Month: September 2018

Was OnLive just way ahead of its time?

Since the hyped-up launch and dramatic fall of OnLive, there has been significant debate over when the idea of streaming games from remote servers will move from niche services like PlayStation Now and Nvidia's GeForce Now to a market-moving mainstream force.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick weighed in on that debate recently, saying he thinks a large-scale market for streaming games could "happen in one to three years."

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia conference last week, Zelnick said the rise of streaming gaming was an inevitability that was just waiting on the technology to power it at scale. While Zelnick acknowledged that the streaming game servers "have to be pretty close to where the consumer is" to address latency issues, he said there are a few large-scale companies "that have hyperscale data centers all around the world," and that infrastructure will be able to address that last remaining hurdle in a few years time.

Enlarge / An artist's rendering of a combination Bitcoin mine and turbine farm. (credit: Soluna)

Morocco has a lot of prime real estate for wind energy along its southern coast. But without robust transmission lines to move electricity from there to more populated centers, a traditional wind energy company might wait years for a grid connection before it could start making money.

But if you're connected to the Internet, one option might be to build a grid-isolated wind farm and use it locally while you wait for a connection to the rest of the grid. In Soluna's case, the money-making byproduct that makes local use worth it is mining Bitcoin.

Soluna, a bitcoin-mining company, is going to start construction on a 36 megawatt (MW) wind farm near Dakhla, Morocco, in January 2019, company spokesperson Yoav Reisler told Ars. The company has the rights to 37,000 acres of land, which could eventually accommodate up to 900MW of wind capacity.

Marvel Studios just released the first trailer for its highly anticipated Captain Marvel movie, and it has enough glorious action and hints of the superhero's mysterious origins to whet any superfan's appetite for more. Captain Marvel is slated to premiere in March 2019.

We had our first hint of what's to come in the teaser at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, when Nick Fury placed a mysterious call just before—well, spoiler alert, he was among the one-half of the population turned to dust when that bastard Thanos fatally snapped his fingers. The caller ID on Fury's dropped phone showed no name, just a bright flash of blue, red, and gold with a white insignia. Marvel fans soon concluded this was a hint that Captain Marvel herself (Brie Larson) would be coming to the rescue.

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

As the public embraces Chrome OS, OEMs have begun to incorporate Google's operating system into their products in new ways. Soon, Chromebooks won't be just the cheap laptops you buy for your kids as an alternative to a more expensive macOS or Windows machine—or for yourself as a secondary device. HP's $599 Chromebook x2 is one of the first higher-end Chrome OS devices to come out, not to mention one of the first Chrome OS tablets available, too.

HP designed the Chromebook x2 to elevate the Chrome OS experience, similarly to how Google's own Pixelbook handles the OS. The x2 is built with premium materials and packed with better internals than most Chromebooks, making it a good option for Chrome OS enthusiasts. At $599 for the tablet plus its keyboard and stylus, the Chromebook x2 isn't trying to be the most affordable Chromebook—rather, it's trying to appeal to those who want a premium Chromebook that balances style, versatility, and power.

Look and feel

Aside from Google's Pixelbook, the Chromebook x2 is the most luxurious Chrome OS device I've ever held. The tablet's weightiness struck me as soon as I took it out of the box, and its metal edges combined with ceramic white back finish make it a very handsome device. HP achieved the white color using the same anodized electrodeposition method used in previous Spectre laptops, showing that the company didn't cut any corners, instead breaking the plastic-clamshell shackles that once restrained Google's operating system.