The Every, a new near-future tech dystopia novel from author Dave Eggers, marks the first time the famed writer has penned a sequel in his two-decades-plus career. In the seven years after Eggers published his tech-obsessed bestseller The Circle, the author found himself still taking notes on things that could take place in that world. He soon understood why some of the writers he admires most (Margaret Atwood, Colson Whitehead, Philip Roth, etc.) revisit worlds, characters, and ideas they’ve already built. The evolution, he told Ars Technica, can be fascinating.

“When you establish the foundation and build a world, after the book comes out, you still have ideas about what happens next—I see the attraction,” Eggers said in an interview with Ars. “[When I’m going to write a book] there’s usually a catalytic moment: ‘OK, all these notes I’ve compiled might be something.’ For me, it was thinking about the way we cede control over our lives to algorithms and rely more and more on numbers to determine our own worth and the worth of other things, whether it’s art, humans, restaurants, or basically anything we interact with on a daily basis. Where is this going if we’re uncomfortable with ambiguity or something that can’t be reportedly measured? Why are we so happy to cede decision-making and value assessment to algorithms? What’s it say about us?”

Published in 2013, Eggers’ The Circle centered on surveillance and eventually inspired a Tom Hanks/John Boyega/Emma Watson film. In it, a company called The Circle develops an always-on streaming camera small enough to be unnoticeable, and the device becomes wildly popular. The central character, a low-level employee named Mae, eventually helps the device reach those heights by adopting a totally transparent lifestyle. She allows virtually all of her day-to-day interactions to be live-streamed on this Twitch-like ecosystem, complete with running comment threads and DMs. As you might expect, it’s not always smooth sailing, and the ramifications can be dark.

The Every quickly asserts itself as a logical progression from its literary forebear. Moving past simply recording everything, this world now revolves around measuring everything so that technology can spit out directions. Prior to the events in the novel, The Circle was part of a mega-merger and evolved into The Every, a company with its hands in seemingly everything: consumer tech, media, digital storage, space, food, etc. (If this sounds like a reference to a certain real-life analogue, that “e-commerce giant named after a South American jungle” was acquired by The Every ahead of the events in the new book.) Mae has risen to CEO and oversees an empire driven by numbers and ruthless efficiency. The Every’s health app tells you when to get up and jump at your desk. The Every’s storage solution will digitize all your belongings as 3D-printable files so you can incinerate your waste and lower your carbon footprint. Media from The Every is driven by data-tracking technology that can tell when readers/viewers/listeners tend to abandon ship; it then tells creators how to improve.

Eggers’ new tale focuses on a young woman named Delaney. She’s a Trog, or someone who sets out to live a low-tech lifestyle, including opting out of having smart devices in her home and staying away from certain public places that require people to check in. Along with her tech-savvy (though still Trog-y) friend and roommate Wes, the two aim to take down The Every before every public space and natural area is leveraged for data gathering. But how can you solve a problem like The Every? The duo has a plan, and suddenly Delaney finds herself going through a complicated interview process to become an Everyone (yes, that’s what employees at The Every are called).

“The Circle was more about surveillance and whether privacy is possible,” said Eggers. “This is more about whether we want to exercise free will on a daily basis, or are we happier to have these algorithms feed us and free us of all these decisions and anxieties? What if there was one monopoly who promised to make you your best self so long as you basically gave up control over every decision?”

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1799306

We got the briefest of teasers for the upcoming 13th season (or series) of Doctor Who during San Diego Comic-Con in July, hinting at the return of some of the show’s most classic villains. Now we finally have the full official trailer, and it’s a doozy, particularly for hardcore fans, with glimpses of the Ood, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, and the Weeping Angels—for my money the most frightening and disturbing creatures the series has yet invented. Just the brief shot of them in this trailer gave me chills. And apparently there will be alien creatures known as the Ravaegers. This will also, alas, be Jodie Whittaker’s last full season as the Doctor.

(Spoilers for the 2021 New Year’s Day special below.)

We last saw Whittaker’s Doctor on New Year’s Day earlier this year in the special episode “Revolution of the Daleks,” which found her being held in a Judoon prison. Her faithful companions—Yasmin (Mandip Gill), Ryan (Tosin Cole), and Graham (Bradley Walsh)—were back in Sheffield, searching for her. Meanwhile, some corrupt politicians were building a defense drone squad by cloning the remains of the Reconnaissance Scout Dalek the Doctor and her compassions encountered in the 2019 New Year’s Day special, “Revolution.” Naturally, wacky, world-threatening highjacks ensued.  

Ultimately, Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) sprung the Doctor from her cell and reunited her with her TARDIS, and the gang defeated the Dalek threat. Ryan and Graham opted to stay on Earth rather than return to the TARDIS, leaving the Doctor and Yaz to continue on with their adventures alone. But not for long! John Bishop will be joining the series as new companion Dan Lewis. (We catch a few glimpses of his chiseled features in the new trailer.)

This 13th season was particularly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with only eight planned episodes, rather than the usual 13. Ultimately, showrunner Chris Chibnall decided to make the season just six episodes, with a complete narrative arc across them all, rather than the episodic structure that has been more typical of the series. (It’s not unprecedented, however. The Trial of the Time Lord in 1986 was also one complete narrative.)

“There were two ways you could go,” Chibnall said at SDCC of his decision. “You could go, ‘Let’s do lots of tiny little episodes in one room, with no monsters,’ or we could throw down the gauntlet and do the biggest story we’ve ever done.” According to Chibnall, this series will be “the most ambitious thing we’ve done.”

Collectively, the six-episode arc has been given the subtitle Flux. There will also be three special episodes that will air next year. Chibnall will step down as showrunner at the same time Whittaker concludes her run as the Doctor, presumably in the third special episode (which is traditionally when the Doctor’s current incarnation regenerates into a new form).

The BBC is bringing back Russell T. Davies—who revived the series in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor—as showrunner. It’s anyone’s guess who will fill Whittaker’s shoes. But she definitely put her unique stamp on the role (despite some less then stellar material to work with), and it’s going to be a tough act to follow.

Doctor Who: Flux premieres on October 31, 2021 on BBC and BBC America.

Listing image by YouTube/BBC

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1804682

Ancient Iron Age miners in what is now Austria were quite fond of beer and blue cheese, according to a new analysis, published in the journal Current Biology, of preserved paleo-poop. The researchers found evidence of two fungal species commonly used to produce blue cheese and beers, along with evidence that the miners’ diet was particularly rich in carbohydrates in the form of cereal grains.

“Genome-wide analysis indicates that both fungi were involved in food fermentation and provide the first molecular evidence for blue cheese and beer consumption during Iron Age Europe,” said co-author Frank Maixner of the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies in Bolzano, Italy. “The miners seem to have intentionally applied food fermentation technologies with microorganisms which are still nowadays used in the food industry.”

For archaeologists keen on learning more about the health and diet of past populations—as well as how certain parasites evolved over the evolutionary history of the microbiome—preserved samples of ancient poo can be a veritable goldmine of information. Samples are usually found in dry caves, desert areas, frozen areas, or waterlogged environments (like bogs), according to Maixner and his co-authors, where desiccation, freezing, and similar processes preserve the fecal matter for posterity.

As we’ve reported previously, it can be difficult to determine whether fecal samples are human or were produced by other animals, particularly dogs. Usually, only those samples found with human skeletons or mummies could be designated as being of human origin with any certainty. That’s why scientists developed a tool last year (dubbed coproID) capable of determining whether paleofeces and coprolites recovered from archaeological sites are of human or animal origin. Among other discoveries, the researchers found that the archaeological record was unexpectedly “full of dog poop.”

One excellent source of human paleofeces samples is the prehistoric underground salt mines of Hallstatt-Dachstein/Salzkammergut, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Austria. The mines have high salt concentrations and a constant annual temperature of around 8 degrees Celsius, which is ideal for preserving organic materials like feces. Archaeologists have unearthed thousands of Bronze and Iron Age tools and implements made from wood and fur, as well as rawhide, woolen textile fragments, ropes—and yes, human feces, typically recovered by wet-sieving larger blocks of debris found in the mines. These artifacts have provided insight into the daily life of the miners.

The present study focused on investigating the miners’ dietary habits, as revealed by the analysis of gut microbes present in the preserved poop. Maixner et al. examined four paleofecal samples. Radiocarbon dating revealed that one was from the Late Bronze Age, two were from the Iron Age, and one dated to the 18th century AD—most likely because the mines began to be re-used around that time. The researchers were able to retrieve DNA and proteins from all four samples and determined that all four came from men. “The DNA damage is exceptionally low,” the authors noted in their paper. “This high preservation is most likely due to the rapid desiccation of the samples in the salt mine.”

The molecular and microscopic analysis showed that the miners primarily subsisted on cereals like emmer, spelt, barley, and millet—a diet rich in carbohydrates and supplemented with beans, fruits, seeds, nuts (walnut), or meats (cattle and swine). The Bronze Age sample showed almost exclusively cereal grain remains, along with a few weeds like corn cockle and poison parsley. The Iron Age samples were similar, except one sample had remains of broad beans, crabapples, and cranberries.

The 18th-century sample was notably different. The cereal remains (wheat and barley bran) were much more finely textured—evidence of grinding—with some garden beans and almost no fruits. “This suggest that the protohistoric miners consumed the cereals and legumes in a sort of gruel or porridge, whereas miners in the 18th century ate their cereals in a more processed form, e.g., as a bread or biscuit,” the authors wrote. The team also found evidence that the men who produced the Iron Age and 18th-century fecal samples suffered from intestinal infections (whipworm and roundworm).

The microbiomes of all four samples were quite similar to the gut microbiomes of non-Westernized populations today, particularly in the abundance of Prevotella copra, which is associated with the digestion of complex carbohydrates, according to the authors. This “adds weight to the hypothesis that the modern industrialized human gut microbiome has diverged from an ancestral state, probably due to modern lifestyle, diet, or medical advances,” they wrote. Analyzing fecal samples from the last two to three centuries would help pinpoint when that pivotal shift occurred.

All the samples showed some evidence of fungal DNA, but the Iron Age sample also had a high abundance of two species of fungi: Penicillium roqueforti—commonly used in the fermentation of cheese—and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, used for fermenting bread and alcoholic beverages like beer, mead, and wine. The former would have likely produced a cheese similar to modern blue cheese, indicating “a major step in ruminant milk processing from fresh to ripened cheese,” the authors wrote—perhaps because the ripened cheese would have lower lactose content and could be stored for longer periods.

As for the S. cerevisiae, the researchers were able to reconstruct about 90 percent of the fungal genome from the paleo-poop sample and concluded that it was most likely used to ferment beer. With the many fermentable cereals that constituted the subject’s diet, the researchers were even able to hypothesize about the likely process. The miners could have simply added water to wort and allowed fermentation to happen naturally via wild, airborne yeasts. But they didn’t find evidence of other yeast species common to this kind of natural fermentation process.

Rather, they found evidence of domestication of yeasts, either through the reuse of vessels or through the practice of “back-slopping,” in which new batches are inoculated with portions from previous batches. The team concluded that the miners were brewing the modern equivalent of pale beer, “produced mainly by top-fermenting S. cerevisiae strains,” they wrote.

“These results shed substantial new light on the life of the prehistoric salt miners in Hallstatt and allow an understanding of ancient culinary practices in general on a whole new level,” said co-author Kerstin Kowarik of the Museum of Natural History Vienna. “It is becoming increasingly clear that not only were prehistoric culinary practices sophisticated but also that complex processed foodstuffs as well as the technique of fermentation have held a prominent role in our early food history.”

DOI: Current Biology, 2021. 10.1016/j.cub.2021.09.031  (About DOIs).

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1803534

Metroid Dread developer MercurySteam has been criticized by multiple former members of the company whose names were left out of the credits, the ex-staffers say.

Speaking to the Spanish outlet Vandal, several former employees who contributed to Dread‘s development—which was handled primarily by the Madrid-based studio with nominal oversight from Nintendo EPD in Japan—said they were not acknowledged for their efforts despite working on the game for months. The outlet also confirmed a company policy at MercurySteam that stipulates any employee must work on at least 25 percent of a project’s total development to be included in its credits.

“The policy of the studio requires that anyone must work on the project at least 25% of the time, of the total development of the game, to appear in the final credits,” a studio representative said in an email to Vandal (via our google translated-script). “Of course, exceptions are sometimes made when making exceptional contributions.” Sources in the story put the game’s total development time at between three to four years.

Credit where credit is due

Roberto Mejías, a 3D artist who worked on the game for eight months, questioned the developer in a public post on LinkedIn offering congratulations to the Dread team.

He said:

I’m not surprised of the quality of the game… the amount of talent on that team was through the roof. I know this first hand because, despite not being included on the game’s credits, I was part of that team for eight months… While playing the game, I’ve recognized quite a few assets and environments I worked on… so my work is there. Then, I would like to ask MercurySteam: Why do I not appear on the game’s credits? Is it some kind of mistake? I would really appreciate having some answer to this.

In a separate email to Vandal, Mejías added that MercurySteam “can always say that they consider someone’s contribution to be exceptional and do whatever they want.” His leaving the company in violation of its policy-stipulated 42-day minimum notice, he said, may have also been a factor in his name not appearing in Dread‘s credits. (Spanish labor law requires workers to give at least 15 days’ notice before terminating employment.)

Mejías was joined by several other anonymous former developers who contributed to Vandal’s story.

“Not accrediting the work of the team that puts all the love in the project, and the effort, is a very ugly practice,” said one person who worked on the game for 11 months. “The 25% issue sounds like an invented one to me and that it suited them well for the above case.”

Representatives for Nintendo did not immediately reply to questions by press time.

This isn’t MercurySteam’s first rodeo with Metroid—the studio previously developed Metroid: Samus Returns for Nintendo’s 3DS in 2017. After that game’s release, no developers came forward to say their names had been omitted from the credits.

The studio was also subject to controversy after the release of 2014’s Castlevania sequel, Lords of Shadow 2. Rumors swirled that co-founder Enric Alvarez had been responsible for creating a negative studio culture, which he and former Konami producer Dave Cox refuted in a 2016 interview with Eurogamer.

“Pretty much everybody in the studio has been here since day one,” Cox told the outlet at the time. “I’m working with the same people who worked on Lords of Shadow 1 and 2. If it were such a horrible environment, and if Enric was such an asshole, then nobody would work here.”

A long (uncredited) history

Of course, the history of names being stricken from game credits goes back decades. Atari infamously refused to credit its games’ developers, leading Adventure creator Warren Robinett in 1980 to create a secret room bearing his name.

Much more recently, multiple developers took to Twitter to express disappointment that their work on Arkane’s Deathloop had reportedly not been attributed in that game’s credits. Some workers, they claimed, had been omitted entirely, while others were relegated to a generic “special thanks” list at the end of the crawl.

Rockstar has also been criticized in recent years for leaving numerous names out of the end credits for Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2. In 2018, the company told Kotaku that worker accreditation was based on whether employees got “to the finish line,” with developers who left before a game was shipped getting left out in the cold. That statement was walked back earlier this year, clarifying that current and future employees will be credited for their work even if they leave Rockstar before a game ships.

Meanwhile, Japan has an entire unsung “support” industry known as “white label development” based around insistently anonymous studio work. Long-running outfits like Hyde and Tose contribute in secret to powerhouse franchises like Final Fantasy, Yakuza, and Resident Evil, among many others. (Tose perhaps most famously helped on the development of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, listed only as a “special thanks” mention in its credits.)

Other not-agreed-upon omissions still happen in Japanese development as well. In 2008, Capcom removed the entire staff list of the now-defunct Clover Studios from the credits of Okami‘s port for Nintendo Wii. The game’s original director, Hideki Kamiya, did not approve of this decision.

“I feel dejected, and not only because my own name has been erased from my creation,” Kamiya said on the blog for Platinum Games, then newly formed from Clover’s ashes. “The fact that they cut the entire staff is utterly deplorable.”

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1804368

Call of Duty‘s comprehensive new anti-cheat system includes a potential olive branch for security-conscious players: it can’t access your PC’s private files, or so Activision claims.

Announced Wednesday via the Call of Duty blog, the developers’ new suite of cheat deterrent tools (called the Ricochet Anti-Cheat initiative) includes a kernel-level driver for PC that the publisher is claiming will only run when a Call of Duty game is active, as well as a host of server-side tools the CoD security team will use to monitor player behavior and respond accordingly. The Ricochet system will be required to play Call of Duty: Warzone and the upcoming WWII-based Call of Duty: Vanguard once the software is implemented in each game.

Assuming the publisher’s claims are true, the kernel driver—slated to be added to Warzone later this year—only performs active checks on software that tries to interact with or otherwise change its files when the game application is open and will turn off when players close out. Data from the driver will be used to analyze suspicious behavior and “assist in the identification of cheaters, reinforcing and strengthening the overall server security,” the blog states.

In other words, it allegedly won’t be constantly running in the background whenever your PC is on and can’t monitor or report data unrelated to Call of Duty files.

An implementation like this would be a significant shift away from the OS-wide, high-level security permissions seen in other kernel-level anti-cheat programs, like the Vanguard software (not to be confused with CoD‘s period-era sequel Vanguard), which Riot uses for Valorant. While the Vanguard anti-cheat client component also only operates while running the game, it uses a “kernel-mode driver” that runs in the background as soon as you load Windows. (And even with Vanguard’s client component handling the majority of operations, an always-on kernel-level driver still hands the developer high-level security access to your PC and would leave you at the mercy of an exploit-savvy attacker until Riot’s security team could patch any breach, a process that could take hours.)

The blog post states that the Ricochet driver has been tested across a wide variety of PC setups to ensure broad stability and will continue to be tested and updated after launch. However, it does not specifically address granular details or provide proof of how the driver has kernel-level access without the ability to turn itself on outside of a Call of Duty application or whether it can prevent attackers from activating the software when a game isn’t running.

The developers haven’t addressed whether any methods will be put in place to report observed issues with the driver itself, either, though they encourage players to continue reporting cheating incidents encountered online and to enable two-factor account authentication for their accounts. Representatives from Activision did not immediately respond to questions by press time.

The blog did not go into much specific detail about how Ricochet’s backend tools will work, but it did state that the system will use machine-learning algorithms to examine game data on the server, using it to identify suspicious trends and implement appropriate security measures as needed.

Ricochet will be added to Warzone alongside its WWII-themed Pacific map update later this year, with Vanguard support coming sometime after.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1803962

After a few ho-hum announcements earlier this year, HTC’s virtual reality division has returned with arguably its boldest (and most mysterious) product launch yet: the HTC Vive Flow.

The new headset, whose basic concept leaked on Tuesday via a massive Twitter image dump, will be available for preorder at some point today (perhaps right now, as this story goes live) for $499. Unlike HTC’s Vive Pro line, this new VR headset does not appear to prioritize gaming or other higher-fidelity use cases.

Instead, this all-in-one headset—whose massive, outward-facing lenses resemble something from a Venture Bros. henchman’s outfit—appears to have casual users in mind. Today’s announcement highlights apps that focus on “meditation,” “brain training,” and “collaborating and socializing,” and the latter example requires using HTC’s own Vive Sync virtual conferencing software. Additionally, promotional materials provided to Ars ahead of today’s reveal mention simple VR games for the platform, like Space Slurpies. (No, I never thought I’d type the words “space slurpies” in an Ars article, either.) The headset does not currently include any way to connect to gaming-grade computers, either wired or wireless, to run higher-fidelity VR experiences.

Instead, Vive Flow supports two types of Android smartphone connections. One requires a “5G” connection and HDCP 2.2, which are used to wirelessly mirror content from your phone to your virtual reality world. As of press time, this use case appears to hinge largely on video-streaming apps (even though Vive Flow’s built-in hardware appears perfectly capable of loading and presenting video). The other is a simpler Bluetooth connection, and this is required to turn an Android smartphone into a VR controller. HTC has yet to clarify how to use Vive Flow without a connected Android smartphone.

From the sound of Thursday’s announcement, Vive Flow includes enough onboard material to run VR experiences all by itself: a processing unit, a battery, built-in speakers, and some form of “inside-out” tracking, apparently powered by at least two outward-facing cameras (one beneath each of Vive Flow’s tinted, outward-facing lenses). However, the on-board battery is apparently so pesky that it can run out within minutes, thus all but requiring that you add an external battery pack for standard use. Users can connect their own Bluetooth audio headsets if they prefer those (but not any headset with a 3.5 mm headphone jack).

HTC sent a pretty basic description about Vive Flow to Ars Technica ahead of its formal Thursday reveal, including a few intriguing sales pitches. The best is the headset’s pair of “diopter adjustment” dials, which will allow users to fine-tune the focus of each eye independently. Additionally, the device’s hinge mechanism appears to adjust to a variety of head sizes and can neatly fold down for the sake of fitting into an attractively slim carrying case.

And while we suspect Vive Flow is an underpowered VR system (more on that in a second), HTC says it only weighs a paltry 189 grams, compared to 532 grams for Oculus Quest 2. Should you be willing to sacrifice power for comfort, the information we have thus far—along with video sequences that emphasize sweat-reducing airflow—looks optimistic on that front.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1804020

Epic Games keeps piling up lawsuits with app store owners. This time, Google is countersuing Epic for breach of contract.

Epic signed contracts with both Google and Apple, pledging to use the default payment systems for in-app purchases. As part of its push for more open payment systems, though (and to dodge each platform’s 30 percent fee), Epic boldly pushed out updates to the Android and iOS apps that switched the payment processing from the platforms’ in-app purchases to Epic’s in-house system. Google and Apple both allege this action was a breach of their app store contracts with Epic.

Apple sued and got its ruling last month. Epic was ordered to pay $3.65 million in damages, covering Apple’s lost revenue from Epic’s three months of self-powered payments. Following that ruling, Google wants its missing money, too, and now it’s countersuing Epic, hoping for a similar ruling.

Google’s suit reads, “Epic willfully breached the DDA [Developer Distribution Agreement] by submitting a version of Fortnite for publication on Google Play with a payment method other than Google Play Billing for purchases of in-app content. By doing this, Epic denied Google its service fee under the DDA for any purchases made through the app outside of Google Play Billing.”

Google continues: “The users that downloaded the non-compliant version of Fortnite before its removal from Google Play are still able to use Epic’s hotfixed external payment mechanism to make in-app purchases—allowing Epic to evade its contractually agreed service fee to Google for those purchases.”

Google argues that “Epic has alternatively been unjustly enriched at Google’s expense” and is seeking restitution of its missing earnings and damages.

Google’s lawsuit also takes time to draw a bright line between Android and iOS, saying that, “unlike competitors like Apple, Google does not require Android users or developers to use Google Play in order to download, install, or distribute apps on Android” and that “most Android phones” come pre-loaded with multiple app stores. Google claims that “consumers and developers don’t have to use Google Play; they choose to use it when given a choice among Android app stores and distribution channels.”

The implication: if Epic doesn’t like the Play Store rules, it’s free to go elsewhere.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1803846

AMD’s latest lower-end graphics card, the RX 6600, is its sixth RDNA 2 offering in the past 12 months—a fact that might lead you to believe the company is making a killing in the world of PC GPUs these days. But the little public-facing data we have doesn’t bear that out.

Both AMD and Nvidia are in similar chip-shortage boats—all leaky and going down the same hellish supply chain creek without a paddle. Yet, Steam hardware surveys have told a tale of Nvidia enjoying a noticeable installation lead with its current-day RTX 3000 series of GPUs (5.76 percent of all registered GPUs on Steam in September 2021, excluding laptop variants) over AMD’s RDNA 2 (0.16 percent in the form of a single GPU, and that’s not a decimal-point typo). You might assume this would compel AMD to try something drastic with its latest GPU.

That’s not the case this month. AMD’s RX 6600, which goes on sale at some point today, is nowhere near the drastic card that AMD arguably needs right now. It’s loudly positioned as a “1080p” resolution card… just like its older sibling, the RX 6600XT, which came and went in August. In fact, both cards involve AMD’s Navi 23 die, with the 6600 either copying or slashing specs while also dropping in MSRP from $379 to $329.

If you’re looking for a smaller, modern GPU with low power draw, you may be tempted by the RX 6600’s compromises. But I currently struggle to recommend it.

132 W can only deliver so much

The biggest issue is that AMD has positioned the 6600 to compare directly to Nvidia’s superior RTX 3060 in terms of size, low power draw, and MSRP. In most respects, Nvidia’s identically priced RTX 3060 wins handily.

AMD’s best exception in this showdown is power draw: the RX 6600 is the gentlest wattage-sipper of either the AMD RDNA 2 line or Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series. At 132 W, that’s 22.4 percent less than the 3060. Like that card, the RX 6600 measures a reduced 8.125 inches (20.64 cm) long—enough space for two standard-size ventilation fans. Yet, sadly, AMD didn’t take this opportunity to beat Nvidia in terms of thickness; you’ll still need two slots in your PC’s case.

As a direct MSRP faceoff, I have to be frank: AMD can only get away with such a bold move in a marketplace where MSRP has often been meaningless. You’re picking this over the RTX 3060 for two reasons: you can actually find an RX 6600 in stock, and you want a smaller, modern GPU that might fit into a packed case with lower power draw as a massive priority.

Otherwise, as far as the superior card at that price point, the stats speak for themselves.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1803544

If you bought Bethesda’s recently released Quake remaster for Sony’s or Microsoft’s platforms, today’s your lucky day—the publisher just released a next-gen edition that adds 4K resolution at up to 120 fps, and the upgrade is free.

Announced Tuesday on Bethesda’s blog, id Software’s classic first-person shooter is now available for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S to owners of the game on PS4 or Xbox One, following the game’s surprise release at QuakeCon in August. At the time, the remaster shadow-dropped for Sony’s and Microsoft’s last-gen consoles, Nintendo Switch, and PC; next-gen versions were announced as coming in the future, but no release date was given.

No matter the platform, this is a quality remaster with a range of improvements, including cross-play and bot support for multiplayer, the original single-player campaign and its expansions, and toggles for visual perks such as antialiasing, ambient occlusion, and upgraded gun models.

Bethesda even surprised fans with some excellent bonuses, like a brand-new episode from Wolfenstein developer MachineGames, Nine Inch Nails’ original unsettling soundtrack (missing for years from the only modern version of the game available), and—maybe best of all—Quake 64, complete with a beautiful lo-fi filter to recreate an impressively authentic-feeling CRT effect in high-def.

The biggest draw of this upgrade is arguably the one that’s exclusive to the PS5, which is DualSense support. The haptic vibration and adaptive triggers add a little extra punch to your carnage-fests, complemented by sound effects from the DualSense’s speaker, which you’ll probably want to turn down a bit in the PS5 system options. These are welcome additions, though we hope to see Bethesda tweak how the gunplay feels in a future update, allowing players the option to increase trigger tension from the subtle-but-noticeable push the controller currently gives.

We should note that we didn’t test all of the available weapons, so it’s possible some of the later explosive ones yield more trigger resistance; the drawback of the PS5 game is that you can’t transfer save data from the PS4 version, so you’ll have to start over without access to your full arsenal if you were playing on PS4 before. (A level select is offered from the get-go, however.)

The Xbox Series X/S versions do allow save transfers, and the game is Xbox Play Anywhere-compatible, which is a nice consolation prize. Both platforms support the higher 120 fps frame rate as long as you own a compatible display.

If you don’t already own Quake on PS4 or Xbox One, you can pick up the next-gen versions of the game from the PlayStation Network or Xbox stores for $10. The upgrade is also available for Xbox Game Pass owners on Xbox Series X/S. Get gibbin’.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1803612

If you’re still searching for a PS5 and are a Best Buy customer, your ship may have just come in—that is, if you’re willing to spend an extra $200 a year for access.

That’s because the big-box electronics retailer is locking stock of in-demand holiday items like Sony’s console behind membership of its new Totaltech program. The expensive customer service package was recently rolled out nationwide.

The $200 annual service—which has benefits like round-the-clock tech support, up to two years of protection on Best Buy purchases (including AppleCare+ insurance, which can cost $200 on its own), and member discounted prices—is throwing in exclusive access to “the season’s hardest-to-find products” as a bonus perk for the holidays, the company said in a statement. The Best Buy retail site had the $500 disc drive model PS5s available for Totaltech members to buy Monday morning, with the consoles gated behind an “exclusive access event” paywall. Instead of selling out instantly, its stock lasted between 90 minutes and two hours—a relatively glacial sales pace compared to the insane demand for the hardware that consumers have faced since it hit stores last November.

VIP… scalping fees?

Although the PS5’s listing page pointed directly to Totaltech membership exclusivity while the hardware was still available, its seemingly unrelated VIP buying privileges aren’t listed anywhere on the program’s membership benefits and FAQ pages. We would not be shocked to see other highly desired products that have been affected by the chip shortage follow suit, particularly high-end PC GPUs and Xbox Series X/S consoles.

The service is replacing a “Best Buy Beta” program that was tested in select markets starting in April. Beta seemed to target a more generalized range of benefits over one focused on tech support and protection, and it notably did not offer special members-only events to buy limited-stock electronics. The company’s free My Best Buy membership, which sometimes includes exclusive discount sales, remains unaffected.

For some consumers, the Totaltech package could be a worthwhile investment. In addition to its 24/7 Geek Squad tech support and private concierge services, it has a number of other bonuses. These include free delivery and installation (useful perhaps if you’re in the market for several wall-filling high-def OLED TVs), an extended 60-day return and exchange window for purchases, and access to “Member Monday,” a weekly Amazon Prime Day-style discount event that starts October 18 and runs during “select weeks” through the holidays.

Given that the AppleCare+ extended warranty includes coverage for two accidental damage incidents every 12 months, discounts on repair services, and covers any Apple device bought through Best Buy, customer mileage may vary depending on their tech tastes. That said, if at the end of the standard two-year agreement you want to extend this insurance service, it won’t be covered under Totaltech’s membership. Buyers assume responsibility for its recurring payments from then on.

There’s not much precedent for flat-out barring average customers from buying hot-ticket consumer electronics. In 2017, Amazon offered an exclusive edition of Motorola’s Moto E4 Plus mobile phone only to Prime members. However, this was just a variant version that added ads to its lock screen in exchange for a discounted price. Customers could also still buy a standard unlocked, no-ads edition of the device from the retailer without a Prime subscription.

Similarly, GameStop offers early access to buy a PS5 or Xbox Series X with its $15-20 annual PowerUp Rewards Pro membership. But these packages—which typically cost around $700—are generally bundled with a selection of two games and an extra controller for the same price as the Totaltech membership plus a disc-model PS5.

But for anyone uninterested in support services who just wants to buy a PS5 or presumably any of the other hottest tech wares that are currently impossible to find, Best Buy’s new program arguably makes it look little better than a corporate scalper.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1803125