For everything from family to computers…
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15138/the-adata-ultimate-su750-1tb-ssd-review
Realtek has entered the SSD controller market and scored several design wins with ADATA for retail SSDs. The ADATA SU750 entry-level SATA drive is not as important to their strategy as NVMe drives, but it may help Realtek establish a foothold in this market.
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December 6, 2019 at 07:08AM
Geoff Babb — a stroke survivor — found that most wheelchairs couldn’t take him where he wanted to go. So, he invented a new way to hike with friends and family: an all-terrain wheelchair.
(Image credit: Emily Cureton/Oregon Public Broadcasting)
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December 6, 2019 at 04:06AM
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1627295
Released on December 6, 2004, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords (KOTOR2) was the first game from the then-newly-formed Obsidian Entertainment. At that time, the new studio was a shoestring operation with just seven veteran developers that had made the move from the recently shuttered Black Isle Studios, all holed up in CEO Feargus Urquhart’s attic. But publisher LucasArts, wanting to capitalize on the success of the original KOTOR from the year before, reportedly gave that threadbare new team just 14 to 16 months to create a sequel.
It’s no surprise that the finished product had some issues.
The most noticeable of these issues at launch might have been the conclusion to the HK-50 factory side quest. Specifically, that conclusion is just nowhere to be found in the final game.
That means players never get to discover the origins of KOTOR2’s most recurring threat. Several files buried in the game’s code reveal content Obsidian made for KOTOR2’s final planet—including dialogue and action set pieces—that the developers just couldn’t get working before launch.
And that’s where 15 years of collective modder obsession comes in…
The Ebon Hawk lands on M4-78, a droid planet removed from the game’s initial release. Modders wouldn’t add it back into KOTOR2 until 2012.
Zbigniew “zbyl2” Staniewicz.
Mandalore reaches the surface of M4-78
Zbigniew “zbyl2” Staniewicz
HK-47 gives his good children the talk about the birds and the bees.
Zbigniew “zbyl2” Staniewicz
To market the Restored Content Mod, Staniewicz and his team edited an original KOTOR 2 graphic.
Zbigniew “zbyl2” Staniewicz
When he first started modding KOTOR2 over ten years ago, Zbigniew “zbyl2” Staniewicz had previously been working with the mod toolset for Neverwinter Nights. That meant he already had experience navigating KOTOR2’s engine.
His initial focus was finishing a mod to bring cut planet M4-78 back into the main game. That’s the droid planet where players were supposed to originally find Jedi Master Lonna Vash hiding from the Sith threat stalking Jedi across the galaxy.
Progress on restoring the M4-78 file was halted while Staniewicz was waiting for a writer to return scripts. So he moved on to begin work on what would become the Restored Content Mod.
“Another group that was making a restoration mod was taking years to release anything, and I knew I could have done what they were trying to do much faster,” he recalled. “I met this other guy in the modding community [DarthStoney] that shared my sentiments and we just went for it.”
Originally, Staniewicz and his team planned on fixing one planet at a time and releasing accordingly as they were completed. Once the team finished working on Nar Shaddaa, however, they decided to keep going and release their work as one large mod encompassing all the cut content.
As development went on, Staniewicz started looking for more people to help get the project across the finish line. A modder named Hassat Hunter was brought in to perform beta testing and eventually began assisting with development. And another modder named VarsityPuppet was brought in to troubleshoot issues with that incomplete HK-50 Factory, putting together the unfinished second half of the mission.
This kind of modding was far from a direct process. Even something as simple as changing the location of an NPC required going into the game, finding the character, writing down the coordinates, then leaving the game and inputting and modifying the coordinates in a modding tool, as Staniewicz described it. But that mod tool gives no indication if the process worked, so the modders had to start the game back up and find the NPC’s new location to see if they’d succeeded.
“With what was left in the game files, the dialogue worked, but there was no ending,” Staniewicz explained. So they put the final sequences of the factory mission together to fit the available dialogue from the factory and Malachor V.
After releasing a few versions of the RCM, Staniewicz stepped away from the project while the team was fixing problems with the game’s random loot system, saying he believed he no longer had substantial feedback to offer during the process. The involvement of the other team members meant progress never ground to a halt, though. “If it was just me and Stoney… we probably would have stopped way sooner,” Staniewicz said.
The Restored Content Mod entered open beta in 2009. It has over 400,000 subscribers on the Steam Workshop.
Thanks to a dare, Effix decided to turn KOTOR2‘s murderous Wookiee companion into “Care Bear.
Effix
Effix’ Mission Vao Deluxe pack allows the player to mimic the appearance of KOTOR‘s Twi’lek companion.
Effix’s Cathar mod let you live your dream of being a Star Wars cat person.
Effix
One of Effix’s disguise mods on Steam allows players to dress up as Darth Revan, Malak and Nihilus
Effix
Effix’s Boba Mandalore mod allows for cosplay as that one guy who looked cool before falling into a Sarlaac.
Effix
Not all KOTOR2 mods are so intricate. Effix, who has posted over 60 mods on Steam since 2010, focuses instead on more cosmetic changes. That can mean everything from changing a companion’s hair color to turning Hanharr, a darkside specific Wookiee companion, into a pink “Care Bear.”
“There was someone who suggested it, and a few others were also on board with the idea or daring me to [make the Care Bear mod],” Effix said. “I don’t think they expected me to make work of it, but to me that was extra funny to turn that idea into an actual mod.”
Other work by Effix includes mods allowing the player to replace their standard human head with alien variants like the ancient Rakatan or dark Darth Malak. “The technical term [for these mods] is ‘disguise’ because that’s the name of the [in-game] item property that lets you take on another appearance,” Effix said. “A lot of things from KOTOR [like disguises] were left in KOTOR2‘s files, even though they might not make an appearance in the game.”
The bulk of Effix’s work, he said, is done through Fred Tetra’s “KOTOR Tool,” a simple utility for editing modules, images, wire models, character appearances, dialogue, and items in the game. Focusing on these elements has helped Effix to retain his enthusiasm for modding the game, he said, as has concentrating on projects that are “fairly bite-sized” when compared to others. “I like doing retextures because I like giving something a new look and for me it’s pretty straightforward. I’m not that into more complex things like scripts, adding new areas, new 3D models and animations.”
“Making mods for a game that you really enjoy is great fun, so that’s my motivation,” he added. “It’s also satisfying to get positive feedback from people who use your mods and also are passionate about the same game. For me it’s a fun and relaxing hobby. It’s cool to create things and see your creation in a Star Wars game, and I get a lot of positive feedback from the community.”
Listing image by Effix
via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com
December 5, 2019 at 10:34AM
Restaurants without diners are popping up all over the place. "Ghost kitchens" and menus that exist solely in smartphone apps such as DoorDash and Uber Eats seek to feed diners’ appetite for delivery.
(Image credit: Shannon Bond/NPR)
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December 5, 2019 at 04:11AM
They’ve identified hundreds of proteins in human blood that wax and wane in surprising ways as we age. The findings could provide important clues about which substances in the blood can slow aging.
(Image credit: ER Productions Limited/Getty Images)
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December 5, 2019 at 10:04AM
https://www.engadget.com/2019/12/04/nasa-parker-solar-probe-results/
As promised, NASA has presented the first results from the Parker Solar Probe — and they’re already providing a treasure trove of insights regarding the Sun. Most notably, the solar wind doesn’t behave entirely like scientists expected. There are flips in the Sun’s magnetic field direction (nicknamed "switchbacks") that manifest in the solar wind inside Mercury’s orbit, but not further. Moreover, the sideways movement of the solar wind near the Sun was not only "much stronger" than expected, but straightened out sooner than predicted as well.
There were more mysteries. The probe spotted tiny energetic particle events that never reach Earth, as well as bursts with oddly high levels of heavy elements. Both may be more common than scientists first thought, NASA said. At the same time, the craft also answered questions — humanity now has the first direct evidence of dust thinning out roughly 7 million miles from the Sun as the intense heat transforms the dust into gas.
The discoveries are poised to change humanity’s understanding of stars in multiple ways, including the causes of solar wind, the Sun’s rate of slowdown (a clue to its lifespan) and the effects of particle events on space weather. And remember, there are closer flybys to come, including a sixth flyby in September 2020 that could observe a dust-free zone roughly 2 to 3 million miles from the Sun. You may well see more findings that force astrophysicists to rethink their cosmic models.
via Engadget http://www.engadget.com
December 4, 2019 at 02:36PM
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1627533
Ground-penetrating radar could help archaeologists spot otherwise invisible ancient footprints, suggests a recent experiment at White Sands National Monument, New Mexico.
Tracks left behind in layers of hardened mud and sand at the site record where humans crossed paths with giant sloths and mammoths during the last Ice Age. But some of the tracks appear only when conditions are just right—usually after a rain—which makes them difficult to study. Archaeologist Thomas Urban of Cornell University and his colleagues used ground-penetrating radar to spot these so-called ghost tracks. The radar images also revealed layers of compressed sediment beneath mammoth tracks, which could reveal information about how the now-extinct woolly giants strode across the Pleistocene world.
To test the method, Urban and his colleagues pulled a radar antenna across the pale gypsum sands of the former lake shore, pacing out a grid pattern over a site where, 12,000 years ago, a human and a mammoth crossed paths. Excavations at the site had already revealed “ghost prints” left by a person who walked north, and then back south, for about 800 meters (2,625 feet).
Sometime in the past, the prints filled with sediment and then got covered by a layer of fine gypsum sand, so they’re usually invisible from the surface. But the sediment filling the tracks holds more moisture than the sediment around them, so when there’s just the right amount of water present, the tracks stand out dark on the pale ground. They appear and vanish again like a message written in invisible ink.
Archaeologists already knew one location along the trackway had about 27 ghost prints. When Urban and his colleagues put their radar to the test, the images revealed 26 of the prints—and the images were detailed enough to calculate the length of the person’s stride and estimate their stature. It turns out that the sediment filling the tracks also reflects radar signal differently than the surrounding material, making it possible to detect otherwise invisible tracks.
Further north along the same trail of human footprints, Urban and his colleagues noticed a set of anomalies that looked like animal tracks. These were in a place where the playa’s surface looked blank and archaeologists hadn’t documented any tracks. After a rain, the anomalies turned out to be sloth tracks. Urban and his colleagues say their results suggest that the ground-penetrating radar could help archaeologists search for other ghost tracks. That could help researchers avoid having to wait for specific weather conditions to find tracks and could boost efforts to preserve the ancient stories written across the desert in invisible ink.
Ghost prints are a common phenomenon in playa landscapes like White Sands.
Urban et al. 2019
Urban and his colleagues say they avoid visiting possible track sites in wet conditions, to avoid damaging them.
Urban et al. 2019
In this close-up radar image, you can see a mammoth print, a human print, and a sloth print.
Urban et al. 2019
These human and mammoth tracks have been excavated and date to around 12,000 years ago.
Urban et al. 2019
Shortly after the Ice Age pedestrian passed by on their way north, a mammoth lumbered west across the fresh tracks. Its massive forefoot distorted two of the human tracks as it passed. Sometime later, the same person crossed the mammoth’s path on the way south again, stepping right in the middle of a massive mammoth print. Beneath the mammoth tracks, radar revealed a complex 3D structure of compressed and deformed sediment; a record of the biomechanics of a long-extinct mammoth.
When an African elephant—the closest thing we now have to a mammoth—takes a step, most of its weight is on the front part of the foot at first. But as the elephant pushes off the ground with its toes, it shifts the pressure backward. And as the foot lifts of the ground, the pressure on the soil suddenly releases. Each of those phases pushes on the ground beneath in a different direction, and studying the patterns left behind can reveal a lot about the mechanical aspects of how an animal walked.
“It turns out that the sediment itself has a memory that records the effects of the animal’s weight and momentum in a really beautiful way,” said Urban in a recent press release. “It gives us a way to understand the biomechanics of extinct fauna in a way that we never had before.” Unlike the tracks themselves, these structures, called plantar pressure records, are hard to get at by excavating.
Ground-penetrating radar seems to be able to detect these plantar pressure records from mammoth tracks, which gives paleontologists a non-destructive way to access important information about how mammoths moved. “If you want to really study the detailed print morphology you still need to excavate it, but we are getting additional information which is rather exciting below the track which you would not get if you excavated,” co-author Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University told Ars.
If radar can reveal plantar pressure records beneath mammoth tracks, Urban and his colleagues suggest that under the right conditions, it might also shed some light on the gait of much older animals: dinosaurs.
“Our next task is to take the technique somewhere with a different type of sedimentary set up and try it. Namibia is one possibility (there are great tracks there which I have worked on in the past),” Bennett told Ars. “Then it is about trying it on a lithified dinosaur track and experimenting with the set up to see what we can see. There are few local sauropod tracks here on the Jurassic Coast in the UK which I have my eye on.”
Meanwhile, at White Sands, radar surveys and excavation have revealed previously unknown trackways crossing the ancient playa. “We have done further investigation and we do know more, but that will be part of a future paper,” Urban told Ars. “The work has been ongoing and will continue in 2020.”
Scientific Reports, 2019. DOI: s41598-019-52996-8 (About DOIs).
via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com
December 4, 2019 at 10:57AM
