Thermaltake Bigwater 760 Plus Review
Read More ...
Bethesda Posts a Teaser Screenshot - Announcement Tomorrow
It looks like the folks over at Bethesda Softworks have something planned for tomorrow, based on a Twitter post. The Bethesda Blog tweeted a rather cryptic message earlier, simply saying "Tomorrow" and including an image. The image can be viewed below, and it is a screenshot from an unknown game. There is not much else to go on other than the screenshot, so hopefully everything will be clear by tomorrow. The screenshot shows a highly-detailed man covered in grime and looking a little beat up. The look would certainly correspond to something for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, possibly a DLC, but it could be a project from another studio, like id Software or even Tango Gameworks. Whatever the case is for this teaser, we will all find out for sure tomorrow.
Read More ...
Crytek Shows Off CryENGINE 3 SDK 3.4.0 Footage
There may not have been any trailers of Crysis 3 accompanying today's announcement, Crytek did release footage of CryENGINE 3 SDK 3.4.0 to give you an idea of what the graphics behind the game will be like. Crytek's CryENGINE has always pushed the boundaries of realism, and this updated version is no exception. A wealth of new features have been added, including DirectX 11 ones like tessellation. I have to say, watching the trailer makes you wonder why more games are not using CryENGINE 3, but then again more people would probably have to upgrade their computers. Still, at least some games will use it, including MechWarrior Online. You can download CryENGINE 3 SDK 3.4.0 for free over at www.crydev.net.
Read More ...
Carbon Nanosponge for Oil Clean Up
There is no denying that oil spills, like any chemical spill, can be very damaging to the environment, and the natural processes that clean up are not always fast at doing so. Scientists across the country and the world are looking for better ways to get oil out of water, which also will not harm the environment in the process. Researchers at Rice University, with others Spain, Belgium, Japan, and other US labs, have discovered a way to grow a carbon nanotube sponge, or nanosponge that can absorb 100 times its weight in oil.
Nanotube solids have been made before by tangling the nanotubes together after being grown. These researchers created their nanosponge by introducing boron while the nanotubes grew. This caused the tubes to grow with defects that tangled them together to form the sponge that is 99% air. The sponge does more than just absorb oil though as it is superhydrophobic, meaning it hates water so much, that even after submerging it, the sponge will remain dry. This is perfect for cleaning up oil spills though, as the sponges will float on top of the water, where the oil is.
Once the sponge has absorbed oil, magnets can be used to capture the sponges for processing. This processing could be compression to force the oil out to be used as fuel or what-have-you, and the sponge is left to collect more oil. Alternatively, the oil can be burned out of the sponge. The fire does not get hot enough to damage the carbon nanotubes, so again the sponge is ready to collect more oil.
For this to actually be deployed for oil spill cleanups though, a large-scale production method will have to be discovered, or a means to weld the sponges together. Fortunately, other uses, such as bone-tissue regeneration scaffolds, do not need very large pieces, so we may see these sponges before too long.
Read More ...
Banned Origin Players Gain Access to Offline Portion of Games
This is certainly a piece of good news and removes a rather confusing segment from a policy. EA has adjusted the Origin policy towards banned players, which means they can now access the offline portion of any games on their banned account. Previously, if you were banned from Origin for any reason, be it multiplayer or forum abuse, you lost access to all of your games. This was not limited to just multiplayer games but also single player, so you could not play anything you had previously bought. Now, EA has adjusted the policy so banned users can at least play the single player part of their games. EA had to wait a little while to make sure there were no legal issues, but now can come clean with it. You will need to set Origin to offline mode before being able to play the single player part, but at least you can play the games without having to buy them again.
Read More ...
Printable Electronics Analyzed to Understand Performance Differences
The world of electronics is changing with the introduction of organic components. These plastic circuits have the great advantage over the current inorganic standard of being able to be printed, like a newspaper. This allows the polymer electronics to be made in large scale and at low cost, but the results are not always very good. To understand why, researchers at North Carolina State University used the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley Lab to look at the molecules of some printed electronics.
For plastic electronics to ever compete with modern electronics, they have to be high quality and cheap to make. While the low cost is fairly easy to achieve, the high quality is not as determining the best materials and methods is still a matter of trial and error. What the researchers found is that the best performing printed electronics had good molecular alignment. Specifically with transistors, the better aligned the molecules were, the better the transistor performed.
Hopefully researchers and manufacturers will find ways to control the molecular alignment of printed electronics soon. Until then though, other organic electronics can be examined in the same way, to increase our knowledge of them and potentially improve their performance further.
Read More ...
Crysis 3 Due Next Year, Setting Combines First Two Games
Remember that inadvertent Crysis 3 leak last week, which then resulted in EA saying to look forward to April 16th? Well, you are in luck, as EA and Crytek have officially announced Crysis 3 due out next year. The companies had to act fairly quick since the leak, but have revealed a fair amount of information on the sequel. Crysis 3 stars "Prophet" and takes place in New York City, but this time the environment echoes the one from the first Crysis. New York has been covered in a Nanodome, which has turned the seven sectors into a rainforest, swamp, and other lovely environments. The Cell Corporation says the dome is necessary in order to cleanse the city of any remaining Ceph forces, but there is more at stake than just that. Prophet uses a composite bow, an advanced Nanosuit, and "alien" technology to help him survive and figure out just what Cell Corp has in mind.
EA also announced various pre-order bonuses for Crysis 3, plus an upgrade bonus for all pre-orders. If you pre-order now, you will be upgraded to the Crysis 3 Hunter Edition, which adds the bow and Hunter Nanosuit module to mulitplayer. There is also an unique skin, dogtags, and an XP boost for multiplayer included with the Hunter Edition. As for the pre-order packs, there will be three of them although no specific retailers are mentioned at this time. The pre-order packs include all of the Hunter Edition content and some extras:
Stalker Pack — Early multiplayer access to the deadly semi-auto Jackal shotgun. This powerful, close-range shotgun comes with a unique silencer attachment, custom weapon skin and two exclusive themed in-game dog tags.All in all, these packs are just for multiplayer and should have no impact on single player. I suspect EA will announce the retailers for these packs at a later date, but you can head over to Origin and pre-order Crysis 3 now. It is set to launch next spring for the PC, PS3, and 360.
Overkill Pack — Early multiplayer access to the Typhoon assault weapon and skin. Spewing 500 rounds a second, the Typhoon gives players the ability to go guns blazing to take back the Liberty Dome. Also included are two exclusive Overkill themed in-game dog tags.
Predator Pack — Early multiplayer access to the Feline submachine gun and exclusive camo. With an extremely fast rate of fire and a 60 round magazine the Feline is highly effective and deadly, at short range.
Read More ...
Graphene Related Semiconductor Discovered
With silicon quickly approaching a physical barrier that will stop future electronics from getting smaller and faster, researchers are constantly looking for new materials to replace it. One possibility is graphene, an atom-thick plane of carbon, which is considerably more conductive than silicon and even copper. Unfortunately, graphene is normally a conductor, not a semiconductor, which is needed for electronics. This has not stopped researchers from searching for ways to make it a semiconductor, and those at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee have had some unexpected success.
The original experiment the researchers were performing was on carbon nanotubes that had been covered in tin oxide nanoparticles. The structure of the nanotube made it difficult for them to examine, so they decided to analyze a piece of graphene with the nanoparticles, because a nanotube is essentially a piece of graphene rolled into a cylinder. To make the graphene, the researchers took some graphene oxide, which is relatively easy to produce, and heated it in a vacuum.
Graphene oxide consists of multiple lays of graphene randomly placed on top of each other, with oxygen attached. The researchers expected heat to break the oxygen atoms off of the graphene, allowing them to occupy the vacuum as a gas. Instead, the graphene layers shifted to line themselves up and the oxygen remain attached, forming graphene monoxide (GMO).
After collecting more data and doing a lot of calculations, the researchers discovered that GMO is a semiconductor, unlike conducting graphene and insulating graphene oxide. The researchers do not know what caused this transformation or how if it can be scaled up. The experiment only created small pieces of it and they do not know what will happen if they try to make a larger piece.
If it turns out GMO can be easily produced, we may have a replacement for silicon. In fact, with graphene being a conductor and graphene oxide an insulator, every part of a future computer’s circuits could be made from a form of graphene.
Read More ...
Barnes & Noble Release New Nook SimpleTouch
Barnes & Noble has announced the release of a new version of its e-Reader, the Nook. The Nook SimpleTouch now has a version that features built-in LED lighting that will allow for nighttime reading. The technology is known as "Flex Lighting" and places a thin LED film over the e-ink display. According to Barnes & Noble, this new Nook will last over a month on a single charge while the light is being used. The new Nook is now available for pre-order at an MSRP of $139, with a ship date of May 1.
Read More ...
Cyberbullying is Different from Traditional Bullying
Who here has ever been bullied? I was once. Can still remember what it was like being pushed into that fence, even after all these years. Modern children are not getting bullied like I was though, at least not all of them. Bullying has moved into the digital age, just like much of our lives have, but cyberbullying is not the same as traditional schoolyard bullying.
Traditional bullying often has three characteristics; a power difference between the bully or bullies and the victim, proactive targeting of the victim, and ongoing aggression. Researchers at the University of British Columbia have found that cyberbullying does not always have these properties. For example, online it does not matter how big you are. Also, posts on the Internet can be misinterpreted much more easily than being shoved into a fence. According to the thousands of youth surveyed, 95% of what is posted online is just meant to be a joke, with only 5% meant to be mean. This indicates the youth are underestimating just how harmful cyberbullying can be.
Differences like these make it difficult to address the problem, because the traditional methods used for traditional bullying may not apply. To further confuse the issues, cyberbullying is more fluid than traditional bullying, with someone being in all three roles of bully, victim, and witness, instead of just one or the other. For now the best thing the researchers can recommend is that children and parents have an open and honest relationship, so they can deal with the problem of cyberbullying together.
Read More ...
Free Witcher iOS Interactive Comic Now Available on iTunes
Before CD Projekt Red's much-lauded RPG Witcher came out in 2007, not many people outside of Poland knew much of Geralt, who was fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski's fictional monster-slayer in a brutal medieval world of foul magic and adventure. Now, with a successful RPG sequel to Witcher released and its much-awaited Enhanced Edition on the way, fans can't seem to get enough of the White Wolf. If you're looking for even more immersion into Geralt's perilous experiences, the best way is to bury yourself in one of Sapkowski's written works such as the short story collection The Last Wish.
However, those armed with iOS devices are in for a treat, as an interactive(and free) Witcher comic has been made available for download. I'm sure a lot of Witcher fans would also appreciate it if this 133MB comic would virtually slash its way into Android devices, but it's alternatively available on Mac computers via Steam as well. The story follows anti-hero Geralt in his search of a werecat, but gets more than what he bargained for when his shady contractors complicate matters. While the level of interactive-ness such as casting magic signs and battling monsters on a comic book might sound a tad juvenile for some, let's get that out of the way by keeping in mind that this is based on mature content, after all. Download the comic now to further appreciate the upcoming Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition.
Read More ...
iPad Mini Rumored to Launch in Q3 2012
A sub-$300 "iPad Mini" is reportedly on the way, according to Chinese news site, NetEase. The source reports that the smaller Apple tablet is scheduled for Q3 release window, and could cost somewhere between $249 to $299. With around six million tablets purportedly ready for release on its launch date, the iPad Mini is supposedly Apple's answer to the looming threat of upcoming Windows 8 tablets. NetEase also hinted that Foxconn's Honhai Precision and Pegatron were tapped to manufacture the iPad Mini. With Apple's dominant market share in the tablet business, a smaller, more affordable iPad could perhaps overthrow reigning "mini" Android tablets.
Read More ...
Hardware Roundup: Monday Edition
Welcome to a new week of reviews from around the Web. Have you ever wondered which sounds better - a USB headset or an analog set hooked up to a sound card? Making a comparison is difficult unless you can use essentially the same headset on both connections, and that is exactly what Computer Ed has done in his USB vs. Sound Card review. Also in our roundup today is a look at the Razer Naga gaming mouse and a review covering the Swiftech H20-320 Edge HD liquid cooling kit.
Cooling
Swiftech H20-320 Edge HD Liquid Cooling Kit @ Bjorn3D
Input Devices
RAZER Naga Hex Expert MOBA/Action RPG Gaming Mouse @ Madshrimps
Speakers/Headphones
USB vs. Soundcard for your Headset @ Computer Ed
Read More ...
Blizzard Announces Changes for Heart of the Swarm
Blizzard first announced new units for the upcoming StarCraft 2 expansion, Heart of the Swarm, at BlizzCon 2011. Some new units were added, while others were removed. Since the announcement, Blizzard has been hard at work testing out the balance of the new units, and some of the new units haven't made the cut. The Shredder has been removed for Terran, and the Warhound is also on the chopping block. To counter this, Blizzard is looking into keeping the Thor and giving some extra abilities to it. Protoss will be losing the Replicant as it was found to remove diversity rather than adding it. The team is also experimenting with adding a Mass Recall ability to the Nexus. The Overseer will be added back in for Zerg, while the Viper will be a pure caster unit. New abilities for the Nydus Network are also being looked into. No announcements were made as to when a Beta version might be made available.
Read More ...
Available Tags:Thermaltake , iOS , iPad , Hardware ,
No comments:
Post a Comment