Month: November 2019

Enlarge / BYU assistant professor of computer engineering Phil Lundrigan is looking at an ONPC heartbeat on an RF signal analyzer. (credit: Brigham Young University)

Researchers at Brigham Young University have created a new RF protocol that runs on top of existing consumer Wi-Fi at significantly greater range. But before you get too excited, the protocol's bandwidth is extremely low—so much so that it makes LoRa look like an OC-24. The protocol, called ONPC—short for On-Off Noise Power Communication—currently only specifies a single bit per second.

Although ONPC only conveys one bit per second of data, its range is 60m or more beyond Wi-Fi—and it runs in software alone, on unmodified Wi-Fi hardware. An ONPC device can connect to standard Wi-Fi when range permits, fall back to ONPC mode if the connection drops, and then re-connect to the Wi-Fi when it becomes available again.

Disconnected versus unpowered

BYU Associate Professor of Computer Engineering Phil Lundrigan told Ars that ONPC was inspired by problems in an otherwise unrelated health care research project he'd worked on. The project required placing IoT sensors in the homes of study participants so that BYU's control over the environment was minimal to nonexistent. The project also required the sensors to report back to the researchers over the Internet, using whatever Wi-Fi the study participants had in place.

Enlarge / Heliogen's demonstration facility. (credit: Heliogen)

The explosion of solar energy capacity has been driven almost entirely by the plunging cost of photovoltaic hardware. That has made the situation difficult for an alternate technology known as solar thermal. Thermal uses mirrors to focus incoming sunlight onto a location that reaches high temperatures, which can then be used to generate electricity by driving a steam turbine. Since heat is relatively easy to store, these plants can continue to produce power long after the Sun has set. In some cases, these plants are able to operate around the clock.

Today, a company backed by tech investors is announcing that it has developed an enhanced form of solar thermal generation that can push the temperatures at the point of focus much higher. That's significant, because the promised temperatures reach heat needed for industrial processes like concrete production, metallurgy, and hydrogen production. While there are clear advantages when it comes to generating electricity, the key to this technology may be how readily it can be integrated into these industrial processes.

A hot startup

The company in question is a startup called Heliogen, which has received backing from several Silicon Valley investors and Bill Gates. But the technology Heliogen has developed does have a rather heavy tech component.

Enlarge / The Facebook logo is displayed on a TV screen on September 9, 2019 in Paris, France. (credit: Chesnot | Getty)

Back in September, Facebook updated its location privacy settings for users. "Facebook is better with location," the company stressed, but users were free to turn off location tracking, and the company would be happy to tell them how. That setting, however, comes with an enormous loophole, and two US senators want the company to explain itself.

Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) today sent a letter (PDF) to Facebook asking the company how, exactly, it tracks users' locations—even when location access and location history are disabled.

"We appreciate Facebook's attempt to proactively inform users about their privacy options," the senators wrote. "However, we are concerned that Facebook may not in fact be offering users the level of control that the company suggests these settings provide."

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster is back with another round of deals to share. Today's deal is headlined by a $150 discount on the OnePlus 7 Pro, a device we called the "fastest, best-designed, best-value Android phone" on the market earlier this year.

The deal applies to unlocked models—which work on Verizon and GSM networks like AT&T and T-Mobile—and brings the phone down to $549. OnePlus says this is their official Black Friday discount for the holiday season, and our own Android guru Ron Amadeo told the Dealmaster it will likely go down as the "smartphone deal of the year."

You can read Ron's review from this past May for the full details, but the short take is that the OnePlus 7 Pro was already a good value at its standard going rate of $699. Despite being a large phone, it's been efficiently designed, with no notches or overly large borders blocking the the 6.67-inch 3120x1440 display. The in-display fingerprint reader and pop-up selfie camera only add to that efficiency, and both work well. That display supports a 90Hz refresh rate, too, which makes operating the device feel noticeably smoother across the board. The Snapdragon 855 processor, 8GB of RAM, and UFS 3.0 storage keep general performance as snappy as a top-of-the-line phone should. The triple-camera system on the back isn't the absolute best on the market, but it's still a great value for the price. And the "Oxygen OS" software remains a uniquely clean and useful take on Android.

Enlarge / A new study by researchers at the University of Chichester in England found that esports players who compete in major tournaments face the same level of stress as pro-athletes. (credit: ESL/University of Chichester)

Professional athletes at the highest level regularly contend not only with fierce competition from opposing teams or individual athletes but also intense psychological pressures, ranging from performance anxiety, fear of failure, and tensions resulting from miscommunication, particularly in team sports. Professional gamers competing in major esports competitions experience the same kinds of stressors, according to a new psychology study published in the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations.

Sports psychology has long been an active field, but applying it to esports is a relatively new area of research, one that the University of Chichester in the UK is embracing with its newly launched BA (Hons) esports degree. The program focuses on the scientific study of the physical and psychological impact of esports, including nutrition, coaching, and strategy in an immersive gaming environment, according to co-author Philip Birch, who specializes in sports and exercise performance psychology.

This is the first study of its kind, per Birch. The objective was to gain a clearer understanding not just of the stresses esports players face but also the coping strategies they use to deal with those stressors. Birch and his colleagues decided to focus on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) because it is similar to physical team sports like football or rugby. It's a multiplayer first-person shooter game that pits two teams against each other: Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists. The Terrorists try to plant bombs or take hostages, for example, while the Counter-Terrorists strive to defuse those bombs and rescue any hostages, as both sides try to eliminate the other. Players who do well are rewarded after each round with in-game currency; those who screw up can incur penalties.