An action game with sweeping: talking Dustforce with Hitbox
Independent games often tackle subject matter that is very different from more mainstream titles. Flower is about the dreams flowers might have. Machinarium is about separated robot lovers. And the upcoming Dustforce is about... sweeping. It's a unique concept, and if the demo is any indication, the team at Hitbox might just have managed to find a way to make housework fun.
Ars spoke with Woodley Nye, one half of the development team, about the demo and what we can expect in the full version.
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Following protons on a trip to (and through) the LHC
All the focus on the LHC is generally on the enormous, 26km circumference of the main accelerator ring. But, according to Paul Collier, the head of CERN's Beams Department, the protons that form the main beams of the LHC travel roughly 6 million kilometers before even reaching the LHC, and these early steps are essential to making the LHC the highest energy, highest intensity particle collider ever built. And once inside the LHC, the proton beams still need to be accelerated and shaped even further before collisions can take place. To help you understand how it all works, we'll take a complete trip from the proton source to the detectors within the LHC, and explain how each step contributes to the final output.The first thing that needs to be understood is that, although the LHC control system refers to beams, that's not an accurate description of the protons that are circulating within it. Instead, a "beam" is actually a collection of proton bunches, a bit like a series of beads without the string to connect them. Each bunch is about 20-30µm in diameter, and a few centimeters long. The timing and control provided by the LHC is so precise that bunches only cross paths—and produce collisions—within the four areas of the LHC that have detectors present.
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Graphene gets even better in a magnetic field
Graphene may yet make its way into the tiny circuitry thanks to a new property that a team of researchers describe in a paper in Nature Nanotechnology. When placed in a magnetic field, the graphene's ability to conduct current can be raised or lowered depending on the field's direction. The property may give scientists a workaround to get even tiny, highly resistant ribbons to conduct current.We already knew that graphene, which counts among its talents super strength and speed, had unusual electronic properties. One of graphene's weirdnesses is that when it is cut into very small ribbons—less that five nanometers in size—it is unable to conduct electricity. That's a potentially useful property for use in nanoelectronics, but only if the behavior could be switched on and off.
Faced with the prospect of electrically apathetic nanoribbons, researchers searched for a workaround. They found that graphene actually has a high magnetoresistance, meaning its ability to conduct current can be altered by putting it in a magnetic field. This works both ways: a field applied in one direction increases resistance and decreases current flow, and another field direction does the opposite.
At room temperature, a magnetic field of 8 tesla reduced a 15 nanometer ribbon's resistance by 56 percent, and 100 percent at 1.6 Kelvin. The resistance reduction would likely be smaller in the thinner ribbons, where it is needed most. Still, any measure that would allow the ribbons to conduct electricity would be very helpful to anyone trying to use graphene to make their circuits as petite as possible.
Nature Nanotechnology, 2010. DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2010.154 (About DOIs).
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Madden 11: a roster update for the masses
If the football-obsessed coworker that normally resides in the cube next to yours is absent from work, we have two words for you: Madden Day. Today is that American pseudo-holiday marking the release of EA Sports' most up-to-date Madden game. It is celebrated by many in the US by calling in sick to work, parking in front of the TV, and gaming all day. So is this an actual update or is it just another roster update from the folks at EA?Read the comments on this post
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Cars hacked through wireless tire sensors
The tire pressure monitors built into modern cars have been shown to be insecure by researchers from Rutgers University and the University of South Carolina. The wireless sensors, compulsory in new automobiles in the US since 2008, can be used to track vehicles or feed bad data to the electronic control units (ECU), causing them to malfunction.Earlier in the year, researchers from the University of Washington and University of California San Diego showed that the ECUs could be hacked, giving attackers the ability to be both annoying, by enabling wipers or honking the horn, and dangerous, by disabling the brakes or jamming the accelerator.
The new research shows that other systems in the vehicle are similarly insecure. The tire pressure monitors are notable because they're wireless, allowing attacks to be made from adjacent vehicles. The researchers used equipment costing $1,500, including radio sensors and special software, to eavesdrop on, and interfere with, two different tire pressure monitoring systems.
The pressure sensors contain unique IDs, so merely eavesdropping enabled the researchers to identify and track vehicles remotely. Beyond this, they could alter and forge the readings to cause warning lights on the dashboard to turn on, or even crash the ECU completely.
Unlike the work earlier this year, these attacks are more of a nuisance than any real danger; the tire sensors only send a message every 60-90 seconds, giving attackers little opportunity to compromise systems or cause any real damage. Nonetheless, both pieces of research demonstrate that these in-car computers have been designed with ineffective security measures.
The Rutgers and South Carolina research will be presented at the USENIX Security conference later this week.
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New antipiracy countermeasures await returning students
Baylor University doesn't want its students using peer-to-peer networks. A BlueCoat PacketShaper locks down bandwidth to students, and all inbound ports are blocked by the campus firewall to keep "computers from acting as servers or super nodes in peer to peer networks."Illinois State uses a packet shaping device called the Packeteer; it singles out P2P traffic and clamps down hard on its available bandwidth to ensure it can't disrupt other, likely more productive uses of the campus network. In addition, the school's intrusion prevention system tries to block P2P traffic in both directions at the campus border, though only if it comes from residence and wireless hotspots—faculty and staff are trusted to use P2P applications responsibly.
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New school program for iOS apps doesn't address all IT needs
Universities and even some grade schools are deploying iPads this fall for educational purposes. With that in mind, Apple launched a new volume purchasing program for iOS apps aimed squarely at the education market. Called the Volume Purchase Program for Education, it allows authorized representatives from educational institutions to buy multiple copies of an iOS app and distribute it to faculty or students. Schools can also get up to a 50 percent discount if developers elect to offer educational discounts via iTunes Connect.The program addresses a need for schools that want to purchase a large number of licenses for an iPhone or iPad app without having to try to manage hundreds or thousands of individual iTunes accounts. How it works is a little complicated, though. The authorized Apple purchaser for the school first pays for Volume Vouchers through educational sales channels. A program facilitator is registered for the school—we imagine for smaller schools this would be the same person—and that person makes bulk App Store purchases using the Volume Vouchers. When a voucher is redeemed, the program facilitator will be e-mailed a spreadsheet with download codes for the app. Finally, the codes are distributed to the faculty or students that need the app, and individual users use the codes to install the app.
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Food stamps for broadband would bring slow 'Net to the poor
Former FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate is back with a vague plan (PDF) to get Big Government away from "dictating what Americans 'should' get or what is 'best for them'" when it comes to broadband. Forget setting mediocre targets, like the "4Mbps for all Americans by 2010" goal of the National Broadband Plan. Instead, just give people vouchers for really crappy broadband service and the problem will take care of itself.Think of this as food stamps for broadband, or in Tate's words, "broadband stamps."
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Epix streaming deal for Netflix narrows streaming window
Netflix has officially closed a deal with premium cable channel Epix that will give Netflix exclusive online streaming rights to films from Viacom, MGM, and Lionsgate. The movies won't show up on Netflix until 90 days after they have premiered on Epix, but it's better than the years it usually takes, and it adds some serious mojo to the service's sometimes-anemic Watch Instantly library.Epix itself has a unique past compared to other premium cable channels. In 2009, Lionsgate, MGM, and Viacom teamed up to show their own recent films in HD before DVD release (the "pay TV window," so to speak). Epix also created its own online, on-demand service that offered HD streams of the same films, also before DVD release.
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Qualcomm joins the Linux Foundation, gets seat on board
The Qualcomm Innovation Center (QuIC) has joined the Linux Foundation as a platinum member, the highest tier of membership. The news was announced this morning at LinuxCon, the foundation's annual Linux conference. It reflects the growing involvement of mobile hardware vendors in the Linux technology ecosystem.
QuIC is a Qualcomm subsidiary that focuses on open source software, Linux platform technology, and developer tools. The group works with upstream development communities and contributes to a number of open source software projects that are relevant in the mobile space, including the Linux kernel and WebKit.
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Droid 2 launches Thursday with Froyo, Flash
Verizon and Motorola have announced that the successor to the original Droid smartphone—the Droid 2—is launching this week. The original was arguably largely responsible for popularizing Android in the US, and its replacement is the first smartphone to launch with the latest version of Android, Froyo (version 2.2). It's also the first smartphone to ship with Flash 10.1.Droid 2 doesn't stray too far from the original's hardware. It has a vertical QWERTY slider with a 3.7" WVGA touchscreen, includes a 5MP autofocus camera with dual-LED flash, and has GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth. The main changes appear to be an upgrade to a 1GHz ARM processor, 8GB of built-in flash memory, a slightly revised slider mechanism, and a redesigned keyboard (which looks to be a significant improvement on the original).
The biggest change to the Droid formula comes from the software. Our testing shows that Froyo offers significant speed improvements over earlier 2.x versions of Android. The Droid 2 includes the capability to turn the device into a 3G mobile hotspot (for an extra charge, of course) and comes supplied with the innovative Swype onscreen keyboard. Froyo also includes Flash 10.1, making Motorola's latest handset the first smartphone to ship with Adobe's long-promised improvement to the mobile version of Flash.
Droid 2 should be available from Verizon and authorized resellers beginning August 12. With a two-year contract commitment, it will cost $199 after a $100 mail-in rebate. Calling plans start at $70 per month, with 3G mobile hotspot service an extra $20 per month.
UPDATE: Verizon will offer a special Star Wars edition of the Droid 2 at some point in the near future. It will come loaded with Star Wars-related content and made up to look like R2-D2. Not sure if that's cheesy or cool (maybe both), but hopefully you'll be able to set the "Imperial March" as your ringtone.
UPDATE 2: The special edition Droid 2 will be Empire Strikes Back-themed—that actually sounds pretty cool. You can sign up to be notified of pricing and availability online, and "follow" R2-D2 on Twitter.
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Video game industry growth runs circles around US economy
While we may discuss the relative merits of certain games or gameplay trends, the fact that gaming is a business is often overlooked. The Entertainment Software Association has released its Video Games in the 21st Century report for 2010, and it shows that not only is our hobby a big business, it's a growing business."The real annual growth rate of the US computer and video game software industry was 10.6 percent for the period 2005-2009 and 16.7 percent for the period 2005-2008," the report states. "During the same periods, real growth for the U.S. economy as a whole was 1.4 percent for 2005-09 and 2.8 percent for 2005-08."
One surprise is the size of the industry in Texas. "The six states with the greatest number of entertainment software industry employees were, in order, California, Texas, Washington, New York, Massachusetts and Illinois."
It's not all great news: game publishing revenue is down almost five percent from 2008 to 2009, but the trends are generally positive. The report's message clear: video games add value to the US economy.
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