Tuesday 30 May 2017

Tech News Flash

Tech News Flash: Tuesday -- May 30, 2017

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Headline Scan
Exclusive Interview with A Better World President MarySue Hansell
MariaDB Offers a Bigger Box of Transactional Tools
Will Future Autonomous Cars Fly Like Birds or Tunnel Like Moles?
Kaspersky to US: Check Our Source Code

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Today's Story Highlights

Exclusive Interview with A Better World President MarySue Hansell

"We saw that there was a lack of kindness, a lack of empathy ... and we
thought it would be nice if we could use technology to do something
about it," said MarySue Hansell, president of A Better World. "We
thought Facebook offered a wonderful opportunity to use a large
technical platform to create a virtual world that would have a big
impact, with a game that emphasizes positive thinking."
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/84565.html

MariaDB Offers a Bigger Box of Transactional Tools

MariaDB last week announced the availability of MariaDB TX 2.0, a fully
functional open source transactional database solution for modern
application development and enterprise use cases. MariaDB TX offers a
comprehensive package of technology and services, including feature-rich
new releases of MariaDB Server and MariaDB MaxScale, which close the
functional gap between open source and proprietary offerings.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/84567.html

Will Future Autonomous Cars Fly Like Birds or Tunnel Like Moles?

It is kind of amazing how much advancement is going on in the autonomous
car space. A year ago, we were mostly talking about cars that seemed
comparatively boring, because they just drove on the surface. How quaint
-- how 2016. Now when we mention "boring," we may be talking about Elon
Musk's new underground tunneling idea. However, a little company called
"Airbus" disagrees.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/84562.html

Kaspersky to US: Check Our Source Code

Cybersecurity expert Eugene Kaspersky reportedly has volunteered to turn
over his company's software source code to allay fears about possible
ties with the Russian government. Kaspersky made the offer public at
CeBIT Australia last week. Some U.S. officials have expressed concerns
that Kaspersky Lab might have a close working relationship with the
Russian government.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/84564.html

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The Morning After: Will we find life, of any kind, beyond Earth?

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Tuesday, May 30, 2017.

Hey, good morning!

Back to work. Taiwan’s Computex PC show has kicked off, and ASUS appears to be dominating it again, with a simplified lineup of laptops and hybrids that continue to push the limits of light and thin laptops. Intel has decided to create an 18-core processor. No, it’s not for your next PC.

Spoiler: Tim is not good at video games

What we played in May: ‘Tumbleseed,’ ‘PlayerUnknown's BattleGrounds’ and more

Gaming IRL is part of a broader series in which you'll find stories from all of the areas we cover: gadgets we use every day, the apps and services we adore, what we're watching and the music and podcasts we can't live without.

This time is all about gaming. In the future, expect to find some essays and personal stories mixed in with the endorsements, but for now, sit back and enjoy an eclectic mix of console, hand-held, online and mobile recommendations.

Everything worth talking about.

Here's everything ASUS unveiled at Computex 2017

It won't be long before laptops are so thin and light that you'll barely notice one in your bag on your commute -- and that's the main takeaway from ASUS' press conference. Topping the table is a refreshed ZenBook Pro measuring 18.9mm thick and weighing less than four pounds, but packing high-end Intel CPU and NVIDIA graphics. Then there's the ZenBook Flip S, which weighs 2.4 pounds and measures just 10.9mm, making it thinner than most rival ultra-light laptops on the market. It's a similar story with its cheaper VivoBook Pro and VivoBook laptops, as well as the company's Zen all-in-one desktops. Each of those ranges comes with NanoEdge bezels which greatly reduce the bulky frames of each device.

With GTX 1080 inside

NVIDIA ‘Max Q’ ultrabooks are coming this summer

Choosing a gaming laptop usually means compromising on size, battery life, or horsepower, but NVIDIA claims it’s ready to change that. New Max Q spec’d laptops rolling out this summer will have GTX 1080 GPUs stuffed inside their 5 lb MacBook Air-like frames. That will give them enough power to play AAA games in 4K or VR if you like, while being light enough to carry around every day.

Can this compete with real life?

What’s on TV: ‘House of Cards’ season five

Netflix’s flagship series is back, and its return comes at an interesting time. With drama playing out in real life every day -- and without its original creator/writer/showrunner Beau Willimon -- Frank Underwood & co. will be hard pressed to measure up. Also this week Star Trek Bridge Crew arrives for VR experiences, the NBA and NHL finals have started and HBO is airing the series finale of The Leftovers.

We heard you like cores.

Intel’s Core i9 Extreme Edition CPU is an 18-core beast

Last year at Computex, Intel unveiled its first 10-core consumer CPU. Now, the company is upping the ante with a whole new family of processors for enthusiasts, the Core X-series, and it's spearheaded by its first 18-core CPU, the i9-7980XE. Priced at $1,999, it’s clearly not a chip you'd see in an average desktop. If 18 cores is a bit too rich for you, Intel has other Core i9 Extreme Edition chips in 10, 12, 14 and 16-core variants. Perhaps the best news for hardware geeks: the 10-core i9-7900X will retail for $999, a significant discount from last year's version.

More power.

ARM's next round of mobile processors are built for AI

While the name may not be familiar to some, ARM’s tech has a significant impact on what your phone can do well. Judging by the company’s latest designs, it looks like mobile chips coming in 2018 and beyond will be ready to shoulder more of the load when it comes to AI. New DynamIQ tech will let processors use the right core for the right job, speeding tasks up and saving battery, while the Cortex-A75 layout promises laptop-level performance.

But wait, there's more...

1. Alienware 15 review: Bigger, but not necessarily better

2. Mercedes-AMG's F1-based Project One rewrites the hypercar rulebook

3. PlayStation's E3 press conference is coming to a theater near you

The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you'll miss if you don't subscribe.

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Monday 29 May 2017

The Morning After: Will we find life, of any kind, beyond Earth?

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Monday, May 29, 2017.

Hey, good morning!

Welcome to the new week. Most of you are probably enjoying a three-day weekend, but the show never stops at Engadget. We have a team of reporters settling into Taipei for Asia’s biggest PC show, Computex, while we also look at the brutal realities of whether we’ll ever find life beyond Earth.

Albeit with ads.

You can play 'Crazy Taxi' on your smartphone for free

If you've always been intrigued by the early noughties appeal of Crazy Taxi, but didn't want to lay down cash on that curiosity, you now have no excuse. Sega has made both Android and iOS versions free to play. And if the ads drive you crazy, you can plunk down a mere two bucks. Or just delete the thing.

It's been eight years since Victorian London was swept underground by a swarm of bats.

'Fallen London' and the secret to writing an infinite gothic game

Fallen London is a deep choose-your-own-adventure game that debuted back in 2009, with no moving pictures to guide players into new worlds. Instead, it's text-based, allowing fans to decide how they'll react to certain scenarios while they wander around a Victorian version of London that’s trapped in an underground dimension. It's still available in browser form, but it's also on iOS and Android, spawning a successful spinoff mobile franchise in the process. Just this week, Failbetter Games announced it would place renewed focus on Fallen London, tying up some of its stories and systems. The lore is probably unlike any other game story you've experienced before.

We’ve never had a better chance of finding extraterrestrial life -- if it exists.

The search for a habitable second Earth

Wrapping up our Tomorrow Week, Steve Dent looks into how scientists and researchers are searching for habitable planets beyond this blue and green orb. Interestingly, half the research takes place right here, as teams try to unlock the mystery of how life started on Earth in the first place.

The Extremely Large Telescope has been years in the making.

Construction starts on the world's largest optical telescope

This is related to said search: After years of planning and no shortage of financial anxiety, construction has officially started on the Extremely Large Telescope. Contractors are now building the main structure and dome of the Chile-based observer ahead of its initial service in 2024. With a 43-yard aperture, this promises to be the world's largest optical telescope for a long time, even compared to future projects.

Infinite (battery) lives

USB-powered Sega Nomad gives you near-endless game time

Sega's Genesis Nomad was always a compromise: It ran 16-bit console games on mid-90s handheld tech, but took six AA batteries just to get three hours of playtime. Wouldn't it be nice if you could use modern hardware to play without constant (and sometimes expensive) battery swaps? The Sega Holic (aka Catch22 on NeoGAF) thinks so. He just teased a homebrew Nomad modification that lets the portable system run on USB power.

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