INFERNOS project

Maxwell's demon is one of the most famous thought experiments in physics. In its traditional formulation, a demon sits next to a small hatch that separates two chambers. It observes the velocity of any gas molecules heading toward the hatch from one room and only opens the hatch when the velocity exceeds a certain value. Over time, the demon will raise the temperature of one room while cooling the second—something we know is thermodynamically impossible.

Over time, the demon's domain has been expanded, as researchers realized the same issue applied to a variety of other problems. One reformulation came from physicist Leo Szilard, who noted you can have a demon-based engine. Now, 90 years later, researchers have built a Szilard engine that operates using a single electron. In the process, the researchers confirm that setting the digital bit of information describing the engine's state has an energetic cost.

In its original formulation, the Szilard engine was a chamber with pistons at either end and a single gas molecule in the middle. Slide a divider down in the middle, and the gas molecule will wind up on one side or the other. This will push one of the pistons out, providing the potential for doing some work for "free" without the input of energy. (This being a thought experiment, the pistons are assumed to move without friction.) You can then remove the divider, let the chamber re-equilibrate, and do it all over again.

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On Wednesday, Dutch consumer electronics maker Philips and its subsidiary Woox Innovations announced the new Fidelio M2L headphones, which plug directly into the Lightning port on Apple devices. The headphones are the first third-party audio accessory to use the Lightning port, and they may have even beaten Apple to the punch. Apple talked about Lightning-connected headphones at WWDC in June and bought headphone maker Beats earlier in the summer, leading some to speculate that such an accessory was in the works.

In June, Apple expanded its Made for iPhone (MFi) program for third-party accessory developers to include the possibility of Lighting port headphones. The specification allows those devices to receive 48kHz digital stereo output and send 48kHz digital mono input.

By avoiding the headphone jack on newer iPhones and iPads, Philips says that it can provide “high resolution audio.” UK reviews site Pocket Lint describes the headphones as delivering “24-bit Digital to Analogue Conversion (DAC) and amplification in the headphones themselves.”

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A design for a Rolls-Royce robotic ship based on the research of the EU's Project Munin. No crew required. Rolls Royce

A European Union-funded research project called MUNIN is looking to make international cargo shipping more energy and cost efficient, essentially turning "seafaring" into a desk job. Named for one of the Nordic god Odin's raven sidekicks, the goal of the MUNIN project is to create autonomous ships that can sail themselves from port to port. This would reduce energy consumption by lessening lighting, eliminating fresh water production, and getting rid of an onboard crew. The project is the subject of a workshop at the SMM maritime conference in Hamburg, Germany, today.

MUNIN is being led by researchers from the Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services. The goal is to prove the safety of unmanned ships and then push for changes in international maritime regulations to allow them to ply the seas. Nearly all of the technology required to operate ships autonomously is already available, as Ørnulf Rødseth, a researcher at the Norwegian Marine Technology Institute, said in a report published in advance of SMM. "The technology for electronic positioning, satellite communications, and anti-collision measures already exists," he said. “Many vessels are also equipped with advanced sensor systems." But he admits that having the technology and getting governments and international authorities to buy in are two separate issues. "This is why there is a lot of talk about the costs issue, as well as the concerns of shipowners and the general public. We mustn’t forget that current rules and legislation all assume that there are people on board.”

In order to get regulatory buy-in, researchers will need to demonstrate that autonomous systems can make the safety of robotic ships at least as good as manned ones. And hopefully, the lower speeds and automated responses of robotic ships could actually reduce collisions and other accidents at sea. As Rødseth noted, 75 percent of accidents at sea are caused by human error.

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While it was pretty well-known that SwiftKey was coming to iOS 8, it wasn't really clear when this would happen. However, we now know that SwiftKey will be available at the launch of iOS 8, which is definitely great news. For those that are unfamiliar with SwiftKey, this is a custom keyboard that is rather well-known for its word prediction algorithms which adapt to the user over time. In addition to the standard prediction insertion upon tapping the spacebar, SwiftKey's latest version adds automatic space insertion in predictions depending upon context. In addition, if given appropriate permission SwiftKey can scan through social media, email, and text messages to build its prediction systems.

One of the major use cases for SwiftKey is its dual prediction capabilities, which makes it possible for the keyboard to infer what language you intend a word to be in, and change its predictions accordingly. This means you can switch between languages within a sentence without ever tapping a button to switch between languages. This is supported for English US/UK/AU/CA, Portugese BR/PT, French CA/FR, Italian, German, and Spanish ES/Latin America/US. In addition, for the iPod Touch and iPhone SwiftKey on iOS will support Flow, which is largely similar to Swype for those familiar with Nuance's Swype keyboard.

Last month AMD held their 30 years of graphics celebration, during which they announced their next Radeon video card, the Radeon R9 285. Designed to be AMD’s new $249 midrange enthusiast card, the R9 285 would be launching on September 2nd. In the process the R9 285 would be a partial refresh of their R9 280 series lineup, supplying it with a new part that would serve to replace their nearly 3 year old Tahiti GPU.

The R9 285 is something of a lateral move for AMD, which is something we very rarely see in this industry. The R9 285’s immediate predecessor, the R9 280 (vanilla) has been on the market with an MSRP of $249 for nearly 4 months now. Meanwhile the R9 285 is not designed to be meaningfully faster than the R9 280 – in fact if you looked at the raw specifications, you’d rightfully guess it would be slower. Instead the R9 285 is intended to serve as a sort of second-generation feature update to R9 280, replacing it with a card at the same price with roughly the same performance level, but with 3 years’ worth of amassed feature updates and optimizations.

Seagate's premium storage brand, LaCie, has been introducing a wide variety of Thunderbolt 2 products since late last year. Today, we are seeing the launch of a hybrid direct-attached storage (DAS) unit with both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 connections in the d2 Thunderbolt 2. The differentiating aspect is the availability of a full-speed PCIe SSD add-on which adds another storage module at the expense of the USB 3.0 port. We took the unit for a spin using our Windows-based Thunderbolt 2 setup. Read on to see how the unit performs.

Pakistani authorities face growing anger over their response to the country's worst flooding since 2010.

A deserted launch-day line highlights the lack of interest in the Xbox One in Japan.

The Xbox brand has always been exceptionally weak in Japan, where consoles from local companies Sony and Nintendo traditionally perform much better than Microsoft's hardware efforts. But the recent launch of the Xbox One in the country has been underwhelming even by Microsoft standards.

Japanese game magazine Famitsu reports that the Xbox One sold 23,562 units in its first four days of local sales after launching in the country on September 4. For context, the PlayStation 4 sold 309,000 units in its first week of Japanese sales in February, and even the Wii U mustered 308,000 units at its Japanese launch. Those latter two launches were considered somewhat weak by historical standards for Japanese console launches, but they still put Microsoft's latest launch to shame.

The Xbox One's Japanese premiere is even worse than that of the Xbox 360, which sold a paltry 60,000 Japanese units in two days after launching in late 2005. The Xbox 360 went on to sell just over 1.63 million systems in Japan over its lifetime, compared to over 12.7 million Wii units and 9.3 million PS3 units in the country. The original Xbox wasn't a big success in Japan either, but it managed to limp past two million regional sales by December 2005, nearly four years after its launch.

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Video of the mobile phone version of iArm Wrestle Champs being played.

Among all the ballyhooed features that Apple talked about for its upcoming smartwatch yesterday, the Cupertino giant didn't really discuss the prospect of gaming on the tiny wrist-screen. Apple has instead left it to indie outfit Flying Tiger Entertainment to announce the first official game for the Apple Watch, a port of its iOS and Android title iArm Wrestle Champs.

Actually, calling iArm Wrestle Champs a video game might be giving it a bit too much credit. It's more of an interactive soundboard that reacts to a real life arm-wrestling match, using the phone (or watch) accelerometer to detect when one player or the other is victorious. Humanity seemed to do just fine figuring out arm wrestling's winners before iDevices existed, but with the app, you get a nice audio reward when you pin the opponent's arm.

Like it or not, this is the kind of non-traditional game that's probably going to be prevalent on devices like the Apple Watch. With a touchscreen small enough to be almost completely obscured by a tapping finger, games on the device will have to rely on other inputs, like the rotating "crown" on the side (Pong, anyone?), the accelerometer/GPS/altitude sensors, voice commands, or even the heartbeat monitor. Similarly, the "taptic" feedback motor inside may end up providing more useful gaming output than the watch face itself.

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If you like geology, you’re used to relying on an active imagination. Most geologic processes occur too slowly to see them play out for yourself. Many of the exceptions are dangerous enough that you might not want a front row seat or are rare enough that the odds of being there to witness them are disheartening. Sometimes, though, the Earth throws us a bone—or in this case, a gigantic slab of granite.

One interesting way that rocks weather and crumble apart is called “exfoliation.” Like the skin-scrubbing technique, this involves the outermost layers of exposed igneous or metamorphic bedrock sloughing off in a sheet. Over time, this tends to smooth and round the outcrop—Yosemite’s Half Dome providing a spectacular example.

We’re not entirely sure just what drives the peeling of an outcrop’s skin like this, but the classic explanation is that it’s the result of bringing rocks that formed at great pressure up to the surface. Once there, the outer layers can expand slightly, creating a physical mismatch with the layers below them.

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Former boxing champion Mike Tyson met Toronto Mayor Rob Ford at his city hall office.

Operation Sports

EA Sports has often used the slogan "If it's in the game, it's in the game" (or a shortened version) to highlight its simulated fidelity to the real world. So it's perhaps not too surprising that former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice will be removed from Madden NFL 15 following his indefinite suspension from the real world NFL yesterday.

Rice had already been serving a two-game suspension for a domestic abuse incident involving his then-fiance Janay Palmer in a hotel elevator earlier this year. On Monday, Rice was dropped from the Ravens and then suspended indefinitely by the NFL after TMZ posted a video of Rice knocking Palmer out, obtained from the elevator's surveillance camera.

"With Ray Rice's indefinite suspension from the NFL, he will be removed from Madden NFL 15," EA Sports said in a short statement. "This roster change will take place by this Friday."

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On Tuesday in Taiwan, Acer announced two monitors that might be worth a look for anyone looking to put a couple of multi-monitor setups together, or interested in an attractive design combined with high resolution. The first is the S277HK, which is a 27” UHD/4K model, and the second is the H257HU which is a 25" WQHD model.

The S277HK is the first 4K monitor with a frameless design according to Acer. In addition to the 3840x2160 resolution for the IPS panel, the 27” model also has DTS surround sound though Acer does not go into specifics on how the audio is achieved. With an asymmetric stand and aluminum bezel, the S277HK certainly looks as premium as the specs would indicate. Connectivity is DVI, HDMI 2.0, and DisplayPort 1.2.

S277HK (left) and H257HU (right),
images courtesy of TechPowerUp

The second monitor announced is the H257HU, which also features the frameless design, but the IPS panel is slightly lower resolution at 2560x1440 (WQHD). This monitor also features DTS sound, and a round rim base and DVI, HDMI 2.0, and DisplayPort 1.2 inputs.

'Frameless' is a little bit of a misnomer, as typically all monitors will have some sort of edge bezel. In the smallest bezel monitors on sale, sub-6mm is quite common although specialist models exist that might go smaller. The H257HU, from the sole small image we have found access to, looks like it has a larger screen-distance, despite the 'frameless' moniker keeping the edge distance small.

The IPS panels on these devices also include features to assist with eye strain including a Flicker-less technology to reduce screen flicker, a blue light filter which Acer claims helps with long term eye damage, and a Low Dimming technology to allow the backlight to be set as low as 15% for low light environments. Both monitors also include “ComfyView” to assist with screen reflections.

Both models will be available starting in Q4 2014, with global availability. Neither refresh rates, color accuracy nor prices have not been announced at this time.

Source: Acer

The Kinshasa Symphony Orchestra from the troubled Democratic Republic of Congo gives its first UK concert in Manchester on Thursday.

With their iPhone keynote behind them, Apple has begun updating some of their developer documentation for iOS to account for the new phone. This of course is always a fun time for tech punditry, as those updates will often include information on the hardware differences in the platform, and explain to developers the various features that different generations of hardware can offer developers.

To that end we have compiled a short analysis of the A8 SoC based on these documents and other sources. And we believe that at this point we have a solid idea of the configuration of Apple's latest SoC.

Apple SoC Specifications   Apple A6 Apple A7 Apple A8 CPU Swift @ 1.3GHz(x2) Cyclone @ 1.3GHz (x2) Enhanced Cyclone @ 1.4GHz (x2)? GPU PVR SGX543MP3 PVR G6430 PVR GX6650 RAM 1GB LPDDR2 1GB LPDDR3 1GB LPDDR3?
A8’s GPU: Imagination PowerVR Series6XT GX6650

On the GPU front this year appears to be especially bountiful. After being tipped to an update for Apple’s Metal Programming Guide, we can now infer with near certainty that we know what the A8 GPU is.

New to this edition of the Metal Programming Guide is a so-called iOS_GPUFamily2, which joins the existing iOS_GPUFamily1. We already know that the iOS_GPUFamily1 is based around Imagination’s PowerVR Series 6 G6430 GPU, so the real question is what does iOS_GPUFamily2 do that requires a separate family? The answer as it turns out is ASTC, the next generation texture compression format is being adopted by GPU vendors over the next year or so.

Imagination’s PowerVR Series6 family of GPUs predates ASTC and as a result iOS_GPUFamily1 does not support it. However we know that Imagination added support for it in their Series6XT designs, which were announced at CES 2014. Coupled with the fact that Apple’s documentation supports the idea that all of their GPUs are still TDBR (and thus PowerVR), this means that the GPU in the A8 must be a Series6XT GPU in order for ASTC support to be present.

This leaves the question of which of Imagination’s 4 Series6XT Apple is using. Imagination offers a pair of 2 core designs, a 4 core design (GX6450), and a 6 core design (GX6650). Considering that Apple was already using a 4 core design in A7, we can safely rule out the 2 core designs. That leaves us with GX6450 and GX6650, and to further select between those options we turn to Apple’s A8 performance estimates.

Apple SoC Evolution   CPU Perf GPU Perf Die Size Transistors Process A5 ~13x ~20x 122m2 <1B 45nm A6 ~26x ~34x 97mm2 <1B 32nm A7 40x 56x 102mm2 >1B 28nm A8 50x 84x 89mm2 ~2B 20nm

A8 is said to offer 84x the GPU performance of the iPhone 1, while last year Apple stated that the A7 offered 56x the iPhone 1’s performance. As a result we can accurately infer that the A8 must be 1.5x faster than the A7, a nice round number that makes it easier to determine with GPU Apple is using. Given Apple’s conservative stance on clockspeeds for power purposes and the die space gains from the 20nm process, accounting for a 50% performance upgrade is easily done by replacing a 4 core G6430 with the 6 core GX6650. At equal clockspeeds the GX6650 should be 50% faster on paper (matching Apple’s paper numbers), leading us to strongly believe that the A8 is utilizing a PowerVR Series6XT GX6650 GPU.

Once the iPhone 6 is out and Chipworks can photograph the SoC, this should be easy to confirm. If Apple is using a GX6650 then the die size of the GPU portion of the A8 should be very similar to the die size of the GPU portion of the A7. Otherwise if it is the 4 core GX6450, then Apple should see significant die size savings from using a 20nm fabrication process.

A8’s CPU: A Tweaked Cyclone?

Though we typically avoid rumors and leaks due to their high unreliability, after today’s presentation by Apple we have just enough information on A8’s CPU performance to go through the leak pile and start picking at leak. From that pile there is one leak in particular that catches our eye due to the fact that it matches Apple’s own statements.

On Monday night a supposed Geekbench 3 score of the iPhone 6 was posted. In this leak the iPhone 6 was listed as having a single-core score of 1633 points and a multi-core score of 2920 points. Curiously, these values are almost exactly 25% greater than the Geekbench 3 scores for the iPhone 5S (A7), which are 1305 points and 2347 points respectively.

The fact that ties all of this data together is that in their iPhone 6 presentation, Apple informed viewers that the iPhone 6 is 25% faster than the iPhone 5S. This data was later backed up with their latest CPU performance graph, which put the iPhone 6 at a score of 50x versus a score of 40x for the iPhone 5S.

Given Apple’s data, it looks increasingly likely that the leaked Geekbench 3 results for the iPhone 6 are in fact legitimate. The data leaked matches Apple’s own performance estimates, and in fact does so very well.

In which case we can infer a couple of points about the A8’s CPU, starting with the clockspeed. Given no other reason to doubt this data at the moment and given Apple’s preference for low clocked SoCs, the 1.4GHz reading appears legitimate. In which case this would be a 100MHz increase over the 1.3GHz A7 found in the iPhone 5S.

However the fact that it’s a 100MHz increase also means that clockspeeds alone cannot account for the full 25% performance gain that Apple is promoting and that these Geekbench results are reporting, as 1.4GHz is only a roughly 8% clockspeed increase over 1.3GHz. This in turn means that there must be more going on under the hood to improve the A8’s CPU performance other than clockspeed alone, which rules out a straight-up reuse of Apple’s Cyclone CPU.

Since Apple already had a solid ARMv8 architecture with Cyclone, there’s no reason to believe that they have thrown out Cyclone so soon. However this does strongly suggest that Apple has made some unknown revisions to Cyclone to further boost its single-threaded (Instruction Level Parallelism) performance. What those tweaks are remain to be seen as we would need to be able to benchmark the A8 in depth to even try to determine what Apple has changed, but for the moment it looks like we’re looking at an enhanced or otherwise significantly optimized version of Cyclone. And given Apple’s already high ILP, squeezing out another 16% or so would be a significant accomplishment at this time, especially for only a year’s turnaround.

1GB of RAM

Last but not least, the apparent validity of the Geekbench 3 leak means that one last piece of information on the A8 can apparently be confirmed: the earlier rumors about it being paired with 1GB of RAM are true. Unfortunately Apple’s official product image of the A8 is of no help here – it’s clearly a doctored version of the A7 image based on the product numbers attached – but this information is consistentwith earlier rumors based on leaked images of the real A8, which had also suggested the SoC contained 1GB of RAM. Again this is based on what we believe is a sound assumption that the Geekbench 3 leak is accurate since it so closely matches Apple’s own CPU performance estimates, but at this point we don’t have any substantial reason to doubt the data.

Image Courtesy Macrumors

The good news is that this is going to be the easiest aspect of the iPhone 6 to confirm, since diagnostic apps will be able to query the phone for the RAM amount. So one way or another we should know for sure come September 19th.

Version:next-20140910 (linux-next) Released:2014-09-10

Andrew Harding profiles Judge Thokozile Masipa, who grew up in a poor township outside Johannesburg, and became the second black woman to become a judge in South Africa.

CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});CUPERTINO, CA—When Apple hosts an event, people listen up. So on September 9, the company's event at the Silicon Valley-based Flint Center for the Performing Arts attracted a rabble of journalists, corporate partners, and a small handful of protesters shouting about working conditions in Apple's factories.

You've no doubt heard about the announcement of Apple's new hardware line, which includes the iPhone 6 and the (huge) iPhone 6 Plus, as well as the Apple Watch. But these events often become a spectacle in and of themselves, without even touching on the new hardware or software. The day starts at the crack of dawn for most tech journalists, developers, and Apple employees, and ends with a well-earned drink sometime after the sun goes down.

Just as we did with WWDC 2014, Ars thought we'd bring you a little flavor of what we saw outside of the main attraction—consider it a tour of the sideshows and the good people we found milling about the perimeter after the ushers shooed us out of the concert hall.

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On Monday, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) announced plans to move survival training for all Soyuz passengers to a Russian naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea, after claiming to have "annexed" the peninsula from Ukraine earlier this year. The strategic move could put the US and other nations in a diplomatic bind as American, European, and Japanese astronauts-in-training would need to travel to the newly annexed territory without Ukrainian-issued visas.

If the foreign crew refuses to travel to Crimea, the astronauts would fail their training and would be disqualified from their trip to the International Space Station (ISS), which is due for a routine crew replacement.

As NBC News notes, the Sevastopol base was commonly used a decade ago for Russian splashdown survival training, when the country’s space program was headed by the Russian Air Force. "But as space budgets dwindled,” NBC says, "that training was transferred to a small lake near Moscow that was deemed adequate for the basics.” Today, the space program is managed by Roscosmos, and the budget is even tighter, so money issues are likely not responsible for the move back to Crimea.

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Enough paper-thin preview events, enough alphas, and enough betas: As of midnight early Tuesday morning, we at Ars finally began fulfilling our Destiny. The long-hyped online shooter from Bungie launched on four consoles simultaneously overnight, and with no major press or critical preview period to speak of, we are only a brief number of missions, multiplayer battles, and public events into our loot-loaded, outer-space quest.

We'll return later this week with enough spent ammo beneath our feet to fuel a full review of the game, but for now, we're stepping away from our controllers for a moment to describe what we've played so far—and whether we think it merits madly dashing to your retailer of choice for a day-one plunge.

Déjà vu

For those who dove into the game's beta, which eventually became free and available on all four platforms for a limited time, prepare for a serious case of déjà vu. The first slew of missions, set in the game's Old Russia landscape, are essentially identical to July's tease.

Thus, you still start the game by creating a "Guardian" character based on one of three classes: Titan, Hunter, or Warlock, who each sport slightly different superpowers and perks but are otherwise incredibly similar. We rolled Titan for this go-round, and the character's ground-pound superpower has, thus far, proven more clutch than the Hunter's supercharged pistol power. Once you choose a hero, you're off on an epic, end-of-the-world quest full of guns, magic, and sci-fi treasure, whose themes and plot we'll dig into come official review time.

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