Month: October 2021

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Lost in the hubbub of yesterday's Pixel 6 launch is the fact that Android 12 shipped for older Pixel phones, too. Google took the odd step of releasing Android 12 to Google's AOSP (Android Open Source Project) repository on October 4, but it didn't ship any finished binaries for Pixel phones, which normally get day-one updates. During the Pixel 6 launch, Google's marketing department finally opened the floodgates with a blog post, a new website, a virtual AR statue, and builds for compatible devices.

Officially, Android 12 is out for the Pixel 5, 5a, 4, 4a, 3, and 3a. Android 12 marks the first major update the Pixel 2 has missed out on, though it has been without security updates for a while. You have a few options to get Android 12. The easiest is to wait for the update to hit your device, which will happen sometime in the next month as it automatically rolls out to users. Another option is to head to developer.google.com and download the OTA update for your device. There are also full from-scratch system images that will wipe out your existing data. Applying either of those last two will require some light command line work and tools downloads, and Google has listed full instructions on its site.

Google used to make real-life Android statues, but now it does AR ones. This one hints at the internal codename for Android 12: "Snow Cone." (credit: Google)

Android 12 is one of the biggest Android releases in recent memory, and it comes with a full user interface revamp called "Material You." Every part of the UI is now color-coordinated with your wallpaper, and Google is rapidly rolling out support for Material You themes to its biggest apps. There are a ton of changes to the notification panel, widgets, and system UI, and there are new privacy notifications for ongoing usage of the microphone or camera. Android 12 brings Android closer to the Linux kernel than ever, with fewer forks and less of a release delay between Android and Linux. There's an incremental file system for play-as-you-download games, new emojis, and plenty of other stuff.

Enlarge / Android apps listed in the Microsoft Store. (credit: Microsoft)

Windows 11 shipped without the promised support for Android apps from the Amazon App Store, but Microsoft has announced the first preview of the feature for Windows Insiders in the Windows 11 Beta channel today.

The initial preview is only available to users in the United States, and it still isn't live as of this writing, despite Microsoft's blog post. But when the update does hit, it will provide access to 50 Android apps, including games, educational apps, and the Kindle app. Microsoft will release new apps to Windows Insiders on its favorite timeline: "in the coming months."

Android apps running on Windows 11 won't look or feel like native Windows apps, but they will support basic integration with the rest of the operating system, including access to the Action Center for notifications and the Clipboard. Microsoft also says that "many Windows accessibility settings apply to Android apps," but it didn't specify which.

Enlarge / Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes collects her belongings after going through security at the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building with her defense team on August 31, 2021, in San Jose, California. (credit: Ethan Swope | Getty Images)

There is a saying in the startup world that many companies try to fake it till they make it. From yesterday’s testimony in the criminal trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, it sounds like her company took that saying to heart.

Prosecutors questioned Daniel Edlin, a former product manager, about Theranos’ investor pitches and other relationships, trying to build the case that the blood-testing startup knowingly misled investors about the capabilities of its technology. 

Edlin was recruited to work at Theranos through his friend Christian, Holmes’ brother—the two had attended Duke University together. At the startup, he was involved in a range of investor-related activities, including giving tours. Each tour was scripted—that’s not surprising—but the path was approved by Holmes herself, Edlin said, which adds to evidence that she had the final say on many investor-related matters. Before one tour, he recalled, Theranos’ proprietary testing devices were set up in a room to look like they were in active use.

Enlarge / Aerial image of L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada. (credit: Glenn Nagel Photography)

Centuries before Christopher Columbus stumbled across the Bahamas, the Vikings established a beachhead at L’Anse Aux Meadows, a site on the northern peninsula of what is now Newfoundland, Canada. A recent study narrows down the date of the Norse arrival in North America to as early as 1021 CE, based on scraps of discarded wood from the site and with help from the aftermath of an ancient solar storm.

Vikings and cosmic rays

In the early 1200s, Icelandic authors wrote down two sagas describing Norse explorers’ trips to a place called Vinland. The expeditions had happened about two centuries earlier. Based on those sagas and the types of artifacts left behind at L’Anse aux Meadows, archaeologists today generally agree that the Norse arrived sometime near the end of the 1^st millennium CE. For a few years (between three and 10), the Norse settlers used the site as a base for explorations farther south—and then they left.

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal from L’Anse aux Meadows suggests that the Viking Age came to American shores sometime between 975 and 1020 CE. To narrow down when the Norse arrived in Newfoundland, University of Groningen chronologists Michael Dee and Margot Kuitems, along with their colleagues, looked for evidence of the year a solar storm bombarded Earth’s atmosphere with radiation.

Enlarge / The Klipsch Cinema 1200 set includes a sound bar, two satellite speakers, and a subwoofer. Hidden within a few of these are the key differentiators: upward-projecting speakers. (credit: Klipsch)

I'm a longtime apartment dweller in a dense city, so home theater space is hard to come by. I have to decide what I can comfortably add to a living room already packed with PC and console hardware. For too long, that has meant saying "no" to good surround sound.

But surround-friendly soundbars now make good sound possible in a smaller package, without needing to run wires through walls or drop some speakers in the ceiling. Some systems claim to do it all, complete with creative speaker placement and virtualized surround-sound tricks. Others use wireless pieces, including subwoofers and satellite speakers. In a particularly recent development, some soundbars even offer compatibility with the "spatial surround" standards of Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. The latter development, especially on game consoles, has jumpstarted my interest in finding a powerful system that balances performance needs and space demands.

We don't review a lot of home audio at Ars, but a recent test opportunity with the $1,900 Klipsch Cinema 1200 let me try one of the new higher-end "spatial surround" soundbars. (This impressions article is the first of a spatial audio two-parter, with a longer look at Apple Music's growing Dolby Atmos music library to come.)

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  This gallery consists of shots taken from today's PC reveal trailer. They all seem to better resemble live gameplay than the sweetened images on the PlayStation blog. [credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment ]

Sony's bullish-if-slow attitude toward launching its biggest PlayStation exclusives on Windows PCs will continue in January 2022 with a release that pretty much everybody saw coming. The critically acclaimed 2018 reboot of God of War will be coming to PC.

What fans probably didn't expect, however, was for Sony to ally with Nvidia for the release.

The PC version of God of War, arriving on January 14, 2022, will retail for $49.99, and its Steam listing already includes some technical details as of Wednesday morning. The most interesting addition is entirely new for Sony Interactive Entertainment launches on PC: support for Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) standard.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Aurich Lawson)

Last month, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger stepped to a podium on a hazy, wind-whipped day just outside Phoenix. “Isn’t this awesome!” Gelsinger exclaimed, gesturing over his shoulder. Behind him, two large pieces of construction equipment posed theatrically atop the ocher Arizona soil, framing an organized tangle of pipes, steel, and fencing at the company’s Ocotillo campus. “If this doesn’t get you excited, check your pulse,” he said with a chuckle. A handful of executives and government officials applauded at the appropriate points.

Despite the gathering dust storm, Gelsinger genuinely seemed to enjoy himself. He was in Arizona to announce not one but two new fabs that, when finished, will form a $20 billion bet that Intel can return to the leading edge of semiconductor manufacturing, one of the world's most profitable, challenging, and cutthroat businesses.

“Semiconductors are a hot topic these days,” Gelsinger continued. “What aspect of your life is not being increasingly driven by digital transformation? If there was any question on that, COVID eliminated it.”