news.buyenne.com

Let us be the 47th outlet to say it: Nothing else on TV or streaming looks like Undone. Amazon Prime's animated time-bending sci-fi series centers on a woman named Alma (played by Rosa Salazar, of Alita fame) who suffers an accident that changes her relationship to the world. And as Alma deals with that in-progress 180, she attempts to investigate the mysterious death of her father (played by Bob Odenkirk, Better Call Saul). The story... well, better to say less and avoid spoilers for any soon-to-be viewers.

Undone's style, however, deserves all the words one can devote. If you heard of the show before, it's likely because it represents the first major streaming series to be done entirely in rotoscope, an animation technique where artists paint over live actors using a variety of methods and styles. (Maybe you've seen the campus shooting documentary Tower or Richard Linkliter's Waking Life; that's rotoscoping in action.) Rotoscoped work can be dreamy,  museum-like, nightmarish, disjointed, or other-worldly—sometimes all at once. In other words, it might be the perfect creative visual choice for a show like Undone. 

Credit for executing this vision goes to a trio of production companies behind the scenes: Tornante in Southern California, Submarine Productions in Amsterdam, and Minnow Mountain in Austin, Texas. If that kind of globe-spanning collaboration doesn't already say it, we will: the process was complicated. But you don't have to take it from us, since Undone director and production designer Hisko Hulsing kindly sat down for our latest entertainment episode of "War Stories" and outlined the laborious process that makes the show seem so effortlessly beautiful to all of us watching at home.

• 

  Remember the old Xbox "Jump In" ad campaign? Apparently it's back. [credit: Microsoft ]

Last November, Microsoft announced that its Project xCloud game-streaming service (which is currently in open beta) would eventually be integrated with its Xbox Game Pass subscription service in some form. This morning, Microsoft added a bit more clarity to that integration, announcing in a blog post that xCloud streaming will be available "at no additional cost for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members" starting in September.

Microsoft promises that "over 100 Xbox Game Pass titles" will be available for xCloud streaming "on your phone or tablet" as part of a Game Pass Ultimate subscription. That's a much smaller selection than the 234 Xbox 360 and Xbox One games that are currently available to download as part of the subscription, not to mention the 140 or so PC-exclusive downloads that are also included. But it is a larger selection than the 50+ games currently available as part of the Project xCloud preview program.

Aside from Halo Infinite, which gets specific mention in today's announcement, Microsoft has yet to clarify which specific titles will be available for streaming with Game Pass. Microsoft also has yet to say whether xCloud access will be available outside of a subscription plan (i.e., on a per-game basis) or as part of a streaming-only plan separate from Game Pass. A Microsoft representative said it expects to have formal answers to those questions closer to the September launch.

Enlarge / This cutaway view of a Western Digital 18TB Gold drive shows off its nine platters and triple-stage actuators. (credit: Western Digital)

Earlier this month, Western Digital announced retail availability of its Gold 16TB and 18TB CMR drives, as well as an upcoming 20TB Ultrastar SMR drive. These nine-platter disks are the largest individual hard drives widely available today.

Earlier this year, rival drive vendor Seagate promised to deliver 18TB and 20TB drives in 2020, but they have not yet materialized in retail channels. Seagate's largest drives, like Western Digital's, needed a new technology to overcome the Magnetic Recording Trilemma—but Western Digital's EAMR is considerably less-exotic than the HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) used by Seagate. That more conservative approach likely helped Western Digital beat its rival to market.

Understanding the Magnetic Recording Trilemma

The maximum usable data density on a magnetic recording device is limited by three competing factors. Magnetic coercivity—the strength of magnetic field required to demagnetize a domain—must be high enough to prevent the separately recorded grains from influencing one another and corrupting data. The field strength of the write head must be high enough to overcome the coercivity of the medium. Finally, the size of the field generated by the write head must be small enough so as not to overwrite adjacent areas.