Month: September 2022

Enlarge / The Pixelbook Go starts at $649 for a Core m3 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Google's hardware division continues to be unable to field a consistent, reliable hardware selection. A report from The Verge claims Google has "canceled the next version of its Pixelbook laptop and dissolved the team responsible for building it." This has been the case for several years, but the only new Chromebooks out there will be ones from third parties.

The last laptop released by the company was the Chromebook Go in 2019, which is still for sale at store.google.com. Shortly after that device's launch, reports surfaced that the laptop and tablet division was being downsized. While the tablet plans managed to recover thanks to Android, the laptop plans are apparently dead. The last credible Google laptop rumors were from the lead-up to the Google Tensor/Pixel 6 launch. Google was rumored to be making its own chips and, along with a phone (Pixel 6) rumors, consistently claimed a laptop version of the chip would be happening. Google Hardware SVP Rick Osterloh said as recently as May that the company was "going to do Pixelbooks in the future," and the report says "the device was far along in development and expected to debut next year" before it was canceled.

The reason for the dissolution of the Pixelbook team is apparently Google CEO Sundar Pichai's cost-cutting. The Google CEO said in August that "productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the headcount we have" and warned that the company would be "consolidating where investments overlap and streamlining processes." The Verge's report says, "The Pixelbook team and the Pixelbook itself were casualties of that consolidation and redeployment."

Enlarge / Galaxy brain, meet Ubisoft brain... (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images | Ubisoft)

If you've been following Ubisoft's relationship with the NFT space in the last year, you probably remember that its nonsensical release of Quartz NFTs in Ghost Recon Breakpoint was halted in April after just a few months. At the time, though, Ubisoft said that players should "stay tuned for more updates with features to the platform and future drops coming with other games!"

In the months since, though, Ubisoft seems to have become less enthusiastic about its future NFT plans. In a recent group Q&A following a press event at Ubisoft's Paris HQ (transcribed by GameIndustry.biz), CEO Yves Guillemot tried to clarify that the company is "still in research mode, I would say, when it comes to NFTs."

"We really look at all the new technologies. We are very much on cloud, on the new generation of voxels, and we're looking at all the Web3 capabilities. We tested a few things recently that are giving us more information on how it can be used and what we should do in the universe of video games. So we are testing ground with some games, and we'll see if they really answer the players' needs.

The bit about "answering the players' needs" is especially interesting in the wake of Ubisoft's use of NFTs in Breakpoint. In the months after Ubisoft gave away thousands of game-usable NFTs, an Ars analysis found only 96 successful secondhand sales for those in-game items on Objkt and Rarible (the only two marketplaces where such sales are allowed), with prices generally measured in the equivalent of tens of dollars. These third-party transfers were sold as one of the primary use cases for NFTs in the first place, so the lack of sales shows just how little player interest there was in Breakpoint's NFT implementation.

Enlarge / The PyTorch logo on a fancy gradient. (credit: PyTorch Foundation)

Meta AI announced today that the governance of PyTorch, a popular open source deep learning framework, has moved to an independent organization called the PyTorch Foundation. It will operate as part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation, and its governing board includes representatives from Nvidia, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and AMD.

The move comes as the adoption of the PyTorch framework has become widely used across the deep learning industry to power many natural language and computer vision projects, including Tesla Autopilot. Meta cites more than 2,400 contributors and 150,000 projects built on the framework. Spinning PyTorch off into its own foundation avoids potential conflicts of interest that might come if PyTorch were only controlled by Meta, which created the framework.

"The PyTorch Foundation will strive to adhere to four principles," wrote Meta in a blog post announcing the news. "Remaining open, maintaining neutral branding, staying fair, and forging a strong technical identity. One of the foundation's main priorities is to maintain a clear separation between the business and technical governance of PyTorch."

Enlarge / A few apps that received significant updates in iOS 15. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple released the next major versions of several of its operating systems today, including watchOS 9, tvOS 16, and iOS 16. The latter is probably the most significant of the three, with a total overhaul of the iPhone lock screen, new iMessage editing and message deletion capabilities, and passkeys that attempt to replace passwords (Our full iOS 16 review is forthcoming.)

Also of note are a volley of updates for older operating systems, including iOS 15.7, iPadOS 15.7, and macOS Monterey 12.6. The iPad and macOS updates both bring the security-related patches from the newer OS versions back to older ones while we wait for the release of iPadOS 16.1 and macOS Ventura later in the fall. The release of iOS 15.7 serves two purposes: to keep older iPhones that can't run iOS 16 updated with security patches (this includes the iPhone 6S and iPhone 7 series along with the original iPhone SE, among others) and to let people who don't want to upgrade to iOS 16 a way to get security updates.

Apple also did this for a few months after the release of iOS 15, offering version 14.8 to supported devices so that people could defer the update without putting themselves at risk. By January 2022, the company stopped updating iOS 14 and pushed all iOS users to update to version 15.2.1.

Enlarge / The box art for Atari 50 includes teases of various console designs and game box art images. (credit: Atari Corp. / Digital Eclipse)

Earlier this year, news emerged about yet another Atari classic-gaming compilation meant to celebrate the company's 50th anniversary. As we've seen quite a few Atari-branded collections over the years, we wondered exactly what shape Atari 50's selection of "over 100 games" would take ahead of its launch on Steam, Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch on November 8.

Thanks to a European retailer listing that emerged over the weekend, we now have an apparently final list of the Atari 50 selection of games: 103 in all, as spread across arcade cabinets, six console families, and a selection of "reimagined," newly coded games and ports. The verdict: It's pretty good, yet it's still a glaring reminder that the compilation might better be named "Atari Corp. 50."

Missing vowels and details about Vctr Sctr (for now)

We'll break this article up into platform-specific lists, which each include our own notes and analysis, and we'll start with the least-surprising list. This collection's stewards at Digital Eclipse (TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection) had already announced plans to "reimagine" six games beyond the original code supplied by Atari's archives, and these alone could be worth the price of admission for '70s and '80s gaming stalwarts.

Enlarge (credit: Intel)

Intel is gearing up to release the first products in its 13th-generation Core processor family, codenamed Raptor Lake. Among the topline facts that the company announced at its Intel Technology Tour is that at least one member of the Raptor Lake family will be capable of hitting 6 GHz out of the box (via Tom's Hardware). Core counts and architectural improvements are generally more important than clock speed when it comes to increasing a CPU's performance these days, but after many years hanging out in the 5 GHz range, it's neat to hit the next digit.

As for what this means for performance, Intel is saying that Raptor Lake will perform roughly 15 percent better in single-threaded tasks and 41 percent better in multi-threaded workloads than the current 12th-generation Alder Lake chips. Clock speed is more important for boosting single-threaded performance, while adding more cores is usually the best way to improve multi-threaded speeds.

It's not clear which of the CPUs will be capable of hitting 6 GHz or under what circumstances or for how long. An Intel SKU chart published by Igor's Lab suggests that the Core i9-13900K will top out at 5.8 GHz, though it's possible that it's capable of further boosting beyond that.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

On Monday, US President Joe Biden will announce more information on his plan to end cancer. The president will use the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy's legendary speech about putting a man on the Moon to name a director for a new agency to make this happen, adding yet one more acronym to the US biomedical research enterprise.

And as was the case in 2016, it's baffling that the government is evidently wasting its money on the National Cancer Institute, which despite receiving almost $7 billion a year, apparently needs an entirely new agency—the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health—to actually cure cancer. What is especially troubling is that those concerns were evident in 2016 when then-Vice President Biden first proposed the idea, which we've dusted off below:

Original article, January 14, 2016: During this week's State of the Union address, President Obama announced that his vice president, Joe Biden, will lead a new science "moonshot" to put an end to cancer. According to an article on Medium posted by the vice president, this will do two things: increase resources devoted to fighting cancer and break down barriers that prevent sharing of information among cancer researchers.

Enlarge / Roku OS 11.5. (credit: Roku)

Roku today announced new hardware with the budget-conscious in mind, including the $130 Roku Wireless Bass subwoofer and an updated Roku Express streaming device. The company also detailed Roku OS 11.5, which includes features that should mean less time spent helplessly clicking around for something to watch.

Roku’s $130 Wireless Bass

The Roku Wireless Bass subwoofer is meant to boost the bass heard with Roku's Streambar, Wireless Speakers, or TV Wireless Soundbar. Roku's upcoming 5.25-inch subwoofer is a cheaper version of the already released, 10-inch Roku Wireless Bass Pro.

Roku Wireless Bass. (credit: Roku)

The lower-priced subwoofer sports a frequency response of 50-200 Hz, while the more expensive Wireless Bass Pro packs more at the low-end with a range of 40-200 Hz. Roku describes the new subwoofer as having a front-firing ported design compared to the Wireless Bass Pro's downward-facing design and sealed cabinet.