other responsibility and privilege associated with the office of president, there's now an official transition plan in place for this, too.

Yesterday, the White House published "The Digital Transition: How the Presidential Transition Works in the Social Media Age," essentially outlining the plan for how to preserve the history of presidential social media while ensuring the accounts transition securely and smoothly to President Obama's successor (whether or not they choose to follow in his BlackBerry, then Android footsteps).

For the headlining Twitter accounts, all media posted by the Obama administration through @POTUS will transition to a new handle, @POTUS44. The same will happen for accounts like @FLOTUS, @PressSec, and @VP. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will maintain these new "44" accounts to preserve the digital record. On January 20, 2017, the newly elected President and his or her administration will then receive access to the @POTUS et al accounts, which will all maintain their current follower counts.