Month: September 2017

It's a great time to be alive for fans of serious racing simulations. Codemasters has been in fine form, giving us two very good games this year. New installments of Forza and Gran Turismo are just around the corner.

But today, I'm here to talk to you about Project CARS 2. The work of Slightly Mad Studios and a followup to the original Project CARS of 2015, it's an expansive title that features road cars, current and historic racing cars, a massive array of tracks to race on (including dirt and even ice), and some heavily revised physics. After several days behind a steering wheel putting the game to the test, I found Project CARS 2 to be extremely rewarding to play and a massive improvement on its predecessor. But it's still no easy arcade racer, and the hardcore nature of its simulation means it's not going to appeal to everyone.

Enlarge (credit: Andreas Sutter, Lithium Storage GmbH)

When it comes to bench-racing electric vehicles, the kilowatt-hour is king. And over in Switzerland, there's an EV that will make Tesla's P100Ds look positively puny. But this is no carbon-fiber hypercar, and it's never going set any records for 0-60 times or the standing quarter. No, this is an altogether more practical creation that's meant to work for a living. It's a Komatsu quarry truck that's being modified by Kuhn Schweiz and Lithium Storage, weighing in at almost 50 tons (45 tonnes) and powered by a whopping 700kWh battery pack.

The e-Dumper has been in the works for a couple of years now, during which time its battery capacity has grown from the original 600kWh to what is now the equivalent of seven top-of-the-line Teslas. The cells in question are nickel-manganese-cobalt, 1,440 of them in total, weighing almost 10,000lbs (4.5 tonnes). And once the team has found space in the chassis for all of that energy storage, the idea is for the e-Dumper to spend the next decade trundling between a Swiss cement quarry and the Ciments Vigier works near Biel.

Here's the really cool part: each round trip actually generates electricity. Because the e-Dumper goes up the mountain empty and descends carrying 71 tons (65 tonnes) of rock, it captures 40kWh on the way to the cement works via regenerative braking. But climbing back up to the quarry only requires 30kWh, so every trip will feed an extra 10kWh into the local electricity grid. Not bad when you then consider that the e-Dumper will be doing that trip 20 times a day.

Enlarge / Tubes of homeopathic granules at Boiron Laboratory in Brest, France. (credit: Getty | FRED TANNEAU)

An organization representing scientific academies throughout Europe released a statement Wednesday that squarely bashed homeopathy as nonsense and warned that the “promotion and use of homeopathic products risks significant harms.”

The statement by the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC)—an umbrella organization representing 29 national and international scientific academies in Europe, including the Royal Society (UK) and Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences—is intended to influence policy and regulations across the European Union. The EASAC emphasized the need to “reinforce criticisms” by scientists as the markets for homeopathy in the EU and US continue to grow.

The council did not mince words about the “alternative medicines,” which rely on the erroneous ideas that ‘like cures like’ and that water can have memory. In its 12-page statement, the group summarized the extensive scientific work showing that homeopathy is scientifically implausible and produces nothing more than the placebo effect in patients.

Razer's Fiona prototype eventually become the Razer Edge gaming tablet. (credit: Kyle Orland)

Gaming hardware and lifestyle company Razer is poised to release a new mobile device later this year, according to an interview on CNBC's Managing Asia with Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan. "I can say that we are coming up with a mobile device specifically geared towards gamers and entertainment," he said. "We are hoping to have it come by the end of the year."

Razer has launched what could be considered mobile gaming devices before. In addition to its popular line of Razer Blade laptops, the company revealed a Windows-driven gaming tablet, called the Razer Edge, at CES in 2013. Ars had good things to say about it at the time. The Edge was positioned as a gaming tablet, though it was certainly capable of playing videos or music and other entertainment applications. Tan played up the importance of the entertainment-side for this new device—and for Razer as a company moving forward.

"Entertainment is going to be massive," he said, when talking about the future of both Razer and the industry. He talked up Razer's acquisition of THX last year, and when CNBC asked him if Razer will become an entertainment company, he said: "Well, we already are. I mean, given that gaming's probably the largest segment in entertainment. What else is left? There's movies and there's music."

Enlarge (credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)

In a statement published on the Securities and Exchange Commission's website yesterday, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton revealed that the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) system was compromised last year. Data from EDGAR, which is used to receive and publish corporate filings to the agency, "may have provided the basis for illicit gain through trading," Clayton said. "Notwithstanding our efforts to protect our systems and manage cybersecurity risk, in certain cases cyber threat actors have managed to access or misuse our systems." The revelations were part of a statement by Clayton on the SEC's overall cybersecurity posture and policy.

This is not the first time the SEC has exposed financial data. In 2014, an audit from the SEC's inspector general found that hundreds of agency laptops could not be accounted for, and many of them may have contained non-public financial market data. But the 2016 breach was the result of a deliberate attack aimed at accessing the EDGAR filing system.

EDGAR is the system that accepts electronic filings of statements from corporations regarding their finances and events or activities that might have an impact on their business. The system also allows the public—including investors and researchers—to access those filings. EDGAR amounts to a huge content management and workflow system, containing data on all manner of publicly traded stocks, bonds, and other securities. It's intended to ensure that all parties have access to the same information at the same time to minimize the ability of some to take advantage of the release of advance financial information.

An IBM keyboard signed by ctrl-alt-del inventor, David Bradley (credit: Ross Grady)

Once again, Bill Gates has bemoaned the creation of the ctrl-alt-del shortcut. Talking at Bloomberg Global Business Forum, Gates reiterates that he wishes IBM had created a dedicated button for the feature. We're republishing this piece from 2013, because we still think that Gates' telling of the story is a little misleading; for IBM it was a feature, not a flaw, that ctrl-alt-del requires two hands, and if Microsoft really wanted a single button ctrl-alt-del for Windows NT, it was Microsoft, not IBM, with the market dominance to achieve that.

Speaking at Harvard earlier this month, Bill Gates was asked why you have to press ctrl-alt-del before you can enter your password and log in to Windows. After explaining the security rationale, Gates then said that it was a "mistake," and that it was due to IBM refusing to add a single button to take the place of the three finger salute.

It's a nice story, but it doesn't really add up.