Month: November 2019

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  The hardware you get with the $129.99 Stadia "Founder's Edition." [credit: Google ]

As Google barrels forward toward streaming gaming with Monday's planned launch of Stadia, the company is talking about the many promised features that won't be available to Founder and Premier pre-order purchasers on day one.

In a wide-ranging Reddit AMA Wednesday, Google employees said that missing features will "start popping up as soon as one week after launch." Director of Product Andrey Doronichev defended this by saying that Google products "always start with nailing the key user-journey and then proceed with releasing extra features. YouTube started with 'watch video.' For Stadia it’s 'Play the Game on your biggest screen.'"

Game platforms often launch with limited feature sets that get expanded via firmware updates over multiple years. That said, the list of promised features that won't be ready when Stadia launches next week is surprising in its breadth and variety.

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  Ford sent us this faceted pony as an invite to the Mach-E reveal, which takes place on Sunday in Los Angeles. If you think you need a faceted pony in your life, it will be up for grabs in our end-of-year giveaway. [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]

The glacial pace at which some of the world's major automakers are electrifying their product line-ups can be rather frustrating. I've been particularly critical of Ford, although there's clear evidence that the Blue Oval wants that to change. It invested $500 million in Rivian, an electric vehicle startup that has also seen big investment from Amazon. And it's going to use Volkswagen's MEB architecture to build battery EVs for European markets. But next year, before either of those efforts bears fruit, we'll get to see Ford's first in-house, long-range BEV hit the showroom. And now it's official—the new vehicle will be badged the Mustang Mach-E.

Right now there aren't really any more details to share. I've heard rumors of a 4-second 0-60 time and 300+ miles of range for the range-topping version. But I'm off to California tomorrow morning for an embargoed briefing on the new BEV, and you'll have to wait until the Mach-E is revealed to the world at 6:30pm ET on Sunday, November 17 to find out what I learned. You'll also be able to put a refundable $500 deposit down once the car is unveiled by Idris Elba via livestream, in both the US and EU.

As of now, all I have to officially share are the above photos of the plastic, faceted pony that Ford sent out as an invite and the augmented reality version taken with the event app that Ford made me download. If you're particularly taken with the stealth-horse, keep an eye out for our end-of-year charity drive, as it will be up for grabs (along with a very heavy Mustang Shelby GT500 supercharger paperweight).

Enlarge / PARIS, FRANCE - Alen Pajenk #2 of Slovenia serves the ball during the EuroVolley 2019 Final match between Serbia and Slovenia at AccorHotels Arena on September 29, 2019 in Paris, France. (credit: Catherine Steenkeste | Getty Images)

A good float serve at just the right moment in volleyball can make or break a tight game, since the ball's trajectory is so tough to predict. It's the surface panels on conventional volleyballs that give rise to these unpredictable trajectories, and modifying the surface patterns could make for a more consistent flight, according to a recent paper in Applied Sciences.

It all comes down to gravity and aerodynamics. Any moving ball leaves a wake of air that trails behind it as it flies through the air. The inevitable drag slows the ball down. The trajectories of various sports balls are affected not just by their diameter and speed but also by any tiny irregularities on their surface. Golf balls have dimples, for example, while baseballs have stitching in a figure-eight pattern—both sufficiently bumpy to affect the airflow around the ball.

It's well known that the movement of a baseball creates a whirlpool of air around it, commonly known as the Magnus effect. The raised seams churn the air around the ball, creating high-pressure zones in various locations that (depending on the type of pitch) can cause deviations in its trajectory. Golf ball dimples reduce the drag flow by creating a turbulent boundary layer of air, while the ball's spin generates lift by creating a higher air pressure area on the bottom of the ball than on the top.

Enlarge / A scribbled filefish in a sea of plastics sampled in surface slicks off Hawai'i Island. (credit: David Liittschwager)

For a brief moment at the start of their lives, fish from different ocean ecosystems live side by side in gigantic fish nurseries, where surface waters converge and the prey is abundant.

Prey isn’t the only thing that’s abundant here. According to a paper published in PNAS this week, the same currents that make these regions appealing as nurseries mean that they’re awash with plastics. The consequences for commercial fisheries and the ocean's food webs are difficult to discern but could be significant.

Fish nurseries

Oceanographer Jamison Gove and his colleagues set out to understand more about how the features of the ocean affect the survival of larval fish—crucial information for the world’s fisheries. They didn’t expect to find a soup of microplastics in what looked like clear water.