Month: June 2018

Enlarge / The object's unusual approach suggests it came from outside our Solar System. (credit: NASA/JPL)

Last year, the Solar System was treated to its first known tourist. 'Oumuamua, an odd, cigar-shaped body, shot through our neighborhood at high speed, following an orbit that indicates it arrived from somewhere else. Although bodies ejected from other solar systems are expected to make regular visits, this was the first one that we'd imaged sufficiently to determine that its origins were elsewhere.

The imaging, however, didn't resolve a somewhat different debate: what, exactly, is 'Oumuamua? Its odd orbit had initially had it categorized as a comet, as these tend to have more extreme orbits. But imaging didn't show any indication of gas and dust being released, as is typical when a comet approaches the Sun. That imaging also revealed that it had an elongated, cigar-like shape. Combined with its relatively rapid rotation, this would indicate that 'Oumuamua had to be fairly robust, leading to the conclusion that it was probably an asteroid.

But now, a large international team of researchers is weighing in with another vote for comet. The argument, says the team, is based on the odd behavior of 'Oumuamua, which appears to have been accelerating away from the Sun.

Ron Amadeo

We now know the date of the Galaxy Note 9 announcement. Samsung sent out invites to "Samsung Galaxy UNPACKED 2018" on August 9 and a teaser image showing the Note line's trademark S-Pen. This year, the show will be at the Barclays Center in New York City, the home of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets and the NHL's New York Islanders.

There isn't a huge amount of rumors out there about the Galaxy Note 9. If past Note devices are any indication, the Note 9 will be very close to the latest Galaxy S9+, just with a slightly larger screen and battery, a squared-off design, an S-Pen, and some new camera tech. Sure enough, a report from Bloomberg earlier this month said the Note 9 "will look similar to last year’s model" and have "an upgraded camera." Samsung just announced a new "Isocell Plus" camera sensor, which it says can "capture more light, significantly increasing light sensitivity and color fidelity." There's a good chance it will end up in the Note 9.

Enlarge / Yarrrrrr

As expected, the unpatchable Nintendo Switch exploit published months ago has now led to the existence of piracy-enabling custom firmware for the system. In an ironic twist, though, the makers of that firmware have introduced anti-piracy code to prevent people from pirating their own work.

While there is a free version Team Xecutor's custom SX OS available online, loading that firmware only allows Switch players to play homebrew software. To load pirated (or "backed up") versions of copyrighted Switch games, you have to buy a licensed copy of SX OS from an authorized reseller.

Trying to load the paid version of SX OS without a valid license leads the firmware to execute a "brick code" path, locking up the system's internal NAND memory behind a password. It's possible to recover your hardware from this "bricked" state, but regaining control can be an opaque process if you don't know what you're doing.

Enlarge / This is your brain. Well, not your brain. Presumably your brain isn't being photographed at this moment. (credit: Adeel Anwar / Flickr)

This week we’re serializing a third episode from the After On podcast here on Ars. The series is built around deep-dive interviews with world-class thinkers, founders, and scientists, and tends to be very tech- and science-heavy. You can access the excerpts on Ars via an embedded audio player, or by reading accompanying transcripts (both of which are below).

This week my guest is a holographer, a one-time academic, a former CTO of Oculus, and a present-day entrepreneur named Mary Lou Jepsen. Mary Lou’s latest startup is called Openwater. It’s doing some incredibly ambitious things in the field of medical technology—and it could one day do even more ambitious things in the realm of telepathy (and yes, you read that correctly). I first posted the full episode to my podcast’s feed on February 20th, and we’ll run it in two installments here on Ars.

We open today’s installment discussing the roots of Mary Lou’s new company. Like so many things, it all started with holography and a brain tumor. The former was Mary Lou’s academic focus in college, and the latter almost killed her (and I’m pretty sure I didn’t get that backward). This gave her a profound and personal appreciation for both the importance, and the overwhelming expense of medical imaging.

Enlarge / The moon is in rough shape.

Warning: plot spoilers for Prey are contained herein!

Prey: Mooncrash is hiding a lot more beneath the surface than its premise lets on. The DLC's surprise announcement and release at E3 2018 promised an endlessly repeatable, never-repeating experience—a distinctly roguelike take on the first-person shooter genre. That means death resets most of your progress, and while certain character abilities carry over into each individual “run,” total progress resets to zero with every load, along with inventory, item, and enemy placement.

The objective is simple: you need to escape the Moon by any means necessary. That could mean repairing an escape pod or zipping through an alien portal to a shoe store on Earth. While the objective might be different, the basic gameplay in Mooncrash is awfully similar to the core Prey.

Mooncrash is still a first-person shooter where you can sneak, shoot, or use psychic powers to get past goopy aliens called “Typhon.” You still rifle your way through garbage cans and shipping containers for bullets and expired snack cakes. And, perhaps most interestingly, you still get to explore Prey’s unusual alternate timeline, through from a very different perspective than that in the main game.