Month: February 2022

Enlarge (credit: ony Avelar/Bloomberg)

Many of Intel’s current woes can be traced to the fact that the company was left out of the iPhone. Whether Intel passed on the opportunity or couldn’t meet the spec is by now a moot point, but missing out on the smartphone revolution—and its billions of chips—played no small part in the company falling behind the leading edge.

Now, Intel is ponying up $1 billion in an attempt to avoid repeating history.

The company announced an “innovation fund” this week that places bets on a couple of key technologies, chief among them RISC-V, a free, open source instruction set that shows promise in low-power and embedded systems, markets that are expected to grow significantly over the next several years.

Enlarge / The interior of JET, configured as a scale model for ITER, overlaid with an image of a plasma present in the tokamak during experiments. (credit: EUROfusion)

On Wednesday, the EUROfusion consortium announced that the Joint European Torus (JET), located near Oxford in the UK, had set a new record for released energy. Over the course of a five-second "pulse," 59 megajoules of energy were released, double the previous record for tokamak fusion set at JET in 1997.

Despite the impressive numbers, the results are still well short of the break-even point where the fusion energy released would match the energy input required to trigger the fusion. Still, the work provides an important validation of the approach being taken at the next major fusion project, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER.

Two ways to fuse

Fusion takes place when atomic nuclei are brought close enough together that they merge, creating a heavier element. It's the process that powers stars, and it could produce vast amounts of energy from small amounts of hydrogen isotopes if we could reproduce the temperatures and pressures found in stars here on Earth. So far, we've taken two main approaches to the process.

Enlarge / In Elden Ring, you get a horse. (credit: Bandai Namco)

Last month, publisher Namco Bandai took down its online player-versus-player servers for all PC Dark Souls games after players found a serious vulnerability that allowed for remote execution of malicious code on an opponent's computer. While a Reddit user who publicly identified that issue said the exploit would also work on Namco Bandai's upcoming Elden Ring, the publisher is now assuring players that the highly anticipated title will be protected.

"We have extended the investigation to Elden Ring... and have made sure the necessary security measures are in place for this title on all target platforms," Namco Bandai wrote in a tweet Wednesday morning.

The wording of that statement suggests that Elden Ring's online services will launch as expected when the game is released on February 25. That's important for players looking forward to online co-op gameplay, competitive multiplayer battles/invasions, and even basic message support between player worlds, as seen in Dark Souls.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It's time for another Dealmaster. Our latest roundup of the best deals from around the web includes a nice discount on Google's Chromecast with Google TV, as the 4K media streamer is currently down to $40 at various retailers. This discount has popped up a few times in the past, but it matches the deal price we saw around Black Friday and comes in $10 below Google's MSRP. We've only seen the device available for less once, but that deal also required you to sign up for Sling TV service.

In any event, the latest Chromecast is the top pick in our guide to the best streaming sticks. Its interface is better at organizing and surfacing content you might actually like than alternatives from Amazon and Roku, it supports all the requisite apps and HDR standards (along with Dolby Atmos), and its remote is compact with a sensible layout. Recent reports suggest that Google may launch a successor later this year, but if you need a new streaming player today, this is a good price for what we think is still the best value in this market. If you prefer a less personalized approach from your media streamer, though, note that Roku's Streaming Stick 4K is currently on sale for $30; its UI is far more basic, but it performs just as well.

Besides that, our roundup has the return of a few all-time low prices on Amazon's Fire HD 8 tablets, which remain worth considering for those who want a competent tablet for the lowest price possible. Amazon has discounted its latest set of Kindle Paperwhite e-readers as well: the standard model, which our review called the best option for most people, is now $30 off at $110. That's within $5 of that device's lowest-ever price. We also have a couple of sweeping "buy two, get one free" sales at Amazon and Target, a "buy one, get one 15 percent off" sale on gaming digital gift cards at the latter, plus deals on LG's C1 OLED TV, a few first-party Nintendo Switch games, and the highly recommended Logitech MX Master 3, among items. You can see our full curated list below.

Enlarge / Illustration of a coronal mass ejection impacting the Earth's atmosphere. These events can cause geomagnetic storms. (credit: Getty Images | Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library)

SpaceX had to ditch most of its latest batch of Starlink satellites because they were disrupted by a geomagnetic storm after being launched from the Falcon 9 rocket. Up to 40 of the 49 satellites will re-enter the atmosphere or have already done so because they were unable to reach their intended orbits.

In an update posted yesterday, SpaceX said that on February 3, the Falcon 9's second stage deployed 49 "satellites into their intended orbit, with a perigee of approximately 210 kilometers above Earth, and each satellite achieved controlled flight." SpaceX initially deploys satellites into lower altitudes than they ultimately orbit in "so that in the very rare case any satellite does not pass initial system checkouts, it will quickly be deorbited by atmospheric drag," the company said. SpaceX has licenses for altitudes of 540 km to 570 km and 335 km to 346 km.

Last week's geomagnetic storm hit a day after launch, SpaceX explained: