Month: September 2017

The door handles, seen here flush against the body, extend as the driver approaches with key in pocket (if the car is equipped with the tech package, that is—otherwise, they'll extend when lightly pressed). (credit: Steven Michael)

As Floridians in the path of Hurricane Irma rushed to evacuate last week, Tesla pushed out a software update that made it a bit easier for certain Model S and Model X owners to get out of the state.

Tesla sometimes sells cars with more hardware battery capacity than is initially available for use by customers, offering the additional capacity as a subsequent software update. For example, Tesla has sold Model S cars rated P60D—the 60 stands for 60kWh of energy storage—that actually have 75kWh batteries. Owners of these vehicles can pay Tesla $9,000 to unlock the extra 15kWh of storage capacity.

But last week, Tesla decided to temporarily make this extra capacity available even to Floridians who hadn't paid for the upgrade to ensure they had enough range to get out of Florida ahead of Hurricane Irma. A Tesla spokesperson confirmed the change to Eletrek. The extra 15kWh should give the vehicles an additional 30 to 40 miles of range.

Enlarge (credit: Marques Brownlee)

Apple's latest and greatest iPhone is called the iPhone X, according to information pulled from a leaked "Gold Master" of iOS 11, the operating system said to power the new phone.

The same software leak also reveals the existence of the iPhone 8 and and iPhone 8 Plus, which are based on a similar design to the existing iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. According to 9to5Mac, which was one of two blogs able to download iOS 11 before it was pulled from Apple's servers, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus feature a faster processor, wireless charging, and a new glass back panel.

Unlike the iPhone 8, the iPhone X features an all-new design with an edge-to-edge 5.8-inch OLED display that removes the chunky bezels and home button. The design—which was originally shown in a separate software leak earlier this year—is a dramatic departure from iPhones to date, which have largely kept the same front-facing aesthetic since the launch of the original in 2007. By shrinking the bezels, much like Samsung did with the Galaxy S8, Apple can cram a larger display into a smaller body, making the device more comfortable to use with one hand.

Ars Technica staffers began attending PAX West in 2007, when it was the only Penny Arcade Expo around. A lot has changed in 10 years, but the biggest difference has been the exponential growth of playable independent games on the massive show floor. Even if we didn't have to wait in a single line, four days is simply not enough time to try out the hundreds of indie titles on offer at PAX today.

Still, we did our best, playing dozens of the most interesting games we could get our hands on during this year's show. We've narrowed that list down to 10 you should definitely watch out for, along with a number of honorable mentions that piqued our interest. Consider this far-from-comprehensive effort our attempt to help you filter through the utterly ridiculous number of independent games floating around these days and seek out the best and most innovative for your playing time.