Month: February 2022

Enlarge (credit: NOAA)

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai erupted on January 15 in one of the largest volcanic events in decades, and research in recent years indicates that the volcano produces similar violent eruptions about once every millennium. But some of the deadliest and most explosive eruptions in the last two centuries have come from volcanoes with no historical record of eruption. Now, scientists are taking a fresh look at surprise eruptions and seemingly quiet volcanoes.

Several smaller eruptions have happened at Tonga over the last century, providing some clues for what to expect. But forecasting volcanoes that have been dormant for hundreds or thousands of years is especially challenging. Mount Lamington in Papua New Guinea, for example, killed nearly 3,000 people and displaced thousands more when it erupted for the first time in recorded history in 1951.

“If this were to happen right now, in a region that is highly populated, like, for example, Indonesia or the Philippines, where millions of people live around volcanoes, the consequences for life would be really high,” said Vanesa Burgos, a PhD candidate at Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

Enlarge / The start of the 60th running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona International Speedway. (credit: Rolex)

As is often the way with endurance racing, the 60th running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona turned into a sprint race for the flag, following a safety car intervention with less than an hour left on the clock. It was the final Daytona 24-hour race for the DPi category of prototypes, and the class put on a fine show over the weekend.

There were dozens of lead changes over the course of 24 hours, and any of the five Cadillac DPi-V.Rs and two Acura ARX-05s would have been plausible winners. But racing for 24 hours is not easy, and hour 13 took out two of the contenders, the No. 48 Action Express Racing Cadillac (which counted NASCAR legend Jimmie Johnson as one of its drivers) and the 301 Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac (driven at the time by multiple IndyCar champion Sebastien Bordais).

The second Chip Ganassi Cadillac had to spend some time in the garage with a fuel pump problem with less than eight hours remaining in the race, leaving a four-way fight for the win between a pair of Cadillacs (the No. 5 JDC-Miller Motorsports car and No. 31 Action Express car), plus the pair of Acuras (the No. 10 Wayne Taylor Racing car and the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing machine).

Enlarge / The Blackberry Torch, the company’s first touchscreen phone, is held for display during its debut in New York in 2010. (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images)

BlackBerry is adding another sad chapter to the downfall of its smartphone business. Today the company announced a sale of its prized patent portfolio for $600 million. The buyer is “Catapult IP Innovations Inc.,” a new company BlackBerry describes as “a special purpose vehicle formed to acquire the BlackBerry patent assets.”

BlackBerry says the patents are for “mobile devices, messaging and wireless networking.” These are going to be the patents surrounding BlackBerry’s phones, QWERTY keyboards, and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). BlackBerry most recently weaponized these patents against Facebook Messenger in 2018, which covered ideas like muting a message thread and displaying notifications as a numeric icon badge. BlackBerry—back when it was called RIM—was a veteran of the original smartphone patent wars, though, and went after companies like Handspring and Good Technology in the early 2000s.

If the name “Catapult IP Innovations” didn’t give it away, weaponizing BlackBerry’s patents is the most obvious outcome of this deal. According to the press release, Catapult’s funding for the $600 million deal is just a $450 million loan, which will immediately be given to BlackBerry in cash. The remaining $150 million is a promissory note with the first payment due in three years. That means Catapult is now a new company with a huge amount of debt, no products, and no cash flow. Assuming the plan isn’t to instantly go bankrupt, Catapult needs to start monetizing BlackBerry’s patents somehow, which presumably means suing everyone it believes is in violation of its newly acquired assets.

Enlarge / Well, we didn’t necessarily see this one coming. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Sony | Bungie)

After Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, talk turned to how Sony and its PlayStation division would deal with the fallout of the purchase. If the Xbox becomes the exclusive home of Call of Duty games, would Sony be left out of the megaton first-person shooter space? Would Sony fire back with a major acquisition of its own?

On Monday, Sony announced plans to acquire Bungie and its Destiny series of shooters in a deal reportedly valued at $3.6 billion (in an email to Ars Technica, a Sony rep declined to confirm that figure). Somehow, this pricey purchase includes a firm pledge from Bungie, despite its new corporate overlords: Bungie’s “future games” will not be PlayStation exclusives.

Bungie had clearly prepared to announce this news to its active Destiny 2 user base, which plays on a variety of non-PlayStation platforms like Steam, Google Stadia, and (of course) Xbox. Its Destiny 2-specific FAQ confirms that the game’s current content map is set until at least 2024, when a project dubbed “The Final Shape” launches. All planned content will continue to work cross-platform without any PlayStation “console exclusive” forks or DLC, the company said.