Month: November 2018

Enlarge (credit: Ouster)

Dozens of startups are working on lidar, a type of laser sensor that many experts see as essential for fully self-driving cars. In my view, one of the most interesting companies is called Ouster. I first wrote about Ouster back in May, when I explained how it was bucking an industry trend toward fixed "solid state" lidar in favor of the spinning design pioneered by industry leader Velodyne.

Because Ouster's lidar looks so much like Velodyne's on the outside, I assumed that it looked similar inside, too. But in a recent interview with Ars Technica, Ouster CEO and co-founder Angus Pacala told me that Ouster's lidar is actually radically different inside.

Patent filings show that Velodyne's venerable 64-laser lidar has a stack of circuit boards, each connected to an individually packaged laser. By contrast, if you crack open the case of Ouster's 64-laser unit, you'll find that all of its 64 laser beams emanate from an integrated circuit not much bigger than a grain of rice.

(credit: Iljitsch van Beijnum)

Update: This week, Ars staffers from across the country gather together in real life for our annual meeting, Technicon. We're supposed to be talking more than typing, so we're resurfacing a few classic Ars stories just in case the front page gets lonely. This one, which originally ran on November 17, 2013, centers on a particular type of typing that would not go over well at Technicon (but does sound oh-so-satisfying within the confines of the home office).

The other day, I posted this image to show off my new MacBook Pro's multiscreen prowess. Nobody cared. But I did get a few comments on my keyboard. Which got me thinking: why do I use a keyboard that's old enough to be of legal drinking age?

It must have been about 10 years ago that a trip to the computer expo could still result in some cool hardware you'd never heard of or a killer deal on something more conventional. In this case, I found someone selling these enormous, old, second-hand keyboards. I thought it would be cool to have some IBM hardware, so I got one.

Enlarge (credit: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Tesla has announced a new chair of its board of directors: Robyn Denholm. The move is part of the deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle claims that CEO Elon Musk misled investors. The deal prohibits Musk from serving as chairman of the company for three years. He will remain CEO of Tesla.

Denholm, who has served on Tesla’s board since 2014, will leave her role as CFO of Telstra, the Australian telecom giant, in six months.

Enlarge / The Infiniti QX50 in Hermosa Blue. (credit: BradleyWarren Photography)

In a world full of similarly priced compact luxury crossovers, one way to differentiate yourself is with what's under the hood. That's the approach Infiniti has taken with the all-new 2019 Infiniti QX50. What might otherwise be yet another $50,000 crossover becomes intriguing if only because of Infiniti's brand-new VC-Turbo engine, and the QX50 is the first vehicle in the carmaker's lineup to be powered by it.

As the name implies, the VC-Turbo uses different compression ratios based on driving conditions. The compression ratio describes the volume of an engine cylinder when the piston is at the top versus the bottom of its travel. The higher the compression ratio, the more thermally efficiently the engine can run. But the turbochargers that are all but omnipresent in today's two-liter engines don't play nicely with high compression ratios, because the combustion can become erratic and possibly result in engine knock (unwanted detonation of the fuel-air mix).

Infiniti's solution involves replacing the usual connecting rod between the piston head and crankshaft with a multilink arrangement. As Ars Automotive Editor Jonathan Gitlin explained: