Month: December 2017

Enlarge (credit: Mark Walton)

Those wishing for 64GB Nintendo Switch game cards will have to keep waiting. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Nintendo pushed back the rollout of 64GB game cards until 2019, citing "technical issues" as the problem. Game developers get Switch cards from Nintendo, so this means that they'll have to wait to get game cards that can support big titles.

Currently, Switch devices have 32GB of internal storage; however, it comes out to about 26GB of usable space, as a portion is reserved for system software. Switch game cards currently support 32GB of storage, and they're able to easily hold games like Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Nintendo planned to release 64GB game cards in the second half of 2018 to support larger games, but it appears those cards won't be ready for another full year or more. Some big titles require more storage from the get-go, and 32GB simply won't cut it.

Enlarge / The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. (credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

If you've read our coverage of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "Stupid Patent of the Month" series, you know America has a patent quality problem. People apply for patents on ideas that are obvious, vague, or were invented years earlier. Too often, applications get approved and low-quality patents fall into the hands of patent trolls, creating headaches for real innovators.

Why don't more low-quality patents get rejected? A recent paper published by the Brookings Institution offers fascinating insights into this question. Written by legal scholars Michael Frakes and Melissa Wasserman, the paper identifies three ways the patent process encourages approval of low-quality patents:

• The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is funded by fees—and the agency gets more fees if it approves an application.
• Unlimited opportunities to refile rejected applications means sometimes granting a patent is the only way to get rid of a persistent applicant.
• Patent examiners are given less time to review patent applications as they gain seniority, leading to less thorough reviews.

None of these observations is entirely new. For example, we have covered the problems created by unlimited re-applications in the past. But what sets Frakes and Wasserman's work apart is that they have convincing empirical evidence for all three theories.

(credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Superfans and holdouts using some older smartphone operating systems will have to bid adieu to WhatsApp messenger soon—or at least the most updated versions of the app. According to an FAQ page, the Facebook-owned messaging app won't support Blackberry OS, Blackberry 10, or Windows Phone 8.0 and older after December 31, 2017. That means that on the first day of 2018, users will no longer be able to create new accounts or re-verify existing accounts on those operating systems.

WhatsApp will still work on those systems, but it's unclear how long the app will be fully functional.The FAQ page does warn users that some WhatsApp features may stop working on these unsupported platforms because the company is no longer actively developing for those OSes.

To avoid issues, WhatsApp recommends users of those platforms either update to a newer OS version or use WhatsApp on a device running Android 4.0 or newer, Windows Phone 8.1 or newer, or an iPhone running iOS 7 or newer.

Need a good, nerdy movie marathon for year's end? 2017 concluded with a surprisingly robust selection of enjoyable flicks in the Ars pantheon, which we consider a mix of sci-fi, fantasy, documentaries, genre pieces, and tech-specific fare. This year's quality really only became apparent once I found myself enjoying putting this year-end list together. (Sometimes, these best-of pieces can be slogs. Not for 2017's films.)

The following picks are not numbered or ranked, but the recommendations get better and better from bottom to top.

Starting with the cheese: xXx: Return of Xander Cage, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Paramount

Enlarge / Here's a press photo of the Mellow. My kitchen is nowhere near this nice, so let's start with an aspirational image. (credit: Mellow)

No, you don’t need a sous-vide. You don’t need one from Mellow or Anova or Nomiku. A sous-vide will not make your life better or easier or more fashionable. This is not a crockpot. This is not an instant pot. Dinner won’t magically appear at 6:30pm. Despite what sous-vide makers tell you, food will not always be the perfect temperature or consistency as long as the word “perfect” is subjective.

You won’t always even be sure you like the food that comes out of your sous-vide.

So what are these various sous-vide contraptions? They’re experiment machines. If you like to play around in the kitchen, if you’re OK with a meal occasionally turning out a little weird or a little raw in exchange for that one magic night when everything tastes out-of-orbit amazing, then perhaps a sous-vide is for you. But disabuse yourself of the notion that you’ll be using this every night to feed your large family of toddler children. This is for the big kids and the people who can chug wine if the fat on your meat never rendered. This is for the stay-cation date night.

Enlarge / The three big home-VR dogs face off for another great year of software. (credit: Ars Technica)

If 2016 was the year that true home-VR systems arrived, 2017 may be best described as the year that they didn't die. Backhanded as that may sound, this compliment is indeed sincere. In spite of a lack of major, industry-changing hardware arriving, virtual reality games and apps continue to be produced, and aging headsets continue to sell (thanks, in part, to dropping prices and cheaper compatible computers).

As a result, the year in VR was less about holy-cow-wow innovations and more about smarter, more-compelling VR content finding its way to system owners. And with more users, true VR multiplayer is starting to emerge, which means it's getting a little less lonely inside of these headsets.

In the end, the best VR content stands out for delivering experiences that are altogether impossible on flat screens, and that rule guides my picks for the best VR content in 2017. Games dominate this year's list, if only because last year saw so many incredible applications that have yet to be topped. But this list contains a couple of exceptions. (Last year, I called Google Earth VR and Tilt Brush "killer apps," and I further stand by those compliments thanks to major, free updates to both apps in the past 12 months.)