America's Supreme Court will soon decide whether Google infringed on a copyright that Oracle says it holds on the APIs of Java. But this week Oracle's executive vice president also wrote a blog post arguing that Google "sought the support of outside groups to bolster its position" by using friend-of-the-court briefs to "create the impression that this case is of great import and controversy, and a ruling in Oracle's favor will impede innovation."

"Upon closer inspection, what these briefs reveal is a significantly different picture, one where Google is the outlier, with very little meaningful support outside the purview of its financial fingerprints." As we discussed in a previous post, this case is not about innovation, it is about theft. Google copied verbatim more than 11,000 lines of software code, and now attempts post hoc to change the rules in order to excuse its conduct... As those of us that have watched Google over the past few decades know, Google's view boils down to the self-absorbed position that the work it is doing is of such consequence that the rules shouldn't apply to them. The problem for Google is that very few outside of its self-generated atmosphere agree.

Let's be clear, it is not commonplace or foundational in the software industry to steal other developer's software code. Rather, what is commonplace is a confluence of interests where code is licensed to facilitate its widespread deployment, with the owner choosing the terms... Java embraced choice, with three different licensing alternatives, including a freely deployed open source license, and a commercial license designed to maintain interoperability. And it turns out that nobody except Google found it necessary to steal despite Java's enormous popularity. It is not in dispute in this matter that Google destroyed Java interoperability so it is unbelievable that many of its amici take the position that Google needs to prevail in order to protect interoperability...

Out of 26 briefs, we found:

- 7 briefs representing 13 entities that received "substantial contributions" from Google;

- 8 briefs filed by entities or individuals that have financial ties to Google through grants, dues, cy pres settlement proceeds or employment of individual amici;

- 2 briefs filed by companies with a clear commercial interest in Google prevailing;

- 1 brief filed by several former U.S. government employees all of whom worked for a small government agency run by a former Google executive, despite the U.S. government itself filing a brief in favor of Oracle;

- 4 separate briefs representing a total of 7 individuals;

- A few other briefs where Google financial ties are likely;

- 1 brief submitted by a serial copyright infringer repeatedly sanctioned by the Courts;

What masqueraded as a mass show of support for Google, may not be much more than an exercise in transactional interests.
The groups Oracle is criticizing include the American Library Association, EFF, and the Python Software Foundation, as well as a brief by 83 computer scientists which included Doug Lea, a former memeber of the executive committee of the Java Community Process. Oracle's blog post also makes the argument that besides Microsoft and IBM, "not a single brief from the other 98 of the Top 100 tech companies was filed."

There was a response on Twitter from Joshua Bloch, who worked on the Java platform at Sun before leaving in 2004 to become Google's chief Java architect for the next 8 years. He called Oracle's blog post "nonsense." For example, Doug Lea -- who is in no small measure responsible for Java's success -- accepted one small grant from Google fourteen years ago, and promptly doled it out to deserving undergrads who were testing java.util.concurrent. Have you no shame, Oracle?

We are not Google shills. We are scientists and engineers. Some of us laid the theoretical groundwork for the profession, some designed the computers you grew up on, and some wrote the software you use every day.

We depend on the right to reimplement each others' APIs, and we are truly afraid that your irresponsible lawsuit may deprive us of that right, which we've enjoyed throughout our long careers.

A new study reports that iron rain likely falls through the thick, turbulent air of WASP-76 b, a bizarre "ultrahot Jupiter" that lies about 640 light-years from the sun, in the constellation Pisces. Space.com reports: WASP-76 b zips around its host star once every 1.8 Earth days, an orbit so tight that the gaseous planet is "tidally locked," always showing the star the same face. Temperatures on this dayside climb above 4,350 degrees Fahrenheit (2,400 degrees Celsius) -- hot enough to vaporize metals -- whereas the nightside is a much cooler (but still ridiculous) 2,730 F (1,500 C), researchers said. WASP-76 b was discovered in 2013. The alien planet is about as massive as Jupiter but nearly twice as wide, likely because the massive radiation loads the exoplanet receives from its host star puff up its atmosphere considerably. (And one quick note about the object's distance: Some sources say that WASP-76 b is about 390 light-years away, but that number is inaccurate, Ehrenreich said. He and his colleagues calculated WASP-76 b's distance using data from Europe's ultraprecise star-mapping spacecraft Gaia.)

Europe and Russia have decided to push back the launch of their joint robotic rover to Mars until 2022, rather than launch this year as originally planned. More testing is needed on the vehicle's parachutes ahead of the launch, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), and there isn't enough time to get all of that work done before the launch window in July and August. The Verge reports: This is the second major delay for the rover, which is a critical piece of the ExoMars mission -- a partnership program between ESA and Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos aimed at figuring out if Mars ever hosted life. Originally, the rover, named after the famous chemist Rosalind Franklin, was meant to launch in 2018, but it was pushed until 2020 due to delays in delivering the scientific payloads. Now, the parachutes needed to land the vehicle on Mars are to blame. Last year, two high-altitude drop tests here on Earth damaged the parachutes, with some even tearing while they inflated. ESA wants to do two additional parachute tests ahead of the mission, but they won't occur in time to allow a summer launch to happen.

Additionally, some of the electronics inside the vehicle that carries the rover down to the surface need to be returned to their suppliers for troubleshooting. The final software for the mission is also delayed, and engineers don't have enough time to test it out before the summer. And if that wasn't enough, Jan Worner, the director general of ESA, admitted that the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic is playing a role in the delay. [...] Now, the earliest option to launch the Rosalind Franklin rover is 2022, thanks to how Earth and Mars orbit the Sun. The two planets only skim close by one another every 26 months, giving scientists a limited window to launch spacecraft to the Red Planet. With a launch window opening up this summer, multiple countries including the US, China, and the United Arab Emirates are launching spacecraft to Mars. But since ExoMars cannot make the deadline, the next opportunity to launch is between August and October 2022.

While ESA and Roscosmos wait for 2022, the rover will go into storage, and engineers will lubricate the vehicle over the next two years to maintain all of its components. In the meantime, the Russian Proton rocket that will launch the rover and the vehicle's European carrier spacecraft are all ready to go and have no issues. So the Rosalind Franklin rover should be ready to go by 2022 if the upcoming tests go well.

The ocean's most mammoth, docile beasts manage to find their way around the oceans with relative ease. And that's especially true for the gray whale, a creature that makes the biggest migration of any mammal, traveling over 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) across the planet to feed and breed. New research suggests gray whales may navigate with a kind of seventh sense that allows them to detect variations in the Earth's magnetic field -- and this sense can be adversely affected by the sun. From a report: Gray whales are about as long as a school bus and six times heavier than an African elephant. They communicate using low-frequency sounds and navigate the oceans without the help of GPS. In a study published in the journal Current Biology on Monday, researchers examined 186 strandings of gray whales reported between 1985 and 2018. To try to tighten up the data set and remove some variables, the team looked at strandings of whales that were stranded alive with "no signs of injury, illness, emaciation or human interaction." The strandings were then correlated with various measures of solar activity: how many sunspots were present, changes in the Earth's magnetic field and solar radio flux, which is determined by radio frequency noise and has shown to correlate well with sunspot numbers and be affected by solar storms.

America's Justice Department "has filed a brief in support of Oracle in its Supreme Court battle against Google over whether Java should have copyright protection," reports ZDNet: The Justice Department filed its amicus brief to the Supreme Court this week, joining a mighty list of briefs from major tech companies and industry luminaries — including Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun, which Oracle bought in 2010, acquiring Sun-built Java in the process. While Microsoft, IBM and others have backed Google's arguments in the decade-long battle, McNealy, like the Justice Department, is opposing Google. McNealy called Google's description of how it uses Java packages a "woeful mischaracterization of the artful design of the Java packages" and "an insult to the hard-working developers at Sun who made Java such a success...."

Joe Tucci, former CEO of now Dell-owned enterprise storage giant EMC, threw in his two cents against Google. "Accepting Google's invitation to upend that system by eliminating copyright protection for creative and original computer software code would not make the system better — it would instead have sweeping and harmful effects throughout the software industry," Tucci's brief reads.
Oracle is also questioning the motives of Google's allies, reports The Verge: After filing a Supreme Court statement last week, Oracle VP Ken Glueck posted a statement over the weekend assailing the motives of Microsoft, IBM, and the CCIA industry group, all of which have publicly supported Google. Glueck's post comes shortly after two groups — an interdisciplinary panel of academics and the American Conservative Union Foundation — submitted legal briefs supporting Oracle. Both groups argued that Google should be liable for copying code from the Java language for the Android operating system. The ACUF argued that protecting Oracle's code "is fundamental to a well-ordered system of private property rights and indeed the rule of law itself...."

Earlier this year, Google garnered around two dozen briefs supporting its position. But Oracle claims that in reality, "Google appears to be virtually alone — at least among the technology community." Glueck says Google's most prominent backers had ulterior motives or "parochial agendas"; either they were working closely with Google, or they had their own designs on Java...

Even if you accept Oracle's arguments wholeheartedly, there's a long list of other Google backers from the tech community. Advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology signed on to amicus briefs last month, as did several prominent tech pioneers, including Linux creator Linus Torvalds and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak. The CCIA brief was signed by the Internet Association, a trade group representing many of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley. Patreon, Reddit, Etsy, the Mozilla Corporation, and other midsized tech companies also backed a brief raising "fundamental concerns" about Oracle's assertions.

As the planet spins on its axis, it teeters back and forth like a child's top, and after millennia of staggering along its path around the sun, it no longer aligns with the constellations of the zodiac on the dates that were established in ancient times. From a report: Because of that, Leo ain't what he used to be -- and neither are Aries, Taurus, Gemini or any of the rest. In astronomical terms, the wobble is known as precession, and it's caused by gravity tugging on the Earth's distended midriff. "The Earth bulges at the equator, and the gravitational pull of the sun and Moon together act on that bulge," said James B. Kaler, professor emeritus of astronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Over a period of roughly 26,000 years, the planet's wobble traces a full circle, gradually making the stars appear to shift to the east by about one degree over the span of a human life. "It sounds slow," Dr. Kaler said, "but it changes the polestar." The polestar appears directly above the North Pole and marks due north. Today, Polaris, which is sometimes called the North Star, is located at the tip of the Little Dipper's handle and is the Earth's polestar. A few thousand years from now, Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, will occupy that position. The creeping discrepancy in the alignment of the Earth, sun and constellations was first noticed by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived from 190 B.C. to 120 B.C., and is considered the founder of trigonometry.

kimanaw shares a report: The Trump administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court to reject an appeal by Alphabet's Google, boosting Oracle's bid to collect more than $8 billion in royalties for Google's use of copyrighted programming code in the Android operating system. The administration weighed in on the high-stakes case on the same day that President Donald Trump attended a re-election campaign fundraiser in California hosted by Oracle's co-founder, billionaire Larry Ellison. Ellison hosted a golf outing and photos with Trump. The event cost a minimum of $100,000 per couple to attend, with a higher ticket price of $250,000 for those who wanted to participate in a policy roundtable with the president, the Palm Springs Desert Sun reported. Google is challenging an appeals court ruling that it violated Oracle copyrights when it included some Oracle-owned Java programming code in Android. The dispute has split Silicon Valley, pitting developers of software code against companies that use the code to create programs. Google's "verbatim copying" of Oracle's code into a competing product wasn't necessary to foster innovation, the U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco said Wednesday in a filing with the court.

cusco shares a report: For the 30th anniversary of one of the most iconic views from the Voyager mission, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is publishing a new version of the image known as the "Pale Blue Dot." The updated image uses modern image-processing software and techniques while respecting the intent of those who planned the image. Like the original, the new color view shows Planet Earth as a single, bright blue pixel in the vastness of space. Rays of sunlight scattered within the camera optics stretch across the scene, one of which happens to have intersected dramatically with Earth.

The view was obtained on Feb. 14, 1990, just minutes before Voyager 1's cameras were intentionally powered off to conserve power and because the probe -- along with its sibling, Voyager 2 -- would not make close flybys of any other objects during their lifetimes. Shutting down instruments and other systems on the two Voyager spacecraft has been a gradual and ongoing process that has helped enable their longevity. This celebrated Voyager 1 view was part of a series of 60 images designed to produce what the mission called the "Family Portrait of the Solar System." This sequence of camera-pointing commands returned images of six of the solar system's planets, as well as the Sun. The Pale Blue Dot view was created using the color images Voyager took of Earth. Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco shared the story behind the idea of Pale Blue Dot picture on Neil deGrasse Tyson's video podcast "Star Talk" last year. It's fascinating -- watch from 51:05 seconds and hang around for 13 minutes. Also the famous video where Carl Sagan describes the Pale Blue Dot. An interview he did on the subject later.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: Organic solar cells (OSCs) have a few advantages over other designs. They still collect energy from sunlight, but can be made more flexible, transparent (or at least semi-transparent) and can be tuned to only absorb certain wavelengths of light. That potentially makes them perfect for greenhouse roofing -- they can let most light through for the plants, while harvesting enough to offset a decent chunk of the facility's energy needs. "Plants only use some wavelengths of light for photosynthesis, and the idea is to create greenhouses that make energy from that unused light while allowing most of the photosynthetic band of light to pass through," says Brendan O'Connor, corresponding author of the study [from North Carolina State University]. "However, until now it wasn't clear how much energy a greenhouse could capture if it was using these semitransparent, wavelength selective, organic solar cells."

To begin to answer that question, the researchers modeled how much energy would be coming in from a greenhouse with OSCs in the roof, versus the amount of energy it would normally consume. The idea was to find the point where the greenhouse becomes energy neutral -- that is, it generates enough energy from the Sun to completely power itself. For this study, the theoretical greenhouses were modeled on the energy needed to grow tomatoes in three locations with different climates -- Arizona, North Carolina and Wisconsin. As a bonus, the OSCs are effective insulators too, helping maintain the right temperature. The team found that there would be a small hit to the amount of usable light the plants inside would receive, but the benefits would be worth it. In the famously sunny Arizona, for example, a greenhouse with OSCs installed could become energy neutral while blocking just 10 percent of the light the plants need. This shouldn't negatively affect the plants, the team says. In fact, the energy output could be doubled with just a little more light blocked. In North Carolina, sunlight is a little more sparse, so a greenhouse would need to block 20 percent of the photosynthetic light to become energy neutral. Chilly Wisconsin winters would be too much to ever achieve neutrality though, but these greenhouses could still generate almost half of their energy needs. The new study was published in the journal Joule.

Apollo Masters, one of two plants in the world that manufacture lacquers that are imperative to the process of making vinyl records, sustained a major fire yesterday and burned down. Loudwire reports: The Desert Sun confirmed that the fire began in the 15,000-square-foot building at 8am Feb. 6. There were multiple explosions reported, and 82 firefighters responded to the scene. The company posted a statement on their website addressing the event, as well as the uncertainty of its future: "To all our wonderful customers. It is with great sadness we report the Apollo Masters manufacturing and storage facility had a devastating fire and was completely destroyed. The best news is all of our employees are safe. We are uncertain of our future at this point and are evaluating options as we try to work through this difficult time. Thank you for all of the support over the years and the notes of encouragement and support we have received from you all."

The only other plant, MDC, is located in Japan. While there has not been an immediate impact, an eventual shortage of lacquers can lead to disruptions in the vinyl production process for companies all over.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe is healthy and operating as designed following its fourth close approach to the Sun, called perihelion, on Jan. 29. From a report: Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, received a "status A" beacon from the spacecraft at 5:20 a.m. EST on Feb. 1. Status A is the best of four possible status signals, and indicates that the spacecraft is operating nominally and the instrument suites are collecting science data. This status also indicates that any minor issues that may have occurred were identified and resolved by Parker Solar Probe's onboard autonomy and fault management systems.

During this perihelion, Parker Solar Probe broke its own records for speed and proximity to the Sun for a human-made object. The spacecraft reached a speed of 244,255 miles per hour (about 393,044 kilometers per hour) as it whipped around the Sun at a distance of 11.6 million miles (about 18.6 million kilometers). Parker Solar Probe's heat shield, called the Thermal Protection System, or TPS, reached new record temperatures as well. At this distance from the Sun, computer modeling estimates show that the Sun-facing side of the TPS experienced a blazing 1,134 degrees Fahrenheit (612 degrees C), about 300 degrees hotter than encountered on the spacecraft's previous three perihelia. The spacecraft and instruments behind this protective heat shield remained at a temperature of about 85 F (30 C). During the spacecraft's closest three perihelia in 2024-25, the TPS will see temperatures around 2,500 F (1,370 C).

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Supermassive black holes have a reputation for consuming everything in their path, from gas clouds to entire solar systems. So is there any way aliens could live on a world that actually orbited one of these cosmic beasts? Surprisingly, the answer is a tentative yes, researchers say, although there are plenty of reasons why life could never take hold in such a place. If it did, living on such a planet would be truly surreal, with the black hole filling nearly half the sky and concentrating leftover photons from the big bang into a pseudosun. It would certainly be no place like home. The deep blackness of the event horizon, looming over nearly half the sky, would be a forbidding presence. And because of the time dilation effects in Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, known as general relativity, 1 year passing on such a planet would see thousands of years go by around an ordinary star. Even if life could take hold on such a world, there's little chance of detecting it. A planet passing in front of a black hole isn't going to make it appear any dimmer when it's black already. An expert says a vast array of radio telescopes, like the one used last year to image a black hole for the first time, might be able to detect such a transit. "Technically it's not so easy, but in theory it's possible." If this idea sounds familiar, it's because it was first published in 2017. The researchers said that in order for a planet to receive strong enough cosmic microwave background (CMB) light, it would need to orbit very close to the black hole's event horizon. However, if it were too close it would get sucked in.

"As the researchers report in The Astrophysical Journal, for their planet to get close enough, the surface of the black hole would have to spin at less than a 100-millionth of a percent shy of the speed of light," reports Science Magazine. "The black hole would also need to be large, the team calculates, at least 163 million times the Sun's mass." It would also need to be "an old galaxy" with "almost empty space" surrounding the black hole. "That's because any other stray matter being sucked into the black hole would emit a blast of radiation during its death spiral powerful enough to kill any life on a nearby planet," the report says.

sciencehabit quotes Science magazine: A new close-up of the turbulent boiling plasma of the solar surface is the debut image of the largest telescope ever built for staring at the Sun. Sporting a 4-meter-wide mirror — twice the size of any existing solar scope—and a vantage point 3000 meters up on the summit of Haleakala on the Hawaiian island of Maui — the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) will reveal unprecedented detail of processes that channel energy from the Sun's interior into its atmosphere, the corona.

Researchers hope that by zooming in on cell-like structures — each about the size of Texas — they can learn what causes the Sun to launch powerful flares out into space, potentially causing damage to Earth's satellites, power grids, and communications. Such information could help scientists give warnings of such events days rather than minutes ahead.

A reader shares a report from The Atlantic, written by Sidney Fussell: Uber has banned guns in cars, for both drivers and passengers, since 2015. But over email and Facebook Messenger, four current and four former drivers told me they carry firearms on the job. In explaining why, they each cited the same self-determinalist rhetoric Uber has slapped on subway ads to entice drivers and used in hearings to justify the business model: Drivers maintain good ratings, own their own cars, set their own hours, act as their own bosses, and follow local laws. But ultimately, they work for themselves, and Uber is, to use a Silicon Valley term of art, just a platform.

In 2017, Jose Mejia, a Miami driver, filed a federal class-action suit against Uber to reverse its firearm ban. Florida's 2008 "bring your gun to work" law empowers employees to store legal firearms in personal lockers or their own cars. With Uber, of course, the car is the workplace. Mejia claimed that Uber policy violated Florida law and, citing an incident in which an Uber driver with a concealed-carry license shot and disarmed a Chicago gunman, argued that arming Uber drivers could save lives. But Mejia couldn't prove that Uber violated his rights: He hadn't been fired or threatened with suspension. The company had announced a ban, yes, but never materially stopped him from carrying a firearm. The Florida court dismissed the suit (PDF) without prejudice in 2018. Here we have a uniquely American absurdity: Drivers can carry guns to work, to a bar, to a supermarket, but not in their own cars while using the app to transport passengers. Like Mejia, they exist in this space between name and effect, adherent to a ban with little practical enforcement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Colorado Sun: Outdoor businesses need people to get outside, but almost half of Americans don't venture outdoors to play. The steady decline in participation threatens not just the bottom line but the outdoor industry's mission to collectively steer policy on critical issues like climate change, environmental protection and public lands. While the Outdoor Foundation's 2019 Outdoor Participation Report (PDF) showed that while a bit more than half of Americans went outside to play at least once in 2018, nearly half did not go outside for recreation at all. Americans went on 1 billion fewer outdoor outings in 2018 than they did in 2008. The number of adolescents ages 6 to 12 who recreate outdoors has fallen four years in a row, dropping more than 3% since 2007.

The number of outings for kids has fallen 15% since 2012. The number of moderate outdoor recreation participants declined, and only 18% of Americans played outside at least once a week. [...] While the decline in participation is disconcerting for the industry, there were some highlights. Female participation rates are up 3.2% over last year. Hispanics are getting outside twice as often as they were a decade ago, with the strongest growth of any ethnicity. And some sports, like BMX cycling and sailing, are seeing surges in numbers. Most people's outdoor activities are close to home, with more than 63% of Americans recreating within 10 miles of their houses. Less than 19% traveled 25 miles or more to play outside. So the Outdoor Foundation is in a mission to bolster participation in outdoor play near homes, in urban areas where residents might not have as many opportunities to get outside.

A reader shares a report from MIT Technology Review: Astronomers have just released the highest-resolution image of the sun. Taken by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Maui, it gives us an unprecedented view of our nearest star and brings us closer to solving several long-standing mysteries. The new image demonstrates the telescope's potential power. It shows off a surface that's divided up into discrete, Texas-size cells, like cracked sections in the desert soil. You can see plasma oozing off the surface, rising into the air before sinking back into darker lanes.

"We have now seen the smallest details on the largest object in our solar system," says Thomas Rimmele, the director of DKIST. The new image was taken December 10, when the telescope achieved first light. It is still technically under construction, with three more instruments set to come online. When formal observations begin in July, DKIST, with its 13-foot mirror, will be the most powerful solar telescope in the world. Located on Haleakala (the tallest summit on Maui), the telescope will be able to observe structures on the surface of the sun as small as 18.5 miles (30 kilometers). This resolution is over five times better than that of DKIST's predecessor, the Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope in New Mexico.

Id software has released a new trailer for their upcoming Doom sequel set on a demon-infested planet Earth in the year 2151. And GameSpot has uploaded a 10-minute clip of gameplay while Collider released 15 minutes.

Collider writes: Doom Eternal takes everything that was gloriously batshit about Doom 2016, throws it in a Lamborghini full of Slayer albums and catapults it into the sun. This game is out of its goddamn mind in the best possible way, and I literally cannot wait to get my hands on the full version... The Fortress of Doom is massive. I wasn't able to access every area, and could only guess at the function of some of the areas I did see. One section had the original Doom Marine costume on display in a glass case, and the game's director, Hugo Martin confirmed that the skin is an unlockable. Moreover, he indicated that there are several unlockable player skins in the game, including one he was clearly excited about but couldn't reveal, saying that it was still in the licensing approval stage...

Doom Eternal, like its predecessor, is a fast game, pitting you against hordes of powerful enemies that force you to constantly be on the move and quick-swapping weapons to inflict maximum damage while avoiding death. You have a few tools at your disposal to earn guaranteed life, ammo, and armor, which are the over-the-top glory kills, the terrifying chainsaw, and the brand-new flame belcher respectively. Glory kills are special instant-death maneuvers you can unleash on enemies after staggering them, and the addition of a retractable arm blade has heightened the graphic absurdity of them to such a degree that I was giggling like an idiot every time I pulled one off.

I spent the next three hours murdering my way across three massive levels that were incredibly varied in terms of design, beginning in a blasted post-apocalyptic city, then moving to a vast overgrown temple, and finally ending up in a heavily-fortified arctic base... Each stage had a completely different feel -- the city was very ground-based, with dark subway tunnels and skeletal office buildings. The temple was spread out across what felt like miles, with an unexpected amount of verticality and traversal thanks to the new climbing mechanic. Yep, Doom Guy can now cling to certain walls, as well as swing from poles to extend his jump and gain access to distant ledges. The climbing controls are a bit funky, like Spider-Man with a rotator cuff injury, but the traversal puzzles are fun and satisfying, and allow for some truly massive environments...

Martin promised that players will continue to be introduced to new enemies and environments right up until the end of the 22+ hour campaign. He describes Doom Eternal as a thinking person's action game, and that the team's goal was to create a combat puzzle worth your time.
DOOM Eternal is scheduled to be released on March 20th.

The future of the next 46 billion devices. From a report: "What do you think is the biggest hardware business at Microsoft?" asked Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella last week during a private media event. "Xbox," answered a reporter who had been quizzing Nadella on how the company's hardware products like Surface and Xbox fit into the broader ambitions of Microsoft. "No, it's our cloud," fired back Nadella, explaining how Microsoft is building everything from the data centers to the servers and network stack that fit inside. As the reporter pushed further on the hardware point, a frequent question given Microsoft's focus on the cloud, Nadella provided us with the best vision for the modern Microsoft that moves well beyond the billion-or-so Windows users that previously defined the company.

"The way I look at it is Windows is the billion user install base of ours. We continue to add a couple of hundred million PCs every year, and we want to serve that in a super good way," explained Nadella. "The thing that we also want to think about is the broader context. We don't want to be defined by just what we achieved. We look at if there's going to be 50 billion endpoints. Windows with its billion is good, Android with its 2 billion is good, iOS with its billion is good -- but there is 46 billion more. So let's go and look at what that 46 billion plus 4 [billion] looks like, and define a strategy for that, and then have everything have a place under the sun."

Alan Buis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, writes: There's an old saying that "the proof is in the pudding," meaning that you can only truly gauge the quality of something once it's been put to a test. Such is the case with climate models: mathematical computer simulations of the various factors that interact to affect Earth's climate, such as our atmosphere, ocean, ice, land surface and the Sun. For decades, people have legitimately wondered how well climate models perform in predicting future climate conditions. Based on solid physics and the best understanding of the Earth system available, they skillfully reproduce observed data. Nevertheless, they have a wide response to increasing carbon dioxide levels, and many uncertainties remain in the details. The hallmark of good science, however, is the ability to make testable predictions, and climate models have been making predictions since the 1970s. How reliable have they been? Now a new evaluation of global climate models used to project Earth's future global average surface temperatures over the past half-century answers that question: most of the models have been quite accurate.

In a study accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a research team led by Zeke Hausfather of the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a systematic evaluation of the performance of past climate models. The team compared 17 increasingly sophisticated model projections of global average temperature developed between 1970 and 2007, including some originally developed by NASA, with actual changes in global temperature observed through the end of 2017. The observational temperature data came from multiple sources, including NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) time series, an estimate of global surface temperature change. The results: 10 of the model projections closely matched observations. Moreover, after accounting for differences between modeled and actual changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other factors that drive climate, the number increased to 14. The authors found no evidence that the climate models evaluated either systematically overestimated or underestimated warming over the period of their projections.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from the BBC: Scientists analyzing a meteorite have discovered the oldest material known to exist on Earth. They found dust grains within the space rock -- which fell to Earth in the 1960s -- that are as much as 7.5 billion years old. The oldest of the dust grains were formed in stars that roared to life long before our Solar System was born. A team of researchers has described the result in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team from the U.S. and Switzerland analyzed 40 pre-solar grains contained in a portion of the Murchison meteorite, that fell in Australia in 1969. Based on how many cosmic rays had interacted with the grains, most had to be 4.6-4.9 billion years old. For comparison, the Sun is 4.6 billion years old and the Earth is 4.5 billion. However, the oldest yielded a date of around 7.5 billion years old. Previously, the oldest pre-solar grain dated with neon isotopes was around 5.5 billion years old.