Month: April 2018

That Steam logo is the only outward sign that this is a Steam Machine and not an Alienware Alpha.

[Update, April 4: In a post to the Steam community last night, Valve employee Pierre-Loup Griffais writes that the Steam Machine link on the Steam store front page was removed "based on user traffic." He also acknowledged that "Steam Machines aren't exactly flying off the shelves," while in the same breath adding that "our reasons for striving towards a competitive and open gaming platform haven't significantly changed."

Working on Steam Machine hardware, Griffais said, helped Valve "[learn] quite a bit about the state of the Linux ecosystem for real-world game developers out there. We've taken a lot of feedback and have been heads-down on addressing the shortcomings we observed." Griffais also highlighted Valve's continuing work on the Vulkan graphics standard, which now supports Mac and Linux thanks in large part to the company's efforts.

"We also have other Linux initiatives in the pipe that we're not quite ready to talk about yet," he continued. "SteamOS will continue to be our medium to deliver these improvements to our customers, and we think they will ultimately benefit the Linux ecosystem at large."]

Enlarge (credit: VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Tesla is having a tough time of late. Its Autopilot advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) is once again the center of attention in a fatal crash. Deliveries of the Model 3, its budget electric vehicle, are far below the company's goals. Meanwhile, Elon Musk made a series of April Fool's "jokes" on Twitter on Sunday about the company going bankrupt even after a sale of Easter eggs. Despite this attempt at levity, Tesla's share price continued to slide on Monday, losing almost seven percent in the morning, having shed more than 20 percent of its value in the last month.

On March 23, Wei "Walter" Huang died when his Tesla Model X—in Autopilot mode—crashed into a highway divider on Highway 101 in Mountain View, California. According to the Mercury News, Huang had complained about Autopilot's behavior at that particular spot on more than one occasion, accusing his car of veering toward the crash barrier.

Several days after the crash, Tesla confirmed that the vehicle was indeed in Autopilot mode but that the driver did not intervene in the seconds up to the incident:

Planet Labs, Inc.

Founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists, Planet Labs has been among the forefront of several companies seeking to provide high-quality, commercially available imagery of planet Earth. As such, it has the capability to look all around the world, in real time.

In January, a senior data visualization engineer at the company began to survey the damage from mudslides in Southern California. As Robert Simmon looked at the area, which had been ravaged first by wildfires and then large debris flows, he realized he could not see all that much definition between the flat, coastal area and the nearby San Rafael and Santa Ynez mountain ranges. "The entire sense of mountain terrain was lost," Simmon told Ars.

SAN FRANCISCO—During last month's Game Developer Conference, longtime coder and designer Chris Hecker invited me to a game demo event with a tidy premise. "We are going to talk about three things," he said as he began booting a six-year-old ThinkPad. I immediately laughed in response.

Hecker invited me under the pretenses of unveiling news about his long-in-development one-on-one video game SpyParty—one I have followed for years, owing to its tense and truly unique face-offs. Every three-minute match pits one "spy," who acts like an AI character at a video game party, against a sniper, who watches the entire party play out before guessing who the human is among the computer-controlled crowd.

Sure enough, Hecker had specific news to share: an April 12 launch date for the game on Steam Early Access, a new slew of game features, and a $25 price. (Discount hunters have ten days to buy the game at its beta-test price of $15, which will include a Steam key.) As I laughingly assumed, it took us a while to get to that trio of facts. First, we had to shovel through more than eight years of SpyParty development rubble, which has cost Hecker hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

Enlarge / Attendees can get reimbursed for travel and other associated costs.

Niantic will pay nearly $1.6 million to settle a class-action lawsuit surrounding a disastrous Chicago anniversary event that left roughly 20,000 attendees without access to the game they had come to play. That's according to TechCrunch, which has viewed documents filed in Cook County Circuit Court outlining a settlement website set to go up May 25.

While Niantic initially blamed congested data networks for many the problems players encountered at Grant Park's "Pokemon Go Fest" last July, the company quickly refunded tickets to the event and gave out in-game currency as an apology. The $1.575 million settlement proposal would reportedly cover additional accrued travel costs such as "airfare, hotel costs, up to two days of parking fees, car rental, mileage and tolls," according to TechCrunch. Claimants will have to prove that they checked in to the event through the Pokemon Go app and provides receipts for expenses over $107.

Following the Chicago event's failure, Niantic cancelled plans for a similar European tour, saying it wanted to "guarantee the best possible gameplay" for attendees. The company has since rolled out regular, smaller "Community Day" events encouraging players to gather in specific locations around the world for special in-game rewards and bonuses.

Enlarge / The 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid (credit: Eric Bangeman)

Last month, I had a lot of nice things to say about the Chrysler Pacifica minivan. And deservedly so: Chrysler did an excellent job in rethinking the minivan after it retired the venerable Town & Country and resurrected the Pacifica name in 2017. The vehicle has a comfortable and well-designed interior, seats that fold into the floor with a minimum of effort, distractions for the kids, and a comfortable ride. But one of the most common comments in the discussion thread was... well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words:

You asked, we listened.

Shortly after the review was published, Chrysler contacted us to tell us a hybrid had just arrived in the Chicago press fleet and asked us if we wanted to drive that one as well. A week or so later, I found myself looking at another minivan parked outside my house, this one blue instead of burgundy. I hopped in, pressed the ignition button, and heard... nothing.

They generate... electricity, electricity

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles