Month: April 2019

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  Behold, the Disney+ app, as it will look in its smart TV implementation.

The Walt Disney Company finally took the wraps off of its Disney+ streaming service's app, slated for launch on November 12 of this year at a $6.99/mo rate or an annual price of $69. The company also confirmed a few new series exclusive to the paid subscription service, along with some technical details and the exclusive acquisition of the complete Simpsons archives.

Ahead of the event, rumors pointed to one major Marvel-affiliated series revolving around the hero Hawkeye. Instead, Disney confirmed a series in the Disney+ "Marvel" tab titled Falcon and Winter Soldier while showing off the service's interface. No footage was shown of this series as of press time, but the characters will be portrayed by their MCU actors, Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan. Additional series announced by Marvel at the event include What If, an animated series that will "take pivotal moments from the MCU and turn them on their head," and WandaVision, a vaguely teased series starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as Wanda Maximoff and The Vision, respectively.

"The post-Endgame vision will be extremely different," Marvel added as a sneaky tease to its upcoming blockbuster (and its assumedly crazy ramifications on the MCU).

Enlarge / The corporate desktop lives. (credit: Thomas Claveirole / Flickr)

Gartner and IDC have both published their quarterly reports on the size of the PC market in the first quarter of 2019, and they've both agreed: about 58.5 million systems were shipped. The two companies use somewhat different definitions of PCs—for Gartner they're desktops, laptops, and "ultramobile premiums" such as the Surface Pro, but exclude Chromebooks and iPads; for IDC they're desktops, laptops, and workstations, including Chromebooks, but don't include any tablets at all—but this quarter they've ended up at almost exactly the same number of units sold.

The two analysts don't, however, agree on who the top seller was. IDC puts HP top, at 13.6 million systems (0.8 percent fewer than the same quarter a year ago) and a 23.2 percent market share, with Lenovo in second place, at 13.4 million systems (up 1.8 percent) and a 23.0 percent share of the market. Gartner, in contrast, puts Lenovo top at 13.2 million systems (up 6.9 percent), and a 22.5 percent share, and HP in second, with 12.8 million systems (up 0.8 percent) and a 21.9 percent share.

Both companies put Dell in third place, with around 10 million systems shipped, and Apple in fourth place, with 4 million systems sold. Gartner then puts Asus fifth, just behind Apple at 3.6 million systems shipped. IDC instead gives the nod to Acer, again at 3.6 million machines sold.

Enlarge / The Falcon Heavy rocket, at sunset along the Florida coast. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann for Ars Technica)

On Wednesday evening, SpaceX ended its first attempt to fly the Falcon Heavy rocket and its Arabsat-6A payload in the middle of a two-hour launch window. The upper-level wind shear was unacceptable, and with a poor forecast, it just didn't make sense to load kerosene and oxygen on the rocket.

Now, the rocket is back on the launch pad for another attempt Thursday, with a similar launch window, opening at 6:35pm ET (10:35 UTC) and closing at 8:31pm ET (00:31 UTC). The upper-level wind forecast for this evening is considerably better.

This will be the Falcon Heavy rocket's second flight, following a successful first launch in February 2018, during which the company famously flung Elon Musk's cherry red Tesla Roadster into deep space. Starman is still out there, by the way, in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. Earth-based telescopes may be able to see him in the early 2020s, certainly no later than 2047.

Enlarge / A scene from a grow room in Weedcraft, Inc., where you can become "Lord of Canabusiness"

Online social and video networks have taken action to limit discussion of Weedcraft, Inc., a new simulation game focused on building a business empire to sell the drug. Videos of the game have been demonetized on YouTube and the game's Facebook page has been restricted to prevent ad sales, according to a representative for publisher Devolver Digital.

Weedcraft Inc., launching today on Steam and GOG, includes Tycoon-style business-growing scenarios that focus on both the legal and illegal sides of the marijuana trade during what developer Vile Monarch calls the "semi prohibition-era" for the drug. Situations where you have to conceal grow rooms from cops exist in the game alongside legitimate lobbying efforts to legalize the drug in more jurisdictions through two distinct story scenarios.

Despite the nuanced and decidedly artistic take on the drug war, though, Devolver says its partners on YouTube are reporting their videos about the game have been blocked from receiving any revenue from advertising. And Devolver's ad manager tells Ars that "basically they've said we can't advertise on [Facebook or Instagram], restricted the page (still trying to find out what that means exactly), and they completely banned my personal ad account because why not I guess."

Enlarge / Comparison of the resolution of U2 aerial photography (left) over Ur, Iraq, from October 30, 1959, versus CORONA satellite imagery (right) taken May 4, 1968. (credit: E. Hammer and J. Ur)

During the 1950s and 1960s, US spy planes made regular flights across Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East, photographing the terrain to track military targets. A chunk of the Middle Eastern photographs were declassified in 1997, and now those airborne images are helping archaeologists track changing features in the landscape that in many cases are no longer visible today, according to a new paper published in Advances in Archaeological Practice.

Co-author Emily Hammer is a landscape archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, meaning she studies how humans in the past were organized with respect to their environment and landscape: where people were living, where their roads were, where their irrigation canals were, and so forth. But it's not always possible to see more large-scale features on the ground, so aerial photos and satellite imagery are a critical tool for landscape archaeologists.

"It's like an impressionist's painting," said Hammer, in that there is no discernible pattern when viewed up close. "Just like stepping back from the blobs of paint on an Impressionist painting reveals the full picture, [aerial and satellite imagery] lets you stand back and see larger patterns that tell us about how humans relate to their environment in the past."

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  Acer's ConceptD 9 convertible. [credit: Valentina Palladino ]

NEW YORK—Acer added to its already extensive family of PCs with an entirely new line today. Dubbed ConceptD, the new family of laptops, towers, and displays are designed for creatives who often gravitate to gaming PCs for their power but may also be turned off by those devices’ unique designs and loud cooling noise.

Acer explained at its event in Brooklyn, New York, today that it took a lot of inspiration from its Predator gaming line when making ConceptD machines. However, that inspiration manifested mostly in the new machines’ internals—most ConceptD devices have the latest 9th-gen Intel processors and powerful Nvidia graphics cards, providing the necessary performance to serve a number of creatives (think animators, graphic designers, VR engineers, etc).

As far as external design goes, ConceptD machines borrow some aspects from Acer’s consumer families but also incorporate white and wooden accents for an airier, modern look. The ConceptD 9 convertible has a design similar to Acer’s Aspire R13, featuring a hinge that allows you to move the display forward and backward (Acer calls this its Ezel Aero hinge). The display itself is a 17.3-inch 4K display that has a DeltaE of less than one, which means it will render colors that are nearly as accurate as those in real life (a DeltaE closer to 0 results in more accurate colors).

Enlarge / Scott Kelly returned from space with a lot of blood and stool samples. They've now told the tale of the changes he underwent during his time on the International Space Station. (credit: NASA)

The US has big plans for putting humans in space. In doing so, it will be building on our experience at the International Space Station, which is approaching the 20th anniversary of the arrival of its first occupants. Some of that experience comes in the form of knowledge of habitation and operations in low gravity. But a large chunk of it is in the form of understanding what time in space does to the human body.

Today, NASA is releasing detailed results of its most audacious experiment yet: sending one half of a pair of identical twin astronauts into space and carefully monitoring both of them for a year. Three year after astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth, and a year after some horrifically speculative press coverage, a paper in today's issue of Science provides excruciating detail on the changes Kelly's body experienced over a year in orbit. While many of the problems highlighted in the new paper had been identified previously, the results aren't exactly good news for the US' long-term exploration plan.

Changes

Over the course of many long-term stays in space, the US and Russia have identified a number of health issues caused by extended stays in minimal gravity. Some of them are pretty simple to correct. Without gravity's constant pull, bones and muscles don't experience the resistance that helps keep them robust. A careful exercise plan, however, can minimize these issues. Less easy to minimize is the fact that the body's internal water content shifts upwards—about two liters of fluid move to the upper body over the short term. Among the consequences are eye problems that can persist after the astronaut returns to Earth.