Month: September 2020

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  The Pixel 5 in black. [credit: Google ]

After what felt like a thousand leaks, Google's flagship smartphone for 2020, the Pixel 5, is finally official. As we've been expecting, this phone doesn't feature top-of-the-line hardware and is instead more midrange, with a Snapdragon 765G SoC. If you've been following the leaks, the main news we were looking for today is the price, which is $699.

The specs include a 6-inch, 2340 x 1080 OLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate, a Snapdragon 765G SoC, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 4080mAh battery. The phone has wireless charging, 18W quick charging over USB-C, and IP68 dust and water resistance. There are two cameras on the back, a 12MP main camera which reportedly is the same sensor the Pixel line has been using for years, a second 16MP wide-angle lens, and an 8MP front camera.

The Pixel 5 design looks just like a Pixel 4a, but a bit more high-end. It has an all-screen front featuring slim bezels and a hole-punch camera. The Pixel 5 looks like it has fully symmetrical bezels all the way around instead of a thicker chin on the bottom like the cheaper 4a. On the back, there's a throwback capacitive fingerprint reader—a contrast to the in-screen fingerprint readers most phones ship with—and a camera block. The design back is also very reminiscent of the Pixel 4a with a simple, one-color design that wraps around the sides. The two-tone motif of the Pixel 4 (which had a flat back and contrasting sides) or the Pixel 1/2/3 (which had a contrasting top half) has been abandoned.

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  The new Chromecast with Google TV. It comes in colors. [credit: Google ]

Alongside the launch of the Pixel 5, today Google is making major changes to its TV strategy and merging its products, Chromecast and Android TV, into a single device. Oh, it's also changing the name of Android TV. Meet the redundantly named "Google Chromecast with Google TV" a Chromecast that, instead of being just a streaming endpoint you control with a phone, runs Android and comes with a remote.

The new HDMI dongle is $49.99, and it looks like a replacement for the Chromecast Ultra, since it supports 4K and HDR10. Google didn't officially release specs yet, but since this is already for sale in some stores, we know the specs. It's powered by an Amlogic S905X2 SoC, which has four 1.8GHz Cortez A53 cores and a Mali-G31MP2 GPU. There's also 2GB of RAM, a measly 4.4GB of user storage (there is probably 8GB total), 802.11ac, and Bluetooth 4.1.

Since this is a low-power streaming device with almost no storage, you would think playing games on Google Stadia would be a major part of the sales pitch, but Google didn't mention the streaming service once during the live event. The Stadia Twitter account tweeted that support would be coming in the first half of 2021.

Enlarge / The Nikola Badger. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Nikola Motor Corporation)

When Nikola and GM announced a partnership on September 8, GM said it expected the deal to close by September 30. Now September 30 has arrived, and the deal hasn't closed. Media reports indicate that the deal is unlikely to close today.

A GM spokesman confirmed the delay in an email to Ars. "Our transaction with Nikola has not closed. We are continuing our discussions with Nikola and will provide further updates when appropriate."

Also this morning, Nikola published a revised overview of the company's business strategy. It discussed Nikola's plans to manufacture semitrucks in Europe and the United States, build a network of hydrogen fuel stations, and even plans for an electric all-terrain vehicle. But conspicuously missing from the document was any mention of the Badger pickup truck—the one that GM was supposed to manufacture for Nikola under the now-delayed partnership.

Enlarge / Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), attends an event about coronavirus vaccine development in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 15, 2020, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Drew Angerer)

Trump administration officials have once again sidelined the head of the country’s leading public health agency while crafting public health policy. This time, officials torpedoed a plan to extend the “no-sail” order on cruise ships until next year.

Cruise ships were initial hotbeds of coronavirus transmission at the start of the global pandemic, which is still far from under control in the United States. Mass outbreaks on the tightly-packed, social vessels forced the cruise industry to shut down in March, and the Centers for Disease Control issued a no-sail order that is set to expire today, Wednesday, September 30.

In a meeting in the White House Situation Room Tuesday, CDC Director Robert Redfield floated a recommendation to extend the no-sail order until February 2021, according to a report by Axios. But Vice President Mike Pence, who chaired the meeting, told Redfield that the administration will be setting a different course.

Enlarge / Clouds obscure the waters off Greenland's southwest coast. (credit: NASA EO)

While the GRACE satellites were active, their incredibly precise gravity measurements tracked a loss of about 280 billion tons of ice from Greenland each year. That's glacial land ice that raises sea level as it flows into the ocean—and it's vanishing at a remarkable clip. But just how remarkable is that clip? We don't have such excellent measurements going back too far into Greenland's history.

A new study led by the University of Buffalo's Jason Briner takes this question on. We have lots of paleoclimate records of climate conditions in Greenland, the position of the ice on the landscape, and even changes in sediments carried into the sea by meltwater. None of that directly tells you how much ice was accumulating or disappearing. To put the pieces together and calculate that, you need to combine that data with a model.

Digital ice

The researchers used a high-resolution ice-sheet model simulating (roughly) the southwest quadrant of Greenland. There's a good reason for that: the ice sheet mostly melts before reaching the ocean here, making it the simplest area to simulate. Since we've been tracking things, the year-to-year growth or losses of the ice sheet here nicely mirror the Greenland-wide total. So simulate this area well, and at high resolution, and your numbers should scale to the whole ice sheet.