Ars Technica - Opposable Thumbs

Feels Good Man, a film that truly gets how things are passed across the Internet

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 14:00:17 GMT

Trailer for Feels Good Man.

There’s no shortage of documentaries about our current political climate or the fact that the Internet might be bad, but Feels Good Man focuses on the craziest intersection of these two modern realities: Pepe, the cartoon frog.

If you’re aware of Pepe already, chances are it’s because the character has become synonymous with the alt-right, that extreme online demographic tied to modern white supremacists and Nazi movements. Or perhaps you heard of Pepe before that, during the time this frog had become the meme du jour of 4chan, the anonymous message board associated with all sorts of nefarious real-world behavior. Though Pepe's most high-profile 15 minutes of fame were inarguably a cameo on then-candidate Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, leading to the character’s adoption by some of his most extreme supporters, like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Feels Good Man will get to all that, of course, but this documentary starts with the now-toxic toad’s tadpole days. By doing so, the film will likely show viewers something they didn’t know or hadn’t previously considered regardless of prior familiarity with Pepe and the insanity swirling around him. And through tracing Pepe’s evolution, Feels Good Man manages to remind everyone of a fundamental truth of communication, particularly in the Internet age. Once you click send on something, things like original intent and context might become as ephemeral as a single tweet.

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Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion makes the megahit more accessible

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 14:00:22 GMT

Enlarge / There's still a lot of stuff in this box. (credit: Cephalofair Games)

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.

There’s a reason Gloomhaven (read our 2017 review) is so popular. There’s also a reason why half of my friends who own a copy have opened it once, stared in despair at the contents within, and loosed a timid box-fart as they reassembled the package. “More is better!” can be true, especially when it comes to fighting your way through a dungeon. “More” means more monsters, more classes, more loot—even additional varieties of stonework decorating the corridors. It also happens to mean, you know, more. More to learn. More to remember. More to sort and keep sorted. Gloomhaven basically defines "more."

But now there’s Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, the largest box to ever feel small. With only four classes, a single (mostly) linear campaign, and some clever quality-of-life improvements, this is Isaac Childres’s attempt to make a Gloomhaven for the rest of us. (Or the rest of you, since I played Gloomhaven until I was well and truly sick of it.)

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Deep algebra for deep beats: The beautiful sounds of musical programming

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 13:00:57 GMT

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Musicians have spent centuries flirting with technology to push the boundaries of the art, from the Theremin to mid-century tape experiments. Despite this fascination, only a tiny niche have gone so far as to programmatically generate music via code. In a span of roughly 70 years, the few who’ve done so comprise a Venn diagram of intersecting programmers and avant-garde musicians.

The results are unlike anything you've ever heard—and some of the most ambitious music to blend the realms of analog and digital sound.

I talked with people who are using code to make a wide variety of music, from sample mangling to a live algorithmic radio show to preaching the Marxist qualities of open source software. Despite the technological complexity and deep algebra involved, they are all seeking something very simple: a creative sandbox unbound by conventions of time and theory.

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The madness of Susanna Clarke, fairy princess

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 12:45:47 GMT

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell fans, it's a good fall. (credit: Amazon / Bloomsbury)

Do fairies exist? To steal us away, to cast curses, to impurify our bloodlines? Let’s say yes. We have artists, don’t we? Sensitive types, so fragile and retreating. The best of them seem touched by an otherness, an otherlandishness, of being. Maybe a small part of their humanity was bargained away without their knowing. A pinky finger. A left eyeball. That’s why they don’t stomp through the world as the rest of us do, very loudly. On those rare occasions when they’re seen to leave their homes, they sort of flicker—fairly float—across the way. Whatever you do, don’t startle the fairy-people, or you’ll scare them off. Just look at what befell Susanna Clarke.

In 2004, Clarke published what can only be described as her first dispatch from the land of Faerie. Ten years in the making and 846 (footnoted!) pages long, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was ethnography, lore. It was as if she’d been there, to England, at the time of Napoleon, when those two infamous magicians, the bookworm Norrell and his perky pupil Strange, tapped into unearthly powers to impress politicians, move mountains, and defeat the French. That’s not how it happened, you say? Why, yes it is. You simply haven’t read your hidden history.

The events that followed only proved Clarke’s preternatural pedigree. After the publication, in 2006, of The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, a collection of fairy tales written around the same time, and in the same world, as Strange & Norrell, Clarke went poof. Yumpy. Far, far away. For 14 years. The official story was debilitating mental illness—housebound, couldn’t write—but clearly her fairy patrons had come for her, to reclaim their erstwhile princess. Or else they meant to punish Clarke for her betrayal, for spilling their precious secrets, by enfuzzing her beautiful brain. Something like that. The ways and reasons of the Fae are little known to common folk.

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Amazon Luna servers will run Windows games directly on Nvidia T4 GPUs

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:36:03 GMT

The now-standard streaming-game-service shot of titles running on many different kinds of screens. [credit: Amazon ]

Amazon's newly announced Luna streaming service will run Windows games on a standard Amazon Web Services EC2 G4 instance, the company told Ars Technica in a roundtable discussion. Those server instances sport Nvidia T4 GPUs equipped with 320 Turing Tensor cores and support for Nvidia's GRID virtualization drivers.

Luna's server architecture is significantly different from that of Google's Stadia, which uses Linux-based data servers and Vulkan's open source graphics APIs. That means extra work for Stadia developers who have to port their existing games to Stadia's environment, which can sometimes lead to apparent graphical snafus.

The precise amount of porting work needed for a Stadia port can vary. A game like Doom (2016), which already supported Vulkan graphics, reportedly took only three weeks of fulltime work by two developers to get running on Stadia. But Cyberpunk 2077 will be coming to Stadia after its Windows and console launches, according to publisher CD Projekt Red, likely due to the extra porting effort.

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Here’s the trailer, release date for Simon Pegg/Nick Frost sitcom Truth Seekers

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 20:09:22 GMT

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play ghost hunters in the new Amazon Prime horror comedy Truth Seekers.

Back in July, during the virtual San Diego Comic-Con@Home, Amazon Studios released a beguiling teaser for Truth Seekers, the forthcoming sci-fi/horror/comedy series starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. It looked like a lot of fun—how could you go wrong with a reunion of Pegg and Frost? The full trailer just dropped, and it definitely reinforces that positive first impression. We also now have a release date: Amazon will screen the first two episodes at the Canneseries festival on October 10 and will release the full series on Prime Video on October 30, 2020.

As we reported previously, the series was created by Pegg, Frost, James Serafinowicz, and Nat Saunders. It's envisioned as a cross between The X-Files and the British TV series Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World. Each of the eight episodes will focus on a specific paranormal incident, a throwback to a classic monster-of-the-week format. Rather than going with pure spoof, Truth Seekers will apparently take its horror aspects seriously.

Per the official synopsis:

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Amazon announces streaming gaming service Luna, launching next month

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 19:00:36 GMT

The now-standard streaming-game-service shot of titles running on many different kinds of screens. [credit: Amazon ]

Roughly 20 months after rumors first emerged of Amazon's entry into the streaming-gaming space, the e-commerce giant and Twitch parent is today ready to officially unveil its plans. Next month, Amazon Luna will start extending early access invitations to players from the mainland United States who request them. The service will stream games running on Amazon Web Services servers to Fire TV, Windows, Mac, and iOS devices initially (with Android support coming weeks later).

That iOS support might be a bit surprising, given the onerous restrictions Apple has placed on streaming-gaming apps before they can be listed on the iOS App Store. But Amazon is getting around those restrictions by running Luna as a "progressive web application" that runs on iOS only in the Safari browser, without an App Store listing at all. That could impact the service's visibility and ease of access to many iOS users, but it also eliminates the 30 percent revenue cut Apple demands from most App Store services.

"We worked with the Safari team to ensure that some of the things that weren't there are there, and that allowed us to kind of get to where we are today," Luna head of engineering and technology George Tsipolitis told Engadget.

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The first Xbox Series S/X 1TB storage expansion card costs $220

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 16:42:27 GMT

A visualization shows how the expansion storage-card slots into the back of the Xbox Series X. [credit: Microsoft / Eurogamer ]

Back in March, we warned you that the proprietary NVMe storage expansions used in the Xbox Series X (and now the Xbox Series S) could be quite a bit pricier than more traditional storage options. Today, we got apparent confirmation of that fact as Microsoft and Best Buy have listed Seagate's "Game Drive for Xbox Series X and Series S" as a $220 pre-order ahead of its launch Nov. 10.

For comparison, Seagate's own 1TB external USB 3.0 hard drives are listed on Best Buy for just $57.49. A 1TB external solid state drive from Seagate will run you $160, still 27-percent cheaper than the NVMe Game Drive.

The Seagate Game Drive is cheaper than a comparable microSD card, though; Best Buy is asking $299 for a 1TB SanDisk card compatible with the likes of the Nintendo Switch.

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Two demon-hunting siblings reunite to save the world in Helstrom trailer

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 00:39:22 GMT

Tom Austen and Sydney Lemmon star as siblings Daimon and Ana Helstrom in Helstrom, a 10-episode horror series that hits Hulu next month.

An ethics professor and secret demon hunter reunites with his estranged sister to take on a powerful demonic entity in the trailer for Helstrom, an upcoming horror series based on Marvel Comics characters. The 10-episode series debuts on Hulu next month

Helstrom has a complicated back story. As we reported in 2019, Hulu announced the development of two new Marvel-centric series, Ghost Rider (with Gabriel Luna reprising his role from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and Helstrom. The shows were intended to kick off a standalone "Adventure into Fear" franchise that would bring a chilling horror element to the Marvel formula. Ghost Rider soon fell by the wayside, and by December 2019, Marvel Television was shut down. That makes Helstrom the sole survivor of the planned fear-based franchise. Shooting finished in March, right before the coronavirus pandemic caused most Hollywood productions to grind to a halt. Showrunner Paul Zbyszewski's contract was terminated in April—also due to the pandemic—but he stayed on for postproduction.

The series focuses on two characters from Marvel Comics. First: Daimon Helstrom, the son of Satan, introduced in Ghost Rider #1 (1973). He eventually became a recurring character in The Defenders. The other protagonist is his sister, Satana (Ana in the TV adaptation), who embraces the occult and her paternal heritage while Daimon chooses to defend humanity. Per the official premise: "The world isn’t ready for a Helstrom family reunion. As the son and daughter of a mysterious and powerful serial killer, Helstrom follows Daimon (Tom Austen) and Ana Helstrom (Sydney Lemmon), and their complicated dynamic, as they track down the worst of humanity—each with their own attitude and skills."

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Sinister trailer for Haunting of Bly Manor looks like a classic ghost story

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 19:50:04 GMT

Victoria Pedretti stars as a governess to two orphans on a spooky estate in The Haunting of Bly Manor.

The Halloween season is almost upon us, so brace yourselves for the annual onslaught of horror fare. But we're also getting a good old-fashioned spooky ghost story with the Netflix series, The Haunting of Bly Manor, loosely based on The Turn of the Screw while incorporating several other ghost stories by Henry James. The series is showrunner Mike Flanagan's highly anticipated follow-up to 2018's exquisitely brooding The Haunting of Hill House. The first teaser dropped earlier this month, and now the streaming platform has released the full trailer.

(Spoilers for the Henry James novel below.)

The Haunting of Hill House shared the top spot in Ars' 2018 list of our favorite TV shows with BBC's Killing Eve. We loved Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy's inventive reimagining of Shirley Jackson's classic novel, at once a Gothic ghost story and a profound examination of family dysfunction. It stayed true to the tone and spirit of the original, aided by dialogue, narration, and other small details from the source material. Small wonder that it garnered award nominations from the Motion Picture Sound Editors, Writers Guild of America, and Art Directors Guild.

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We are in possession of a working Xbox Series X

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 16:00:31 GMT

It's a busy week for all things Xbox. On Monday, Microsoft confirmed its acquisition of the Bethesda and ZeniMax game-dev family to fuel the Xbox ecosystem going forward. On Tuesday, the company launched preorders for this November's Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.

And today, Microsoft topped all of that off by shipping us a "non-final" Series X of our own—and I have immediately begun testing it.

The "non-final" Xbox Series X, photographed before we powered it on. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

As the above gallery shows, Ars Technica received a package from Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, containing a "non-final" Xbox Series X console, the brand-new Xbox gamepad, and a 1TB "storage expansion" card, as built to the Xbox Velocity Architecture spec and made by Seagate. Nothing else came in this box (besides an HDMI 2.1 cable and a power cord, anyway).

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Apparent prototype photos show Sony’s canned "PlayStation phone” followup

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:52:22 GMT

PlayStation buttons? On a phone?! [credit: Taobao ]

There is an alternate universe where Sony Ericsson's 2011 release of the Xperia Play was a huge success. In that universe, a substantial portion of today's mobile games are played on similar successor devices, complete with physical buttons and d-pads that slide out from underneath the screen.

Today, we get a brief glimpse into that universe via late leaked photos of what seems to be a prototype of a planned Xperia Play 2.

The above photos (as discovered on the Sony Xperia subreddit) originate from a reseller on China's Taobao platform, which specializes in person-to-person sales of new and used goods. Ars can't independently verify the authenticity of the images, but they do line up somewhat with concept art for the Xperia Play 2 that leaked in 2012.

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Shock treatment: Ratched is a stylishly gruesome soap opera dialed up to 11

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 11:52:56 GMT

Sarah Paulson plays Nurse Mildred Ratched in Ratched, series creator Evan Romansky's prequel (of sorts) to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

One of the most iconic movie villains of all time gets the American Horror Story treatment in Ratched, Netflix's star-studded prequel, of sorts, to Director Milos Forman's Oscar-winning 1975 film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The series is richly styled and visually striking, and the cast is terrific, but there's very little substance or insight, and the plotting is a meandering mess riddled with holes and inconsistent characterizations. It's basically a body horror soap opera in which everything is dialed up to 11 for maximum shock value.

(Spoilers for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest book and film below. Some spoilers for Ratched but no major reveals.)

As I wrote previously, Forman's film is based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey. It's set in a psychiatric hospital in Salem, Oregon, where Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is sent after faking insanity to escape a prison farm sentence for assault and the statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl. The cold, rigidly controlled (and controlling) Nurse Mildred Ratched (aka Big Nurse, played by Louise Fletcher) rules the place with an iron hand. She maintains order by withholding basic necessities, medications, or patient privileges—with the occasional bit of hydrotherapy and electroshock therapy for especially unruly patients—but McMurphy's rebellious nature challenges her authority.

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What happens to Bethesda’s multi-platform games under Microsoft?

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 15:45:12 GMT

A quick tour of some of the Bethesda gaming franchises Microsoft now owns begins with The Elder Scrolls series.

As recently as last weekend, it seemed relatively certain that the next games in major franchises like Doom, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Dishonored, and The Evil Within would come to the PlayStation 5 (and maybe even to the Nintendo Switch). That certainty went out the window yesterday, though, when Microsoft announced that it would spend $7.5 billion to acquire major publisher Bethesda Softworks.

Still, there is some hope for Bethesda fans who don't want to play on Xbox, PC, or via Microsoft's xCloud streaming. Future Bethesda titles will still be considered for multi-platform release "on a case-by-case basis,” Microsoft Head of Xbox Phil Spencer said in an interview with Bloomberg News Monday morning.

Thus far, there are only a few clues as to which games might qualify for either side of that "case-by-case" line.

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LGR’s Clint Basinger plumbs the depths of retro computing—and his YouTube comments

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 15:15:21 GMT

Produced by Vara Reese, edited by Ron Douglas. Click here for transcript.

Retro-tech YouTube is an awesome place to lose months and months of time—it's a place where awesome creators like The 8-Bit Guy and Techmoan ply their wares, tempting viewers with in-depth discussions of decades-old technology. My personal favorite retro-tech channel to fall into, though, is LGR, or "Lazy Game Reviews," hosted by the smooth-voiced Clint Basinger.

LGR has been reliably churning out videos (often set to smooth jazz) for more than a decade, running the gamut from game reviews to industry retrospectives to... whatever this is, but the videos I love the most are the unboxing videos. They're not your typical unboxing videos—I mean, where else can you watch someone unwrap and set up a new old-stock IBM PC AT, model 5170? And then upgrade the crap out of it?

We've done a couple of successful videos with YouTubers Markiplier and Linus Tech Tips, and so we thought it was time to give Clint at LGR the same treatment—we trawled through the comments on his past videos looking for gems, and then we asked him for his recollections about the comments and the videos to which they're attached.

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All your Xbox Series X and S preorder links in one place

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 13:39:50 GMT

Enlarge / The Series S is nearly 60-percent smaller than the Series X, Microsoft says. (credit: Microsoft)

Sony made its PlayStation 5 available to preorder last week. It didn’t exactly go smoothly.

On Tuesday, it’s Microsoft’s turn. After almost a year of buildup, the tech giant is ready to make its new Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles available to the public—but unlike with the PS5, these preorders are set to go live at a specific, predetermined time.

As a service for those interested in the new machines, and to help them beat the inevitable shopping rush, we’ve compiled all the Xbox Series X and S preorder listings we could find in one place, just like we did with the PS5 last week.

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Everyone loves the new couple on the block in first Wandavision trailer

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 19:37:47 GMT

Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprise their roles as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch and Vision, respectively, in Marvel’s spinoff series WandaVision.

If you were watching the virtual 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards last night, you no doubt caught the debut of a new trailer for WandaVision, the first standalone series to be released in Phase Four of the MCU. The studio offered a sneak peek last year during D23 Expo 2019, Disney's annual fan extravaganza. Lacking any actual footage, that teaser was just snippets of The Dick van Dyke Show interspersed with snippets of the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) from the various MCU films. At the time, I was skeptical of the concept, but this new trailer is quite promising and gives me hope that Marvel can pull it off.

WandaVision is meant to be a kind of sitcom/epic superhero mashup, with Kat Dennings reprising her role as Darcy from the Thor films, alongside Randall Park reprising his Ant Man and the Wasp role as FBI agent Jimmy Woo. Kathryn Hahn (Crossing Jordan) will play a "nosy neighbor," and Teyonah Parris (Mad Men) plays a grown-up Monica Rambeau, daughter of Carol Danvers' BFF Maria Rambeau, introduced in Captain Marvel. Within the MCU timeline, it takes place after the events of Avengers: Endgame, and its events will directly tie in to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, currently slated for a 2022 release.

Per the official description: "WandaVision will follow the story of Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany's superhero characters, the Scarlet Witch and Vision. The series is a blend of classic television and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which Wanda Maximoff and Vision—two super-powered beings living idealized suburban lives—begin to suspect that everything is not as it seems."

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Microsoft purchases Bethesda Softworks in industry-changing acquisition [Updated]

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 13:35:24 GMT

Enlarge / Just a few of the gaming franchises Microsoft now owns.

Major game franchises like Doom, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and more will soon be Microsoft properties. That's because the Xbox and Windows maker announced Monday morning it is buying the corporate parent of Bethesda Softworks, ZeniMax Media.

"Like us, Bethesda are passionate believers in building a diverse array of creative experiences, in exploring new game franchises, and in telling stories in bold ways," Microsoft wrote in its announcement. "All of their great work will of course continue and grow and we look forward to empowering them with the resources and support of Microsoft to scale their creative visions to more players in new ways for you."

From many platforms to one?

Bethesda has confirmed an acquisition price tag of $7.5 billion. For context, that's three times the price Microsoft paid for Minecraft maker Mojang back in 2014. Mojang, of course, continued to be a multiplatform developer after its Microsoft acquisition—a decision that led to the odd sight of Microsoft publishing a Mario-themed "Mash-Up Pack" for Minecraft on Nintendo consoles.

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