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Mario Kart 8 makes good use of its newfound extra resolution with some busy graphics.

It's too easy to dismiss the Mario Kart series as a past-its-prime throwback that's holding Nintendo back, a family friendly nostalgia-fest that becomes more of a pale echo of the company's golden era with each passing year. I'd argue instead that Nintendo has done a great job keeping the franchise fresh over the years, adding enough new ideas and tweaks to the solid core with each release to make Mario Kart a must-play rite of passage for each new piece of Nintendo hardware. Sure, some games in the series have been more revolutionary than others, but Mario Kart games are far from the phoned in, more-of-the-same, semi-annual sequels that they could be.

Mario Kart 8 keeps this pattern going for the, um, eighth time, providing a deceptively solid racer beneath its candy-colored exterior. The changes might be relatively slight this time around, and some of the alterations have bafflingly made things worse, but all in all, this is still the kind of game that gets people to buy Nintendo consoles.

Hover in HD

The most striking improvement this time around, truth be told, might just be the HD graphics. That might seem like an odd thing to stress as a vital new feature for a series in 2014, but loading up the game for the first time, it's easy to wonder how the series got by without the increased resolution for this long.

Google

Here's a fun new trick that Google just patched into Google Now, the company's card-based personal assistant: it can now keep track of where you parked. While there are plenty of apps out there that can help you remember your parking space, they all require you to open them and save your spot manually. In contrast, Google's parking tracker will save your parking location automatically. First noticed by Android Police, the new feature is part of Google Search 3.4, which is rolling out out to Android devices running 4.1 and above right now.

Google Now automatically detects your parking spot through Android's Activity Recognition system, a feature Google released at Google I/O 2013. Activity Recognition uses a mashup of GPS, Wi-Fi, cell tower location, compass, accelerometer, gyro, and barometer data to try and figure out what the user is doing. By using all the sensor data available to a smartphone, Activity Recognition can detect if the user is walking, driving, cycling, or sitting still, and it can trigger apps to do something when a change is detected. If Google Now detects that the user has gone from driving to walking, the car has most likely been parked, and pinging the GPS to save your location would be a good idea. All of this happens silently in the background without the user having to do anything.

While it might sound like a huge battery drain, preserving battery life is a priority for Activity Recognition. GPS is one of the biggest battery drains in a phone, and Google can do intelligent things like activate GPS if the accelerometer detects that the user is sitting still. The activity recognition comes from precomputed profiles, so the only CPU work the phone is doing is pattern matching (e.g., shaking up and down and going 15 mph is bicycling). If you have an Android device, Activity Recognition is already running on it, provided you opted into Google location services.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Computer History Museum

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler confirmed today that proposed rules to replace the net neutrality regulations struck down by a court decision are on track for an FCC vote on May 15.

Wheeler didn't detail exactly what those rules would be, but The Wall Street Journal says it has a source who knows."The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose new open Internet rules on Thursday that would allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers, according to a person familiar with the proposal," the Journal reported.

This would be the opposite of the FCC's original intent with the 2010 Open Internet Order passed under Wheeler's predecessor, Julius Genachowski. The order forbid Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against services or charging content providers for preferential treatment. Verizon challenged those rules and won, with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling that the commission improperly imposed "common carrier" obligations on ISPs without first declaring them to be common carriers.

Extracting it is hazardous to miners, while alternatives like open-pit mines or mountain top removal permanently alter the landscape and often release hazardous chemicals into the environment. Burning it requires careful pollution controls to avoid the release of hazardous chemicals like mercury or acid-forming sulfur compounds. It also releases the most carbon dioxide per unit of electricity generated. Combustion also leaves behind a toxic sludge that creates a long-term contamination hazard.

The April issue of National Geographic includes an article that asks "Can coal ever be clean?" (The answer is no, but at the right cost, it could be cleaner.) The article is accompanied by the photographs of Robb Kendrick, who has captured some of the costs of coal at sites around the world. National Geographic got in touch and offered to share some of these images with our readers; you can find these and more at the magazine's website.

Khek Chanthalavong told investigators the blaze started after he had been using a torch on the deck of a unit he shared with Barbara Pellow to burn the fur off a squirrel he'd captured.

People, how many times do I have to say, "Never leave a hot squirrel torch near something flammable when you go inside to wash the carcass"? 

I mean, I really didn't expect to have to say that once.

This happened in 2012 in Michigan, but is back in the news because now it's time for the lawsuits. There are lawsuits because, sadly, the squirrel-torcher was unable to douse the fire that started after he put the torch behind a plant holder, and the fire spread to 32 other units. No one was injured (except for the squirrel, and one firefighter who broke a toe), but insurers paid out over $2 million in damages.

They would like to have that back.

Khek is probably in the doghouse permanently for this one. First, his (ex?)girlfriend said she "would not approve of him burning the hair off a squirrel on the deck" to begin with. Understandable, especially since this may not have been the first time. I infer this from the statement that Khek "said he placed [the blowtorch] behind the plastic plant holder on the deck that day to make it less obvious to his girlfriend." That might have been just to avoid the awkward question, "Um, what exactly have you been doing out here with a blowtorch?" but I'm guessing she knew what the blowtorch was for and had told him to cut it out. But as soon as she dozed off ... squirrel time!

Second, he doesn't appear to have any assets, which I infer from the fact that Travelers Insurance, which paid the vast majority of the damages, is only suing her. Both of them signed the lease, and so Travelers is taking the position that she is equally responsible for the damages, even though as far as we know she has never singed a rodent in her life. 

Surprisingly, a search revealed that this is the first squirrel-related litigation post I've written since 2006, when an Illinois woman sued a mall after she was allegedly attacked by a squirrel there. She claimed the mall was liable because it had "allowed the squirrel to remain on the premises" despite knowing it had a history of violence. (Doesn't look like I ever followed up on that one—she lost.) In the Michigan case, of course, the squirrel was just an innocent victim.

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Aurich Lawson

It’s a situation many have faced before or will in the future: last month, I was up early waiting for a call and a medical update. Unfortunately, the news wasn’t great: a doctor said I had an elevated risk—around two to three times higher than the average person—of developing late-onset Alzheimer's disease.

On the bright side, this news was complicated.

My regular physician or local hospital didn’t deliver the diagnosis. Instead, a doctor from Turkey contacted me on Skype to go through a detailed analysis of my DNA. Because of some family history with early onset Alzheimer’s and an interest in what’s becoming an emerging field, I sought out some direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing within the last six months. Turns out that these days, it takes nothing more than some money and a mailed spit sample to get a routine DNA exam; a brief glimpse at fate is then conveniently sent to your inbox.

It's no secret that I love Bioware's Mass Effect—last year I wrote a 10,000 word piece on why the series is so great, and I've played the games through more times and written more fan fiction and obsessively edited more Mass Effect music videos than anyone else on staff. I am the closest thing Ars Technica has to a Mass Effect editor. You can imagine, then, the absolute delight I felt deep down when FedEx dropped off my prerelease review version of Bioware's new Garrus Vakarian Body Pillow.

Body and build quality

The whole thing is six feet in length (1.82 meters), which means that Garrus himself is quite a bit shorter on the pillow than he is in real life (everyone knows that Turians are typically a bit over six feet tall). For better or for worse, Garrus is emblazoned directly onto the pillow—there is no pillowcase. This means that if you spill something onto him—like, I don't know, wine or something, like when the two of you are watching a movie—it's going to be a bit complicated to clean. You can't just throw the pillow case into the washing machine.

I was able to overlook the shortcomings of Garrus' height, though, since the pillow is well made and very snuggly. In bed, the pillow functions excellently, and I was able to hold it closely and whisper secrets and sweet nothings to it without any issues. The pillow also had no problems absorbing the tears that I shed on it—finally being able to have Garrus this close was an emotional moment, but he dealt with it admirably.

Look into the face of the FUTURE OF GAMING. Do you see it yet? Keep looking! KEEP LOOKING UNTIL YOU SEE IT.

“It’s like me and Diggle are right there for real, right there in the shit!” slurred CTO Nicholas Vining while demonstrating GASLAMP VR.

Procedurally animated marine sedimentary deposit talus with the expected chert or flint nodules.

A detailed cross-section of a hypabyssal intrusive igneous formation utilizing pre-generated normal-maps.