Author: easyfilo

Enlarge / MJ and Peter Parker, dropping in one more time. (credit: Sony Pictures / Marvel Studios)

After watching Spider-Man: No Way Home, the third Tom Holland live-action film in the series, I’m befuddled. How do I fully convey its quality without spoiling even a smidge of its contents? As I left the theater, I found myself giddily talking aloud about the film, recounting its delightful surprises. It might have been enough to earn a slap from a spoiler-averse passerby.

Tricky as it may be to convey the film’s charm, laughs, excitement, and heart without revealing its twists, I’ll do my best to keep most of No Way Home‘s surprises as hidden as Peter Parker’s identity.

Something really wacky happens (shocker)

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to confirm that at least one familiar Marvel Studios character appears in No Way Home. (credit: Sony Pictures / Marvel Studios)

That simile may make you sweat a bit, however, if you’ve been following the Holland series that kicked off with Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2017. Its 2019 sequel ended with an NYC-rocking reveal of who’s been hiding beneath Spider-Man’s mask, and NWH picks up at this exact point in time, with Parker (Tom Holland) and his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) escaping an alarmed, newly informed mob via frantic web-swinging.

Enlarge / The prototype can stick onto a screen so you can place it at eye level, or wherever else you’d want. (credit: Scharon Harding)

If you asked me to guess which company is revamping webcam positioning, I wouldn’t name Dell. That’s because I still remember the Dell XPS’s infamous up-the-nose webcam, an unfortunately placed shooter that provided an in-nostril view of countless XPS users for years. But Dell wants a different, more positive reason for you to associate it with funky webcams, and, ironically, the company is all about getting webcams in the most ideal spot possible.

Dell demoed Concept Pari to the press last week (at the same event where it showed off its Concept Luna repairable PC). It’s a 1080p webcam prototype that can depart its holster with a simple pluck, to be placed anywhere magnets work. The idea is that the camera will continue to send video to a connected PC through Wi-Fi, even from a couple of feet away. The most obvious use case for Concept Pari is sticking it directly onto your computer’s display rather than on its bezel. This creates a more intimate space for conversation with your long-distance interlocutors, bringing their view of you to eye level. 

The webcam is placed closer to eye level to make the call feel more like real life. (credit: Scharon Harding)

“It can be placed directly—anywhere—on compatible displays, in a charging dock, on a stand, or even held in the hand,” Dell Technologies CTO of the Client Solutions Group Glen Robson explained in a blog post today.

Enlarge / A handful of picks from our last-minute gift guide. (credit: Jeff Dunn)

The holiday season is ticking away, and procrastinators are sweating. Do you still need to find the right gift for the last few people on your shopping list? No problem: We’ve researched and tested countless products and services over the last year to find the gear that’s worth your time, so allow us to help you get across the finish line.

We’ve dug into our Santa bags to round up a handful of last-minute gift ideas below. As we write this, each pick is scheduled to ship in time for Christmas, but that could change as the days roll on, so don’t be surprised if you need to visit a physical store to grab something on time. If you’re all set with your holiday shopping, meanwhile, congratulations on being responsible—and maybe consider participating in our annual Charity Drive to further your giving spirit.

Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

Enlarge / Google’s Sycamore processor. (credit: Google)

Recently, when researchers were testing error correction on Google’s quantum processor, they noted an odd phenomenon where the whole error-correction scheme would sporadically fail badly. They chalked this up to background radiation, a combination of cosmic rays and the occasional decay of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope.

It seemed like a bit of an amusing aside at the time—Google having accidentally paid for an extremely expensive cosmic ray detector. But the people behind the processor took the problem very seriously and are back with a new paper that details exactly how the radiation affects the qubits. And they conclude that the problems caused by cosmic rays happen often enough to keep error-corrected quantum computations from working unless we figure out a way to limit the rays’ impact.

It’s a shame about the rays

Cosmic rays and radioactivity cause problems for classical computing hardware as well. That’s because classical computers rely on moving and storing charges, and cosmic rays can induce charges when they impact a material. Qubits, by contrast, store information in the form of the quantum state of an object—in the case of Google’s processor, a loop of superconducting wire linked to a resonator. Cosmic rays affect these, too, but the mechanism is completely different.

Enlarge / Porsche’s newest electric car variant is the $133,300 Taycan GTS Sport Turismo. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Two weeks ago, we found out how the new Porsche Taycan GTS sedan handles some light track work—quite competently, as it turns out. But as I noted at the time, few Taycan GTSes will ever take part in a track day, so how the car drives on the road is more important .

We didn’t get a road drive in the GTS sedan, but we did get a few hours’ seat time in that car’s new sibling, the $133,300 Taycan GTS Sport Turismo. And for readers who don’t speak fluent Porsche, that means this one is a station wagon.

In fact, this is not even the first battery electric station wagon. I think that honor goes to the Taycan Cross Turismo, which is basically the same bodyshell with the suspension raised a few millimeters, plus some plastic bumper extensions to give it an ersatz off-roader feel. Porsche would say that the Cross Turismo “exemplifies all-weather, all-road capability” and that this new Sport Turismo version is focused entirely on on-road performance.

Enlarge / Then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler (L) and FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai talk before testifying to the House Judiciary Committee on March 25, 2015 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla )

Six former chairs of the Federal Communications Commission yesterday criticized the Federal Aviation Administration’s fight against a new 5G rollout on spectrum that the FCC has studied and deemed safe to use. Republicans Ajit Pai and Michael Powell joined with Democrats Tom Wheeler, Mignon Clyburn, Julius Genachowski, and Michael Copps in writing a letter describing their concerns about how the FAA has tried to undermine public confidence in the FCC’s decision-making process.

“The FAA should work with the FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)… to assess and resolve the FAA’s concerns expeditiously, but this debate should not be fought publicly in a way that undermines consumer confidence in the process, nor should it require months of additional delays,” said the six former chairs’ letter, which was sent to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and NTIA acting Administrator Evelyn Remaley.

The “FAA position threatens to derail the reasoned conclusions reached by the FCC after years of technical analysis and study,” the former chairs also wrote.

The front of the SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California. (credit: Megan Geuss)

In late September, a former communications executive at Blue Origin and 20 other current and former employees raised concerns about the culture at the company, highlighting issues such as sexism in the workplace. Writing on the Lioness website, Alexandra Abrams and the unnamed employees wrote that Blue Origin “turns a blind eye toward sexism.”

The essay ignited a wildfire of criticism about the working environment of Blue Origin, even extending to concerns about the safety of the company’s vehicles. In the wake of the essay’s publication, the Federal Aviation Administration launched an investigation of these safety allegations.

Now the conflagration has spread to SpaceX. On Tuesday, Lioness published another essay by Ashley Kosak, a former mission integration engineer at SpaceX. This essay has fewer anonymous co-signers (only two) and is more tightly focused on sexism rather than the company’s broader culture. But in regard to harassment, its allegations are no less worrisome. Kosak writes about multiple occasions of feeling sexually harassed and her belief that SpaceX’s management did not do enough to intervene.