Month: September 2021

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  "Will one of you finally give me what I desire?" [credit: Sony ]

Sony broke a months-long game of silence today with a wide-ranging PS5 showcase, announcing two new Marvel games from Insomniac, a remake of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and a March release date for Gran Turismo 7, among other news. This is the first significant update from the publisher since it opted to skip multiple major industry events throughout 2021. The industry behemoth is now offering first glimpses of several games in production from PlayStation Studios and third-party developers.

Leading the charge was news that a remake of BioWare's classic 2003 RPG Knights of the Old Republic—which many players consider the best Star Wars game ever made—is in development as a PS5-and-PC exclusive, at least at launch. Though only the briefest clip of what looked like a Sith knight was shown, we already know this is a joint project between Lucasfilm, Sony, and Aspyr Media, a studio known for porting classic Star Wars games to modern hardware. Without a release date yet, we wonder whether BioWare's Old Republic MMO will still be in operation by the time this remake launches.

PlayStation Studios galore

Sony also had some first-party news to share with actual, PS5-only releases. Insomniac is expanding its vision of the Marvelverse in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, due out 2023, and, unexpectedly, a new game starring Wolverine.

Scientists are nothing if not endlessly curious, and sometimes that trait can lead them into unusual research directions. Maybe they find themselves exploring whether sex could be a natural alternative to nasal sprays for relieving nasal congestion, or maybe they'll end up taking the vitals of a rhinoceros while the animal is sedated and suspended from its feet for helicopter transport. Perhaps they might find surprising insights into how cats communicate or into the bacteriomes of discarded wads of chewing gum from different parts of the world. These and other unusual research topics were honored tonight in a virtual ceremony to announce the 2021 recipients of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes. You can watch the livestream of the awards ceremony above.

Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes that honors "achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The unapologetically campy award ceremony usually features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds, and the second in just seven words. Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds. And as the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn't mean it is devoid of scientific merit.

Viewers can tune in for the usual 24/7 lectures, as well as the premiere of a miniopera, A Bridge Between People, in which children try to mediate between argumentative adults by building actual tiny suspension bridges between them—in keeping with the evening's theme of engineering. Traditionally, the winners also give public talks in Boston the day after the awards ceremony, although the pandemic put a kibosh on that for the second year in a row. Instead, the winners' talks will once again be given as webcasts a few weeks from now.

Enlarge / If you don't maintain good relationships with bug reporters, you may not get to control the disclosure timeline. (credit: mhatzapa via Getty Images / Jim Salter)

The Washington Post reported earlier today that Apple's relationship with third-party security researchers could use some additional fine tuning. Specifically, Apple's "bug bounty" program—a way companies encourage ethical security researchers to find and responsibly disclose security problems with its products—appears less researcher-friendly and slower to pay than the industry standard.

The Post says it interviewed more than two dozen security researchers who contrasted Apple's bug bounty program with similar programs at competitors including Facebook, Microsoft, and Google. Those researchers allege serious communication issues and a general lack of trust between Apple and the infosec community its bounties are supposed to be enticing—"a bug bounty program where the house always wins," according to Luta Security CEO Katie Moussouris.

Poor communication and unpaid bounties

Software engineer Tian Zhang appears to be a perfect example of Moussouris' anecdote. In 2017, Zhang reported a major security flaw in HomeKit, Apple's home automation platform. Essentially, the flaw allowed anyone with an Apple Watch to take over any HomeKit-managed accessories physically near them—including smart locks, as well as security cameras and lights.

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  Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses, from Facebook and EssilorLuxottica. [credit: Facebook ]

As previously rumored, Facebook has partnered with EssilorLuxottica to produce Ray-Ban Stories, one of the first potentially viable attempts at mass-market smart glasses. They are similar in some ways to early iterations of Snapchat Spectacles but with a more stylish aesthetic that looks right in line with other Ray-Ban glasses.

The glasses have two front-facing cameras, each at 5 megapixels. Users can take a photo either with a touch gesture or with a "Hey Facebook" voice command. So people in the room can tell that pictures or video are being taken, a white LED on the front of the frames will light up. Videos can be as long as 30 seconds.

Photos and videos taken with the glasses are sent to a new smartphone app called Facebook View, which offers essential editing and sharing capabilities. In addition to photo and video capture, the glasses allow you to take calls or listen to music and podcasts or with built-in speakers and microphones.

Enlarge / Try doing that with your RAM. (credit: A.I. Khan and A. Daus.)

A few months ago, we brought news of a bendable CPU, termed Plastic ARM, that was built of amorphous silicon on a flexible substrate. The use cases for something like this are extremely low-powered devices that can be embedded in clothing or slapped on the surface of irregular objects, allowing them to have a small amount of autonomous computing. But to meet the low power requirements, a minimalist processor is not enough—all the components have to sip power as well. And that makes for a poor fit for traditional RAM technology, which needs power to maintain the state of the memory.

But a group from Stanford now has that covered. The researchers have built a form of flexible phase-change memory, which is closer in speed to normal RAM than flash memory but requires no power to maintain its state. And, while their work was initially focused on getting something that's flexible to work, the principles they uncovered during their work should apply to phase-change memory in general.

A change of phase

People have made flexible forms of memory before, including flash and ferroelectric RAM, and resistive RAM can be made from materials that are also bendable. But phase-change memory has myriad advantages. It works by connecting two electrodes via a material that can form crystalline and amorphous states, depending on how quickly it's cooled down after heating. These two states differ in how well they conduct electricity, allowing them to be distinguished.