Month: May 2019

The long-awaited fifth season of Black Mirror debuts next month, and Netflix just released three—count 'em—new one-minute trailers to stoke fans' anticipation.

Black Mirror is the creation of Charlie Brooker, co-showrunner with Annabel Jones. The series explores the darker side of technology and its impact on people's lives in the near future, and it's in the spirit of classic anthology series like The Twilight Zone. Brooker developed Black Mirror to highlight topics related to humanity's relationship to technology, creating stories that feature "the way we live now—and the way we might be living in 10 minutes' time if we're clumsy." The series debuted on the British Channel 4 in December 2011, followed by a second season. Noting its popularity, Netflix took over the series in 2015, releasing longer seasons 3 and 4 in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

The first season 5 teaser dropped last week, showcasing an impressive cast that includes Anthony Mackie, Miley Cyrus, Topher Grace, Nicole Beharie, Damson Idris, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, among others. We only caught glimpses of what the three episodes might be about, and now we have a separate trailer for each yielding a bit more information.

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft's Xbox chief Phil Spencer has written a paean to video gaming, calling games a unifying force that anyone and everyone can enjoy. He rejoices in gaming's ability to sustain communities, foster friendships, and even reduce stress and depression. He also describes the shift gaming has made; games aren't just the domain of teenage boys but have grown far beyond that: most gamers are adults, and nearly half are women.

But against these positive elements, Spencer recognizes the many flaws in the gaming community. Online life as a whole includes a "growing toxic stew of hate speech, bigotry, and misogyny," he writes, but games can be part of the solution. Spencer says that games have a uniquely equalizing ability to bring people together—we're all just names on a screen, substantially eroding differences in class, race, gender, and so on—and so present an environment that can help dismantle prejudice.

The purpose of his essay is to call on the gaming industry to work together to make gaming a safe space, one where gaming's positive features can be celebrated, without being mired in the same toxicity as contaminates the rest of the online world. To that end, he outlines three principles he wants the games industry to follow.

Enlarge (credit: UpNorthMemories)

Reconstructing crime scenes is more or less what most geoscientists do for a living. Sometimes the “whodunnit” revolves around a mass extinction event 66 million years ago, and sometimes it’s about an extreme weather pattern just last week. But as with a homicide investigation, geologists also have to consider natural causes.

A new study led by the University of Oxford’s Karsten Haustein takes a look at the influence of natural causes on the temperatures of the last century. While natural variability inherent to the climate system was thought to play a role in some features of our temperature record, the new results suggest that the record is dominated by external forces—though some of those are natural, too.

Explaining wiggles

It’s well-established that human activities are the dominant cause of recent climate change. But looking at the instrumental temperature record, which goes back to the late 1800s, there are significant wiggles that look curious. Why, for example, did global temperatures drop for a time after World War II before resuming their upward ascent in the late 1970s?

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster is back with another round of deals today. Topping our list is a pre-Memorial Day doorbuster from Lenovo for a very popular ThinkPad machine. Now you can get the 5th-gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon, featuring an Intel Core i5-6200U processor, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD for just $849.

The X1 Carbon is a favorite of many, including a few Ars staffers, for its no-nonsense, yet sleek design as well as its power and practicality. Its carbon fiber chassis keeps it lightweight, and at about 16mm thick, it's quite thin as well. Its keyboard stands out as one of the most comfortable we've ever used on a laptop, and TrackPoint ball users will appreciate that Lenovo retained that beloved trackpad alternative. Every model also comes standard with a fingerprint sensor on the palm rest area as well as a versatile array of ports that includes two Thunderbolt 3 ports, two USB-A ports, and a full-sized HDMI port.

The 5th-gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon isn't the newest model—it debuted in 2017 and was updated in 2018 with newer processors and small changes, including a new physical camera shutter over the webcam and an optional IR camera. Lenovo is also gearing up to debut the 7th-gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon later this year, which will include Whiskey Lake chips, an optional 4K display panel, and the high starting price of $1,709.

Enlarge / PlayStation Now currently offers 780 streaming games, and Sony promises to expand that catalog significantly going forward.

In a wide-ranging investor presentation that focused on Sony's future gaming plans, Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan echoed comments from companies like Google in saying "we believe the streaming era is upon us and is about to begin a period of rapid growth."

To support that bold statement, Ryan cited Sony's own internal data on the 5.6 million PS4 owners that use the system's Remote Play functionality, which essentially turns the console into a home server that can stream games to PC/Mac, iOS, and Xperia-branded Android devices. The "growing appetite" for that feature among PS4 users is "one of the concrete reasons we feel the move to streaming is upon us," Ryan said, and the feature will make a return for the PS4's console successor.

Sony has also learned a lot about streaming's potential from PlayStation Now, the streaming game service it launched in 2015. In opening remarks, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said examining usage patterns for PlayStation Now's 700,000 subscribers has taught the company "what kinds of games fit the needs of people who subscribe to such a service. We intend to strengthen content catalog, including AAA titles, and are working to make those improvements."

Enlarge / PlayStation Now currently offers 780 streaming games, and Sony promises to expand that catalog significantly going forward.

In a wide-ranging investor presentation that focused on Sony's future gaming plans, Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan echoed comments from companies like Google in saying "we believe the streaming era is upon us and is about to begin a period of rapid growth."

To support that bold statement, Ryan cited Sony's own internal data on the 5.6 million PS4 owners that use the system's Remote Play functionality, which essentially turns the console into a home server that can stream games to PC/Mac, iOS, and Xperia-branded Android devices. The "growing appetite" for that feature among PS4 users is "one of the concrete reasons we feel the move to streaming is upon us," Ryan said, and the feature will make a return for the PS4's console successor.

Sony has also learned a lot about streaming's potential from PlayStation Now, the streaming game service it launched in 2015. In opening remarks, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said examining usage patterns for PlayStation Now's 700,000 subscribers has taught the company "what kinds of games fit the needs of people who subscribe to such a service. We intend to strengthen content catalog, including AAA titles, and are working to make those improvements."

Enlarge / PANAMA CITY, Fla. - OCTOBER 19: Mark Mauldin hangs a sign near the front of his property expressing his dissatisfaction with his Verizon cell phone service following Hurricane Michael, which slammed into the Florida Panhandle on October 10. (credit: Getty Images | Scott Olson )

After Hurricane Michael wreaked havoc on Florida last year, AT&T restored wireless service more quickly than Verizon because it relied on well-trained employees while Verizon instead used contractors that "did not have the proper credentials," according to a union that represents workers from both telecoms.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) made the allegations yesterday in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, which recently found that carriers' mistakes prolonged outages caused by the hurricane. Many customers had to go without cellular service for more than a week.

It's not surprising for a union to argue that union workers are preferable to contractors, of course. But it seems clear that AT&T did a better job than Verizon after the storm. In the days following the October 2018 hurricane, Florida Governor Rick Scott slammed Verizon for its poor hurricane response while praising AT&T for quickly restoring service.