Steam punk magical-realist world-building at its finest. Back in 2012, Dishonored earned the first Game of the Year honor of my tenure at Ars Technica. Looking back on the game some 13 years later, Arkane’s well-constructed world of steam punk magical realism earns its place as a modern classic.…
“Never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try.” The rocket company founded a quarter-century ago by billionaire Jeff Bezos made history Thursday with the pinpoint landing of an 18-story-tall rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean. The on-target touchdown…
The results of AI-assisted hacking aren’t as impressive as many might have us believe. Researchers from Anthropic said they recently observed the “first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign” after detecting China-state hackers using the company’s Claude AI tool in a campaign targeting dozens of targets. Outside researchers are much…
Tariffs, component volatility, and Valve’s tolerance for losses all lead to uncertainty. If you ask random gamers what price they think Valve will charge for its newly announced Steam Machine hardware, you’ll get a wide range of guesses. But if you ask the analysts who follow the game industry…
Tiny chips can be powered by infrared light if they’re near the brain’s surface. Standard brain implants use electrodes that penetrate the gray matter to stimulate and record the activity of neurons. These typically need to be put in place via a surgical procedure. To go around that need,…
Ars chats with particle physicist Daniel Whiteson about his new book Do Aliens Speak Physics? Science fiction has long speculated about the possibility of first contact with an alien species from a distant world and how we might be able to communicate with them. But what if we simply…
Almost half of US car buyers won’t consider a car without Apple CarPlay. Apple CarPlay, the interface that lets you cast your phone to your car’s infotainment screen, may finally be coming to Tesla’s electric vehicles. CarPlay is nearly a decade old at this point, and it has become…
Google will preserve sideloading for power users, but it hasn’t decided how that will work yet. Google recently decided that the freedom afforded by Android was a bit too much and announced developer verification, a system that will require developers outside the Google Play platform to register with Google.…
Even a 50 percent performance-per-watt improvement wouldn’t be enough, engineer says. Yesterday’s announcement of new living room and VR hardware from Valve obviously has many gamers clamoring for any news of a more powerful version of the nearly 4-year-old Steam Deck. In a new interview with IGN, though, Valve…
Tracking winds across Mars’ surface and their association with dust storms. Mars is cold, parched, and extremely dusty. Powerful gusts of wind kick up literal tons of reddish dust that often takes the form of whorls known as dust devils. These winds also shroud the planet in dust by…
