Month: August 2018

Enlarge / Don't expect to see this action on PS4 unless Sony starts changing its tune on cross-platform play...

Across multiple years and multiple franchises, Sony has uniformly prevented PS4 games from playing nicely online with versions of the same game on other consoles. Now, Bethesda is warning that such cross-platform support is "non-negotiable" for the coming console versions of The Elder Scrolls: Legends collectible card game, potentially barring the title from Sony's system.

In an interview with Game Informer, Bethesda VP Pete Hines says that any and all versions of The Elder Scrolls: Legends need to allow for full, unrestricted cross-platform play and cross-platform progress. The applies to the current versions—which already work seamlessly across iOS, Android, and PC platforms—as well as previously announced console versions planned for "later this year."

"It is our intention in order for the game to come out, it has to [have full cross-platform support] on any system," Hines said. "We cannot have a game that works one way across everywhere else except for on this one thing."

Enlarge / Lasers, magnets, and superconductors, oh my! The lasers have nothing to do with this story, but the other two are critical to understanding it. (credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

Science is said to be moving faster than ever before. In fact, the pace is usually limited by the flow of information—I can’t respond to your results until I know about them, and journals are notoriously slow. The arXiv, which hosts manuscripts that may be submitted for peer review, is not. Put your preprint in today, watch it go public tomorrow... and see it get slapped down three weeks later.

This has all played out before our eyes with an extraordinary claim for room-temperature superconductivity, which is marred by some suspicious data.

Why is superconductivity important?

Superconductivity is a hidden workhorse of today’s medical and scientific establishment. The way to get high magnetic fields is to use a very large current loop. In ordinary conductors, the imperfect conduction of electrons heats the metal, which increases the resistance of the metal. The whole feedback loop terminates when your finely designed metallic coil turns into a small glowing metallic puddle—often considered a bad thing.

(credit: Free Press)

A US appeals court has blocked the Federal Communications Commission's attempt to take a broadband subsidy away from Tribal areas.

The FCC decision, originally slated to take effect later this year, would have made it difficult or impossible for Tribal residents to obtain a $25-per-month Lifeline subsidy that reduces the cost of Internet or phone service for poor people. But on Friday, a court stayed the FCC decision pending appeal, saying that Tribal organizations and small wireless carriers are likely to win their case against the commission.

"Petitioners have demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their arguments that the facilities-based and rural areas limitations contained in the Order are arbitrary and capricious," said the stay order issued by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. "In particular, petitioners contend that the Federal Communications Commission failed to account for a lack of alternative service providers for many tribal customers."

Enlarge / Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (credit: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund is the mystery funder that has offered to finance a deal to take Tesla private, Elon Musk wrote in a Monday morning blog post. The post lays to rest a mystery that has bedeviled Wall Street and the news media since Musk tweeted last Tuesday that he had "funding secured" for a buyout.

"Going back almost two years, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private," Musk wrote in his Monday post. "They first met with me at the beginning of 2017 to express this interest because of the important need to diversify away from oil."

In late July, the Saudis purchased almost five percent of Tesla's stock (acquiring more than five percent would have triggered public disclosure requirements). They then met with Musk on July 31 and reiterated their interest in funding a buyout.

Enlarge / Building cars—as seen here at a Mercedes-Benz factory in Kecskemet, Hungary—is harder than designing them. (credit: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The Foxconn Technology Group doesn't design, market, or sell a single product. Yet, ironically, it is one of the largest consumer electronics manufacturers on the planet. Chances are you have at least one of the products it builds within reach right now. Could the same type of arrangement work in the auto industry?

It would make sense if traditional carmakers like FCA, Ford, and General Motors could be hired to build or assemble cars conceived by vendors like Apple, Uber, and Waymo/Google, says Bryan Reimer, a research scientist in MIT's AgeLab and associate director of The New England University Transportation Center at MIT, vehemently. In fact, he insists it's already happening.

You design it, we build it

Foxconn is the king of contract manufacturers. It assembles a multitude of items: everything from flat-screen televisions to smartphones for cash-rich tech giants like Apple, Nokia, Samsung, Sony, and others. A client hands Foxconn a set of schematics. The Taiwan-based manufacturer then manages the supply chain and quickly builds the product so that the client can market and sell it to the masses.

Google is taking special steps to let Google Play users know they can't download Fortnite to their Android device through the centralized app store. When users search for "fortnite" on Google Play, they're now presented with a special message reading "Fortnite Battle Royale by Epic Games, Inc is not available on Google Play."

The message appears to be new and unique to Fortnite searches—looking for other popular titles that aren't available on Google Play and/or Android phones doesn't result in the same warning. The warning also does not appear when searching the Google Play store through a Web browser.

The top result of the "fortnite" search on Google Play remains the competing battle-royale game PUBG Mobile, as it was before Fortnite's Android release. This is likely the result of the algorithmically derived similarity between the games and not a specific, manually inserted dig at Epic's similar game.