The Challenge of the Planets, Part One: Ports-of-Call

NASA

In the 1950s and early 1960s, many who made it their business to consider the yawning gulfs between the planets foresaw that only through enormous efforts, spanning perhaps centuries, could those immensities be crossed. To be sure, rocket engines burning chemical propellants akin to those already in use in missiles could accomplish round-trip journeys to the moon, and probably also reach and return from Mars and Venus; beyond those near neighbors, however, new propulsion technology and techniques would be required.

One approach sought to mimic the European and Chinese Ages of Exploration, during which ships sought repair and resupply at exotic seaports and remote islands as they slowly made their way to distant destinations. The moon, the planets, and the moons of planets would serve as ever-moving stepping stones. Earth and Venus, for example, become aligned every 19 months so that advanced chemical or perhaps nuclear-thermal rocket engines could propel a spaceship on a minimum-energy course to a Venus-orbiting station from an Earth-orbiting spaceport or from a base on Earth’s moon. Upon arrival at Venus four or five months later, the crew would assist technicians based there as they rechecked, refueled, resupplied, and refurbished their spaceship.

When, months later, Venus and Mercury moved along their orbits so that they became aligned for a minimum-energy crossing, the crew would board their spaceship and move on to their ultimate destination. If they were the first crew to reach Mercury, they would look for valuable resources – chiefly rocket propellants – and perhaps establish the nucleus of a permanent base. When Mercury and Venus lined up again, they would begin to retrace their steps to Earth.

If a spaceship’s destination lay in the other direction – that is, beyond Mars, in the outer Solar System – then the challenges of interplanetary voyaging were far greater. Though spacecraft would not travel in straight lines between worlds – they would instead follow curving minimum-energy Hohmann transfer orbits about the Sun – the straight-line distances between Earth and the planets serve to illustrate the problem. Mercury is at its most distant about 120 million miles from Earth; Jupiter, on the other hand, approaches Earth no nearer than about 480 million miles.

Because Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto orbit far from the Sun, their years are long, so opportunities for minimum-energy transfers between them occur infrequently. Jupiter orbits the Sun in a dozen Earth years, Saturn circles the Sun in 26, and Uranus has a year lasting 84 Earth years. A spaceship starting from Earth bound for Uranus would have to wait for an Earth-Mars minimum-energy transfer opportunity (these occur every 26 months). Upon arrival at Mars, they would ready their spaceship to take advantage of a Mars-Jupiter transfer opportunity (they happen every 28 months). The journey from Mars to Jupiter would require about six years.

The intrepid Uranus-bound crew would then have to wait for a minimum-energy Jupiter-Saturn transfer opportunity. These happen every 20 years. The journey from Jupiter to stunning Saturn would last a decade. While they awaited a Saturn-Uranus transfer opportunity (they occur every 54 years), the crew might refuel at Saturn’s moon Titan, which was known to have an atmosphere; 1950s astronomers thought it was made of methane, which could serve as rocket fuel. The journey from Saturn to Uranus would last 27 years. Hence, even if the wait time at every stop along the way were minimal, the one-way journey from Earth to Uranus would need at least 40 years.

Confronted with these kinds of numbers, most 1950s space writers felt certain that the planets were virtually off-limits. Patrick Moore, for example, wrote in 1955 that none of his readers would live to see Mars and Venus up close. As for the nearest and largest of the gas giants, Moore declared that “for generations of men to come, there can be no hope of seeing the wonders of Jupiter from close range.” He added that “[w]e must be content to look at the king of planets from a respectful distance, and leave him alone in his cold, proud glory.”

Even as these florid words saw print, propulsion engineers sought new fast ways of reaching the planets. Part Two of this post will look at some of the spacecraft designs they proposed; it will then describe the discoveries that undermined their plans and threw open the entire Solar System to scientific exploration.

Reference

Guide to the Planets, Patrick Moore, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1955; pp. 141, 195.

The Amazon Fire Phone Was Always Going to Fail

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos holds up the new Amazon Fire Phone at a launch event in Seattle, June 18, 2014. Ted S. Warren/AP

The Amazon Fire Phone is a flop. Last quarter, the company’s worst in years, Amazon took a $170 million loss on the tepidly-reviewed device.

In a new, deeply reported piece for Fast Company, tech journalist Austin Carr tells the inside story of how the Fire Phone debacle unfolded. It’s a fascinating tale of how the seeds of failure were planted. But in a way, regardless of any bad management decisions, self-destruction was embedded in the Fire Phone’s DNA from the beginning. The project was doomed from the start, because the only one who really needs an Amazon phone is Amazon.

“As the world goes mobile, an Amazon phone would provide a more direct link to its users,” Carr writes. But to whom is that connection truly useful? Android and iPhone users can connect to Amazon well enough through the devices they already have.

Carr observes that, by not controlling the hardware, Amazon runs into problems like the 30-percent cut Apple takes of in-app sales. The company doesn’t sell e-books through its Kindle iOS app for that reason, and yes, that’s inconvenient for users. But it’s not a reason for people to buy a whole new phone. The bigger inconvenience lies with Amazon.

Overcoming a competitive disadvantage does not in itself suffice as a premise for any new product, much less one as integral to users’ lives as a smartphone. As Facebook discovered with the lackluster embrace of Home, its “apperating system” that acted as an OS-like skin for Android handsets, a killer app doesn’t make a killer phone. Amazon is incredibly useful, and as a funnel for both commerce and content, it can lay claim to many of the things we do on our phones. But not all of them.

Not Cool

To justify its existence, a smartphone has two options: incredible design or irresistible price. The Fire Phone had neither Apple and its superior design prowess own the premium segment of the smartphone market, while the competitive jostling on the budget end has led to dynamic upstarts like Xiaomi. If Amazon from the start had imagined the Fire Phone as, say, another free perk for Amazon Prime members, it could have slipped a sleek shopping engine into tens of millions of pockets.

Instead, as Carr describes it, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos dove deep into the design process in a doomed effort to win on ill-conceived features like the Fire Phone’s 3-D display. Originally priced at $199 with contract, the Fire Phone cost the same as an iPhone, suggesting Bezos saw his baby as a rival to Apple’s market-defining product. The miscalculation is all the more baffling considering Amazon seems to have taken the opposite tack with its Kindle Fire tablets, which work as a concept because they serve mainly as portals for Amazon content while costing much less than iPads.

From the time he founded the company in the mid-’90s, CEO Jeff Bezos has fostered a quasi-religious culture at Amazon with “the customer” as the ultimate object of worship. This relentless focus has led to revenue-spewing crowd-pleasers such as Prime. But according to Carr, Bezos saw the Fire Phone as a chance to scratch another itch that had long bothered him. He has succeeded dramatically by putting customers first. But he also wants Amazon to be cool.

Amazon is a lot of things—convenient, industry-crushing, hyper-efficient—but “cool” is not one of them. Jeff Bezos is also a lot of things—driven, brilliant, ruthless—but he doesn’t exactly radiate “cool,” either. And that’s totally fine. Amazon is already so overwhelmingly, dominantly good at the main thing it does, selling stuff online, that being cool doesn’t really matter. The world is already full of people trying to be cool, an effort that seldom works out well in the end. Instead, it apparently leads to stacks of unsold phones gathering dust in warehouses. So uncool.

Kickstarter Ditches Amazon Payments for Stripe

From left, Patrick and John Collison. Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

Kickstarter says it wants to make things a lot easier for artists and inventors to use its crowdfunding site—and it’s doing so by dropping Amazon Payments in favor of a payments service from Silicon Valley startup Stripe.

On Tuesday, with a blog post, Kickstarter announced that Stripe would handle all credit card transactions on the site, saying the move should make things simpler for both creators, who no longer have to create an Amazon Payments business account and wait for approval, and backers, who can pledge money to a project they’re interested in with fewer steps.

Kickstarter’s decision is unfortunate for Amazon which, according to reports, has over 200 million credit cards on file and has long tried to make something of this vast database of customer payment information. But the move also shows that Stripe is continuing to reinvent the online payments world with its system, which can make it easier for any online service or smartphone app to process payments at low cost. The ultimate aim is to create an common internet infrastructure that lets payments move across the networks as easily as content—and the plucky startup is well on way to realizing this lofty goal.

In addition to driving Kickstarter, Stripe handles purchases on Facebook and Twitter. It helps drive Apple Pay, the tech giants smartphone payment system. And it’s powering payment for smaller outfits too, such as online-ride-hailing startup Lyft and internet-grocery-delivery outfit Instacart. With the mobile payments estimated to hit a whopping $1 trillion in 2017, according to research firm IDC, Stripe looks to be one of the more likely candidates to lead the charge

Kickstarter says it will start converting projects over to Stripe immediately, and by next week, the online payment system would be in place for all new projects.

The Amazon Fire Phone Was Always Going to Fail

Jeff Bezos presents the Fire Phone, Amazon’s first smartphone. Photo: David Ryder/Getty Images

The Amazon Fire Phone is a flop. Last quarter, the company’s worst in years, Amazon took a $170 million loss on the tepidly-reviewed device.

In a new, deeply reported piece for Fast Company, tech journalist Austin Carr tells the inside story of how the Fire Phone debacle unfolded. It’s a fascinating tale of how the seeds of failure were planted. But in a way, regardless of any bad management decisions, self-destruction was embedded in the Fire Phone’s DNA from the beginning. The project was doomed from the start, because the only one who really needs an Amazon phone is Amazon.

“As the world goes mobile, an Amazon phone would provide a more direct link to its users,” Carr writes. But to whom is that connection truly useful? Android and iPhone users can connect to Amazon well enough through the devices they already have.

Carr observes that, by not controlling the hardware, Amazon runs into problems like the 30-percent cut Apple takes of in-app sales. The company doesn’t sell e-books through its Kindle iOS app for that reason, and yes, that’s inconvenient for users. But it’s not a reason for people to buy a whole new phone. The bigger inconvenience lies with Amazon.

Overcoming a competitive disadvantage does not in itself suffice as a premise for any new product, much less one as integral to users’ lives as a smartphone. As Facebook discovered with the lackluster embrace of Home, its “apperating system” that acted as an OS-like skin for Android handsets, a killer app doesn’t make a killer phone. Amazon is incredibly useful, and as a funnel for both commerce and content, it can lay claim to many of the things we do on our phones. But not all of them.

Not Cool

To justify its existence, a smartphone has two options: incredible design or irresistible price. The Fire Phone had neither Apple and its superior design prowess own the premium segment of the smartphone market, while the competitive jostling on the budget end has led to dynamic upstarts like Xiaomi. If Amazon from the start had imagined the Fire Phone as, say, another free perk for Amazon Prime members, it could have slipped a sleek shopping engine into tens of millions of pockets.

Instead, as Carr describes it, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos dove deep into the design process in a doomed effort to win on ill-conceived features like the Fire Phone’s 3-D display. Originally priced at $199 with contract, the Fire Phone cost the same as an iPhone, suggesting Bezos saw his baby as a rival to Apple’s market-defining product. The miscalculation is all the more baffling considering Amazon seems to have taken the opposite tack with its Kindle Fire tablets, which work as a concept because they serve mainly as portals for Amazon content while costing much less than iPads.

From the time he founded the company in the mid-`90s, CEO Jeff Bezos has fostered a quasi-religious culture at Amazon with “the customer” as the ultimate object of worship. This relentless focus has led to revenue-spewing crowd-pleasers such as Prime. But according to Carr, Bezos saw the Fire Phone as a chance to scratch another itch that had long bothered him. He has succeeded dramatically by putting customers first. But he also wants Amazon to be cool.

Amazon is a lot of things—convenient, industry-crushing, hyper-efficient—but “cool” is not one of them. Jeff Bezos is also a lot of things—driven, brilliant, ruthless—but he doesn’t exactly radiate “cool,” either. And that’s totally fine. Amazon is already so overwhelmingly, dominantly good at the main thing it does, selling stuff online, that being cool doesn’t really matter. The world is already full of people trying to be cool, an effort that seldom works out well in the end. Instead, it apparently leads to stacks of unsold phones gathering dust in warehouses. So uncool.

Study rules out spiders as common cause of bacterial infections in humans

Can spiders be carriers of human pathogens? Can they provoke an infection through a break in the skin?

A team of scientists, led by an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, has data-mined the history of publications on spider envenomations to conclude that the evidence for spider-vectored infection is scanty. Further, the researchers note that the mere presence of bacteria on spider fangs or mouthparts does not establish spiders as vectors for these bacteria.

Study results appear as a letter to the editor in the January 2015 issue of Toxicon.

"Although spider bite may be an attractive and tenable causative agent of a bacterial infection, the data show this is highly improbable," said Richard S. Vetter, the lead author of the study and a former staff research associate in the UC Riverside Department of Entomology, now retired. "Any implied causative association between skin infections and spider bites should be considered suspect. The medical community should not scapegoat spiders for bacterial infections. When examining reports of thousands of spider bites of many species worldwide, we found almost no mention of infection associated with the arachnid-inflicted injury."

Vetter explained that an important advancement in spider bite diagnosis in recent years is the realization that bacterial infections have been commonly misattributed as spider envenomation by both physicians and patients.

"'Spider bite' is used as a default diagnosis despite lack of supporting evidence," he said. "In a study published three years ago, of 182 Southern Californian patients presenting with complaint of spider bite, less than 4 percent had spider envenomations, while about 86 percent had skin infections."

He mentioned that the only credible report of spider bite leading to infection that his research team is aware of is an episode involving an Australian golden silk spider, a very large orbweaver.

"It resulted in colonization by a bacterium rarely found in humans," he said. "The bite led to a pus-filled lesion that persisted more than two months."

Vetter's advice to people concerned with skin infections is that both the medical community and the general public should stop blaming spiders as the cause of bacterial infections.

"This medical platitude is not supported by the history of spider bite data and could lead to misdiagnosed patients who then have an overzealous reaction that could, in turn, lead to the unwarranted development of arachnophobia in bite victims, possibly then requiring psychological desensitization to spiders or excessive use of pesticides in living spaces," he said.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of California - Riverside . The original article was written by Iqbal Pittalwala. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Kickstarter Ditches Amazon Payments for Stripe

From left, Patrick and John Collison. Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

Kickstarter says it wants to make things a lot easier for artists and inventors to use its crowdfunding site—and it’s doing so by dropping Amazon Payments in favor of a payments service from Silicon Valley startup Stripe.

On Tuesday, with a blog post, Kickstarter announced that Stripe would handle all credit card transactions on the site, saying the move should make things simpler for both creators, who no longer have to create an Amazon Payments business account and wait for approval, and backers, who can pledge money to a project they’re interested in with fewer steps.

Kickstarter’s decision is unfortunate for Amazon which, according to reports, has over 200 million credit cards on file and has long tried to make something of this vast database of customer payment information. But the move also shows that Stripe is continuing to reinvent the online payments world with its system, which can make it easier for any online service or smartphone app to process payments at low cost. The ultimate aim is to create an common internet infrastructure that lets payments move across the networks as easily as content—and the plucky startup is well on way to realizing this lofty goal.

In addition to driving Kickstarter, Stripe handles purchases on Facebook and Twitter. It helps drive Apple Pay, the tech giants smartphone payment system. And it’s powering payment for smaller outfits too, such as online-ride-hailing startup Lyft and internet-grocery-delivery outfit Instacart. With the mobile payments estimated to hit a whopping $1 trillion in 2017, according to research firm IDC, Stripe looks to be one of the more likely candidates to lead the charge

Kickstarter says it will start converting projects over to Stripe immediately, and by next week, the online payment system would be in place for all new projects.

Sennheiser Adds Wireless and Noise-Canceling Features to Its Consumer Headphones

Sennheiser’s Momentum 2.0 over-ear. It’s now wireless and has noise-cancelation tech inside. Sennheiser

A handful of new Sennheiser headphone models are debuting here at CES. They aren’t entirely new—most of them are based on older models from the last year or two, but the designs have been given a slight refresh and some new features have been added, like NFC pairing, Bluetooth wireless, and active noise-cancelation.

It was about two years ago that the venerable German audio giant began shifting focus from purely professional and high-end applications. Senny still makes studio monitor headphones and pricey over-ears for dedicated home listening, but it’s added commuter-style portables and fashion-forward designs to its headphone line. This shift has mostly been positive—I loved the Momentum over-ears, and the Urbanites are the best-sounding of the bazillion Beats wannabes. So if you’re happy to see more of the same, just better, then these announcements should be welcome.

First the Momentums. Both the on-ear and over-ear designs have been updated to include wireless Bluetooth connectivity, NFC smartphone pairing, and active noise cancellation. As you can see in the photo above, there are mics (for ANC) built into the earcups now. There are some minor design tweaks on the new models, too, including more mobile-friendly folding headbands and larger earpads on the over-ears. No pricing or availability information yet, but the older models are $270 (over-ear) and $150 (on-ear), so we can probably expect something in that ballpark when the Momentum 2.0 models arrive.

The Urbanite XL is also going wireless. Sennheiser

Next, the Urbanites. The XL (over-ear) version of Sennheiser’s “big bass, urban style” headphone is also going wireless. The Bluetooth 4.0 headphone also has NFC pairing and a touchpad on the right earcup for controlling volume, switching tracks, and taking calls. The microphones on the outside are just used for speech, so they don’t have the same active noise-canceling tech as the new Momentums. The current Urbanite XLs are $250, which gives some indication of how the new wireless model will be priced.

There are a couple more models of note. First is the new MX 686 Sports headphone. It’s a headset designed for running or outdoor exercise, and the little green hooks at the tops of the earpieces help keep them clamped inside your ear-holes. They actually slide up and down, providing an adjustable fit. (See the photo below.) If you run, you’ll be happy with these. There are also new sports models that wrap behind the ears, and a model with a thin headband that runs around the back of the head, but those are more traditional designs. You’ve seen headphones from Sennheiser that are very much like these, except blue and cross-branded with Adidas. These new headphones are bright green and Adidas’ branding is curiously absent. Hmm.

Lastly, Sennheiser announced four new wireless headphone models for home listening. They are part of the company’s RS line of “home entertainment” headphones, so if you’re familiar with Sennheiser’s previous options in this area, you know what to expect. These are Wi-Fi headphones—operating on the 2.4GHz band instead of Bluetooth—so they have a base station that you connect to your A/V system and plug into a wall, and which also acts as a charging stand for the headset. There’s an entry-level model with an optional bass boost, and then the pricier models introduce features like surround sound and optical digital inputs. We’ll have updates with pricing and availability for all of these headphones—as well as reviews of the choicest cans—when we get them.

Sennheiser’s new sports earphones have the same sliding, adjustable nub above the ear tip. Sennheiser

Razer’s New Virtual Reality Gaming Headset Encourages Open-Source Hacking

The OSVR Hacker Dev Kit from Razer arrives in June and will cost $200. Developers can buy it (or build their own) to test their VR games and devices. Alex Washburn/WIRED

Virtual reality gaming is in its super-hype phase. But even with the recent developments and industry buzz, the technology still ranks as nascent. If it’s going to grow in a healthy fashion, it needs standards—assurances to developers and manufacturers that their software and hardware will work with all the VR products and games coming to the market.

That’s the principle behind OSVR, a new group formed by hardware and software heavyweights to promote interoperability around virtual reality gaming.

Razer (one of OSVR’s founders, along with Leapmotion, Ubisoft, Reload, and SMI, among others) is here at CES showing off a new piece of hardware: a VR headset developer’s kit. It’s a fully functioning headset for play-testing games and peripherals, complete with a gyroscope, accelerometer, and compass. There’s a surround-sound codec onboard, so you can add 3D audio to your creations. The internal display runs at 1080×1920 and the optical elements are adjustable. It also has USB ports for connecting any controllers or other devices you want to add to enhance the experience. And since it’s open-source hardware, all of the circuit boards are modular, and Razer says it will make the both the schematics and the 3D files freely available for download, so you can print and build your own goggles or customize the design.

Razer’s OSVR Hacker Dev Kit will cost $200 when it’s released to the public in June of 2015. The company is also allowing some access to developers now on a strictly limited basis.

What will run on it? Any software written for Unity 3D or Unreal 4 Engine for starters, which covers a big chunk of the VR gaming market. In line with the group’s goal, anything made with OSVR’s tools should work across all VR devices, including the Oculus DK 2.

Look into my EYES! Razer

Rap Weirdos on This Week’s Playlist Start 2015 on the Right Note

Soundcloud

Welcome back to the grind, everyone. Maybe you’ve noticed, like we did, that the holidays aren’t exactly the most fertile time for new music—but that didn’t stop a handful of artists from dropping material over the past couple of weeks. Whether it’s Chicago duo Leather Corduroys enlisting a gaggle of guest stars for its new mixtape, or surprise new tracks from Death Grips and Shabazz Palaces, or even morsels from dollar-sign-sporting artists like A$AP Rocky and Joey Bada$$, there’s plenty to make us optimistic about what 2015 holds.

As usual, we’ve added the tracks to our ongoing Spotify playlist of great new music, and created a standalone playlist (below). Keep the recommendations coming.

The tracks:

Sam Sparro, “Rock the Boat”

Leather Corduroys feat. Chance the Rapper, “I Told You So”

Aesop Rock, “Cat Food”

Joey Bada$$, “On and On”

A$AP Rocky, “Lord Pretty Flacko Jodye 2″

7 Days of Funk, “N My System”

Shabazz Palaces, “Ham Sandwich”

Death Grips, “Runway Y”

Razer Debuts Android Set-Top Box That Also Streams PC Games to Your TV

Razer’s new Android-based Forge TV and wireless game controller. Alex Washburn/WIRED

For the last few years, Razer has been producing some of the best high-end hardware for PC gamers: controllers, headsets, mice, keyboards, and of course, the awesome Blade gaming notebook PC.

Now the company is delving further into couch-based entertainment with a new $100 “microconsole.” It relies on both a small set-top box, as well as a software platform for streaming PC games to the box, and thus your television.

The tiny box is called Razer Forge TV, and it runs the Android TV platform on a quad-core chip. In many ways, it’s like any other set-top box—you can use it to watch movies and shows on YouTube, Hulu, Crackle, Google Play, and web videos via Google Cast. But you can also connect wireless controllers and use it to play games.

To that end, Razer is releasing two new controllers in conjunction with the Forge TV box: an $80 console-style controller called the Serval, which is based on the company’s Sabertooth console controller. It’s meant to be paired with the Forge TV, but also comes with a clip for mounting your Android phone to the top so you can use it as a mobile controller.

Also new is a $130 wireless keyboard/mouse combo that rests on your lap while you sit on the couch. This one is called the Turret, and it’s tuned for games: the mouse’s precision measures 3,500 dpi, and the controller is dual-wireless, so you can run it either as a Bluetooth device or over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and use it with multiple systems. The mouse has a magnet inside, so it won’t fall off when you move your hands to the keyboard to type, or when you reach for your soda. There’s a little charging cradle that lets you stash the keyboard (vertically) and mouse next to your TV.

The Razer Turret “lapboard” is a wireless keyboard/mouse combo. It folds up and slots vertically into a charging cradle. Alex Washburn/WIRED

Of course, the whole point is that you can use this mouse and keyboard on your couch. And it’s not just for typing in Hulu searches. The Forge TV will connect to the PC game launcher Razer Cortex and be able to stream just about any game from your PC—you know, that machine that lives in your bedroom that you already spend $2,000 on. Well now you can play all those games in your living room too. The requirements are not restrictive, as the streaming will work with a wide range of PC hardware, and any DirectX9 or later title. It works very much like the existing streaming platforms from Steam and Nvidia.

The latency of Razer’s streaming platform (which uses a proprietary encoder) is so low, even at 1080p, that visual lag and controller lag are imperceptible. A couple of us from WIRED have had a hands-on demo, and even though the Cortex: Stream platform isn’t fully finished yet, we both agree it felt just like playing a native console game. The beta release of Razer Cortex: Stream is slated for the second quarter of 2015, and will be a free feature if you buy the Forge TV and Serval controller bundle.

The Forge TV and the Serval are available at the beginning of this year, while the Turret keyboard/mouse controller will be available in the second quarter once the beta version of the streaming service comes online.

You Should Be Watching The Fall, a Serial-Killer Show Like No Other

BBC Two

Serial-killer shows aren’t hard to find these days: Dexter, Hannibal, The Killing, The Following, The Bridge, not to mention all the CSIs, and NCISes. But in a sea of television that has made the ritualistic murder of women an industry unto itself, The Fall manages to be a feminist show about a sexually-motivated serial killer that not only critiques the real-life phenomenon of violence against women, but the pernicious way that so many shows turn it into entertainment.

It also has Gillian Anderson, and fans who loved her as Special Agent Scully on The X-Files would be well advised to watch her on the BBC show, where she stars as the cool, effortlessly excellent Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson. A British police officer brought in to oversee a murder investigation in Northern Ireland, Gibson ends up chasing a serial killer who targets professional women. But far from just going through the motions of a police procedural show, her on-screen sleuthing uncovers how cop shows have been treating women for years.

“Violence against women, often graphic, has been part of TV drama for a very long time,” says The Fall’s creator Allan Cubitt. Too often, Cubitt says, television shows that focus on female victims tend to eroticize and glamorize their murders—just like sexually motivated killers themselves. “One of the ways the killer is able to perpetrate such crimes is by objectifying and dehumanizing their prey. Torturers do the same thing. I think it’s important that drama doesn’t do that. … My concern has always been that because we don’t know who they are, we feel nothing for these victims—not even their fundamental humanity.”

But if The Fall, which will debut its second season on Netflix on Jan. 16, strives to grant more humanity to its female victims, it also offers it to a far more controversial figure: their killer.

The Fall is not a mystery; we know from the very first moments exactly who the murderer is, a family man and grief counselor named Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan). Spector is a disturbing figure, not simply because he seems to be a loving father and husband, but because he actually might be. We see him cuddle his daughter at the park—while simultaneously stalking a future victim sitting on a nearby bench. Not only does he feel and understand emotions, but his entire job is devoted to discussing them. A grief counselor, we see him offer legitimately helpful advice to a bereaved mother who fits the profile of his victims—while doodling her half-naked in his notepad.

Spector terrifies not because he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but because he is a different sort of animal entirely, a chimera that is just as much sheep as it is wolf. He is no Dexter Morgan, mechanically acting out the part of a human being and always seeming slightly “off.” Spector is very much on: He jokes with his in-laws, socializes with friends, strikes all the right notes. He seems to feel very deeply at times, to understand the emotions of his patients, and genuinely love his family. He even expresses regret when he learns one of his female victims had been pregnant. “Babies are innocent,” he writes in an anonymous apology to the woman’s father. “I’ve always felt very protective of children.”

When he holds his wife, on the edge of tears, and says, “only you can save me from myself,” we believe him—or at least, we believe that he thinks it’s true.

Jamie Dornan stars as Paul Spector in The Fall. BBC Two

We see our own discomfort with this sort of ambiguity in the way we talk about murderers and rapists: as monsters, as demons, as an unadulterated form of evil that permits no good. We separate them from their humanity, we divide them into a different class of being, because we are not comfortable feeling like we walk among them unawares—though of course, we do.

When an officer on the case complains to Gibson that people keep calling in and reporting their husbands, boyfriends, and sons as the serial killer, she replies coolly, “It is a husband, boyfriend, brother, son we’re looking for.”

Our insistence that a murderer or rapist looks or behaves a “certain way” is not only misguided but dangerous, allowing predators to escape notice and continue to prey on their victims. Spector is a handsome, charming father of two, not to mention a counselor whose very position engenders deep emotional trust, a man who helps comfort bereaved parents and even rescues one of his clients from domestic abuse. And it’s true: He is all of those things. But he’s also something else.

Consider the stunned reaction we so often see from the friends and acquaintances of people accused of terrible crimes: “But he seemed so normal.” As though the appearance of normalcy were a protective talisman, like garlic or a cross. On a fundamental level, we want to believe that people are knowable, that our friends and neighbors and even lovers are who we think they are, that they could never secretly be capable of terrible things. We tell ourselves this because we have to, because how else can you live?

One of the saddest characters on the show is Spector’s wife Sally Ann (Bronagh Waugh), a neonatal nurse with no clue what her husband is really doing when he goes out at night, pretending to work at a help line. Spector’s crimes feel like a sword hanging not only over his head but hers, waiting to drop and destroy her and her children utterly. Indeed, they seem to leave at least a subconscious mark on his daughter Olivia (Sarah Beattie), who starts having night terrors and drawing pictures of murdered princesses in school.

Spector’s relationship with Olivia also points at the larger issue of misogyny, and how it often collides in contradictory ways with fatherhood: How do men who do terrible things to women—or who encourage a culture that is abusive and dangerous to women—reconcile their behavior with the love that they have for their daughters?

In the final scene of the first season, Gibson confronts the still-anonymous Spector by phone with this very question: “Does [your daughter] love her daddy? Does she look up to him? … What’s going to happen when she finds out who you really are, what you really do? It will destroy her. It will kill her.”

As much as we enjoy horror movies and outlandish, sensational tales of murder—perhaps because they are so safely outlandish—the truly scary stories are often the ones that remind us that bad people often don’t wear black hats, that people are fundamentally unknowable, and that the face of evil is often terribly banal.

It’s the same feeling evoked by “Westfall” by Okkervil River, one of the most haunting songs about murder ever written. Based loosely on the 1991 murders of four teenage girls at a yogurt shop in Austin, it is sung from the point of view of the killer; after his arrest, he reflects on the people and cameras staring at him, searching for outward signs of malevolence, trying desperately to believe they would have known—that they would have been able to protect themselves.

“They’re looking for evil, thinking they can trace it,” he sings. “But evil don’t look like anything.”

The Fall‘s second season comes to Netflix on Jan. 16. The first season is already streaming—catch up here.

Razer’s New Virtual Reality Gaming Headset Encourages Open-Source Hacking

The OSVR Hacker Dev Kit from Razer arrives in June and will cost $200. Developers can buy it (or build their own) to test their VR games and devices. Alex Washburn/WIRED

Virtual reality gaming is in its super-hype phase. But even with the recent developments and industry buzz, the technology still ranks as nascent. If it’s going to grow in a healthy fashion, it needs standards—assurances to developers and manufacturers that their software and hardware will work with all the VR products and games coming to the market.

That’s the principle behind OSVR, a new group formed by hardware and software heavyweights to promote interoperability around virtual reality gaming.

Razer (one of OSVR’s founders, along with Leapmotion, Ubisoft, Reload, and SMI, among others) is here at CES showing off a new piece of hardware: a VR headset developer’s kit. It’s a fully functioning headset for play-testing games and peripherals, complete with a gyroscope, accelerometer, and compass. There’s a surround-sound codec onboard, so you can add 3D audio to your creations. The internal display runs at 1080×1920 and the optical elements are adjustable. It also has USB ports for connecting any controllers or other devices you want to add to enhance the experience. And since it’s open-source hardware, all of the circuit boards are modular, and Razer says it will make the both the schematics and the 3D files freely available for download, so you can print and build your own goggles or customize the design.

Razer’s OSVR Hacker Dev Kit will cost $200 when it’s released to the public in June of 2015. The company is also allowing some access to developers now on a strictly limited basis.

What will run on it? Any software written for Unity 3D or Unreal 4 Engine for starters, which covers a big chunk of the VR gaming market. In line with the group’s goal, anything made with OSVR’s tools should work across all VR devices, including the Oculus DK 2.

Look into my EYES! Razer

Rap Weirdos on This Week’s Playlist Start 2015 on the Right Note

Soundcloud

Welcome back to the grind, everyone. Maybe you’ve noticed, like we did, that the holidays aren’t exactly the most fertile time for new music—but that didn’t stop a handful of artists from dropping material over the past couple of weeks. Whether it’s Chicago duo Leather Corduroys enlisting a gaggle of guest stars for its new mixtape, or surprise new tracks from Death Grips and Shabazz Palaces, or even morsels from dollar-sign-sporting artists like A$AP Rocky and Joey Bada$$, there’s plenty to make us optimistic about what 2015 holds.

As usual, we’ve added the tracks to our ongoing Spotify playlist of great new music, and created a standalone playlist (below). Keep the recommendations coming.

The tracks:

Sam Sparro, “Rock the Boat”

Leather Corduroys feat. Chance the Rapper, “I Told You So”

Aesop Rock, “Cat Food”

Joey Bada$$, “On and On”

A$AP Rocky, “Lord Pretty Flacko Jodye 2″

7 Days of Funk, “N My System”

Shabazz Palaces, “Ham Sandwich”

Death Grips, “Runway Y”

Razer Debuts Android Set-Top Box That Also Streams PC Games to Your TV

Razer’s new Android-based Forge TV and wireless game controller. Alex Washburn/WIRED

For the last few years, Razer has been producing some of the best high-end hardware for PC gamers: controllers, headsets, mice, keyboards, and of course, the awesome Blade gaming notebook PC.

Now the company is delving further into couch-based entertainment with a new $100 “microconsole.” It relies on both a small set-top box, as well as a software platform for streaming PC games to the box, and thus your television.

The tiny box is called Razer Forge TV, and it runs the Android TV platform on a quad-core chip. In many ways, it’s like any other set-top box—you can use it to watch movies and shows on YouTube, Hulu, Crackle, Google Play, and web videos via Google Cast. But you can also connect wireless controllers and use it to play games.

To that end, Razer is releasing two new controllers in conjunction with the Forge TV box: an $80 console-style controller called the Serval, which is based on the company’s Sabertooth console controller. It’s meant to be paired with the Forge TV, but also comes with a clip for mounting your Android phone to the top so you can use it as a mobile controller.

Also new is a $130 wireless keyboard/mouse combo that rests on your lap while you sit on the couch. This one is called the Turret, and it’s tuned for games: the mouse’s precision measures 3,500 dpi, and the controller is dual-wireless, so you can run it either as a Bluetooth device or over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and use it with multiple systems. The mouse has a magnet inside, so it won’t fall off when you move your hands to the keyboard to type, or when you reach for your soda. There’s a little charging cradle that lets you stash the keyboard (vertically) and mouse next to your TV.

The Razer Turret “lapboard” is a wireless keyboard/mouse combo. It folds up and slots vertically into a charging cradle. Alex Washburn/WIRED

Of course, the whole point is that you can use this mouse and keyboard on your couch. And it’s not just for typing in Hulu searches. The Forge TV will connect to the PC game launcher Razer Cortex and be able to stream just about any game from your PC—you know, that machine that lives in your bedroom that you already spend $2,000 on. Well now you can play all those games in your living room too. The requirements are not restrictive, as the streaming will work with a wide range of PC hardware, and any DirectX9 or later title. It works very much like the existing streaming platforms from Steam and Nvidia.

The latency of Razer’s streaming platform (which uses a proprietary encoder) is so low, even at 1080p, that visual lag and controller lag are imperceptible. A couple of us from WIRED have had a hands-on demo, and even though the Cortex: Stream platform isn’t fully finished yet, we both agree it felt just like playing a native console game. The beta release of Razer Cortex: Stream is slated for the second quarter of 2015, and will be a free feature if you buy the Forge TV and Serval controller bundle.

The Forge TV and the Serval are available at the beginning of this year, while the Turret keyboard/mouse controller will be available in the second quarter once the beta version of the streaming service comes online.