Month: August 2017

Enlarge / Young businessman hiding head in the sand

It's no secret that President Trump came into office rejecting the conclusions of the vast majority of the world's scientists when it comes to our changing climate. But it wasn't clear how that would translate to policy. At least some of his advisors, as well as his daughter, accept the conclusions of the scientific community. And there was the possibility that policy decisions would be constrained by reality, as Trump was sworn in as the most recent global temperature records were set.

Over the past few weeks, however, it has become increasingly clear that there's been extensive push back against climate change throughout the government, with several occurring in the last week alone. We'll review those briefly below.

The grid and the grant

Enlarge (credit: Aurich / Thinkstock)

As a real estate agent, Kim France's business depends upon answering calls from unfamiliar numbers. But during a five-day stretch in June, her cell phone was flooded with so many junk calls that it was almost impossible to answer legitimate ones.

"I am in the middle of a cell phone nightmare," France, who lives in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, told Ars in an e-mail after three days worth of the calls. "My phone started ringing three days ago and has continued to ring every few minutes since then. Each time it is from a different number... I can’t conduct a client call, can’t text because calls coming in interrupt the process, can’t even take photos for the same reason."

On the first night, France went to bed, slept for 7.5 hours, and woke up to 225 missed calls, she said. The calls continued at roughly the same pace for the rest of the five-day stretch, putting the number of calls at somewhere around 700 a day.

(credit: Irell & Manella)

President Donald Trump has selected Andrei Iascu, the managing partner of a major Los Angeles law firm, to be the next head of the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Iancu has been a partner at Irell & Manella since 2004, and was an associate at the firm for five years earlier.

His most notable work in the tech sector is likely his representation of TiVo Corp. in its long-running patent battles with companies like EchoStar, Motorola, Microsoft, Verizon, and Cisco. TiVo ultimately succeeded in compelling those defendants to pay up for its pioneering DVR patents, and payments to TiVo ultimately totaled more than $1.6 billion, according to Iascu's biography page.

Aston Martin

Aston Martin is the latest car maker to announce it's going to move to an all-hybrid line up. CEO Andy Palmer has told the Financial Times that "We will be 100 per cent hybrid by the middle of the 2020s." Palmer also told the FT that he expects about 25 percent of Aston Martin sales will be EVs by 2030. A similarly bold announcement was made by Volvo earlier this summer; however in this case Aston Martin will continue to sell non-hybrid versions of its cars as an option.

The first all-electric Aston Martin will be the RapidE, a sleek four-seater due in 2019. But that will be a limited-run model, with only 115 planned. There's also the hybrid Valkyrie hypercar in the works, an F1 car for the road that's being designed by Aston Martin in conjunction with Red Bull Racing's Adrian Newey. But there will be more mainstream (if such a word can apply) hybrid and battery EV Aston Martins coming too. Like Volvo, some of these will just be 48V mild hybrids.

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Dell has a wide array of products under its name and brands, including Alienware, but the company has never had its own mixed reality headset until now. Dell announced the Dell Visor ahead of this year's IFA conference, along with a number of updates to its XPS and Inspiron systems. Most notably, all of Dell's updated laptops and convertibles will have 8th-generation Intel processors, making them some of the first devices to launch with the new CPUs later this year.

Dell jumps into mixed reality

Dell has made a number of VR-ready desktops and laptops, but now it has its own VR headset to go along with them. The company's first mixed reality headset looks most like HP's or Acer's headset, with an oval-shaped ring that fits around your head with an attached, goggle-like viewfinder. The head-wrapping ring adjusts easily using a thumbwheel that expands and contracts the sides, similar to adjusting the length of a pair of over-ear headphones. With the ring opened just wide enough for your head, you can tilt the viewfinder up to put the device on, then snap it down into place when you're ready to enter a mixed reality experience.

Overall, the Visor feels less cumbersome on your face than an Oculus Rift. With no external sensors needed, it's also easier to set up than an HTC Vive. Users will still need to draw a five-by-seven-foot boundary for their mixed reality situations to live in, but that's done by simply hovering the headset over your boundary lines. The Visor connects to a compatible PC through a single USB Type-C connector, and you only have to manage that one cord, so it creates less of a mess around your PC. Similarly to HP's and Acer's headsets, it has 1440x1440 panels for each eye.