Category: Technica Aquarius

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It’s the weekend, which means it’s time for another Dealmaster. Our latest roundup of the best tech deals from around the web includes a good discount on HyperX’s Cloud Alpha, a gaming headset we like. It’s currently down to $60 at several retailers, which matches the best price we’ve tracked and comes in about $15 below its typical street price online.

The Cloud Alpha has been available for a few years now, but it remains a commendable option for those who want a no-frills gaming headset, particularly at this discounted price. For one, it’s comfortable: the design doesn’t clamp down too hard on the head, and the ample amount of soft padding on the headband and earcups keeps the headset comfortable to wear for hours at a time. The headband is adjustable, the included 3.5mm cable is fully detachable, and the whole thing feels sturdily built. There’s no wireless connectivity, but that shouldn’t be a big negative for gaming purposes: every modern gaming console and PC still uses a 3.5mm jack, and the microphones found on wireless headsets tend to sound worse anyway.

In general, headsets explicitly marketed toward gaming often don’t sound as sharp as the best standard headphones at the same price, but the Cloud Alpha performs well for what it is. There’s a slight bass boost, but it’s never muddy or overwhelming. The headset also does a good job of accurately locating and separating sounds in a mix, so you won’t have trouble, say, pinpointing where shots are coming from in an online first-person shooter. That said, the treble range is a bit lacking in detail and, like most closed-back headphones, the soundstage isn’t especially wide. Likewise, the included boom mic could stand to sound clearer, though it does well to block out background noise. It’s fine. It’s also fully detachable.

Enlarge / The Raspberry Shake, a simple seismograph based on Raspberry Pi hardware. (credit: Mike Hotchkiss, Raspberry Shake)

On the afternoon of January 12, 2010, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck about 16 miles west of Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince. Among the most significant seismic disasters recorded, more than 100,000 people lost their lives. The damage—costing billions of dollars—rendered more than a million people homeless and destroyed much of the region’s infrastructure. The earth tore at the relatively shallow depth of about 8 miles, toppling poorly constructed buildings.

At the time, Haiti had no national seismic network. After the devastating event, scientists installed expensive seismic stations around the country, but that instrumentation requires funding, care, and expertise; today, those stations are no longer functional. In 2019, seismologists opted to try something different and far less expensive—citizen seismology via Raspberry Shakes.

On the morning of August 14, 2021, amidst a summer of COVID-19 lockdowns and political unrest, another earthquake struck, providing the opportunity to test just how useful these Raspberry-pi powered devices could be. In a paper published on Thursday in Science, researchers described using the Raspberry Shake data to demonstrate that this citizen science network successfully monitored both the mainshock and subsequent aftershocks and provided data integral to untangling what turned out to be a less-than-simple rending of the earth.

Last Exit: Space is a new documentary on Discovery+ that explores the possibility of humans colonizing planets beyond Earth. Since it is produced and narrated by Werner Herzog (director of Grizzly Man, guest star on The Mandalorian) and written and directed by his son Rudolph, however, it goes in a different direction than your average space documentary. It’s weird, beautiful, skeptical, and even a bit funny.

In light of the film’s recent streaming launch, father and son Herzog spoke with Ars Technica from their respective homes about the film’s otherworldly hopes, pessimistic conclusions, and that one part about space colonists having to drink their own urine.

“My accent is a joke”

“[As a narrator], I always spoke in a deadpan [voice], and of course there’s a certain humor in it because listening to my accent is a joke already,” Werner says from his current home in Los Angeles. His son Rudolph, phoning in from Germany, scoffs at this, to which Werner replies, “Well, to some!”

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For decades now, Vladimir Putin has slowly, carefully, and stealthily curated online and offline networks of influence. These efforts have borne lucrative fruit, helping Russia become far more influential than a country so corrupt and institutionally fragile had any right to be. The Kremlin and its proxies had economic holdings across Europe and Africa that would shame some of the smaller 18th-century empires. It had a vast network of useful idiots that it helped get elected and could count on for support, and it controlled much of the day-to-day narrative in multiple countries through online disinformation. And many people had no idea.

While a few big events like the US’s 2016 election and the UK’s Brexit helped bring this meddling to light, many remained unaware or unwilling to accept that Putin’s disinformation machine was influencing them on a wide range of issues. Small groups of determined activists tried to convince the world that the Kremlin had infiltrated and manipulated the economies, politics, and psychology of much of the globe; these warnings were mostly met with silence or even ridicule.