Month: January 2020

Enlarge / President Donald J. Trump signs a trade agreement with Chinese Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China, Liu He, in the East Room at the White House on Wednesday, Jan 15, 2020, in Washington, DC. (credit: Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images)

After years of posturing, tariffs, retaliation, and heated rhetoric, United States and China officials this week finally signed off on a new trade deal that should allow tech businesses and consumers to avoid steep tariffs on electronics and other goods that would otherwise have taken effect this coming weekend.

The full agreement (PDF) is principally focused on the agricultural sector. US farmers, unable to export their goods to the country's largest trade partner, faced significant losses from the trade standoff, and the administration spent billions on agricultural bailouts.

Under the terms of the new deal, China will purchase an additional $200 billion worth of US goods and services over the next two years. Experts estimate that US exports to China this year would pass the $260 billion mark in the next 12 months.

Enlarge / Would you like to tear through Horizon: Zero Dawn with a keyboard and mouse? And all the other inherent perks of PC gaming? According to insiders, that might happen by the end of 2020. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

Gaming news has emerged that may signal a monumental shift for Sony Interactive Entertainment. According to Kotaku, the publisher plans to port a massive game, previously exclusive to PlayStation consoles, as a standalone purchase for Windows PC gaming storefronts.

The Thursday report, citing "three people familiar with Sony's plans," says that the game in question is the robo-safari adventure Horizon: Zero Dawn, which launched in early 2017 to rave reviews. News Editor Jason Schreier suggests that the game will arrive by the end of 2020. The PC version could be sold on both Steam and Epic Games Store, though Kotaku is careful to say that storefront detail has not yet been finalized.

As a many-armed media company, Sony has published games on a variety of platforms over the decades. One of its most recently formed subsidiaries, UNTIES, is dedicated to launches of indie games like TinyMetal on consoles and PCs. But the part of Sony dedicated to all things PlayStation, which is currently known as SIE (formerly Sony Computer Entertainment), has only recently loosened its grip on PlayStation console exclusivity.

Enlarge / A Comcast service vehicle in Indianapolis, Indiana, in March 2016. (credit: Getty Images | jetcityimage)

Comcast has agreed to issue refunds to 15,600 customers and cancel the debts of another 16,000 people to settle allegations that the cable company lied to customers in order to hide the true cost of service. Comcast will have to pay $1.3 million in refunds.

The settlement with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, announced yesterday, resolves a lawsuit filed by the state against Comcast in December 2018.

"Together, the refunds and debt relief are worth millions of dollars," Ellison's announcement said. "The settlement also requires Comcast to change its advertising practices to disclose to its customers the full amount that they will be charged for service."

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a notable discount on 12-month Audible Gold subscriptions. A year of Amazon's audiobook service is currently available for $99.50, which is $50 off its usual going rate. The deal also nets you access to 12 audiobooks upfront, instead of Audible's usual policy of only granting one bonus audiobook a month.

The big catch is that the deal is not available to existing subscribers. That said, it's a little less restrictive than previous offers of this type, since those who haven't been a paying Audible subscriber in the past 30 days can take advantage of the deal in addition to first-time subscribers. So if you've been thinking of jumping back on the audiobook wagon, this might be a good opportunity to do so. Amazon says the offer will be available until January 31. Just keep in mind that once the discounted year expires, your membership will continue at the standard $150 rate until cancelled. As for whether or not Audible is worth it in the first place, we recommended the service in our most recent Mother's Day gift guide.

If you have no interest in audiobooks, we also have deals on the latest-gen AirPods, lots of charging gear, PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass subscriptions, gaming monitors, Roku TVs, and more. You can check the full rundown below.

Lidar sensors work by bouncing laser light off surrounding objects to produce a three-dimensional "point cloud." The first modern three-dimensional lidar was created for the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, a pivotal self-driving car competition. Today, many experts continue to see lidar as a key enabling technology for self-driving cars.

That original 2005 lidar, made by a company called Velodyne, contained a vertical array of 64 lasers that spun around 360 degrees. Each laser had to be carefully aligned with a corresponding detector. This complexity contributed to prices as high as $75,000. Today, high-end lidars still cost tens of thousands of dollars.

There are now dozens of startups trying to build cheaper lidar. Many of them try to reduce costs by using a single laser beam that's scanned in a two-dimensional pattern.

We're going to try something a little different this afternoon. Some of Ars' highest-performing YouTube videos have focused on gaming topics—like how designers created Dead Space's grab-tentacle or how Amnesia: The Dark Descent tricks players into terrifying themselves (though we've also done well with non-gaming topics, like exploring the phenomenon of flat earthers and even interviewing famous NASA people).

Which leads us to Mark "Markiplier" Fischbach. He runs one of the most popular gaming channels on YouTube, with (currently) just a hair under 25 million subscribers.

The Condé mothership informed us late last month that they had gotten some time with Markiplier and wanted to know if we were interested in filming something with him—and we took the plunge. Markiplier has a loud personality and is best known for his mugging at the camera while doing "Let's Play" videos on jump-scare games, but we wanted to see if we could capture a calmer, more introspective Markiplier than most folks might be used to seeing, looking over the past several years of the YouTube content creator landscape and discussing his successes—and his not-so-successes. It's an interesting glimpse into a world that a lot of regular Ars readers (myself included) might not be that familiar with—an alternate reality of content creation, where YouTube comments actually matter and trying to figure out how to maintain engagement is critical to success.

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  We opted to only share images from the game's gussied-up trailer that actually resemble what we saw in the hands-off demo.

Update, June 18: As CD Projekt Red gears up for another summertime Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay reveal, coming next week, the game developer took to Twitter to confirm at least one more delay for its futuristic, open-world shooter: to November 19, 2020.

"We are fully aware that making such a decision costs us your trust, and trading trust for additional time is one of the hardest decisions a developer can make," studio leads Marcin Iwinski and Adam Badowski wrote on Twitter. The letter goes on to claim that the game is "finished both content and gameplay-wise" and that the rest of the development process will revolve around squashing bugs and balancing mechanics.