NVIDIA GeForce 290.36 Beta Drivers Released
We have seen several games release over the past month or so, which means new video card drivers are always right behind. Today, we have some new beta drivers from NVIDIA that improve performance in Batman: Arkham City as well as a few fixes for Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, and Settlers 7. The 290.36 beta drivers also add Ambient Occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The Ambient Occlusion helps those two games look a ton better by providing more realistic shadows, but if the Quality mode proves too demanding then NVIDIA recommends dropping down to Performance. Battlefield 3 gets a fix to remove the random triangular artifacts, Crysis 2 has an SLI shadow bug rectified, and Settlers 7 should no longer have any corruption. NVIDIA Surround is also enabled on Intel X79 SLI-certified motherboards, plus SLI profiles and 3D Vision support has been added to many games. For a full list of fixes, additions, and improvements, feel free to hit up the source link.
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PS Vita Memory Card Price Leaked, Not the Cheapest
I know many of you are eagerly awaiting the launch of the PlayStation Vita next February to see exactly what the new Sony handheld can do. I am sure you also know that some of the PS Vita games will require a memory card in order to boot, but we did not know how much these memory cards would cost. Sony still has not officially confirmed the price, but an early posting by GameStop has. I warn you, these memory cards are not exactly cheap, and while they may resemble an SD card, the price certainly does not. The 4GB PS Vita memory card will set you back $30, the 8GB at $45, the 16GB at $70, and the 32GB at a staggering $120. That is a pretty high price to pay for a memory card, even a proprietary one, but hopefully we will be able to make do with one of the cheaper cards. Still, these prices should drop over time, but it looks like we will have to deal with a high price at launch.
The PlayStation Vita launches in North America and Europe on February 22nd, 2012.
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AMD Announces Branded Memory
AMD has announced that it will soon be releasing its own branded desktop memory under the name AMD Memory. AMD already has some experience with memory, as it has been producing the memory found on the Radeon graphics cards for some time now. Branching out to system memory seemed like a natural progression. AMD will be partnering with Patriot Memory and VisionTek Products for this venture. AMD Memory will be available in capacities of 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB across a variety of speeds and timings. AMD feels that this is a move that should help consumers "take the guesswork out of DRAM selection, providing an easy and straightforward experience when looking for the ideal match for gaming or multimedia PC needs."
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TES V: Skyrim Patch Launches This Week
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been out for over two weeks now, and while many people are enjoying it immensely, some people are having problems with the game. There have been a variety of bugs identified in the game, from performance problems to crashes and even dragon souls not being given at times. Bethesda said the other week it would be launching a patch for Skyrim sometime the week of November 28th, and now that time has come. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 1.2 update will roll out this week, with European gamers already getting it. The update is available now on the PS3 in North America, while PC and 360 gamers will have to wait until Wednesday. The full list of fixes can be seen over on the Bethesda Blog, but some of the main ones are the crash that would happen on the PC when the audio sample rate is something other than 44100Hz, the Escape button can be used to exit all menus, dragons now attack when sometimes before they would not and also give their souls upon death all the time. Bethesda will keep monitoring forums, blogs, and everything else to see what needs to be fixed in the next patch, but at least something is being done quickly.
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Cracking HDCP for $267
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection, better known as HDCP, is a security standard used for high definition media signals. Its purpose is to prevent a high definition signal from being recorded, and potentially pirated. This makes it very important to the media industry, so anything with the potential to crack it can be worrying to them.
Last year a master key for HDCP’s encryption was found and posted on the Internet. Shortly afterward, Intel, the developer of HDCP, stated such a key was unimportant to the security system as a device to take advantage of it would be highly complex and expensive. Obviously it could not be too complex and expensive, because if it were there would be little point to this news item.
Researchers at Ruhr-University Bochum decided to test Intel’s claim. Using a commercial ATLYS board from Digilent the researchers successfully used field-programmable gate arrays to implement a man-in-the-middle attack. Such an attack literally places the device in the middle with an HDMI cable coming in with HDCP and going out without. Though the cost of the ATLYS board is only 200 Euros (roughly $267) the researchers point out this method would likely be of little interest to a pirate. There are simpler alternatives to this setup already available. However, security-critical systems may still be threatened by this, and because HDCP 2.0 is backward compatible, this weakness may remain for years to come.
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New Magnetostrictive Alloy Found
Yes, magnetostrictive is a word, an adjective specifically, to describe a material having the property of magnetostriction. In the past the piezoelectric effect has been mentioned; it is a phenomenon that converts mechanical and electrical energy back and forth. Magnetostriction is similar, but instead of electricity it converts magnetic energy into mechanical force; in this case, compression.
The most magnetostrictive material known to exist is Tb-Dy-Fe, which relies on rare-earth metals. As the name suggests, rare-earth metals are hard to find, making this material quite expensive. Researchers at NIST have been working to find a cheaper alloy with the same property, and have recently found one comprised of iron and cobalt. This new material is created using a process called annealing, which requires heating the alloy to get the proper internal structure, and quenching it, to lock in that structure. The result is an alloy that reacts to just 0.01 Tesla (the typical refrigerator magnet is roughly 0.7 T), which is not as good as Tb-Dy-Fe, but still comparable.
Devices to take advantage of magnetostriction are not well developed currently, due to lack of interest. However, scientists are looking more and more at this phenomenon for an advantage it has over the piezoelectric effect. Magnetostrictive materials can be manufactured at very small scales, but piezoelectric materials are often too brittle to survive at such small sizes.
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‘Paragon’ for Security Developed
From the University of Gothenburg comes an extension for the Java programming language to help close security holes. The greatest risk to information on a computer being leaked is not poor network security or weak encryption but poor programming. As software becomes more complex there are more places for holes to occur, which can then be exploited. This is such a large problem code reviewers are used to find the holes by reading through a program’s code manually.
To speed things up a bit, Paragon has been created. By inputting the specifications desired a programmer can use Paragon to monitor security holes in the software as they write it, or later when it is being compiled. Thus far the analysis power of Paragon proving to be greater than earlier attempts in the field.
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New Material to Improve Variety of Electronics
The element erbium is used in optical data transmission because it can radiate photons with wavelengths around 1.5 microns, the frequency used for such transmissions. Currently erbium is used to amplify the signals, but with a new discovery from Arizona State University, it may allow for much smaller and more efficient digital communication systems, and more.
Researchers have synthesized a single-crystal nanowire of a new erbium compound with capabilities beyond other erbium compounds. The increased abilities comes from contain 1,000 times more erbium atoms than the other compounds. With such a higher concentration, smaller amounts of the compound are needed, which will allow components essential to optical communication to be integrated directly into computer chips.
Erbium’s ability to work with wavelengths around 1.5 microns also gives it the ability to enhance solar panels. Silicon based photovoltaics cannot reach past 1.1 microns, and thus miss a great deal of energy from the Sun. What erbium could do is absorb the photons with longer wavelengths and then reemit them and shorter wavelengths the silicon can absorb.
The best part of this new material though is how much more it may be able to do. By only having just been discovered, it likely has properties we are not aware of yet. These properties, when found, could also have an impact on a variety of technologies.
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Total War: Shogun 2 - Fall of the Samurai Revealed
It was not too long ago we were talking about Total War: Shogun 2 - Rise of the Samurai, which was set 400 years before the main game and showed the events of the Gempei War and the rise of the Samurai as the ruling class. It is a separate campaign from the main one, but introduced new factions, units, and heroes. Today, The Fall of the Samurai has been revealed by The Creative Assembly, and it looks to show the events leading up to the Boshin War. This time, American and European forces introduce new tactics to the Samurai that could lead to their downfall. There will be six new factions added to the game, with some supporting the outsiders and others wanting to support the Shogun. Throughout the campaign, you will be able to determine Japan's fate, be it with the Americans, British, French, or Shogun.
There will be new tech trees showcasing a country being influenced by the west, with new naval units like the steamers, torpedo boats, and Ironclad ships. For the first time in the Total War series, these new naval units can launch attacks on land units from the sea. On land, there will be 39 new units like Gatling guns, US Marines, and British Royal Marines. There will also be three new agents, four new historical scenarios, "new siege mechanics," and an upgrade to multiplayer features.
Total War: Shogun 2 - Fall of the Samurai will launch next March.
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Turning a 60-Year-Old Book Into a Groovy Synthesizer
A 60-year-old cookbook probably isn't your average musician's first choice as a musical instrument, but Konkreet Labs' designer Gwydion ap Dafydd went out of his way to do just that. Armed with a newly-purchased MeeBlip Digital Synthesizer and a hardcover version of Praktisches Kockbuch (Practical Cookbook) from the 1950s by Mary Hahn, Gwydion set about the delicate task of hollowing out the old book for use as the synthesizer's case. While it was Gwydion's initial attempt at such an unusual project, it turned out to be very usable combined with Konkreet Labs' Performer app for the iPad - with the physical dials, switches, and the LED aptly arrayed on a page with a recipe for pork roast. So how cool does the synthesizer cookbook sound? Hit the play button at the video below for a quick listen.
Synth in a Book from Konkreet Labs on Vimeo.
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