New research shows that the British Museum’s most famous artifact—the Portland Vase—was manufactured by a different technique than the one traditionally assumed by historians and archaeologists.
Source: Gizmodo – Historians May Have Been Wrong About This Ancient Roman Vase for Centuries
The Pixel 2 comes loaded with special features beyond what you get with stock Android, and now Google is bringing some of those extras to older devices with Android 8.1. The latest update won’t officially release until December, but you can download the first preview now without too much effort.
Source: LifeHacker – How to Download Android 8.1, Which Brings Pixel 2 Features to Your Old Google Phone
Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. With pre-orders for Apple’s new iPhone X (that’s “ten,” not “ex”) set to open at midnight, today’s list includes a roundup of the savings the four major US carriers are promising for those who want the new handset.
Each carrier is promising “up to” $300 or so off for those who trade in an old device toward the purchase of an iPhone X; just know that you’ll usually have to trade in a newish iPhone or Android device—think an iPhone 6 or Galaxy S7—and be on a monthly installment plan to get the entirety of that discount. Older phones will likely still get some kickback, but the exact amount will vary. And in most cases, the discount is spread out over the course of 18-24 months in the form of credits. Carriers will be carriers, but something’s better than nothing, right?
Beyond the iPhone, you can find a variety of deals on laptops, TVs, drones, and other gadgets below.
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Source: Ars Technica – Dealmaster: Get up to 0 in credit when you pre-order an iPhone X
Plenty of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus reviews have appeared ahead of the game’s release tomorrow. If you don’t trust the opinions of the media giants, you can check out some great ones from YouTubers such as ACG. I did not notice anything particularly spoiler-ish here, so it should be a safe watch for those who only want an idea of what the gameplay is like. He also has a review up for Assassin’s Creed: Origins, which is out tomorrow, too.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – ACG Reviews Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
Uber has partnered with Barclays and Visa to get into the credit card business. It’ll be a new point of access for incredibly valuable customer information, allowing the company to get the spending habits of the millions of people that use their ride-hailing service every day.
The no-fee card offers a bonus of $100 after spending $500 on purchases within the first 90 days, and has other perks, like 4 percent back on restaurants, take-out and bar purchases; 3 percent back on airfare, hotels and Airbnb or other short-stay rentals; 2 percent back on online purchases; and 1 percent back on everything else.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Uber Introduces a Credit Card
In a blow to consumer protections, the Senate has voted to get rid of a banking rule that allows consumers to bring class-action lawsuits against banks and credit card companies to resolve financial disputes. Critics say that the government has sided with Wall Street over Main Street, blocking consumers from joining together against the likes of Wells Fargo and Equifax.
“This bill is a giant wet kiss to Wall Street,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said on the Senate floor. “Bank lobbyists are crawling all over this place begging Congress to vote and make it easier for them to cheat their customers.” The consumer agency’s rule, released in July, was aimed at giving consumers more power. Prior to the rule, the bureau said companies could “sidestep the court system” by “forcing consumers to give up or go it alone.”
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Senate Kills Rule on Class-Action Suits against Financial Companies
The Turtles in 1967. (credit: Chris Walter/WireImage)
Members of 1960s rock band The Turtles have lost a major legal battle in their quest to collect copyright royalties from their old hit songs.
The Florida Supreme Court held today (PDF) that the state doesn’t recognize any copyrights in pre-1972 music recordings, despite the band’s arguments to the contrary. All seven justices concurred in the ruling.
Flo & Eddie, a company that represents two members of The Turtles, had claimed that even though there is no federal copyright in sound recordings for pre-1972 songs, they are entitled to payments because their songs are protected by state copyrights and common law. The band members sued Sirius XM in 2013, and lawsuits against streaming services like Pandora followed. The major record labels also got involved, essentially copying The Turtles’ strategy, by suing Sirius as well as Pandora.
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Source: Ars Technica – Florida’s top court stops 1960s band from earning pre-1972 copyright royalties
As recently as September, ultra-secretive augmented reality startup Magic Leap entertained holding a splashy event to reveal more about its mysterious technology, according to a confidential document detailing a proposed event concept obtained by Gizmodo. The document outlines a pitch for a strange live-streamed…
Source: Gizmodo – All of the Crazy Shit in This Pitch for a Magic Leap Event
Last week, AMD quietly announced the availability of the Radeon Pro WX 9100 and Radeon Pro Solid State Graphics (SSG), and with them two new Radeon Pro Software drivers for Pro WX 9100, Pro SSG, and Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. The major driver, Radeon Pro Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.10, is actually the same Vega Pro driver previewed and announced earlier this summer, now bringing full Driver Options and more to the WX 9100 and Vega Frontier Edition. The other driver, 17.10.1, is the inaugural driver for the Radeon Pro SSG (Vega), although it is not clear if it includes 17.10’s new features.
Prosumers and close readers may remember AMD’s SIGGRAPH 2017 Capsaicin event, and at the time they slated the WX 9100 and SSG for release on September 13th, at $2199 MSRP and $6999 MSRP respectively. While it is late, the products are finally shipping, both at HPC/professional outlets and traditional retailers. SabrePC is offering the Pro WX 9100 at $1549 and Pro SSG at $4599, significantly cheaper than the original MSRP, while Newegg has the Pro WX 9100 at $1599 and the Pro SSG, due for release on October 31st, at $6999.
For the WX 9100, this slots in at the top of the AMD workstation video card stack, joining the Polaris based cards announced last year, as well as the entry-level Polaris 12 based cards, first introduced as the RX 550. For the SSG (Vega), this release has finally productized the prototype SSG, although swapping Fiji out for Vega. With 2TB M.2 NVMe SSG + 16GB ECC High Bandwidth Cache (HBC) of total video memory, the Radeon Pro SSG allows for significantly larger workset sizes. As opposed to the beta SSG, the Radeon Pro SSG is now able to coordinate the video memory with Vega’s HBCC, a feature that was not present in Fiji.
| AMD Workstation Card Specification Comparison | |||||
| Radeon Pro SSG (Vega) |
Radeon Pro WX 9100 |
Radeon Vega Frontier Edition |
|||
| Stream Processors | 4096 | ||||
| ROPs | 64 | ||||
| Boost Clock | 1500MHz | 1500MHz | 1600MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 1.89Gbps HBM2 | ||||
| Memory Bus Width | 2048-bit | ||||
| Single Precision | 12.3 TFLOPS | 12.3 TFLOPS | 13.1 TFLOPS | ||
| Half Precision | 24.6 TFLOPS | 24.6 TFLOPS | 26.2 TFLOPS | ||
| VRAM | 2TB SSG + 16GB HBC ECC | 16GB HBC ECC | 16GB HBC | ||
| TDP | <300W | <250W | Air: 300W Liquid: 375W |
||
| Power Connectors | 1x 6pin, 1x 8pin | 1x 6pin, 1x 8pin | 2x 8pin | ||
| GPU | Vega 10 | ||||
| Architecture | GCN 5 (Vega) | ||||
| Manufacturing Process | GlobalFoundries 14nm | ||||
| Launch Date | 10/2017 | 6/2017 | |||
| Launch Price (MSRP) | $6999 | $2199 | Air: $999 Liquid: $1499 |
||
In terms of drivers, 17.10 brings full functionality of “Driver Options,” although limited to Windows 10. Essentially, Driver Options allows Radeon Pro Software to swap between up to two gaming drivers (Radeon Software for Radeon Pro) and one professional driver (Radeon Pro Software) without a reboot. The installation process requires the Custom Install option to be selected, and AMD has provided a user guide outlining the setup of Driver Options. Alongside the driver, AMD had also released updates to the Radeon ProRender plug-ins, centered around performance and new features.
17.10 also fixes 10-bit display anomalies in display results and Blu-ray playback issues on PowerDVD after switching to Game Mode, as well as infrequent hangs during wake from sleep or resume states, and TDRs during sleep and resume when instant replay is enabled.
As for 17.10.1, the Radeon Pro SSG launch driver is only available for Windows 10 (64 bit), with an SSG API User Manual available online. Both drivers state that the WX 9100 and SSG do not support Multi-GPU Large Surface, AMD CrossFire Pro, Display Overlap, and Serial Digital Interface. Additionally, the WX 9100 does not support Pack Pixel with 10-bit support, and the SSG does not support Bus Active Chip Off.
For more driver details, see the 17.10 and 17.10.1 release notes, as well as AMD’s workstation graphics driver index.
Source: AnandTech – Now Shipping: Radeon Pro WX 9100 and SSG, with New Vega Pro Drivers
Google is taking its battle against misleading information to the real world. The company has partnered with the International Fact-Checking Network, a nonpartisan organization run by The Poynter Institute that advocates across the globe for accuracy…
Source: Engadget – Google partners with fact-checking network to fight fake news
Enlarge / Vehicles drive past a Las Vegas billboard featuring a Federal Bureau of Investigation tip line number on Interstate 515. On October 1, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and injured more than 450 after he opened fire on a large crowd at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival. (credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Local and federal investigators still have not come up with a motive that sparked a Nevada man to commit one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history. More than three weeks after Stephen Paddock opened fire and killed 58 people and wounded hundreds of others attending a country music festival below his Las Vegas hotel room, authorities appear stumped about uncovering a critical piece of information—Paddock’s hard drive—that could potentially lead them to other suspects.
Stephen Paddock. (credit: Facebook)
Some perpetrators of mass violence leave behind manifestos of sorts, like the one from Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber. His 35,000-word manifesto railing against technology paved the way for his 1996 arrest after his brother, David, realized it was written by his sibling. Paddock, who killed himself in his Mandalay Bay hotel room after the October 1 shooting rampage, hasn’t left any hint of a motive to explain his murders.
The FBI is currently examining computers and cell phones in the FBI’s lab in Quantico tied to the Paddock case. However, a hard drive in a laptop found in the shooter’s hotel room is now missing, according to the Associated Press.
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Source: Ars Technica – What happened to Las Vegas shooter’s hard drive? It’s a mystery
A look at the themes behind this years’s Landslide list from the Cultural Landscape Foundation.
Source: TreeHugger – What are Cultural Landscapes, and why should we care?
Chris Mooney, writing for the Washington Post: Climate change could lead to sea level rises that are larger, and happen more rapidly, than previously thought, according to a trio of new studies that reflect mounting concerns about the stability of polar ice. In one case, the research suggests that previous high end projections (PDF) for sea level rise by the year 2100 — a little over three feet — could be too low, substituting numbers as high as six feet at the extreme if the world continues to burn large volumes of fossil fuels throughout the century (Editor’s note: the link could be paywalled). “We have the potential to have much more sea level rise under high emissions scenarios,” said Alexander Nauels, a researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia who led one of the three studies. His work, co-authored with researchers at institutions in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, was published Thursday in Environmental Research Letters. The results comprise both novel scientific observations — based on high resolution seafloor imaging techniques that give a new window on past sea level events — and new modeling techniques based on a better understanding of Antarctic ice.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – New Science Suggests the Ocean Could Rise More — and Faster — Than We Thought
These are the Void Rugs created by British designer Scott Jarvie. They make it look like there’s a giant gaping hole in the floor, but only when viewed from just the right angle. Otherwise they just look like a crescent moon. Jarvie is currently working on bringing the 100% merino wool rugs into production, which will presumably cost a small fortune when available. Alternatively, just cut an actual hole in your floor AND INSTALL A FIREMAN’S POLE! Don’t act like you didn’t always dream of having one when you were a kid. And what good is being an adult if you can’t make all your childhood dreams come true? I drive a monster truck now, don’t I? “That’s a bicycle.” Okay, I’m still working on that dream. And, fine, all the other ones. Man, this adult thing is tricky. At least I can buy lotto scratchers without a fake beard now.
Keep going for several more shots including a rectangular version.
Source: Geekologie – Optical Illusion Floor Rugs That Look Like Giant Gaping Holes
There are two conflicting definitions of the phrase internet troll, just as there are two conflicting origin stories. The more refined definition comes from the fishing technique of trolling (dragging a fishhook behind a boat) and is a synonym for trickster. This type of troll knowingly strings others along, often by…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Troll a Troll
Bedbugs aren’t just for beds anymore. A Canadian family got bitten all over by bedbugs on a nine-hour flight to London. What’s worse, the mother saw a bedbug and knew what it was at the beginning of the flight, but the crew said there was nothing they could do.
Source: LifeHacker – What to Do If Your Airplane Is Full of Bedbugs
There’s something going on in Georgia. First, the state rejected help from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to inspect its voting equipment for potential hacker inroads. Strangely, the man responsible for this and a massive private data leak…
Source: Engadget – Georgia election server reportedly wiped in wake of lawsuit
Enlarge (credit: Honda)
Apple CarPlay is moving beyond the car and into the motorcycle.
Honda this week announced its new 2018 Gold Wing, the first bike to come equipped with Apple’s infotainment system. It will arrive next February and start at $23,500.
As noted by CNET’s Road Show blog, CarPlay’s implementation on the Gold Wing is a bit different from what it looks like on a four-wheeled automobile. The bike includes a 7-inch LCD display that shows the usual iOS-style interface, but it’s not touch-enabled. Instead, you can use a four-way joystick on the left grip or a rotary controller on the tank to get around. The latter could be tricky to manage when you’re actually on the move, but from there, you can access the usual Apple Maps, personal music libraries, iMessages, and the like.
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Source: Ars Technica – The first motorcycle to use Apple CarPlay has been announced
It didn’t seem possible, but Equifax may have screwed the pooch even harder than previously thought.
Source: Gizmodo – Report: Equifax Warned of Vulnerability Six Months Before Attack, Took No Action
Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai at The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research on May 5, 2017 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla)
The Federal Communications Commission will vote next month on ending a rule that prevents joint ownership of newspapers and TV or radio stations in the same geographical market.
The change is part of a larger overhaul of media ownership rules announced yesterday by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. Currently, the FCC says its newspaper/broadcast station cross-ownership rule “prohibit[s] common ownership of a daily newspaper and a full-power broadcast station (AM, FM, or TV) if the station’s service contour encompasses the newspaper’s city of publication.”
Pai is proposing to eliminate that rule and others. He announced the move during an FCC oversight hearing in Congress yesterday, saying he wants to “pull the government once and for all out of the newsroom.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Ajit Pai submits plan to allow more media consolidation
