Month: October 2018

Valentina Palladino

In unveiling its new leather-covered Spectre Folio, HP claimed that it was "reinventing" the PC. At the risk of being called cynical, I must confess to rolling my eyes somewhat at HP's grandeur. My skepticism was confirmed when we saw what HP had actually built: it's a new take on the two-in-one convertible, a system which—like the Surface Pro and so many others—can be used as both a laptop and as a tablet.

But having held the thing, looked at it up close, and used it a little? I think HP could have something quite special here.

Enlarge (credit: Assassin's Creed Odyssey)

Google just announced "Project Stream," a "technical test" of a service designed to stream AAA video games à la Playstation Now and GeForce Now. We've heard rumors of a "Project Yeti" gaming service for some time now, and this looks to be the first sign of a real "Google Gaming" product.

The Project Stream test will involve streaming Ubisoft's Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to desktop-class Chrome browsers, which means it will work on Windows, macOS, Linux, and ChromeOS. Google's blog post says that a "limited number of participants" will be able to try the game for free starting October 5. A 25Mbps Internet connection is "recommended" for the service, and you'll need accounts with Google and Ubisoft. For controls, you have options of a keyboard and mouse or a USB (not Bluetooth) game controller. Google says a recent Xbox or Playstation controller will work fine. Provided you are 17 years or older and live in the US, you can sign up at projectstream.google.com.

Game-streaming services are still in their infancy, but the idea applies the standard "cloud computing" thinking to video games. Rather than have players buy and maintain their own expensive gaming hardware, game streaming offloads that compute work to the cloud and streams down only what you need (a video feed) over the Internet. When done correctly, the services allow for high-fidelity games on minimal hardware.

Enlarge / California State Capitol building in Sacramento. (credit: Getty Images | joe chan photography)

California's net neutrality law is slated to take effect on January 1, 2019, unless the US government convinces a federal court to halt the law's implementation.

As we reported yesterday, the Department of Justice sued the state of California shortly after Governor Jerry Brown signed net neutrality legislation into law. The Trump administration claims the California law is preempted by the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules.

The government lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of California seeks a preliminary injunction that would stop implementation of the law pending the outcome of the case.

Enlarge / The two systems developed into therapies by today's Nobel winners. For both systems, the APC is an immune cell that presents proteins to the T cell so that it can determine if they're recognized. On the left, if CTLA-4 (yellow) is engaged on the T cell, it tones down the immune response. The same thing is true for PD-1 (right), except it can be engaged by the tumor cells (pink) as well. (credit: Nobel Prize )

Today, the Nobel Prize Committee has honored two researchers for their role in pioneering a new avenue for cancer treatment, one where the therapy targets the immune system, which then goes on to attack the cancer. The researchers, James Allison of the MD Anderson Cancer Center and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University, worked separately to identify and target proteins that help keep the immune system from attacking other cells in the body. When these proteins are inhibited, the immune system can target cancers, although at the risk of autoimmune disorders.

Immunity and cancer

Our thinking about the relationship between the immune system and cancer has undergone a number of revisions over the last century. The initial question—why doesn't the immune system attack cancers?—was seemingly answered as people developed a better understanding of how it normally keeps from attacking healthy cells. Under this view, cancer cells looked too much like a normal cell to generate a response.

But this turned out to be not quite right. People taking immunosuppressive drugs over long periods tended to have increased incidence of cancer, suggesting that the immune system was attacking and eliminating cancers all the time. The question then became one of why the immune system wasn't effective against some cancers.

Enlarge / Untitled Mega Man Unity Fan Project is coming along nicely.

Over decades of inconsistently timed, numbered releases, Capcom has generally been reluctant to tinker with the core Mega Man formula. Since the introduction of sliding back in Mega Man 3 and charged shots in Mega Man 4, the series has been content with new levels, new bosses, and only small tinkering around the edges regarding gameplay and visual style. Even the last decade's Mega Man 9 and 10 reboots hewed to the nostalgic NES style, almost to a fault.

With Mega Man 11, Capcom seems less afraid to play around with the formula. The basic run-and-jump-and-shoot gameplay is still there, but the new Gear system brings some major changes to the way the game plays, and new 3D graphics fundamentally change the way this game looks and feels.

Slow it down

Let's talk about the Gear system first. With the tap of a shoulder button, Mega Man can now get a time-limited boost that either powers up his standard weapon or slows down the world around him. At low health, Mega Man can activate both gears at once for a final desperate salvo.

The weapon-boosting Power Gear is nothing to get too excited about, amounting to a somewhat more awkward version of the Charge Shot in most situations. While this Gear adds some interesting, often enemy-annihilating power to Mega Man's special weapons, I didn't end up using it much in my playthrough.

Enlarge (credit: Google LLC / Aurich)

A lone engineer has succeeded in doing what Uber's top lawyers and expert witnesses could not—overturning most of a foundational patent covering arch-rival Waymo's lidar laser ranging devices.

Following a surprise left-field complaint by Eric Swildens, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has rejected all but three of 56 claims in Waymo's 936 patent, named for the last three digits of its serial number. The USPTO found that some claims replicated technology described in an earlier patent from lidar vendor Velodyne, while another claim was simply "impossible" and "magic."

Swildens, who receives no money or personal advantage from the decision, told Ars that he was delighted at the news. "The patent shouldn't have been filed in the first place," he said. "It's a very well written patent. However, my personal belief is that the thing that they say they invented, they didn't invent."