Virtualization updates let you use your MacBook Pro Touch Bar in Windows 10

Why it matters to you

If you’re using the Parallels Desktop 13 or VMWare Fusion 10 virtualization apps to run Windows 10 on your MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, then grab the latest versions to get the most out of your investment.

One major advantage of Apple’s MacOS platform is its ability to run Windows 10 via Boot Camp or third-party virtualization apps. While Boot Camp is likely the highest performance option, it doesn’t fully leverage the MacBook Pro Touch Bar in Windows 10 mode. Two of the more popular virtualization apps, Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, change that equation by adding in meaningful Windows 10 Touch Bar support.

The news comes via 9to5Mac, which reported on both Parallels Desktop 13 and VMware Fusion 10 now enabling some nice Touch Bar functionality for Windows 10 users. The virtualization apps also add a number of other features that equate to significant upgrades for existing users.

VMWare Fusion 10’s Touch Bar support provides for “commonly used controls,” without much in the way of details. Additional updates in Fusion 10 include enhanced GPU and 3D graphics performance, and a new user interface that better leverages MacOS, Linux, and Windows 10. Enterprise users will benefit from improved virtual machine management (VM) features and enhanced support for Microsoft’s virtualization-based security features, UEFI Secure Boot, and virtual Trusted Platform Module support.

Parallels Desktop 13’s Touch Bar support for Windows 10 was explained in additional detail. Not only does the Touch Bar provide specific functionality for Windows apps that are running in a VM, but when no apps are running, the Touch Bar can be used to show items in the Windows task bar for easy access to running and available apps. The following video shows off Touch Bar support in Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac.

Other updates include enhancements to the Parallels Toolbox utility like Airplane Mode, Clean Drive, and Find Duplicates. Parallels Desktop 13 also anticipates some future Windows 10 features that will be coming in the Fall Creators Update, such as the Windows 10 People Bar and picture-in-picture functionality. Of course, performance and reliability improvements are also part of the package

The update to VMware Fusion 10 costs $49 for existing users and $119 for the Pro version. If you buy version 8.5 or 8.5 Pro now, you’ll receive an update to version 10 when it’s officially released in October. Parallels Desktop 13 is available today as a $50 upgrade for version 11 or 12 users; a new copy costs $80.

What is AMD doing in LA? Helping more filmmakers achieve Hollywood-caliber FX

For any lifelong fan of sword-and-sorcery fantasy, watching the dragon called Dragon sweeping over the onrushing Dothraki horde and spewing fire at the Lannister army was thrilling. Watching it in a TV show like Game of Thrones was simply remarkable. It wasn’t too long ago that such scenes were limited to feature films with blockbuster budgets. AMD Studios, a newly unveiled AMD venture that’s opened its first office in Hollywood, wants to make such scenes far more commonplace.

AMD Studios wasn’t involved in creating that scene from Game of Thrones. But if you’re a director who envisions a scene with 100 such dragons instead of just one, then Roy Taylor, AMD’s worldwide head of media and entertainment, wants you to give him a call.

Scenes like the one from Game of Thrones season 7, episode 4, “Spoils of War,” that caused such a stir, are incredibly expensive to make. There’s a reason why we don’t see many such scenes in a single season of a TV show, even one with an above-average budget like HBO’s production. AMD Studios wants to change that by lowering the cost of systems capable of creating those magical moments and making it easier for studios to pack more of them into a show — and for smaller studios to achieve them at all.

Being stealthy while the technology catches up

AMD Studios grew out of a friendship between Taylor and James Knight, a Hollywood veteran with production credits on films including Avatar and I Am Legend, as well as the Star Wars: The Old Republic video game. Two years ago, after Knight joined AMD Studios and became its virtual production director, the two set up shop in Hollywood and flew under the radar — listening to what Hollywood was looking for and waiting for AMD technology to catch up with the industry’s needs.

Left to right: Daryl Cameron, chief of staff; James Knight, virtual production director; Dominick Spina, head of film technology; and Roy Taylor, worldwide head of media and Entertainment

Over time, AMD Studios added new team members with some serious media and entertainment backgrounds. Dominick Spina came on board as head of film technology, bringing with him two decades of technology experience in film, broadcast, visual effects animation production, and other industries. And Robin Prybil, AMD Studios head of TV technology, added to the team’s experience with her work on The BFG, The Adventures of Tin Tin, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

AMD Studios flew under the radar — listening to what Hollywood wanted and waiting for AMD technology to catch up.

During those first two years, the team used its location in Hollywood and its industry contacts to kick off its first collaboration. Fox’s FoxNext VR and Technicolor MPC were creating the VR experience Alien: Covenant In Utero, and the studios weren’t happy with the available 4K stereo video players. AMD Studios, much to the producers’ surprise, offered to put AMD software engineers to work writing a custom player for the production. According to Taylor, the resulting 4K player contributed significantly to In Utero’s success.

Next, Taylor was introduced to Red Digital Camera Company Camera President Jarred Land by a mutual acquaintance. He wasted no time in promising something that Land didn’t believe AMD could possibly provide: a solution for editing 8K footage in real time at 24 frames per second. AMD Studios is two blocks from Red’s offices, and Taylor and his team rolled a system down the street to prove they could deliver. AMD’s Radeon Pro Vega SSG with 2TB of RAM was the presented solution.  AMD software engineers were then once again put to work — this time in converting AMD’s code to support Red’s R3D file format.

Land was so impressed with AMD’s technology, and the work that AMD Studios performed, that he went on stage during AMD’s Capsaicin event, at SIGGRAPH 2017. He also took his plaudits to Facebook:

AMD, Welcome to Hollywood. Thanks for having me be part of your Siggraph reveal last night. Threadripper, Radeon SSG…

Posted by Jarred Land on Monday, July 31, 2017

Now, AMD Studios is leveraging its prime Hollywood location to keep listening to the industry. At the same time, AMD’s recent hardware advancements mean that the team has an even stronger story to tell.

Bringing film’s relationship with technology into the 21st century

Taylor opened the AMD Capsaicin SIGGRAPH 2017 event by quoting Shakespeare’s Henry V. His point: to draw a direct parallel between resource-hungry writers leaning on the Bard’s writing skills in opening a new theater in 1599, and smaller Hollywood studios today facing their own unmet technology needs. That’s exactly what AMD Studios wants to offer — to act as a partner that can deliver end-to-end digital production capability that until now has been impossible or unaffordable.

Historically, technology has been involved with film from the very beginning, starting in 1895 with Louis Lumière adding a sprocket to something akin to Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, thus creating the Cinématographe machine that could broadcast a moving picture to a screen. Today, everyone’s familiar with the impact of computer graphics (CG) in special effects. Less well-known is the use of video game engines in the 1990s for preproduction visualization, which let directors virtually place people and items in a scene on a display, without the cost of physically changing things on a set.

Next came virtual production in the mid-2000s, where actors could dress in jeans and T-shirts in real life, while being digitally displayed in full costume on a large screen suspended above a set. Virtual production allows a director to frame a final shot exactly as desired with minimal cost. Taken together, these technologies make for an end-to-end digital pipeline that includes digital preproduction visualization, digital virtual production, digital post-production, and visual effects.

Today, there is a shift from offline to CG production, or virtual production. Challenges remain, such as how to get actors into real-time CG production — consider the difference in reaction to Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher’s digital representation in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, for example. Further technologies such as volumetric capture and light-field capture should help make for more realistic movement, animation, and human expressions.

Where AMD Studios comes in is in bringing this technology down in price, making it available to smaller studios and productions with smaller budgets. Consider post-production rendering, for example. Larger studios have access to huge render farms that can churn through the special effects that make Avatar and Game of Thrones possible. Smaller studios, though, must make do with much less powerful hardware and software — so what’s possible for them is limited.

AMD Studios will help by going on set and into production houses and creating custom hardware and software solutions based on AMD hardware and software. They want to say to a director, as Taylor put it, “Oh, by the way, you want that shot to have another 10,000 troops? And you think it’s going to cost you millions to render? Well guess what, it’s not, and we can do that for you.”

As with In Utero and Red Camera, AMD Studios will pull AMD hardware and software together to create tailor-made solutions that let studios tell their stories in a more impactful way, for less money than ever.

Where the metal meets the digital cellulose

According to Taylor, AMD is uniquely suited for an initiative like AMD Studios. Intel can provide CPU-based solutions and Nvidia can provide GPU-based solutions while AMD can bring both to a studio. This is important because some tasks require superior CPU performance while others benefit primarily from GPU performance.

AMD’s recent advances in CPU and GPU technology are contributing to making AMD Studios a viable concern, which helps explain why AMD is the first chip company to set up an office in Hollywood. The company’s new Zen architecture, Ryzen and Threadripper CPUs  and Vega GPU architecture, are leading the way in providing the tools AMD Studios needs to create its custom solutions.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

To meet the needs of smaller studios and lower-budget productions, for example, AMD has created RS1, a system aimed directly at 8K rendering at a significantly lower price. RS1 brings two EPYC server processors and up to four high-end Vega or SSG GPUs, providing up to 100 teraflops of half-precision performance. Just as important, Taylor expects the most powerful RS1 system to come in at half the price of a similarly configured Intel and Nvidia solution.

The first RS1 samples will be rolling out in the next few weeks, and AMD Studios will also be providing access to its Project 47 server rack that delivers a petaflop of full 32-bit precision compute performance via 20 EPYC CPUs and 18 Vega GPUs. Project 47 can be leased or purchased, and it’s intended to provide massive rendering performance to smaller production houses.

AMD

While this off-the-shelf hardware will on occasion be offered up as a solution to a filmmaker’s problem, AMD Studios will be focused on providing custom solutions. That means AMD’s software engineers will remain busy, and that the usual applications in use by studios will increasingly be optimized for AMD’s newest technology. For example, two popular tools used in the industry, the Octane renderer used to create final photorealistic images and video, and The Foundry’s Nuke 11 Studio, for composing and editing scenes, now run on AMD. Adobe’s Premier is now optimized for SSG. And a fully AMD-optimized version of the popular renderer Redshift will be shipping in late September 2017.

40-percent talking, 60-percent listening

Taylor is enthusiastic about how AMD Studios will help push storytelling forward by using AMD technology, essentially “bridging the gap between Northern California’s Silicon Valley and Southern California’s Hollywood.” His team’s future success will derive from two primary efforts.

First, building on its Hollywood location and on its philosophy of “40-percent talking, 60-percent listening,” as Taylor describes it, AMD Studios will remain at the forefront of media and entertainment technology by constantly looking — and listening — for opportunities to push storytelling forward. Because its solutions will be custom-built based on what filmmakers envision, AMD Studios will avoid the tendency to let its current state of hardware and software resources define the solutions it presents.

For example, as Taylor points out, directors routinely look back after a shoot and imagine how they might have done things differently. “In an ideal world, a director should be able to wake up one morning and have a eureka moment. ‘What we should have done in Act 1 is, we should have taken this part and had that effect,’” Taylor said.

Today, studios balk at the cost of completely redoing a scene, but a fully digital production pipeline could make it possible to edit and re-edit on the fly, and provide directors with significantly more flexibility. The ability to virtually reshoot a scene could make the difference between a good film and a masterpiece — and it’s having that kind of discussion with filmmakers that will ensure that AMD Studios’ offerings avoid stagnation.

As Taylor put it, “The line between imagination and invention is indistinguishable.” He’s depending on filmmakers themselves to guide him across that line by telling him what they imagine and letting AMD Studios discover what’s possible. Taylor elaborated on this point:

“There may be some director, some writer, out there right now, who maybe has a scene envisioned for something, and they don’t really think it’s possible. But now there’s someone they can call up and say, ‘Is this possible.’ And you might very well say, ‘Yeah.’ And the impact on imagination is immeasurable.”

It doesn’t hurt that Taylor and his team are also heavily involved with media and entertainment organizations like the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). AMD Studios a BAFTA partner, and AMD will gain serious exposure at the upcoming AMD BAFTA Britannia Awards.

Teach them, and they will lead you forward

AMD Studios’ second tactic for influencing the industry is to work closely with film schools in England and the U.S. By introducing these technologies to a new generation of filmmakers, Taylor hopes to help create technology-savvy producers and directors who are fully prepped to hear AMD Studios’ message. In turn, those up-and-coming filmmakers will be the ones to guide AMD Studios’ efforts going forward, ensuring that it remains at the cutting edge of media and technology production.

AMD Studios makes digital production technology more affordable for smaller studios and productions with smaller budgets.

Some of Taylor’s most excited moments during our interview was when he talked about working with film students: “I really get a kick out of the students. They have such great ideas for the use of technology. The new generation of filmmakers is going to come through, which is going to say, ‘Alrighty, I’m going to keep challenging.’”

One place where Taylor is heavily involved with educating filmmakers is at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which is setting up the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, and he is encouraging investments in advanced media technology like light-field capture. Another example is a scholarship that’s being established at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in Britain.

How will AMD measure its success?

The bottom line is this — providing filmmakers with access to more powerful systems at significantly lower prices means more and better scenes in more of our favorite shows. Imagine a Game of Thrones where elaborate Drogon and the Dothraki scenes aren’t limited to a single episode and a few minutes of air time.

Taylor speaks directly to AMD Studios’ potential impact by referring to one of his favorite TV shows:

“And so if you look at, for example, ‘Spartacus,’ which is a show that I love, at the very beginning they didn’t have very large scenes, and if you look at some of the crowd scenes at the beginning of ‘Spartacus,’ they weren’t that great. By the time you go to the finale, the budgets had improved dramatically and they looked that much better. I would have love to have been there and to have been able to speak to the director and producer at the beginning, and we could have helped them to make it look great right now.”

When we asked Taylor directly how he would measure the success of AMD Studios, his answer was immediate. He said, “If it’s as successful as I can imagine, we’ll hopefully one day be picking up some sci-tech Oscar awards, and we’ll be recognized for contributions to film, television, and VR. To think that we contributed enough to be recognized like that would really be terrific.”

For the larger AMD organization, the knock-on effect could be equally as profound. Just like Apple became the de facto platform for graphic artists by getting its equipment into creative schools early and making sure its technology met their needs, so, too, is AMD Studios getting AMD’s technology into media and entertainment.

And when we watch a TV show that blows our mind not just once a season but in every episode, then there’s a good chance that Roy Taylor and his staff at AMD Studios will have been hard at work making it happen.

Scientists re-create the ‘diamond rain’ effect from Neptune and Uranus

Why it matters to you

The diamond rain effect not only helps answer questions about Neptune and Uranus, it also provides a new way of making diamonds, too.

The kind of glittering “diamond rain” hypothesized as taking place on Neptune and Uranus has been replicated in a lab here on Earth. On the two icy giant planets, the phenomenon is thought to be the result of hydrogen and carbon mixing under high-pressure conditions. On Earth, scientists re-created the effect by creating shock waves in plastic using an intense optical laser.

The laser rapidly heated up the surface of the plastic, which caused it to expand and generate a shock wave. The team prompted the creation of two shock waves, with the second being the faster of the two. When the shockwaves overlapped, it resulted in pressure and temperature of 150 GPa and 5,000 K being produced. These are similar to the conditions found around 10,000 km into the interior of Neptune and Uranus.

The results turned almost every carbon atom in the plastic material into a tiny diamond, just a few nanometers wide. While that is considerably smaller than the diamonds theorized to fall on the icy planets in question, this represents the first time the effect has been demonstrated. Using short pulses of X-rays, the team were actually able to watch the diamonds being formed.

“Our experiments were able to directly measure hydrocarbon separation and diamond formation at planetary interior conditions for the first time,” Dominik Kraus, a scientist at Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, told Digital Trends. “Besides the pretty cool [images] of diamond precipitation inside ice giants, this is important for various reasons.”

These reasons including a better understanding of planetary interiors, which is crucial to our understanding of the solar system, as well as — with more immediate practicality — a new way of potentially making diamonds.

“Making diamonds, in the case of our experiment ‘nanodiamonds,’ from simple hydrocarbons like plastics may have interesting applications since nanodiamonds have a steadily growing range of use in medicine, electronics, and material science,” Kraus continued. “This may be another example of how physics that was motivated by trying to understand objects in the sky can lead to useful applications on our planet. Currently, most nanodiamonds for scientific and industrial applications are produced with explosives. High-energy lasers may be able to provide a more elegant and controllable method.”

A research paper describing the project was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Good to the last drop? NASA could use astronaut pee to make tools, food

Why it matters to you

This new prototype approach to recycling astronaut urine could change the way me plan and supply a mission to Mars.

For years, NASA has tinkered with creative ways to use in-situ materials to minimize launch costs and also prepare for extended missions. And it looks like the agency may have found an unlikely and ubiquitous space resource to work with: Astronaut urine. Based on new research, NASA could one day use astronaut pee for everything from 3D-printer plastics to a source of nutrients.

NASA has been repurposing astronaut urine on the International Space Station for years. In fact, nearly 93 percent of all water on the ISS is reclaimed from sweat, breath, shower runoff, and urine (from both astronauts and animals on board). A fun fact: Cosmonauts don’t drink water reclaimed from urine. However, the American astronauts recycle cosmonaut urine for a portion of their hydration needs.

The project, presented at the American Chemical Society annual conference, is focused on fine-tuning clever ways to repurpose human waste in orbit. The team hopes to one day use strains of Yarrowia lipolytica- — a yeast often found in certain cheeses — fed human urine to create a series of useful byproducts including plastics for 3D printing and even food supplements. The urea in urine provides nitrogen for the yeast cultures. Earlier research has already illustrated how genetically modified yeast can be used to produce essential nutrients like omega-3 fatty acids, plastics, and also polyesters. All of which will be crucial supply elements on longer missions (say to Mars, for example) where resupply missions could take months.

“Astronauts will need to be able to produce nutrients and materials they need during Earth-independent long-term space travel,” noted lead researcher Mark Blenner, a synthetic biologist at Clemson University in South Carolina. “They simply don’t have the space to transport all possible needs — and certain nutrients, drugs, and materials can degrade over the course of three-plus year mission.”

NASA has made great leaps in the past few years when it comes to testing support systems crucial to any extended, self-sufficient mission. These projects include everything from growing food in an onboard space garden to 3D-printing tools and even satellites in orbit. This latest effort is still in its preliminary phase, however, Blenner is optimistic the project will eventually have practical applications in due time.

Blenner’s team is also considering the possibility of another process that uses human fecal matter to support yeast growth. The best method for extracting plastics from said yeasts as well as how well the organisms will grow in microgravity and a host of other variables are currently still unknown. That said, not everyone in the scientific community is equally amped about the potential of this new pee-fed Franken-yeast.

“I can’t help feeling in most cases it is a lot lighter just to carry the spares than a giant piece of machinery that produces a rather crappy piece of plastic that might not be the best for the tool in the first place,” explained Mark Hempsell, president of the British Interplanetary Society.

Whether this project ever comes to fruition or is simply money down the drain is anyone’s guess.

Dell gets X-treme with Alienware Area-51 PC, but caps CPU core count at 10

Why it matters to you

If you were holding out to see if Dell would offer an Alienware Area-51 desktop using a processor with more than 10 cores, you might want to consider the Threadripper Edition instead.

We already know that the Alienware Area-51 Threadripper Edition is out for your purchasing pleasure. Now Dell is reporting that the Intel X-Series version of its gaming desktop is available for a $1,900 starting price, which is cheaper than the Threadripper model’s $2,700 starting price. Unfortunately, the Intel-based model doesn’t provide a processor option of more than 10 cores, so you’ll have to make a separate purchase and install the Core i9-7920X 12-core chip or higher yourself if you want more performance.

Here’s the full list of hardware options:

Processor:
Intel Core i7-7800X (6 cores)
Intel Core i7-7820X (8 cores)
Intel Core i9-7900X (10 cores)
Processor cooling:
Liquid
Graphics single card:
AMD Radeon RX 570 (4GB)
AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB)
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 (air-cooled)
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 (liquid-cooled)
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Graphics dual cards (SLI):
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Graphics triple cards (Crossfire):
AMD Radeon RX 570 (4GB)
AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB)
Open expansion slots
Six
Memory slots:
4x DDR4 UDIMM (288-pin) up to 64GB
Memory single-channel support:
8GB DDR4 @ 2,400MHz / 2,666MHz
8GB HyperX DDR4 XMP @ 2,933MHz
Memory dual-channel support:
16GB DDR4 @ 2,400MHz / 2,666MHz
16GB HyperX DDR4 XMP @ 2,933MHz
32GB DDR4 @ 2,400MHz / 2,666MHz
32GB HyperX DDR4 XMP @ 2,933MHz
Memory quad-channel support:
64GB DDR4 @ 2,400MHz / 2,666MHz
64GB HyperX DDR4 XMP @ 2,933MHz
Storage 1 (boot):
128GB M.2 SATA SSD (in dual-storage config only)
256GB M.2 PCI Express SSD
512GB M.2 PCI Express SSD
1TB M.2 PCI Express SSD
Storage 2 (data):
2TB 7,200RPM SATA 3 HDD
Storage 3 (optical):
Slot-loading dual-layer DVD burner
Slot-loading dual-layer Blu-ray reader
Intel Optane memory options:
16GB
32GB
Audio:
High-definition 7.1 audio
Connectivity:
Dell 1820 Wireless AC (up to 867Mbps)
Killer 1535 Wireless AC (up to 867Mbps)
Bluetooth 4.1
Ports (rear):
2x Gigabit Ethernet (Killer E2500)
2x USB 2.0 Type-A
6x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A (5Gbps)
1x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A (10Gbps)
1x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C (charges)
6x Audio output (including SPDIF)
Ports (front):
2x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A
1x Headphone jack
1x Microphone jack
1x SD card reader
Power supply:
850-watt 80 Plus Bronze
1,500-watt 80 Plus Gold
Dimensions:
22.41 (H) x 25.15 (D) x 10.73
Weight (starting):
61.73 pounds
Chassis color:
Epic Silver
Operating system:
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Lighting:
Nine programmable zones using 20 colors
Rear I/O panel
Internal “theater” illumination

The heavy list of hardware should speak for itself. There are plenty of options to meet your budget, but we’re honestly a little disappointed that Dell didn’t wait a few more weeks to include Intel’s 12-core X-Series processor option. That chip alone costs $1,200, and the prices only get steeper from there until you reach the ceiling with Intel’s upcoming 18-core i9-7980XE, which costs a hefty $2,000. That’s more than the Area-51 starting price, which is why you’ll probably never see Intel processors with more than 10 cores in the desktop anytime soon.

Notice that the dual graphics card option only includes Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 10 series, whereas the triple graphics card setup only uses Radeon RX 500 Series cards. While cramming in two Geforce GTX 1080 Ti cards will be your most powerful graphics option, it’s also the most expensive given the cards cost $700 each. Having the three Radeon RX 580 cards installed will likely surpass a single GTX 1080 Ti card’s performance for $13 less. To help in your purchasing decision, here’s a little chart to show the cards for the SLI and Crossfire options, their prices, and Fire Strike results pulled from 3DMark:

Unit Price
Fire Strike Score
Radeon RX 570 (4GB)
$169
11,970
Radeon RX 580 (8GB)
$229
13,980
GeForce GTX 1070
$399
18,240
GeForce GTX 1080
$549
21,950
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
$699
27,890

Honestly, for a desktop with a starting price of $1,900, the Area-51 is an attractive product you’ll have no trouble showing off to friends. And it’s ready for virtual reality no matter what CPU or graphics card you choose. Dell’s current $1,900 starting configuration includes the six-core Intel Core i7-7800X, 8GB of system memory, and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card.

Of course, if you have money to burn, Dell provides three additional starting points for $2,200, $2,800, and $3,800 right here. For the record, Dell isn’t calling this version the “X-Series Edition” as previously thought, but merely the “New” Alienware Area-51 as seen listed within the site’s Products > Desktops > Alienware menu. Happy shopping!

Watch our Android 8.0 Oreo video review!

There are big updates, and there are not-so-big updates. Over the years, some Android versions have brought massive technical and visual changes, while others have tightened up the screws and added polish without shaking things up too much.

The new release of for 2017 and beyond — Android 8.0 Oreo — fits somewhere in between those two extremes. Android is pretty stable at this point, so broad, sweeping changes are less necessary with every new version.

As a result, the new version isn’t really about big, obvious new features — instead, it’s the sum of many, many smaller changes which help make it the most mature and powerful version of Android to date. Oreo brings better performance, fewer pain points and added convenience, thanks to features like notification channels, picture-in-picture, background app limits and smarter text input. Android still feels like Android, but in 8.0 it’s more polished than ever.

Check out our video review to see more of what’s coming to your phone with the latest OS update.

• Android 8.0 Oreo full review
• Android Central on YouTube
• Everything you need to know about Android Oreo
• Latest Android Oreo news and articles

There are limited edition Android Oreos, but not for most people

Google and Nabisco have made limited edition Android Oreos.

You know what tastes better than new software? New software and cookies. To that end, Google and Nabisco have teamed up to make some Oreo cookies with the Android logo inscribed on top. There’s also a green filling inside to match the green of the Bugdroid logo. I haven’t heard anyone mention what flavor the filling is, but I’d guess it would be mint.

According to Ausdroid, this was apparently only for the Oreo launch event. When Android 4.4 KitKat was released, Google and Nestlé printed special wrappers for KitKat bars, though the bars themselves were unchanged. There was also some delicious looking ice cream at the Oreo launch event, and it’s making me hungry for some Sonic.

Found this on my desk this afternoon. Just ate it. Hope it wasn’t limited edition. pic.twitter.com/JjUH26PjeJ

— Dave Burke (@davey_burke) August 21, 2017

How quickly would you eat an Oreo with the Android logo on it? Let us know down below!

Android Oreo

• Android Oreo review!
• Everything new in Android Oreo
• How to get Android Oreo on your Pixel or Nexus
• Oreo will make you love notifications again
• Will my phone get Android Oreo?
• Join the Discussion

LG will build electric car parts in Detroit

LG Electronics is building a 250,000 square foot EV parts plant in Detroit suburb Hazel Park, it said in a press release. LG might not build its own cars, but its vehicle components division supplies many key pieces for GM’s critically acclaimed Chevy Bolt, to name one manufacturer. That’s an understatement: It builds the battery cells and pack, electric motor, power inverter, on-board charger, climate control, instrument cluster and infotainment system.

GM is therefore relying a lot on LG, but the feeling is mutual: LG says it made about $1.5 billion building vehicle components in the first half of 2017. That’s a 43 percent increase from the year before and a big chunk of that gain is due to the Bolt. The new plant should make it easier to supply those parts and ease any importing concerns with US regulators. The plant received a $2.9 million grant from the Michigan Business Development Program, and will employ at least 292 factory workers and engineers.

LG will no doubt look to expand its parts business beyond GM. Traditional automakers have been forced to switch gears from gas to electricity, thanks to an EV revolution created largely by Tesla. To make that transition more quickly, they’ll need help from companies that already know how to build complex battery packs and other components. With a plant in the center of the US auto industry, LG should be able to fill that role quite nicely.

Source: LG Electronics USA

Ubisoft’s next ‘Anno’ game relives the age of trade and empire

The Anno RTS series focuses more on civilization-building than straight-up combat, and its later editions explored that premise centuries into the future. But the franchise’s next entry casts back a couple hundred years to the past when mankind’s maps weren’t fully filled in. Today at Gamescom, Ubisoft announced Anno 1800, putting players in charge of nations setting sail for trade and diplomacy.

While scaling back from the far-flung future to the steam era is a serious change, the 19th century setting is a fertile period for revolutionary ideas and national ambitions. Players will get the standard campaign, sandbox and multiplayer modes from Anno’s past, though not much more detail has been released, aside from a release date: Winter 2018. To alleviate the wait, the German-based Ubisoft team in charge of the game, Blue Byte, is inviting players to vote on which elements make it into the game to make them feel a bit more invested.

Follow all the latest news live from Gamescom here!

Source: Ubisoft

Super-powered bacteria can harness light for fuels and plastics

Researchers have been working on improving the photosynthetic process for some time — trying to use light to create energy but doing so in a way that’s much more efficient than chlorophyll. For plants, chlorophyll works well, but to use photosynthesis to create products like fuels or polymers, we need something that works faster and generates more output. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have come up with a method that does just that and they’re presenting their work this week at the National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

The team did this by using a bacteria that doesn’t normally photosynthesize. Instead, it uses carbon dioxide to generate acetic acid — a chemical that can be used to produce a number of different fuels, polymers and pharmaceuticals. When the researchers gave the bacteria cadmium (a metal) and cysteine (an amino acid), the bacteria synthesized tiny particles of cadmium sulfide on their surfaces. And cadmium sulfide can use light to create energy, boosting the bacteria’s production of acetic acid. It’s like photosynthesis but much more powerful.

“Rather than rely on inefficient chlorophyll to harvest sunlight, I’ve taught bacteria how to grow and cover their bodies with tiny semiconductor nanocrystals,” Kelsey Sakimoto, one of the researchers on the project, told Phys.org. “These nanocrystals are much more efficient than chlorophyll and can be grown at a fraction of the cost of manufactured solar panels.” The bacteria are 80 percent efficient and self-replicate, passing on the ability to produce the cadmium sulfide particles to new bacteria during replication.

Others have worked on this same goal with different methods. Some of them require hardware like solar cells, electrodes or nanowires but this process doesn’t require anything extra. “Many current systems in artificial photosynthesis require solid electrodes, which is a huge cost,” said Sakimoto. “Our algal biofuels are much more attractive, as the whole CO2-to-chemical apparatus is self-contained and only requires a big vat out in the sun.”

The method is still being developed and Sakimoto says there’s a chance that a similar sort of bacteria already exists in nature. “A future direction, if this phenomenon exists in nature, would be to bioprospect for these organisms and put them to use,” he said.

Source: Phys.org