Month: March 2018

Enlarge / An Iraqi Air Force AC-208 Eliminator fires a Hellfire missile. Afghanistan is getting 7 of these aircraft courtesy of the US Air Force. (credit: US Air Force)

The US military has fought the Taliban in Afghanistan for 16 years now, and frequently has done so from the skies with Hellfire strikes by Predator and Reaper drones. Now the US is buying the Afghan military something with the same sort of sensors, loitering time and firepower—except humans will have to sit in their cockpits.

The US Air Force has inked a new deal with aerospace and defense company Orbital ATK to provide seven AC-208 Eliminator attack and reconnaissance aircraft. The Eliminator is a militarized version of the Cessna 208 Caravan, the aircraft used by the FBI and various contractors to fly aerial surveillance in the US—including flights over Baltimore in 2015 after the death of Freddy Gray in police custody.

The contract for the Eliminators was originally issued last September, and part of the $86 million is coming out of fiscal-year 2017 funds. The original sole-source contract was for $69.4 million, but was expanded in the award made this past week.

Enlarge / Tracy Fullerton is the director of USC's Game Innovation Lab and has created a number of indie games that experiment with game design and storytelling. (credit: Tracy Fullerton)

After nearly 50 years of innovation, where are video games headed next? Ars Technica Live returns with guest Tracy Fullerton, an award-winning, experimental game designer and director of USC’s Game Innovation Lab. Tracy has spent her entire career developing games as an entrepreneur, teacher, and designer. The Night Journey is her latest indie game and is a collaboration with artist Bill Viola.

Tracy’s work at USC gives her a broad perspective on what's coming next for games, both technologically and artistically. Join Ars Technica editors Samuel Axon and Annalee Newitz in conversation with Tracy at the next Ars Technica Live on March 21 at Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland.

Tracy is the designer and director of Walden, a game, an adaptation of Henry David Thoreau’s experiment at Walden Pond, which was recently awarded “Game of the Year” and “Most Significant Impact” at Game for Change. Currently, she’s director of the USC Game Innovation Lab, a research center that has produced several influential independent games, including Cloud, flOw, and Darfur is Dying. She is the author of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, a design textbook in use at game programs worldwide, and she holds the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair in Interactive Entertainment. Other recent projects include Collegeology, a suite of college preparation games funded by the Department of Education, the Gilbert Foundation, and the Gates Foundation, and Reality Ends Here, an alternate-reality game for incoming freshmen at the School of Cinematic Arts.

Enlarge / Preparing to monitor conditions in the Imringer Sea. (credit: National Science Foundation)

All of the world's oceans have a similar pattern of currents. Surface waters warm near the equator, then flow toward the poles, where they cool and sink. The cold, dense bottom water makes its way back to restart the cycle. This pattern has particular significance in the North Atlantic, where the flow of warm surface water helps moderate the climate of Northern Europe, parts of which might otherwise resemble Greenland.

A lot of people have pondered whether the warming induced by climate change could interfere with this conveyor belt, preventing the water that nears the Arctic from cooling and sinking. Most analyses, however, suggest that this could only happen after the world had warmed enough that Europe wouldn't need the currents to moderate its temperature.

A new study, however, suggests that there's a tipping point for the Atlantic conveyor that could be reached much sooner. It only relies indirectly on warm temperatures; instead, it is driven by the melting of the Greenland Icecap. And the new research suggests we've already gone nearly halfway to the tipping point.