Month: October 2018

Google's Building 44, where Android is developed. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

We're still seeing the fallout from the European Commission's $5 billion antitrust fine against Google. Earlier this week, Google announced it would comply with the ruling by unbundling the Google Android app package, allowing OEMs to skip Chrome and Google Search in favor of alternatives. The catch is that, since ad revenue from these Google services was used to support Android development, Google will start charging OEMs that license Google apps but choose the unbundled route.

Now, thanks to a report from The Verge, we're getting an idea of just how much this more flexible app licensing scheme will cost OEMs. Citing "confidential documents" that were shown to the site, The Verge says Google will charge OEMs as much as $40 per device if they don't use Google's preferred Android setup. The pricing is flexible based on the country and the pixel density of the device's screen. The EU is split into three tiers, with the UK, Sweden, Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands in the most expensive tier. Lower-end phones in bottom-tier countries can cost as little as $2.50 per device. Android tablets, if any of those still exist, get their own pricing tier that is even across all countries and caps out at $20. It all sounds very complicated, but if we imagine this pricing structure applied to the $720 Galaxy S9 sold in the UK, slapping on the top-end $40 fee works out to a 5.5 percent price increase and a $760 phone.

That's not the only spot in Android OEMs' wallets Google will hit. If OEMs don't pre-install Chrome, the report claims OEMs will no longer get a share of search revenue generated by Chrome users. The report says the new rules will kick in February 1, 2019, which is strange given that Google's new licensing rules from earlier in the week start at the end of the month.

Enlarge / "Mr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks." (credit: MGM/UA)

Today we’re presenting the fourth and final installment of my conversation with the outspoken author, podcaster, philosopher, and recovering neuroscientist Sam Harris. Please check out parts one, two, and three if you missed them. Otherwise, you can press play on the embedded audio player or pull up the transcript, both of which are below.

We open today’s conversation by talking about bioterrorism. Because that’s not uplifting enough, we then move on the dangers a super AI could present in certain worst-case scenarios (which was the topic of a popular TED talk of Harris'). This conversation builds on yesterday’s cheerful discussion of nuclear terrorism.

The final part of the podcast is a conversation between me and podcasting superstar Tom Merritt. In it, Merritt and I discuss my interview with Harris—as well as a chunk of my novel After On. This section exists because I originally thought my podcast would be a limited set of just eight episodes connected that novel. But the podcast acquired a life of its own, and I’m about to publish episode #38 in the series of eight.

Enlarge / A 110 megawatt (MW) solar plant in Israel’s Negev desert. (credit: OPIC)

With the price of photovoltaics having plunged dramatically, solar is likely to become a major contributor to the electrical generating mix in many countries. But the intermittent nature of photovoltaics could put a limit on how much they contribute to future grids or force us to develop massive storage capabilities.

But photovoltaics aren't the only solar technology out there. Concentrated solar power uses mirrors to focus the Sun's light, providing heat that can be used to drive turbines. Advances in heat storage mean that the technology can now generate power around the clock, essentially integrating storage into the process of producing energy. Unfortunately, the price of concentrated solar hasn't budged much, and photovoltaics have left it in the dust. But some materials scientists may have figured out a way to boost concentrated solar's efficiency considerably, clawing back some of photovoltaics' advantage.

Feel the heat

Solar thermal revolves around transfers of heat. Sunlight is used to heat up a working fluid at the mirrors' focus. That then transfers the heat either to a storage system or directly to another fluid that is used to drive a turbine—typically steam. Higher temperatures typically mean more work can be extracted, making the efficiency of these transfers critical.

Enlarge / Players duking it out in the new Blackout mode.

Call of Duty, like video game war simulations in general, is caught in a paradox. It never changes, and yet, every year, it definitely does change. Approaching a new Call of Duty, especially from the multiplayer side, is a bit of a challenge. How much do the various iterative changes matter, and do they manage to reshape the core of the game in any meaningful way? Call of Duty has long been a game about moving fast and shooting guns; what makes the latest version worth playing over the dozen-plus iterations prior?

To be fair, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 changes more than most. The highly choreographed, extravagantly cinematic single-player campaign that has been de rigueur for the series' entire lifespan has been excised. That leaves an awkward hole at the core of the experience, which developer Treyarch has filled with Blackout, an 88- to 100-player battle royale mode in the vein of Fortnite or PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. The rest of the game modes—the standard-by-now multiplayer suite and the ridiculous but addictive Zombies mode—fall in line around Blackout, creating a three-tiered experience of hyper-violence and militaristic energy.

Black Ops 4 is the biggest single-game change for the Call of Duty franchise in ages. But it's still, when it comes right down to it, just another Call of Duty.

“Where we droppin’, soldier?”

Black Ops 4 doesn't present its content in any particular order. As a player, you can jump freely between its three modes, and nothing—except for player progression in each mode—is gated from the start. The natural place to start, though, is Blackout, the newest part of the Call of Duty package, both the most derivative and the most distinct mode on offer. Taking place on a sprawling map stitched together from locations and motifs in Call of Duty's multiplayer past, Blackout heavily resembles just about any other battle royale game, both in concept and execution.

ESA

One might think it's a relatively easy thing to reach Mercury, the innermost planet in the Solar System. At its closest approach, Mercury is just 77 million kilometers from Earth, or not all that much further than the closest that Earth comes to Mars. The Earth-Mars transit typically only takes about six months.

However, the Sun's enormous gravity makes putting a spacecraft into orbit around Mercury quite difficult. How much gravity are we talking about? The g-force at the surface of the Earth is 9.8 meters/second^2. By comparison, the Sun's gravity is nearly 30 times greater, at 274 m/s^2.