Month: September 2022

Enlarge / Volkswagen won't reveal the US-spec ID Buzz for another year, but it invited us to drive the European version, which it has just launched. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK—Few vehicles in the time we've been covering the industry have attracted—or sustained—quite the level of interest as Volkswagen's ID Buzz. Part realization of two decades' worth of concept cars and teases, part apology for dieselgate, it's an electric minivan with retro-cool styling, built on a solid electric vehicle platform. US-spec ID Buzzes are still some way off—we won't get the Buzz until 2024—but in the meantime, VW asked if we'd be interested in trying out the two-row, European-spec model, which is just about to go on sale the other side of the Atlantic.

Boxy microbuses have been a part of the VW lineup since 1949's original Type 2, also known as a T1, Kombi, or Transporter. As time went on, the buses evolved to be more angular, and they eventually started to look like any other minivan. But as VW found with the Beetle concept in 1994, there's a lot of affection out there for its early designs.

The first retro-looking revival attempt was a 2001 concept called the Microbus. This was before people realized you could daisy-chain immense amounts of laptop batteries together to make a viable electric vehicle, so the 2001 Microbus concept would have been powered by VW's internal combustion engines—most commonly its ubiquitous and cheaty diesels, no doubt.

Enlarge / Dave Grossman (L) and Ron Gilbert (R) joined Ars Technica for a rare interview in Seattle at PAX West 2022. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

SEATTLE—Longtime game designer Ron Gilbert has repeatedly suggested that a sequel to his beloved Monkey Island series would arrive how fans want it: unspoiled. It's a major reason why the point-and-click adventure's pre-release period has been devoid of gameplay footage or other major giveaways of what to expect, lest any of its puzzles or jokes be ruined.

As the long-awaited Return to Monkey Island approaches its September 19 release date, then, interested fans will have to tide themselves over with the bones Gilbert and his collaborator Dave Grossman threw my way at this weekend's PAX West. After I entered their meeting room and sheathed my camera, the pair turned on an external display, picked up a computer mouse, and began goading hero Guybrush Threepwood around the new game's environs.

You might be jealous, but I would argue that your comparable ignorance about how the game looks and sounds is a happier place to be until September 19. My patience for this game's release has now dwindled.

Enlarge / Dell's XPS 15 9520 is nearly identical to the last-gen 9510, albeit with improved processor performance. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Even as an iterative update to an existing computer, Dell's XPS 15 9520 is pretty mild. It's super-iterative. The only thing that separates it from the XPS 15 9510 we reviewed last year is that it swaps the 11th-generation Intel processors for 12th-gen versions. Everything else, from the design to the screen to the GPU, is the same (unless you count changing the foreshortened Windows 10-era rectangle logo on the Windows key to a square Windows 11-era logo).

So we won't spend much time redescribing things about this laptop that we have already mentioned. Weighing just a bit over four pounds, this is still a computer made for people who want more power than a 13- or 14-inch laptop can provide, but who still care enough about size and weight that they don't want to graduate to a full-size desktop or a bulky gaming laptop.

It still has a nice slim-bezel screen, a huge trackpad, a comfortable keyboard with firm-but-not-too-firm keys and a pleasing amount of travel, and Thunderbolt and USB-C ports for accessories and charging (plus a single SD card reader and a headphone jack). A fingerprint reader, face-scanning Windows Hello-compatible IR camera, and a 720p webcam and speakers (serviceable-but-middling in both cases) round out the basic amenities.

Titanic is by far the most famous historical shipwreck, still holding an enduring fascination for the public 100 years after the "unsinkable" ship struck an iceberg and sank in April 1912. We've seen images and video footage of the wreck since it was discovered in the mid 1980s. That includes the footage shot by director James Cameron in 1995 for sequences featured in his blockbuster 1997 film—although much of the latter was actually miniature models and special effects filmed on a set, since Cameron couldn't get the high-quality footage he needed for a feature film.

Now a private company called OceanGate Expeditions has released a one-minute video showcasing the first 8k video footage of the wreck of the Titanic, showing some of its features in new, vivid detail. One can make out the name of the anchor manufacturer (Noah Hingley & Sons Ltd.) for instance, and the footage also gives us a better look at the bow, hull number one, the number one cargo hold, solid bronze capstans, and one of the single-ended boilers. The video has already racked up nearly 3 million views on YouTube, even though the average TV or computer screen has much lower resolution than the 8K footage.

The footage was shot during the company's 2022 descent, with guests forking over $250,000 apiece for a seat on the submersible. "No public entity is going to fund going back to the Titanic," OceanGate President Stockton Rush told The New York Times in defense of the steep price tag for what is essentially deep-sea tourism. "There are other sites that are newer and probably of greater scientific value."

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal this week told Politico that he expects that diminished access to technology will be the driving force staving off Russia's ongoing attacks. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has spent months burning through nearly half of the critical military technology in its arsenal, and now Politico has shared a leaked "shopping list" of tech that Russia is most urgently seeking to replenish its stockpile.

"According to our information, Russians have already spent almost half... of their weaponry arsenal," Shmyhal told Politico.

Among about two dozen "chokepoint technologies" that Russia "most desperately" needs to stay in the fight are microchips manufactured by eight US tech companies that America hopes to block Russia from accessing through sanctions.