Month: December 2016

Enlarge (credit: Samsung)

Samsung may not be keeping its PC division around too much longer—the company stopped selling PCs in Europe a few years ago, and rumors abound that it wants to sell the division to Lenovo. But, for now, the company is still making PCs, and, ahead of CES, Samsung has announced a couple with the bold claim that they're the lightest on the market.

The new Notebook 9 comes in a 13.3-inch and 15-inch version, with the smaller of the two weighing just 1.8lbs. That's a full pound less than our current laptop pick, the HP Spectre x360, and it even comes in 0.2lbs less than Apple's MacBook. Indeed, even the 15-inch version, at 2.17lbs, comes in at a lower weight than these 13-inch competitors. The new Samsungs are thin, too; 14.9mm for the large screen, 13.9mm for the small one. If thin and light are what you crave above all else, Samsung's hardware is worth looking at.

On the inside, the Notebook 9 uses (unspecified) Intel Kaby Lake i5 and i7 processors. We assume these are ultra low-power Y series parts. While the different-size screens offer different diagonals, they seem to be otherwise equivalent: 1920×1080, 350 nits brightness with a 500 nit "outdoor mode." Unusually, Samsung claims them to be high dynamic range screens, though the company does not specify if they support HDR-10 or some other specification. At 13.3 inches, you get a SATA SSD, up to 256GB, and up to 16GB RAM; at 15 inches, you get upgraded to an NVMe SSD and up to 256GB, though oddly the spec sheet says that this only goes up to 8GB RAM. Both include 2×2 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1, a 720p webcam, and an integrated fingerprint reader with Windows Hello support. Both devices also include two USB 3.1 generation 1 ports, one USB Type-C port that's also used for charging, an HDMI port, a microSD reader, and a headset jack. The 15-inch device adds a USB 2 port into the mix.

Enlarge (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Although Apple released new MacBooks and redesigned MacBook Pros this year, one area of the Mac lineup could still use some attention: the desktop. The iMac was last refreshed in October 2015, the Mac Mini was last refreshed in October 2013, and the Mac Pro dates back to December 2013.

In an internal memo obtained by TechCrunch, Apple CEO Tim Cook briefly addressed the importance of Mac desktops in the lineup. He did so to quell skepticism in the media and possibly among Apple's own staff. The full quote reads:

The desktop is very strategic for us. It’s unique compared to the notebook because you can pack a lot more performance in a desktop—the largest screens, the most memory and storage, a greater variety of I/O, and fastest performance. So there are many different reasons why desktops are really important, and in some cases critical, to people.

The current generation iMac is the best desktop we have ever made, and its beautiful Retina 5K display is the best desktop display in the world.

Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we’re committed to desktops. If there’s any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that.

Some of these delayed refreshes can be blamed on Intel, whose CPUs' rate of improvement has slowed significantly in the last three years. The iMac is already using the newest available processors, despite its age. The Mac Mini and Mac Pro, on the other hand, are both using chips that are two or three generations old at this point. The Mac Pro in particular is a sort point, since it's being sold with the exact same specs, and its price hasn't change since it launched three years ago.

Waymo

Last week we learned that Google's car project is not dead. It just has a new name. Now called Waymo, the company expects to eventually move into the autonomous-mobility ride-sharing market. Today, we got our first look at the new Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans that will complement Waymo's fleet of Lexus SUVs and other test machines.

Pacificas make sense for Waymo. Although the research vehicles don't need to be hybrids, the fact that they are drive-by-wire is obviously crucial. And their capacious cargo volume should come in handy for carrying technicians and extra equipment.

(credit: hansol)

A South Carolina politician is hoping to stop computer owners in his state from viewing pornography.

State Rep. Bill Chumley, a Republican from Spartanburg, told his hometown newspaper that his Human Trafficking Prevention Act would require manufacturers or sellers of computers or other devices that access the Internet to install digital blocks to prevent the viewing of obscene content. Blocking websites that facilitate prostitution would also be required, he said.

If a purchaser wants the filter lifted, he or she has to pay $20 to have it taken out—provided the person is over the age of 18.

Enlarge (credit: Hawaii.gov)

The US electric grid continued to transform in 2016. No new coal plants were added, and solar became the top new source of generating capacity. Combined with wind, a small bit of hydro, and the first nuclear plant added to the grid in decades, sources that generate power without carbon emissions accounted for two-thirds of the new capacity added in 2016.

These numbers come from the US Energy Information Administration, which asked utilities about what sources they expected to have online at the end of the year. These numbers typically show a burst of activity in December, as projects are raced to completion to take advantage of the tax benefits of reaching operational status in the current year.

Overall, the EIA recorded 26 GW of new capacity added to the grid in 2016. This includes a small amount (0.3GW) of new hydropower and a smattering of projects collected under "other" that produce a similar magnitude. Notably absent from the list is coal. Also absent is distributed solar, meaning panels installed on homes and other small-scale projects. Distributed solar accounted for about 2GW of new capacity in 2015, and the EIA notes that the incentives for these projects haven't changed considerably in 2016.

The preamplifiers of the National Ignition Facility are the first step in increasing the energy of laser beams as they make their way toward the target chamber. NIF recently achieved a 500 terawatt shot—then it had to turn it down. (credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory )

In order to investigate something called inertial confinement fusion (or ICF, which we'll talk about below), scientists at the National Ignition Facility built the biggest damn laser in the world. Located in Livermore, California, the NIF's laser is capable of producing something like 500TW of power per pulse, and the facility is so futuristic that parts of Star Trek Into Darkness were filmed there.

So imagine the disappointment felt by everyone at the NIF when, even though their laser worked fine, the amount of fusion it appeared to produce was shockingly low. Researchers now may have identified the problem and have shown that many neutrons can be observed at the NIF. Neutrons are a result of fusion, so the number of neutrons is a measure of how many atoms have fused. The problem is that, to produce efficient fusion, we can't currently use the facility at its full power.

Small hydrogen bombs

The idea behind inertial confinement fusion is simple. To get two atoms to fuse together, you need to bring their nuclei into contact with each other. Both nuclei are positively charged, so they repel each other, which means that force is needed to convince two hydrogen nuclei to touch. In a hydrogen bomb, force is generated when a small fission bomb explodes, compressing a core of hydrogen. This fuses to create heavier elements, releasing a huge amount of energy.

Enlarge (credit: Tim Sackton)

The more you follow government down to the local level, the harder it is for decision-makers to pretend climate change isn’t real. Coastal cities in particular can see what’s coming, and their officials understand that people can’t just sit on their hands. When you’ve cleaned up after storm surge flooding before, the risk of more severe flooding feeds a concrete urgency. One of the first cities to get the ball rolling was Boston, which recently released a new report laying out a roadmap for a “Climate Ready Boston.”

The report was prepared by a team of city officials, planning consultants, non-profits, utilities, and climate scientists. The scientists provided climate projections for the Boston area, and the others analyzed the city for vulnerabilities to those expected changes.

For several scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions, the report summarizes the possible range of increases in hot summer days, extreme precipitation, and sea level and flooding events along the coast or in areas with poor drainage.