Month: September 2022

Enlarge / The new HD Chromecast. It only comes in white. (credit: Google)

Google's 4-year-old base-model Chromecast is getting a big upgrade. Today, Google made that rumored Google TV pivot official and introduced the "Chromecast with Google TV (HD)." The original 4K, $49.99 version of the Chromecast with Google TV was announced in 2020, and now when you go to check out in the Google Store, there's a "screen resolution" option for "4K" (still $49.99) or the new "HD" version for $29.99.

So that's one store listing with two different sizes, which communicates that these two devices have only minor differences. They look the same, they have the same remote, and they run the same software. Google TV is Google's new version of Android TV and represents a major upgrade in capabilities for the Chromecast. The initial versions were dead-simple streaming sticks that were only able to receive content from a phone and had no UI themselves. The Chromecast with Google TV is a full TV OS, with a home screen, Play Store access, user accounts, and scrolling lists of apps, games, and content. If you aren't interested in any of that, the Google TV still acts exactly like the Chromecast did when you press a Chromecast button in an app. It can still receive a media stream, turn on the TV, and start playing, all without needing to find the remote.

Every angle of this looks just like the 4K version. (credit: Google)

Just like the 4K version, the HD Chromecast with Google TV supports 802.11ac (aka Wi-Fi 5) and uses a USB-C port for power. Google hasn't posted a full spec sheet but confirms the dongle only has 1.5GB of RAM, while the 4K version has 2GB. Earlier reports of this indicated that it used an Amlogic S805X2 SoC (12 nm, four Cortex A35 cores), which would give it the interesting wrinkle of supporting Google's new AV1 video codec, something that is missing from the 4K version.

Enlarge / The gang (and the other gang) is all here!

Even though Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope is a sequel to a well-loved crossover, it’s still hard to fathom that it’s a real game. Blending the distinct worlds of Nintendo’s iconic Super Mario franchise and Ubisoft’s raving, oddball Rabbids series, the original Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle took many liberties with its sources. Yet it was still a game that was a passionate tribute to both.

The sequel, thankfully, seems to be leaning further into the strangeness of this odd union while also tapping further into what makes Mario and the Rabbids both so endearing. Just ahead of its planned October 20 release, I got to play several hours of this follow-up to one of the Nintendo Switch’s best tactical RPGs and found a charming and transfixing crossover that adds a bit more vibrancy to its solid predecessor.

Strange bedfellows

On paper, a Mario crossover with Ubisoft’s Rabbids as guests in a tactical role-playing game seems strange, but it’s not too far off from some genres Nintendo has infused with Mario in the past. The Mario + Rabbids series shares a lot of DNA with the likes of Super Mario RPG and the Paper Mario series but within the framework of tactical turn-based strategy systems from more mature games like XCOM or Final Fantasy Tactics.

Enlarge / Microsoft's event teaser image is a colorful riff on the Windows 11 desktop wallpaper bloom, with handwritten "save the date" text that evokes the Surface Pen. (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is planning a product event for 10 am Eastern on October 12, 2022. The announcement page doesn't give much away—it's a multi-colored version of the Windows 11 desktop wallpaper swirl, which could mean a lot of things. But the handwritten "save the date" text (and also rumors reported by The Verge and other outlets) suggest that it will be focused on Microsoft's Surface hardware lineup.

The rumor mill suggests that the flagship Surface Pro and the Surface Laptop are the most likely to get updates, though truth be told there's not a single device in the entire lineup right now that's using a current-generation processor. The Surface Laptop Go 2 gets a pass because it's a budget device that was just updated a few months ago, but the Surface Pro, Surface Go 3, Surface Laptop, and Surface Laptop Studio are all using one- or two-generation-old CPUs. And the Surface Studio 2 all-in-one—not currently in stock but still listed as a current product—is so old that Microsoft had to change Windows 11's system requirements to include it.

Rumors about specific specifications and other details have so far been pretty sketchy, but updates with 12th-generation Intel CPUs for the Surface Pro and Laptop would be a safe bet. A German-language report from WinFuture suggests that the Surface Pro 9 will get U-series 12th-generation chips as well as a separate Arm-based version with a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 SoC. That report also claims that there will be no follow-up to the AMD Ryzen version of the Surface Laptop 4, though I sincerely hope that isn't true—we've been much more impressed by the performance and battery life of the Ryzen 6000 laptops we've tested this year than we have been with the 12th-generation Intel products.

Enlarge (credit: picture alliance via Getty)

The United States gets about 40 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources, including renewables and nuclear, and researchers have a pretty good idea of how to cost-effectively get to about 90 percent.

But that last 10 percent? It gets expensive, and there is little agreement about how to do it.

A new paper in the journal Joule identifies six approaches for achieving that last 10 percent, including a reliance on wind and solar, a build-out of nuclear power, and development of long-term energy storage using hydrogen.