Month: June 2018

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. With E3 in full swing this week, today's list is led by a slew of deals on gaming hardware and services from Sony and Microsoft.

On the PlayStation 4 side, the offers cover Sony's beefed-up PlayStation 4 Pro, the PlayStation VR headset, newer games like God of War, and a limited-edition version of the PlayStation 4 Slim. Xbox diehards, meanwhile, can save on Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass subscriptions as well as Microsoft's 4K- and HDR-capable Xbox One X.

Beyond the gaming stuff, various retailers have also started up deals in preparation for Father's Day this weekend. Amazon has cut prices on almost all of its major devices, for one, while a variety of audio gear and other gadgets can be had for cheaper than usual as well.

Enlarge / Tesla CEO Elon Musk. (credit: Yuriko Nakao/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Tesla is cutting nine percent of its workforce, CEO Elon Musk announced today in a memo to staff.

"We are a small company in one of the toughest and most competitive industries on Earth," Musk wrote. He argued that cost cutting was necessary to turn Tesla into a sustainably profitable company.

The layoffs are "almost entirely" in salaried positions and won't impact Tesla's efforts to increase Model 3 production, Musk said.

Enlarge / These two 3,800-year-old plague victims were interred together in a Bronze Age burial mound in Russia. (credit: Spyrou et al. 2018)

Geneticists are a step closer to understanding how plague evolved into one of the great scourges of human history. Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, spreads through the bites of infected fleas. In the flea’s gut, plague bacteria multiply until a mass of bacteria blocks the passage to the flea’s stomach. The starving flea bites a host and feeds frantically, but since it can’t swallow its meal, it ends up regurgitating blood and bacteria back into its prey’s bloodstream, spreading the disease to a new host.

Inside a mammalian host, Y. pestis travels through the lymph system until it reaches a lymph node, like the ones near the armpits or the groin. There, the bacteria multiply, causing the dark, swollen lump called buboes that give the plague its name. Plague patients also face dangerously high fevers, along with headaches, nausea, coughing, and (in modern times, at least) the horrifying realization that they got it from flea vomit.

That ruthlessly efficient system helped bubonic plague kill nearly 25 million people and made the ancient world shudder in its tracks during the Justinian plague of 541–542. Its likely return, according to the most widely accepted data at least, killed somewhere between 75 million and 200 million more during the Black Death of 1347-1351.

The HoloLens headset. (credit: Microsoft)

Internal documents outlining Microsoft's future hardware plans have leaked, giving a sneak peek at what the next couple of years of the company's hardware are likely to look like, writes Brad Sams of Thurrott.com.

First up, there's a trio of Surface-branded devices with the code names Carmel, Libra, and Andromeda. Libra is the cheap Surface tablet that Bloomberg reported in May. This isn't Microsoft's first foray into the cheap(er) tablet market; while the focus of the last few years has been on the more expensive Surface Pro, it seems that Redmond continues to regard it as an important segment, with the education market a particular target. Should Libra make it to market, it's expected to become available this year.

Carmel is the next iteration of the Surface Pro. Intel is going to refresh its mobile processors later this year, with processors codenamed Whiskey Lake and Amber Lake—the former with a power consumption of about 15W, the latter of about 4.5W. These will continue to use the "8th generation" branding, and either or both could make sense in some kind of Surface product. This processor timeline means it's unlikely we'll see Carmel before Whiskey and Amber Lakes hit the market; however, the documents apparently don't provide any hard dates for when it's due.

Enlarge (credit: Comcast)

The repeal of federal net neutrality rules became official yesterday, giving broadband providers the right to block or throttle Internet traffic or to prioritize traffic in exchange for payment.

But at least for now, some major ISPs are saying they won't do any of those things. The Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T websites all say they aren't doing any blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization.

By contrast, Charter's network management disclosure only promises that it won't block or throttle, while making no promises about paid prioritization. That doesn't mean Charter has immediate plans to charge websites and online services for priority access to consumers. ISPs are required to disclose paid prioritization publicly, so we'll find out if it happens as long as the companies follow the disclosure requirements.