New Bastion DLC on the Way
Bastion is the debut game from Supergiant Games, and it has proven to be very successful for the studio. Bastion is an action RPG with a unique take on the genre in the form of a narrator who talks about your every move. There are multiple weapons and upgrades to equip your character with, and the game itself features some absolutely gorgeous hand-painted environments as you explore the Calamity. The main draw is the fully-voiced narrator and how much his voice adds to the overall game. Many people probably would like to know more about the narrator and his story, and now is your chance. Supergiant Games has announced some new DLC for Bastion called Stranger's Dream. This DLC lets you explore more of the narrator's backstory and even the history of Caelondia, that is, if you survive. Stranger's Dream also adds Score Attack Mode, which has every Spirit and Idol unlocked, and will rate your combat performance on efficiency, and No-Sweat Mode, which gives you unlimited lives so you can enjoy the story of Bastion with no chance of failure.
Bastion: Stranger's Dream will launch on Steam, Chrome, and Xbox Live. It will launch on December 14th on Xbox Live for 80 Microsoft Points, while the Steam and Chrome versions will be free when it launches at an undetermined date. No, you are not seeing things, as Bastion is now playable in the Google Chrome browser as a downloadable app. You can play through the prologue for free, but unlocking the full game will cost the game's regular $14.99 price.
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HP's webOS to Continue Through Open Source, Hardware Still Dead for Now
I know what you're thinking. HP declared webOS and any hardware running it as dead in the water earlier this year, and the fire sale on the HP TouchPad was a last ditch effort to make some money on the system. Well, that is true in a way, because while the hardware running webOS may be gone, the software will live on. HP will continue to develop webOS with the help of the open source community, meaning the software itself could have a long life. Developers at HP and outside it will help to improve webOS for any interested OEMs and anyone who currently owns a webOS device, like all those who purchased the TouchPad during the fire sale. Currently, HP has no plans to make any more hardware running webOS, but it could change that stance later on. It said other companies have been eyeing webOS, but nothing definitive has been set for wbOS to find its new home. HP is planning another fire sale of the TouchPad on its eBay page this Sunday, with refurbished 16 and 32GB models up for grabs at $99 and $149, respectively.
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Mimicking the Greenhouse Effect in Solar Power
In practice there are two ways to capture energy from the Sun; photovoltaic and collection. The photovoltaic method directly converts the energy of light into electricity, while the collection method uses mirrors to focus light on water. The water heats until it boils, and the steam turns a turbine. A third method which has gotten less attention has been advanced recently by researchers at MIT.
Thermophotovoltaic devices use the Sun’s heat to generate electricity, but have had a key drawback. As the device heats up, it will tend to reradiate the heat, causing energy to be lost. What the researchers at MIT have done is create a photonic crystal that mimics the greenhouse effect by letting photons in, but not out. Precisely shaped holes in the material allow the photons to enter, but they are very unlikely to leave, given the size and spacing of the holes. You can picture it like a piggy bank with a narrow slot. The coins fall into it fine, but trying to get the coins out of the slot is anything but easy and requires more luck than skill.
The researchers speculate this approach could allow efficiencies to reach as high as 35-36%, which is higher than the SQ limit for semiconductor-based photovoltaics. Still, the work thus far has been theoretical, and more devices and experiments are needed, but there is potential here.
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Release Date and Price Announced for Dear Esther
Even though Half-Life 2 came out all the way back in 2004, it has inspired several mods that have gone to become full blown releases. The latest to do so is the mod Dear Esther, an exploration-focused adventure that has you unraveling a chilling ghost story. The mod was designed by Dan Pinchbeck and came out in 2008 and won several awards. Later that year, DICE artist Robert Briscoe (environment artist for Mirror's Edge) started overhauling the entire game. Valve supported Pinchbeck and Briscoe in 2010 and granted the two a license to make it a fully independent release. Now, Dear Esther will release on February 14th, 2012, for $9.99 on Steam. A store page will go up pretty soon detailing system specifications and a brand-new trailer. The game simply looks amazing, as it has been designed on the Portal 2 engine and features re-recorded audio, a haunting soundtrack, and fully rebuilt environments. It may not fit the classic idea of a game, but really, you cannot find too many great experiences like this in an interactive medium.
Dear Esther releases on February 14th, 2012, for $9.99.
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Macroscale Entanglement Observed
To observe quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, researchers will lower the energy of a system to near absolute zero. At least researchers outside of Oxford University where they instead made very fast measurements.
The experimental setup involved two 3 mm diamonds placed in front of am ultrafast laser. The laser would shine in pulses only 100 femtoseconds (fs) long (100*10^-15 seconds) and, occasionally, a photon would hit the diamond just right, to get it vibrating, thus increasing the energy of the diamond. Another laser pulse, 350 fs after the first, travels through one of the diamonds and, if the diamond was the one vibrating, it should pick up the extra energy (causing the diamond to stop vibrating) which can then be observed.
According to classical mechanics, only one of the diamonds would be vibrating, because the photon to cause the vibration could only pass through one of them. The only way the second photon could pick up the energy would be to pass through the same diamond; a 50-50 chance. After 200 trillion trials, the second pulse showed the increase in energy 200 trillion times. This is where quantum mechanics comes in.
The only explanation for this observation is for the original photon to have entered both diamonds, similar to a photon travelling through both slits in the double slit experiment. This would cause the vibrational states of the diamonds to be entangled. When the second laser pulse passes through only one diamond, it will pass through the vibrating one, because both are vibrating.
Though entangled diamonds may find use in future quantum computers, it will be a long time before this particular setup could be applied. Until then, this experiment and those based on it can be used to explore the apparent barrier between quantum and classical mechanics.
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GSC Game World, Creator of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series, Closes
This is not the kind of news anyone wants to hear, especially when it concerns a pretty popular game series. GSC Game World, creators of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, has closed its doors, meaning the upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is canceled. It sounds like GSC's CEO Sergei Grigorovich was not pleased with the progress being made on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, but still it does not mean the entire studio needed to close. However, 1C's Sergey Galenkin says it did not make much financial sense to continue with a PC exclusive, like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, so perhaps that has something to do with it. Whatever the case may be, GSC Game World is now no more and we will never get a chance to see the haunting beauty and dark mysteries that could have awaited us in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.
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Purifying Water and Producing Energy
Water is among the most important compounds on this planet, and its most useful form for our lives is purified water. In some situations, such as at or near the front lines of a warzone, getting purified water can be incredibly difficult and expensive (as much as $60 per gallon). Researchers at Michigan State University have created a device with the ability to not only purify water, but produce useable fuels.
Large-scale systems to purify water already exist, but this new creation has some advantages. The solar unit used to power the system has been carefully crafted to make it as much as 80% lighter than current units. A series of biological processes are used to break down waste water and food waste into methane which can then be used as fuel. A nano-filtration is used to clean the discharge from the biological processes to produce drinkable water.
Though the current focus is to provide the military with an advanced water purification system to ease supply chain issues, the researchers ultimately want this technology used to make wastes and asset, instead of a liability.
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Impact of Thailand Flooding to Affect HDD Supply Into 2013
Recent severe flooding in Thailand has raised havoc with the hard disk drive supply chain with manufacturer Western Digital being the hardest hit. The situation was so dire that last month analysts were predicting the situation would last well into 2012. Now, analysts at research firm IDC are pushing that out into 2013. While the worst of the situation is expected to ease up after February 2012, things are now predicted to return to normal sometime in 2013.
Lenovo is now informing its corporate customers it is out of 7,200-rpm drives and will be forced to begin substituting alternative models such as 5,400-rpm drives. It is estimated that Western Digital lost an estimated 75% of its production capacity due to the flooding. Some of the flooded production facilities have been drained and are starting to come back online with others, mostly in the south of Thailand, are still underwater.
IDC goes on to say that they expect a shortage of 55 million units this quarter with shipments of around 120 million. This shortage is also affecting PC manufacturers with forecasted shipments expected to be 3.8 million units lower than earlier expected. Prices are beginning to stabilize, and come down a bit, although they are up over 100% on some models.
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