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The Blizzard campus that will soon host the team behind the "pirate server" Nostalrius. (credit: Blizzard)

The administrators behind the recently shut-down Nostalrius server—which ran a popular "vanilla" version of World of Warcraft as the game existed before its many expansions—are currently "scheduling a meeting at Blizzard campus" to discuss the status of what some call "legacy servers" but what Blizzard and others often refer to as "pirate servers."

In a post to the Nostalrius forums late Sunday night, the administrators seemed optimistic about serving as spokespeople for a group of players interested in preserving a playable history of the popular MMO— a group that has now grown to include over 250,000 signatories to an online petition.

"We are very excited to be able to help Blizzard understand the part of their community asking for legacy servers and many other related topics, in the hope that they will eventually make it possible to legally play previous game expansions," the team wrote. "After the answer from Blizzard and the amazing support we received, we feel we are now not only the admins of a private server: We are also the ambassadors of a larger movement for the entire World of Warcraft community that wants to see game history restored. It is a major responsibility. Our top priority and only focus now is to fulfill the needs of this community, by carrying your voice to Blizzard directly."

Astronomers have found three Earth-size worlds around a cool star just 40 light-years from the Sun. (credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)

The star is only about the size of Jupiter and much colder and redder than the Sun. Its luminosity is far less than 1 percent that of our star—so faint that, although the "ultracool" dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1 lies less than 40 light-years from Earth, it can only be seen via relatively powerful telescopes.

Yet it is a star worth looking for. Astronomers using a 60cm telescope designed especially to study such stars, and any planets around them, have found this system to contain some of the most habitable exoplanets discovered to date. As European astronomers looked at TRAPPIST-1 from September through December of last year, they discovered slight, periodic dimming that indicates the presence of three worlds which are close to or inside the system's habitable zone. All have radii of between 1.05 and 1.17 that of Earth's radius.

According to the observations published Monday in the journal Nature, the two inner planets orbit the star every 1.51 days and 2.42 days. The innermost planet, TRAPPIST-1b, likely receives about four times the solar radiation from its star than does Earth, and astronomers estimate its surface temperature is probably closer to the higher end of a range between 11 degrees and 127 degrees Celsius. The next planet, TRAPPIST-1c, receives a little more than two times the solar radiation as does Earth and has a surface temperature likely between -30 degrees and 69 degrees Celsius. The researchers speculate these worlds are likely tidally locked and, therefore, even if they have extreme average temperatures, they may have habitable regions along the terminator or poles.

LG's new fingerprint module integrated into smartphone display glass. (credit: LG Innnotek)

LG Innotek, LG's components subsidiary, has announced a new fingerprint reader component that can be integrated into the bezel area of a smartphone's display glass.

The latest round of phones have all shipped with fingerprint readers, but the design limitations imposed by the sensor component left most phones with similar design. Other than the 2015 Nexus phones, LG G5, and the Nextbit Robin, the latest phones all used a fingerprint sensor that is integrated into the front home button.

For this new design, LG cuts a small groove into the underside of the display glass and installs the fingerprint reader there. The result is a fingerprint reader that LG Innotek says "is not exposed to [the] outside of the device," making it invisible. In fact, LG Innotek recommends indicating the location of reader on the bezel of the phone so users can tell where it is.

(credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Another online TV bundle could be hitting the market as soon as next year, and this one may have big TV networks behind it. According to The Wall Street Journal, Disney and 20th Century Fox are close to making a deal with Hulu to license channels and content for a new digital TV service that could be available in early 2017.

Disney and Fox are co-owners of Hulu, so it makes sense that they would partner up with the online streaming platform over the likes of Amazon or Netflix. The unnamed service would stream live TV from popular channels including ABC, ESPN, Fox, and the Disney Channel, as well as archived content from the networks involved. While the Comcast-owned NBCUniversal is also a co-owner of Hulu, it has not agreed to license any network content to the new service.

Reports also suggest that the service may include a "cloud-based digital video recorder" for watching previously aired shows on-demand. While no price information has been given, the service is expected to run about $40 per month to compete with similar TV bundles from companies like Dish's Sling TV ($20 per month) and Sony's Playstation Vue (starting at $30 per month).

(credit: BMW)

When we reviewed the BMW i3 back in 2014, the little rear-wheel drive city car left us quite impressed. However, the i3 has always had a couple of flaws in comparison with other electric vehicles out there; it costs too much and the range isn't very good, even if you go for the optional two-cylinder range-extending engine. It appears BMW has decided to address the latter issue, because from this summer the i3 will now come with a 33kWh battery in place of the current 22kWh unit.

Battery technology—and the amount of kilowatt-hours a dollar buys—keeps getting better each year. Certainly it improves measurably over the lifespan of a car, and the fact that BMW has seen this and bumped the battery spec for the i3 is a promising sign for the industry. That probably sounds like we're damning with faint praise, but technology now moves too rapidly for OEMs to stick their old cycles of refreshing cars every four years. If BMW wants to sell any i3s once the Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 start shipping, a range boost is the bare minimum it needs to do.

The new battery is 50 percent bigger, so more than 100 miles (160km) should be possible on a full charge. The gas tank for the range extender engine will also grow by 25 percent; expect to stop for gas every 75 miles if you try road-tripping. These range tweaks should help boost the i3's appeal, but before long the Bolt and Model 3 are going to make people expect 200+ miles from their EV as a bare minimum.