Month: September 2017

Way back at the beginning of 2016, rumors were swirling that BMW planned to expand its i range of electric vehicles. The i6 would be a four-door coupé that offered more practicality than the i8 sports car or i3 city car. Then things went quiet as BMW geared up to celebrate its centenary. Now, it looks like those rumors were correct, judging by the concept car it brought to the Frankfurt Auto Show this year. The BMW i Vision Dynamics is a four-door coupé EV that we reckon will become a production car in the next year or so.

"BMW i is the innovation driver for the BMW Group," explains Klaus Fröhlich, Member of the Board of Management at BMW AG, Development. "Here, visionary solutions and future-ready concepts become reality for the first time. But BMW i also acts as a spearhead of innovation for our other brands. The BMW i Vision Dynamics allows us to show right now what another electric BMW might look like. And BMW has demonstrated its talent for turning visions into real life throughout its history."

(credit: Photograph by Aurich Lawson)

The countless number of TV streaming services continues to grow with the addition of a forthcoming bundle that leaves a big audience behind: sports lovers. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, media companies including Viacom, Discovery, AMC Networks, A+E Networks, and Scripps Interactive are joining together to create a sports-free streaming service that will have a "soft launch" in the coming weeks. The report suggests that leaving out sports, which is the most expensive type of programming, will allow the service to keep the price tag under $20 per month.

While the exact list of networks and channels hasn't been finalized, it's expected that all channels owned by the media companies involved will be included in the service. Many streaming packages include a number of live sports channels, but Viacom, Discovery, and the other companies involved believe there's a market for an entertainment-focused bundle. According to the report, the package will include "nonfiction and lifestyle programming, children’s fare, and scripted dramas."

Back in May, Viacom CEO Bob Bakish criticized current TV streaming bundles for not being "transformational" enough. He explained he believes the truly transformational services will be those that give customers "a new entry segment at a much lower price point," possibly with optional sports programming. Current services offered by YouTube and Hulu include a number of sports networks and are priced between $35 and $40 per month. A new service at a $20-per-month price could be enticing for some users, particularly those who lament paying for sports programming they never watch.

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The car industry is currently going through a burst of exuberance that dwarfs even that of the early 1990s. You'd think sensitivities over pollution and climate change would have made the horsepower wars passe, but that doesn't appear to be the case. And when Dodge is selling a pony car with 840hp under the hood, you can can see why those wanting to play at the very sharpest end of the market are aiming for four-digit power figures to go with multi-million-dollar sticker prices. Three F1 teams are currently developing hypercars. Red Bull and Aston Martin have the Valkyrie, McLaren is building the BP23, and then there's the Mercedes-AMG Project ONE, which made its debut in Frankfurt on Monday evening.

Formula 1 has been good for Mercedes-Benz. It won a lot of races as an engine supplier, but in 2010 the company entered the sport as a constructor, contesting Grands Prix for the first time since the 1950s. The first few years were spent relearning the ropes and playing second fiddle to teams like Red Bull Racing. But it got its sums exactly right when the sport switched to a 1.6L turbocharged V6 hybrid powertrain, winning three championships in three years. So to celebrate, it's decided to take that F1 know-how and build a road car.

Enlarge (credit: Ford Asia Pacific)

Over the past decade, Bluetooth has become almost the default way for billions of devices to exchange data over short distances, allowing PCs and tablets to transfer audio to speakers and phones to zap pictures to nearby computers. Now, researchers have devised an attack that uses the wireless technology to hack a wide range of devices, including those running Android, Linux, and, until a patch became available in July, Windows.

Blueborne, as the researchers have dubbed their attack, is notable for its unusual reach and effectiveness. Virtually any Android, Linux, or Windows device that hasn't been recently patched and has Bluetooth turned on can be compromised by an attacking device within 32 feet. It doesn't require device users to click on any links, connect to a rogue Bluetooth device, or take any other action, short of leaving Bluetooth on. The exploit process is generally very fast, requiring no more than 10 seconds to complete, and it works even when the targeted device is already connected to another Bluetooth-enabled device.

"Just by having Bluetooth on, we can get malicious code on your device," Nadir Izrael, CTO and co-founder of security firm Armis, told Ars. "Blueborne abuses the fact that when Bluetooth is on, all of these devices are always listening for connections."

Back in April, when Nintendo discontinued the hot ticket NES Classic Edition after just six months on the market, it prompted us to suggest in a headline that "Nintendo hates money." Someone at Nintendo must have figured out that money is good, though, because Nintendo announced this morning that the $60 plug-and-play retro console will be coming back to retailers "next summer."

Nintendo promised more details in the future and didn't provide any explanation as to why we'll have to wait through an entire fall, winter, and spring before more NES Classic units are available. Component shortages seem to be a likely culprit, though; Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime recently told the Financial Times about the "challenge" of managing a complex global supply chain, especially when it comes to bottlenecks on multiple Switch components.

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Alleged benchmarks for Intel's as yet unannounced Core i7-8700K have leaked online courtesy of a tech YouTuber and an unguarded HP Omen PC at DreamHack 2017. The i7-8700K—the rumoured flagship six-core, 12-thread processor of Intel's upcoming eighth generation Coffee Lake desktop CPUs—was put through popular benchmarking program Cinebench R15, scoring a cool 1230 points in a multithreaded test. That's a significant leap over the previous-generation Intel Core i7-7700K (4C/8T), which typically posts a score around 950 points.

That score also puts the i7-8700K neck and neck with AMD's 6C/12T Ryzen 1600X, which we scored at 1234 points, but behind AMD's 8C/12T Ryzen 7 1700 with its score of 1422. Meanwhile, AMD's flagship Ryzen 7 1800X is significantly faster with a score of 1616 points.

YouTuber Karl Morin was also able to run a single-threaded benchmark, which shows the i7-8700K posting a score of 196. That would make it fastest single-threaded chip around, beating the pervious generation i7-7700K's score of around 185 points, although it's still far from a compelling improvement in instructions per clock.