As schools adopt remote learning or hybrid reopening models, US students face a laptop shortage, particularly of low-cost Chromebooks popular at K-8 schools — American students are facing a shortage of laptops, particularly low-cost Chromebooks popular in K-8 schools …
Jamie Foxx plays The Major (who's name we eventually learn is Art), a veteran trying to hunt down the creators of the Power pills. [credit: SKIP BOLEN/NETFLIX © 2020 ]
Remember movie theaters? Those things were fun—even in the dead heat of summer, you could snag a $10 ticket for two hours of air conditioning, varying degrees of thrills, and the option to overspend on popcorn and M&Ms. Perhaps even better, this situation encouraged out-of-your-comfort-zone choice. Only so many different films can play on a theater's limited number of screens at once, so instead of being paralyzed by endless selection screen scrolling, you and your cohort simply aimed for what sounded best and maybe enjoyed something you wouldn't have tried otherwise.
Project Power, available this weekend on Netflix, stars Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Dominique Fishback. It screams "summer action movie, available for a few weekends in July." But in 2020, such things remain fantasies of the past. That's a shame for many, many reasons, but one of the tinier downsides of the film industry's current reality is that Project Power is a good time many people will simply never see, maybe never even know exists.
In a broad sense, Project Power tells a classic tale of those in power conducting experiments on the rest of us. A seedy scientific startup called Teleios has created a drug that gives humans superpowers (the drug's plainly called Power). The drug sits firmly in the development stage, though. Users don't know what power they'll develop—the list of classics includes chameleon-like camouflage, super strength, regeneration abilities, etc.—but not all of 'em end up benefitting users.
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Sure, you could watch some film on Netflix this weekend... or you can learn all you ever wanted to about the great Subnautica. Directed by Sean Dacanay, edited by Jeremy Smolik.
Around Ars, we always knew Subnautica was special. The gaming world has been littered with different spins on a survival game—from Minecraft to Don't Starve et al.—but reviewer Steven Strom put his finger on the key difference when reviewing the game back in February 2018:
Unlike the other survival games I've tried, [Subnautica] has a beginning, middle, and ending. There's a purpose to the player's time spent stranded on Planet 4546B. By giving an end to the means, survival doesn't just feel like satisfaction for its own sake—for my own self-aggrandizement.
Naturally, when we had the chance to get director Charlie Cleveland in a room last year to walk us through this modern classic's backstory (err, War Story), we dove in deepsea helmet-first. Cleveland walked us through his initial inspiration (a game that wasn't built around guns and combat), what made the game's mysteries so effective (being engaged is more important than being engaged in combat), and how he settled on placing this alien world below rather than above ground.
But really, for game with the depth of Subnautica, 20 minutes ain't nearly enough. So we've finally made our entire 90-plus minute conversation with Cleveland available for your enjoyment. If you love Subnautica or are even just curious about it, this cut has much, much more detail than our initial War Story. Be sure to stick around till the interview's final third in particular if you're interested in seeing some early versions of the game.
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Planet X has a long and storied history of non-existence. For about 130 years, astronomers have debated the existence of an additional planet or planets to explain discrepancies in the orbits of the known planets (mainly Neptune and Uranus). Later, the list of discrepancies was expanded to cover trans-Neptunian objects. But none of the Planet X candidates discovered, including Pluto, have the mass or location to explain observations.
Primordial black holes have now been proposed as the latest planet X (or planet 9, since Pluto was demoted).
Planet X’s origin starts with the discovery of Neptune. Neptune was not found by accident: observations of oddities in the orbit of Uranus were used to calculate the location of Neptune, and it was subsequently found.
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India announces National Digital Health Mission for digitizing citizens' health records; enrollment in the initiative will be voluntary — Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the government's National Digital Health Mission on 15 August. So what is it?
Enlarge / Uh, you didn't buy your mask at FaceMaskCenter.com, right? (credit: Kilito Chan / Getty Images)
The COVID-19 pandemic, and millions of people desperate for scarce protective equipment like masks and Tyvek suits, has presented a bonanza for scammers. Now, according to the US Department of Justice, it seems that even ISIS has gotten in on the game.
In a series of civil and criminal complaints and forfeiture notices released this week, the Justice Department has revealed that it seized hundreds of bitcoin and ethereum accounts, millions of dollars, and four websites from known Islamic extremist groups that were using those accounts and funds to support terrorist operations. Prosecutors say the forfeited crypto assets from the groups, which include ISIS, the al-Qassam Brigades, and al Qaeda, represent "the government’s largest-ever seizure of cryptocurrency in the terrorism context." The cryptocurrency haul alone totals more than $1 million according to Chainalysis, a blockchain-focused firm whose tools were used in the investigation.
Among the jihadist fundraising efforts the DOJ has nixed, however, one stands out as particularly brazen. Court documents [PDF] detail how an ISIS agent allegedly ran a scam website for COVID-19 personal protective equipment, or PPE, known as FaceMaskCenter.com.
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An oral history of hip-hop sites like UBO, Hookt, and 360HipHop which raised millions before becoming the early casualties of the first dot-com bubble — It wasn't just Pets.com and eToys — 20 years ago, a slew of hip-hop and ‘urban’ sites became early casualties of the first dot-com bubble
Tens of thousands of high school students were downgraded from teacher estimates by an algorithm that replaced exams in UK, affecting university applications — Even with the late changes, GCSE and A-Level results still highlight the flaws in a biased education system
Researchers detail XCSSET, a newly discovered macOS malware that spreads through Xcode projects; it is not yet clear how XCSSET is infecting Xcode projects — XCSSET malware focuses on exploiting Safari and other browsers. — Xcode projects are being exploited to spread a form …
Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia : MediaTek says it has started to use Intel Foundry's advanced chip packaging in addition to TSMC's...
