ASUS P9X79 Deluxe Review
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Blizzard Adding Over a Quarter Million Diablo III Beta Testers
In anticipation of the May 15th launch, Blizzard is adding over a quarter million beta testers to Diablo III. Blizzard is sending an opt-in invite to 275,000 gamers, so be sure to check your Battle.net account to see if you are accepted. The studio did warn there may be some issues with such a large amount of people being added, so do not be surprised if you encounter lag, disconnections, and even an inability to log in. Blizzard is also taking this time to launch its queuing service, so you may have to wait in line for a time when you load up the beta client. This large number of people will be a way for Blizzard to stress test its servers to ensure next month's launch is as smooth as possible. Hopefully everything goes as planned, since I know practically everyone will want to hop into Diablo III on May 15th.
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Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition Team Looking to Icewind Dale
It will not be long before we can check out Beamdog's Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, but many people have been thinking if other Dungeons & Dragons games from that era will get a facelift. The folks at Beamdog know how passionate the fans are of these classic RPGs, and it looks like Icewind Dale could be next to get an Enhanced Edition. Beamdog's Trent Oster tweeted last night that his team is interested in Icewind Dale, but says BG:EE must be a success first before the team considers other games. If BG:EE is sucessful, Oster said the team will likely use the codebase from the Baldur's Gate expansion Throne of Baal, which has some enhancements not seen in the original Icewind Dale. All of this is just talk right now, but it would be really nice to see more Enhanced Editions of those games, maybe even Planescape: Torment.
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Sleeping Dogs Arrives August 14
It was just a couple of months ago when Square Enix announced Sleeping Dogs, the upcoming cop drama that is the spiritual sucessor to the True Crime series. At the time, all Square Enix would say is the game would arrive later this year, but now we know when. Sleeping Dogs will arrive on August 14th for the PC, PS3, and 360, with different pre-order bonuses announced for different stores. The downloadable PC version will have its bonuses revealed later, so all of these are for retail copies. Best Buy, GameStop, and Amazon each have unique offers to obtain your dollar, and it is your chance on the store to go with. Best Buy will receive the Georges St. Pierre pack (he was a consultant on the game), while GameStop and Amazon will have police and martial arts-themed packs, respectively.
Square Enix has not said whether the pre-order packs will be available for purchase later, but one can hope. You can check out the full list below to see which one interests you the most.
Best Buy: Georges St. Pierre Pack
GSP's signature "flying punch"
Exclusive GSP outfit including T-shirts, headband, and shorts
GSP's outfit unlocks the "flying punch" and increases grappling and throwing damage
GameStop: Police Protection Pack
Exclusive "High Speed" Mission
Exclusive HK Police SWAT Outfit
Exclusive assault rifle
Exclusive SWAT Police Vehicle
Amazon: Martial Arts Pack
Shaolin Showdown Mission
Shaolin Warrior outfit (with increased striking damage)
Bonus Triad XP points
Wing Chun decoration for safehouse (with temporary combat buff)
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Biofuel Cell Implanted in a Snail
There are a variety of electric fuel cells out there, with the most popular being hydrogen based, but other fuels can be used too. For example, glucose which is a sugar found in many organisms, can be used to generate electricity in a fuel cell. This intrigues many scientists as a way to power electronic devices implanted into an organism. Already cockroaches, rats, and rabbits have received such implants in experiments, and now a snail has as well.
The electrified snail had electrodes placed into its shell and was able to produce a current for several months, as it lived freely with the implant. As reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the snail was able to consistently generate electricity after being fed and resting to recharge. To facilitate the fuel cell, compressed carbon nanotubes were used as electrodes and were coated in enzymes.
The current experiment shows the potential of an implanted biofuel cell, but did not put it to use powering a device. Exactly what may be connected to such a power source is up to the imagination. Miniature cameras and microphones are two examples, but other devices, possibly with a medical purpose, could also utilize this power. Only time will tell.
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Teeth of Naros DLC Trailer for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Debuts
The upcoming Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning DLC, Teeth of Naros, is nearly upon us, and today we have a new trailer to entice fans. Now, Teeth of Naros will drop on Tuesday the 17th for the PC, PS3, and 360, but EA and 38 Studios want to get you ready for adventure with this new trailer. You can see the floating city your character heads to, plus see the Kollossae - a race of people made of stone. These Kollossae are the new race for Reckoning, and it is up to you to solve the riddles of their faith. There are other dangers in the lands you must face, from dungeons and traps to a rather large, bird-like creature that should prove challenging in fights. The Teeth of Naros will set you back $9.99 on Tuesday.
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Improved Chip Simulator to Speed Up Tests
Before a new chip architecture can make it to market, it has to be simulated in a lab. This can be done using software, which is not always accurate, or with hardware. The hardware solution uses Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) which are circuits and memory cells that can be connected in new ways after being manufactured. This property allows researchers to create the architectures without actually manufacturing the design, but FPGAs are not very faster.
Instead of modeling the entire architecture at once, which uses a lot of FPGAs, portions of it are tested in stages. This causes the testing to take as many as eight clock cycles to perform an operation the finished product would only need one to do. Researchers at MIT do not like that, so they figured out how to speed up the process.
Every circuit in a chip has so many wires going in and out. What the researchers did was have every piece of data going in or out of the chip on the wires stored, until the calculations were done. Once all of the operations on the output data are complete, the input data can be dumped, and this signals the end of a simulated clock cycle. How many actual clock cycles this takes depends on the logic involved, so if only three cycles are needed, only three are used, instead of a full eight.
This design immediately allows the simulation process to be sped up, but the researchers also created a new high-level hardware design language. StructuralSpec, which is based on BlueSpec, is meant to make it easier to design new architectures by automating part of the process. A researcher would have to hand code possibly 30,000 lines with BlueSpec, but StructuralSpec can take a formal abstract design and create the software model in just 8,000 lines. Together, these two advances should allow for faster testing and development of future architectures.
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Over 30 Interplay Games on Sale this Weekend at GOG.com
Nearly everybody loves a sale, especially when it is a video game sale. The folks over at GOG.com have put up practically every Interplay game on sale for this weekend only. There are 32 Interplay titles at 50% off, but you have to act quick because every one of them goes back to full price on Monday. Every single game is priced at $2.99, so there should be no reason for you to miss out on some of these gems. Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout: Tactics are on sale, as are MDK and MDK 2, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Freespace and Freespace 2, Descent 1, 2, and 3, and dozens more. This is a wonderful chance to pick up some games and relive or experience for the first time what made these classics. What are you waiting for? You only have until Monday, so head over to GOG.com!
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Superradiant Laser Built
Lasers are used for a variety of things, from pointing to diagrams to accurately measuring time, but each use requires a special kind of laser. A laser pointer does not need to be the best of quality for what it does, but the lasers used in atomic clocks and other high-precision measurements need to be the very best. These are situations where the vibrations from a car driving outside the building can disrupt the measurement. Fortunately researchers at JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder, have created a superradiant laser which has the highest stability of any laser.
Modern laboratory lasers work by shining a light into a cloud of atoms between two mirrors. As the light bounces between the two mirrors, it hits and stimulates the atoms to release another photon, thereby increasing the amount of light in the cavity. Some of this light gets through the mirrors to produce the beam we have all seen. Those mirrors are a problem for the laser though. The smallest of vibrations can cause the mirrors to shift a very small amount, but still enough to throw off the frequency of the laser light. The new superradiant laser however does not require the mirrors as much as a regular laser.
In a traditional laser, the cloud of atoms all act separately, but in this superradiant laser, the atoms act as though they are one. Atoms release photons when they drop in energy levels, so in a regular laser, one atom releases one photon. In the superradiant laser the atoms will all drop together, so 10,000 photons can be released all at once. This means far fewer photons are needed to create the laser, so they do not need to be bouncing off the mirrors. With less dependence on the vibrating mirrors, the superradiant laser is only 1/10,000 as sensitive as a traditional laser.
The next step is for researchers to find what other atoms they can make a superradiant laser from, because the rubidium atoms used are not the best of all situations.
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Tough Screen Cover Turns iPad Into a Chopping Board
Tired of using the ubiquitous iPad for the usual iOS gaming, web-browsing or taking awkward pictures? With a BuffLab protective screen cover, your iPad just might be useful in the kitchen too. Now, before you cringe at slicing a carrot on your fragile $499 tablet, South Korea's hard-as-nails BuffLab screen cover promises to absorb all the damage from the culinary pounding. Apparently, its shock-absorption properties are so strong that it can even withstand the force of a walnut-cracking hammer. Just remember not to rinse the iPad afterwards, as even the world's toughest screen protector doesn't stand a chance against soap and running water.
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Engineer Job Ad Confirms Valve's Gaming Hardware Plans
So there was this rumor floating around that Valve was going to develop a Steam Box game console, but us curious folks didn't exactly get the answers we wanted from Doug Lombardi and company. However, a casual peek inside Valve's current job openings indicate that the studio is in fact ready to cook up some serious gaming hardware. "For years, Valve has been all about writing software that provides great gameplay experiences. Now we’re developing hardware to enhance those experiences, and you can be a key part of making that happen." Whatever that hardware is could be anything related to gaming in general(gravity gun, anyone?), but don't expect it to be a "me-too" mouse nor a gamepad, because Valve is looking for an Electronics Engineer who can help them "invent whole new gaming experiences."
Got the chops to help Valve in its mysterious plans on building sexy new gaming hardware? You'll need to be skilled at crafting prototypes, knowledgeable in embedded systems, schematic entry and circuitry. Drop by Valve's website for more details on the job posting.
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Non-Newtonian Pothole Patch
Potholes are a pain (sometimes literally) and are not easy to repair. Patches requires specially trained workers and equipment, and completely resurfacing a road obviously takes a lot more work and time. Fortunately it does not take specially trained researchers to come up with a fast, cheap, and easy temporary solution that holds until the trained workers can repair the road.
Undergraduate students at Case Western Reserve University were trying to think of a common problem to try to solve, and settled on potholes. (Also being in the Cleveland area, I understand why this would come to mind when trying to think of the world’s problems.) While considering solutions, they thought of the unusual physics of non-Newtonian fluids, which can act like solids under certain circumstances. Though normally the materials are liquid and will flow just like water, the right kind of force causes them to resist external forces. One moment you can pour it out a glass and the next you can run and even jump on it, then pour it out of a glass again.
All non-Newtonian fluids contain particles, and it is how they interact which cause the unusual properties. Different particles create different properties and the particles the students decided on not only are able to support a car but also are biodegradable and nontoxic. To make the pothole patch one needs only add the particles in powder form to water inside of a sturdy bag. A piece of black adhesive fabric covers the patch, so drivers don’t think it is hazard of some kind. When the pothole is repaired, the bag can be emptied, cleaned, and reused.
Thus far, tests on Cleveland roads have been successful, but the students have not yet put their invention up against a Midwest winter. If it survives that, then I am sure it will only be a matter of time before a commercial product hits the streets.
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Skyrim for 360 to Support Kinect Voice Commands Soon, PC Mod Offers Similar Features Now
Bethesda Game Studios shared its Game Jam video in February, which showed off what the developers could add with a week of free time to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. A slew of different mods were shown in that video, and it seems some of those are starting to find their way into the game. A recent patch for Skyrim added new killcams first seen in the Game Jam, and now another feature is being added. Bethesda has announced the Xbox 360 version of Skyrim will receive Kinect support to let you control various aspects with your voice. The most obvious Kinect usage is for shouts, but you can also use it to give commands to your follower, navigate menus, and equip items. There are more than 200 voice commands supported, and Xbox 360 owners will receive the free update later this month.
PC users do not need to feel left out, as there is a mod to add voice commands to Skyrim. It is still a work-in-progress, but you can do many of the things Kinect-equipped 360 gamers will soon be able to. The PC mod can be used with any microphone, but you will need to have Script Dragon installed and speech recognition enabled in Windows.
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Brian Fargo Discusses Wasteland 2 and Obsidian's Involvement
The Kickstarter page for Wasteland 2 is winding down (four more days), and Brian Fargo has posted an update answering some questions. First off people were confused on the definition of a party-based game (not surprising considering today's market). Fargo said when you start Wasteland 2, you will customize four Rangers and give each of them different skills to utilize. These skills cover a wide range of abilities, like lockpicking, disarming bombs, and even repairing toasters. This way everybody who plays the game can tailor their Ranger party to specific tasks and essentially ensures everyone will have a different party. There are also three slots available for NPCs to join, which will not be under your direct control. These NPCs could have different quirks to make them unique, like being trigger happy or a cleptomaniac, and it is up to you to decide who to bring with.
Fargo also touched on Obsidian Entertainment's involvement with Wasteland 2, since the Kickstarter fund surpassed $2.1 million. Obsidian will be supplying some tools to speed up asset integration, plus Chris Avellone will be lending his talents. Programming and production reside with inXile and Brian Fargo, with Fargo stating Wasteland 2 is his "baby." Obsidian and Avellone are helping to get the game created faster, plus Avellone can give another creative voice to the design team. Games benefit from multiple angles to ensure a large amount of content, and that is what Avellone can provide.
Wasteland 2 will begin production next week, with Fargo and the team sharing the final vision with the public. Fan feedback is essential to Wasteland 2, so the final vision document will not be available right away.
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Google Breaks $10 Billion in Revenue for Q1
Google has announced that it had first quarter revenue of $10.65 billion for 2012. That amount is a considerable improvement over last quarter as well as the first quarter of 2011, showing a 24% increase over the latter. The majority of the revenue, $10.2 billion, was from advertising. Net income of $2.89 billion means that Google now has $49.3 billion in cash. Also announced was a 2-for-1 stock split, and that the new stock will be non-voting shares.
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