After what has seemed like an interminable period, we will finally be getting some Intel Arc GPU benchmarks soon. Yes, we previously promised we wouldn’t be covering Arc GPUs until they launched because we were also tired of the “” announcements too. The is Oct. 12, so we should see benchmarks before then. Another new ripple is Intel has revealed pricing for the 16GB version of the A770, as well as the A750. Intel will also be bundling the highly-anticipated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II with its Arc GPUs at launch. If you sign up at Intel Gaming Access, you can get three more games: Batman Gotham Knights, Ghostbuster Spirits Unleashed, and The Settlers.
Hot on the heels of , there’s a new cloud gaming portable on the horizon. Verizon, Razer, and Qualcomm have teamed up to launch the Razer Edge 5G, an Android-powered gaming device that will let you play your favorite phone games, as well as console and PC games streamed from the cloud. We don’t have most of the details, but as the name implies, this device will have a connection for cloud gaming on the go. The Edge 5G will run on the Qualcomm Snapdragon G3x Gen 1, the current top-of-the-line gaming platform from Qualcomm. It previously only appeared in a dev kit produced in partnership with Razer.
Hello, readers, and welcome back to This Week in Space, your Friday escape from terrestrial news. This week, NASA finally crashed its DART spacecraft into its target asteroid. Three cosmonauts also came home from the International Space Station. And despite the center of Hurricane Ian passing directly over the Kennedy Space Center, and despite a “fire” in the Vehicle Assembly Building, as far as we know the Artemis rocket is doing fine. DART Spacecraft Finally Crashes Into Asteroid Monday evening, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) : Dimorphos, AKA “Didymoon.” Dimorphos is a moonlet, an asteroid orbiting another, slightly larger asteroid called Didymos.
If you use the internet, you’ve answered a few CAPTCHAs. (Okay, maybe more than a few.) These unavoidable tests of humanity are a hallmark of the online experience, but they’re inconvenient and intrusive. Cloudflare, a cloud server network, claims to have created a more discreet substitute. On Wednesday the company Turnstile, a “privacy-preserving” alternative to CAPTCHA. Unlike many Cloudflare products, this one will be free to use for any site owner—even those who aren’t Cloudflare customers. Turnstile differs from CAPTCHA in that it doesn’t require any input from the site visitor whatsoever. Rather than asking a site visitor to click on blurry palm trees or copy down a few characters, Turnstile automatically picks from a handful of browser challenges based on recent telemetry and client behavior.
Researchers in Scotland have devised a way to “neutralize” creepy crawlies in the coolest way possible: by shooting them with a laser. Ildar Rakhmatulin, a research associate at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University, recently partnered with a group of engineers, biologists, and machine learning specialists to create a cockroach-compromising, AI-powered laser device. Rakhmatulin had previously created Raspberry Pi and laser combinations to kill mosquitos, but after recognizing the effect roach infestations could have on the restaurant industry and general public health, he wanted to go bigger. The system begins with a single-board Jetson Nano, a small computer capable of running deep learning algorithms.
The Artemis 1 launch is still , but it’s only a matter of time before NASA has humans walking on the moon once again. This time, the agency intends to use the moon as a waypoint to more distant locales like Mars. However, some scientists believe Mars should be our second stop. Instead, they say, the mission should start with a quick swing past Venus. After Artemis 1 finally gets off the ground, it will take two more missions before humans return to the lunar surface. Toward the end of the planned Artemis launches, NASA hopes to have the Gateway station up and running allowing for a long-term human presence around the moon.
(Photo: Thibault Penin/Unsplash)Netflix has come a long way since it first began shipping DVDs in paper sleeves. The subscription streaming service announced yesterday that it’s digging its heels into the video games industry by establishing its very own games studio. The internal studio is in Helsinki, Finland and is headed by former Zynga and Electronic Arts executive Marko Lastikka. At Zynga, Lastikka spearheaded FarmVille 3; before that, he co-founded and managed EA’s Helsinki studio, Tracktwenty, where he helped build SimCity BuildIt. Lastikka’s newest studio at Netflix will join Next Games, Night School Studio, and Boss Fight Entertainment—all pre-existing teams acquired by the streaming service over the last year.
Air travel must often be approached with the same attitude you’d bring to a game show: wary yet eager as you throw caution to the wind and embrace the unknown in the name of a new adventure. Maybe you’ll have a good experience, with straightforward ticket prices and working in-flight Wi-Fi; maybe you’ll lose everything at the last minute, having been hit with a canceled flight just moments after unexpectedly having to pony up for a checked bag. A lack of airline accountability can make for a whirlpool of exasperating (and financially painful) circumstances. Soon, this could change, as yesterday the White House proposed a slew of regulations that would protect air travelers from shady airline practices.
Until recently, DART was a spacecraft about the size of a vending machine. Now, it’s debris scattered across the surface of a small asteroid called Dimorphos. This was very much the intention, though. in smashing DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) into its target on Monday, Sept. 26. Now, scientists get to assess the data from the impact, including some stunning images of the event. NASA live-streamed the big moment, which was the first real-life test of planetary defense technology. The idea is that a sufficiently large impactor spacecraft could change the orbit of a dangerous asteroid, ensuring that it doesn’t hit Earth.
