Month: January 2022

Enlarge / RGB not included. (credit: Scharon Harding)

It's not uncommon to have multiple gamers living under a single roof. But what happens when all those gamers want to play at the same time? Wi-Fi mayhem, arguing over who gets to use the best hardware, and, often, separation as family members retreat to their respective gaming caves. Alienware is looking into that solving that problem, with one powerful, mysterious computer.

An R&D project announced today, Concept Nyx is essentially a household server with enough computing power to allow multiple people to stream PC games off it simultaneously. I checked out a prototype in person and saw it powering two gaming sessions at one time—one user fragging on a non-gaming laptop, and another on a larger screen fit for a living room.

The idea is that members of the household could stream their games off the computer at the same time. (credit: Alienware)

Alienware showed me two gamers playing at once but its lab is currently testing Concept Nyx with four gamers playing concurrently. A spokesperson told me there's "basically no performance drop" when adding a person, but the demo wasn't long enough (under 10 minutes) to confirm that for me.

Enlarge / RGB not included. (credit: Scharon Harding)

It's not uncommon to have multiple gamers living under a single roof. But what happens when all those gamers want to play at the same time? Wi-Fi mayhem, arguing over who gets to use the best hardware, and, often, separation as family members retreat to their respective gaming caves. Alienware is looking into that solving that problem, with one powerful, mysterious computer.

An R&D project announced today, Concept Nyx is essentially a household server with enough computing power to allow multiple people to stream PC games off it simultaneously. I checked out a prototype in person and saw it powering two gaming sessions at one time—one user fragging on a non-gaming laptop, and another on a larger screen fit for a living room.

The idea is that members of the household could stream their games off the computer at the same time. (credit: Alienware)

Alienware showed me two gamers playing at once but its lab is currently testing Concept Nyx with four gamers playing concurrently. A spokesperson told me there's "basically no performance drop" when adding a person, but the demo wasn't long enough (under 10 minutes) to confirm that for me.

Enlarge / Two recovered and restored portraits of 19th century Portuguese physician Vicente Urbino de Freitas, suspected of poisoning several of his wife's family members in the "Crime of Flores Street"—Portugal's first major forensic case. (credit: Ricardo Jorge Dinis-Oliveira, 2019)

On January 2, 1890, a Portuguese man named Jose Antonio Sampaio, Jr., died in terrible agony while staying at the Grand Hotel de Paris in Porto, Portugal. The son of a wealthy and highly respected linen merchant, Sampaio Jr. showed signs of poisoning in his final hours, including blood in his vomit. He was attended by his brother-in-law, a physician named Vicente Urbino de Freitas.

Sampaio Jr. was nonetheless buried without incident, and the family might have grieved their loss and moved on. But in late March, Sampaio Jr.'s son and two nieces suddenly became ill after eating almonds with liquor and coconut and chocolate cakes, which had arrived at the Sampaio house on Flores Street via a mysterious package. The children's uncle, the aforementioned de Freitas, prescribed lemon balm enemas. While the girls recovered, 12-year-old Mario Guilherme Augusto de Sampaio died in spasms and convulsions on April 2.

Once again, the symptoms were consistent with poisoning, and suspicion soon fell on de Freitas. He was arrested, tried, and convicted in 1893, although he maintained his innocence for the rest of his life. This was the infamous "Crime of Flores Street" and it made headlines around the world. The case continues to fascinate Ricardo Jorge Dinis-Oliveira, a forensic toxicologist at the University of Porto, more than 130 years later, because it gave birth to forensic toxicology studies in Portugal and still informs present-day Portuguese medico-legal procedures. It's also one hell of a story: "It will certainly make a good movie," Dinis-Oliveira wrote.