Month: March 2018

Enlarge / The Stratolaunch aircraft has a wingspan of 117 meters. (credit: Stratolaunch Systems Corp.)

As Stratolaunch Systems Corp. has rolled its super-massive aircraft out of the hangar during the last year and performed some ground-based tests, there has been one big unanswered question—what is the purpose of building the largest airplane in the world?

Yes, the company had signed an agreement with Orbital ATK, a Dulles, Virginia-based company, for its aircraft to serve as the first stage for launching Pegasus XL rockets from the air. But these are relatively small rockets, with a diameter of just 1.27 meters—compared to the 117-meter wingspan of the Stratolaunch aircraft—and capable of hefting less than half a ton into low-Earth orbit. This is a bit like using a Falcon Heavy rocket to launch a few cubesats into space.

We may finally have some clues. As part of his forthcoming book The Space Barons, the Washington Post's Christian Davenport got Stratolaunch founder Paul Allen to open up about his ambitions for the giant aircraft. And it turns out that Allen, a cofounder of Microsoft, wants to launch a reusable space shuttle into orbit.

Enlarge (credit: Khronos Group)

The Khronos Group today launched Vulkan 1.1, the first big revision of its vendor-neutral, cross-platform GPU API.

The new revision standardizes a handful of features that were previously offered as extensions. The release rounds out the API, bringing parity with Microsoft's DirectX 12 in a few areas where it was absent, improving compatibility with DirectX 12, and laying the groundwork for the next generation of GPUs.

One feature in particular goes a long way toward filling a Vulkan gap relative to Microsoft's API: explicit multi-GPU support. This allows one program to spread its work across multiple GPUs. Unlike SLI and Crossfire of old, where the task of divvying up the rendering between GPUs was largely handled by the driver, this gives control to the developer. With this addition, developers can create "device groups" that aggregate multiple physical GPUs into a single virtual device and choose how work is dispatched to the different physical GPUs. Resources from one physical GPU can be used by another GPU, different commands can be run on the different GPUs, and one GPU can show rendered images that were created by another GPU.

Enlarge (credit: Square Enix)

The open-world RPG Final Fantasy XV has finally launched for Windows PCs ($49.99 at Steam, Windows Store), roughly 15 months after its console predecessor. Up until this week, we weren't so sure this later version would be worth playing.

Nearly six months ago to the day, Square Enix invited us to take a world's-first look at FFXV's PC version. It wasn't good news. The clearly incomplete preview build included everything in our worst PC-port nightmares: messy mouse-and-keyboard support, incorrect resolution scaling, lousy tweaking options, and a frame rate only a mother could love.

This was followed with a February launch of an FFXV benchmarking tool, full of in-game sequences meant to tax your system and print out a vague score. However, this tool turned out so rough that Square Enix now tells fans to ignore its readings. Between that and the lack of advance access to review the PC version, we wouldn't have been surprised to see this port launch as an utter disaster.

(credit: Furie v. Infowars)

The poster contains the frog’s likeness alongside President Donald Trump and other conservative political allies, including Infowars’ founder, Alex Jones.

The lawsuit, which was filed Monday in federal court in Los Angeles, claims that Infowars and its parent company, Free Speech Systems LLC, are in violation of Furie's copyright for Pepe.

Enlarge / A customer speaks with employees at the Geek Squad counter inside a Best Buy store in Downers Grove, Illinois, on Tuesday, May 23, 2017. (credit: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Nearly 200 pages of documents released Tuesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show that Best Buy’s top officials have "enjoyed a particularly close relationship" with the FBI for at least a decade, if not longer.

The filings were obtained by the advocacy organization as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in an attempt to better understand how the retail chain sometimes uses its "Geek Squad" tech support service to aid law enforcement. In a document from 2008, the FBI's Louisville, Kentucky, division is described as having a "close liaison with the Geek Squad’s management." In some instances, the agency even paid Best Buy employees directly.

The FOIA suit was filed last year in the wake of a federal prosecution of a California doctor, Mark Rettenmaier, who was charged with possession of child pornography in 2014. In court filings from 2015, Rettenmaier claimed that when he took his computer in for repair, Best Buy technicians, at the behest of the government, searched his hard drive without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Bentley

In the first part of our Geneva Motor Show coverage, we took a look at some of the electric vehicle offerings, not to mention the proliferation of four-door (not) coupes. In part two, we're getting high-end.

A Bentley plug-in hybrid SUV?

For example, how about a Bentley Bentayga Hybrid? While I don't think "better fuel economy" is high on most Bentley owners' list of requirements, something that emits less CO₂ was almost certainly a must from a corporate point of view. The Bentayga Hybrid combines a turbocharged 3.0L V6 with an electric motor, which should make for a most serene experience as you drive over a bunch of peasants on your way to the hedge fund.