Month: April 2017

Enlarge / Meet Fyodor, Russia's new gun-toting robot. (credit: Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter)

The reports this weekend were breathless. Mashable said Russia was sending a "death dealing" robot with the power to shoot guns to the International Space Station. Pravda reported that the Russian cyborg, Fyodor, had frightened the West. It was like the Terminator, only in space, and only for reals.

In reality, probably not. The stories were written after the Russian deputy prime minister overseeing military and space activities, Dmitry Rogozin, posted on Facebook and Twitter about the country's humanoid robot, Fyodor. Rogozin was proud that the robot had demonstrated the ability to shoot from both hands. "Fine motor skills and decision-making algorithms are still being improved," he tweeted. But maybe we shouldn't call upon Arnold Schwarzenegger to save us just yet. "Shooting exercises is a method of teaching the robot to set priorities and make instant decisions," Rogozin added. "We are creating AI, not Terminator."

Rogozin has previously suggested that Russia will send this robot to the space station in 2021. Pravda claims this is still the target date and that Fyodor will ride into space aboard Russia's next-generation spacecraft, named Federation. So should NASA be concerned about an armed and lethal robot coming to the station four years from now?

Enlarge (credit: Verizon)

Just after LG announced its first two smartwatches running Android Wear 2.0 in February, Verizon announced its own competing wearable. Now we know Verizon's Android Wear smartwatch, named Wear24, will be available starting May 11. Coming in silver, black, and rose gold, the Wear24 will be sold on Verizon's website and in its stores for $350. Alternatively, customers can choose to activate a new two-year plan and get the device for $300.

The Wear24 smartwatch has LTE capabilities, so Verizon obviously wants users to start a new plan when they buy it. However, you can add it to an existing Verizon plan and pay an additional $5 per month for LTE access. With that data, the smartwatch can receive notifications and information without your paired smartphone nearby, and it can also take calls, send messages, and stream music on its own. The Wear24 will run Android Wear 2.0 out of the box and it'll have the latest version of Google Assistant as well.

The Wear24 smartwatch is comparable to LG's $350 Watch Sport because it has a 1.39-inch, 290 ppi AMOLED display, a 450 mAh battery, and a water-resistance level that allows it to withstand being submerged in about three feet of water for 30 minutes. There's still no word if the Wear24 will have extra features like an onboard GPS or heart rate monitor like LG's high-end watch has. The feature set (or lack thereof) could make the Wear24 a harder sell at such a high price.

Enlarge

Intel has cancelled its Intel Developer Forum (IDF) developer events. Earlier in the year, the company said that it wasn't going to hold an IDF in China this year, but now even the San Francisco event (which was to be held in mid-August) has been scrapped. The announcement was spotted by Anandtech.

In the past, Intel has used IDF to launch each year's new processor architecture along with other big product announcements such as Optane non-volatile storage. The difficulties of physics have made it harder for the to offer an annual architecture refresh, however. Intel has experienced delays in deploying new manufacturing processes and slow, extended rollouts of new chip designs.

While the company earlier said that it would not have a Chinese event, the San Francisco IDF was still being planned, albeit with a "new format," in the early months of 2017.  It appears now that this "new format" is in fact "non-existence."

Video shot and edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

NEW YORK—Think of Cadillac and what springs to mind? Unfairly or not, you might already be thinking about an older gentleman, sedately cruising behind the wheel. Or, perhaps you imagine an Escalade with windows tinted, massive wheels, and loud speakers. Some of you might even be picturing the CTS-V wagon—one of the Internet's favorite cars to talk about but not ever buy.

But the brand also goes racing, and in 2017 it's having an excellent year. We wanted to hear more about this aspect of Cadillac, so at this year's New York International Auto Show, we met up with factory driver Jordan Taylor and his Cadillac DPi-V.R race car. They came to the showcase fresh from victory on the streets of Long Beach, California.

Enlarge / No more security bulletins for your neighborhood bulletin board. (credit: Randy Heinitz)

The last three Patch Tuesdays haven't been the straightforward affairs we're used to. February's was a big deal because it was delayed and then cancelled outright, with Microsoft never explaining to us why it didn't happen.

Of course, that decision might have had something to do with the unexpected contents of March's Patch Tuesday: that release fixed a bunch of previously undisclosed flaws that were then publicized by Shadow Brokers when the mysterious group published a cache of NSA exploits.

In a change announced last November, Microsoft originally intended to introduce a new system of describing its patches and their respective security fixes this February. That didn't happen in February, and it also didn't happen in March. The bumper crop of fixes referenced above instead used the company's long-standing security bulletin format. But last week's April release did, at last, make the change.

Coming to Steam. But, wait, where'd the Xbox Live requirements go? (credit: Microsoft Studios)

Might a mainline Halo game one day receive a bonafide Steam launch? Microsoft Studios tiptoed ever closer to that possibility with a Monday announcement—Halo Wars: Definitive Edition (HWDE) is coming to Steam later this week.

You're not smokin' something: Microsoft is indeed releasing its resolution-bumped, mouse-and-keyboard-supported version of the 2009 real-time strategy game on Steam on 4/20. The Steam version will cost $19.99. What's more, it may have major Xbox Live features and requirements stripped in favor of Steam's own solutions.

This follows other official, top-down Halo games, the twin-stick shooters Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike. They launched on Steam in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Halo: Spartan Assault was originally designed as a Windows Phone game and only came to other platforms after its lukewarm launch had cooled. HWDE, on the other hand, is barely two months old, and its Steam launch will do a few important things. First, it will officially support Windows 7 and 8.1, which could spur wider adoption than its original, Windows 10-only launch—especially for a game with such low system requirements (in short, Intel HD Graphics 4200) that it could run in, say, PC Bang cafés.

The Internet Archive is a great resource if you're looking to play with older PC apps and operating systems—thanks to a JavaScript port of DOSBox, you can run stuff like Mario Teaches Typing and Windows For Workgroups 3.11 right in your browser, giving you a quick and easy way to get some idea of what it was like to use a computer 20 or 25 years ago.

Now, the Internet Archive has some retro computing offerings from the other side of the great Mac/PC divide. Using a version of the PCE PC Emulator that has been ported to JavaScript, people interested in the Mac's early years can run System 6, System 7, and dozens of old apps, including MacWrite and Microsoft Basic using their browsers.