Receive up to $650 off a Surface Pro or Surface Book when trading-in a MacBook Yesterday, we introduced the world to the newest members of the Surface family, including the Surface Studio – a new class of device that turns your desk into a creative studio. Today, we are announcing a limited-time "trade up" offer to invite more people to experience Surface. Starting today, anyone in the U.S. can trade in their MacBook Pro or MacBook Air at a Microsoft Store or online for up to $650 off a Surface Book or Surface Pro. Microsoft (also, The bizarre role reversal of Apple and Microsoft)

A quantum leap for the web Over the past year, our top priority for Firefox was the Electrolysis project to deliver a multi-process browsing experience to users. Running Firefox in multiple processes greatly improves security and performance. This is the largest change we've ever made to Firefox, and we'll be rolling out the first stage of Electrolysis to 100% of Firefox desktop users over the next few months. But, that doesn't mean we're all out of ideas in terms of how to improve performance and security. In fact, Electrolysis has just set us up to do something we think will be really big. Medium

Internet Archive, repository of modern culture, turns 20 When the Internet Archive was created 20 years ago, few envisioned how a small galaxy of about 500,000 websites would evolve into the center of human communication and culture. Now, the nonprofit San Francisco organization – which celebrated the milestone with a party Wednesday night – curates a vast digital archive that includes more than 370 million websites and 273 billion pages, many captured before they disappeared forever. San Francisco Chronicle

Google's AI created its own form of encryption Researchers from the Google Brain deep learning project have already taught AI systems to make trippy works of art, but now they're moving on to something potentially darker: AI-generated, human-independent encryption. According to a new research paper, Googlers Martín Abadi and David G. Andersen have willingly allowed three test subjects – neural networks named Alice, Bob and Eve – to pass each other notes using an encryption method they created themselves. Engadget

This guy has the fastest home internet in the United States What does the guy with the fastest internet in the United States use his jealousy-inducing bandwidth for? Analyzing X-rays... and gaining an advantage in Call of Duty, of course. Startup and community-run internet service providers have grabbed headlines over the last two years as they've begun rolling out the first 10 gigabit-per-second residential internet connections in the United States. Vice

Breaking the multicore bottleneck Researchers at North Carolina State University and at Intel have come up with a solution to one of the modern microprocessor's most persistent problems: communication among the processor's many cores. Their answer is a dedicated set of logic circuits they call the Queue Management Device, or QMD. In simulations, integrating the QMD with the processor's on-chip network at a minimum doubled core-to-core communication speed and, in some cases, boosted it much further. IEEE Spectrum

Making energy-harvesting computers reliable A revolutionary and emerging class of energy-harvesting computer systems require neither a battery nor a power outlet to operate, instead operating by harvesting energy from their environment. While radio waves, solar energy, heat, and vibrations have the ability to power devices, harvested energy sources are weak leading to an "intermittent execution", with periodic power failures and unreliable behavior. Phys.org

Star Citizen diary, part 2: Riding shotgun in the game's biggest ship Let me get to the important stuff first, the question that's been on everyone's mind since I posted my first Star Citizen diary last week: did I wind up buying a new cap? I did. A blue one. Also, a blue jacket, a blue shirt, and blue pants. I do have a bit of buyer's remorse, since I probably should have saved my spacebux for a new spacesuit instead, or perhaps for an energy rifle. PC Gamer (part 1)

Want to see gaming's past and future? Dive into the "educational" world of PLATO In the days of mainframe computing, one system stood miles ahead of the rest. PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) wasn't special for its power or speed or graphical prowess, though. It was remarkable for the ideas that drove its development and for the breadth of its impact – starting in the 1960s and accelerating through the '70s and '80s, PLATO terminals became omnipresent throughout schools, universities, and offices around the world. Ars Technica

Component shortages expected in PC market after November With smartphone vendors having been aggressively placing short-term orders for the fourth quarter, several component suppliers have been delaying their shipments to PC vendors recently and the action could relatively impact these PC vendors' shipments in the quarter. Because of the recall of its Galaxy Note 7, Samsung Electronics has been increasing its orders for the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, hoping to minimize the impact in its shipment performance... Digitimes

3D-printed heart-on-a-chip with integrated sensors Harvard University researchers have made the first entirely 3D-printed organ-on-a-chip with integrated sensing. Built by a fully automated, digital manufacturing procedure, the 3D-printed heart-on-a-chip can be quickly fabricated and customized, allowing researchers to easily collect reliable data for short-term and long-term studies. Harvard

Congress needs more information before the government's new hacking powers kick in The federal government is set to get massively expanded hacking powers later this year. Thankfully, members of Congress are starting to ask questions. In a letter this week to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, 23 members of Congress – including Sens. Ron Wyden and Patrick Leahy and Rep. John Conyers – pressed for more information and said they "are concerned about the full scope of the new authority" under pending changes to federal investigation rules. EFF

New method increases energy density in lithium batteries Yuan Yang, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Columbia Engineering, has developed a new method to increase the energy density of lithium (Li-ion) batteries. He has built a trilayer structure that is stable even in ambient air, which makes the battery both longer lasting and cheaper to manufacture. The work, which may improve the energy density of lithium batteries by 10-30%, is published online today in Nano Letters. Columbia University

7,500 people to get texts asking for info in Frederick John Hatch homicide, OPP say In a move they're describing as "extraordinary" and "unprecedented," Ontario Provincial Police will send text messages to about 7,500 people on Thursday to ask for information about an unsolved homicide. Investigators are calling it a "digital canvass" --- the high-tech equivalent of knocking on thousands of doors for information. CBC

Pizza, the unsung agent of the robot revolution It wasn't so long ago that the idea of biped or quadruped robots delivering pizzas seemed like a real possibility. Such speculation was fuelled by Google's acquisition of Boston Dynamics – a company more associated with potential military applications, which earned notoriety for its scarily nimble Big Dog robots. Ars Technica

Hybrid nanostructures hold hydrogen well Layers of graphene separated by nanotube pillars of boron nitride may be a suitable material to store hydrogen fuel in cars, according to Rice University scientists. The Department of Energy has set benchmarks for storage materials that would make hydrogen a practical fuel for light-duty vehicles. Rice University

Making computers explain themselves In recent years, the best-performing systems in artificial-intelligence research have come courtesy of neural networks, which look for patterns in training data that yield useful predictions or classifications. A neural net might, for instance, be trained to recognize certain objects in digital images or to infer the topics of texts. MIT

How 2K killed Irrational Games  I am a life long video game developer. I worked for Irrational Games before they were a part of 2K. I also worked for them during their time with 2K, and I even worked with them as they shut down the final reminiscence of what used to be Irrational Games. This is my story... Hacker Noon

Linux marketshare is above 2-percent for third month in a row For the 3rd month in a row the share of worldwide desktop computer users running Linux has been above 2%, according to data from web analytics company Net Market Share. OMG Ubuntu