BitFenix Parts Store Now Open
The BitFenix Parts Store has just been opened and promises to be your one stop shop for all your spare parts needs for BitFenix cases and accessories. Upon visiting the site users will be presented with an easy to use interface for browsing for all the parts they might need, from side panels to hard drive trays. BitFenix decided to create the parts store after "dozens of requests from enthusiastic BitFenix fans around the world." BitFenix has listed a number of potential uses for the store including "getting practice parts for modding, finding replacement parts for mods that went wrong, and additional side panels for creating custom window mods."
Source: Press Release
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Biostar Announces TB85 Motherboard
Biostar has announced a new motherboard based on the Intel B85 chipset supporting fourth generation Core i7 and i5 processors, the TB85. The TB85 has a broad range of features that will make it appealing to a wide audience including "IT departments in larger companies as well as small firms," and for Bitcoin miners as the board has six PCI-E slots. The board supports up to 16GB of memory in two DR3 slots, uses 100% solid capacitors, has a total of six SATA connections, and features onboard audio.
Source: Press Release
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Smart Benches Coming to Boston Parks
Various parks around Boston, to include Titus Sparrow Park in the South End, the Boston Common, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway, will be receiving smart benches known as “Soofas” over the next week. The benches, which were shown off for the first time at a White House meeting for innovators and entrepreneurs, were invented by MIT Media Lab product Changing Environments, which is a Verizon Innovation Program. Solar panels are incorporated in the benches, allowing visitors to charge their phones while taking a break from the activities located at the Boston parks. Besides providing virtually endless power to charge cellular phones, the benches can also connect wirelessly to the Internet through the Verizon network, sharing location-based environmental information such as air quality and noise data.
Source: The Boston Globe
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California Lifts Ban on Alternative Currencies
A new law has recently been passed by California Governor Jerry Brown that repeals Section 107 of California’s Corporations Code. This section stated that companies or individuals were prohibited to issue money in any form other than U.S. dollars. Section 107 of California’s Corporations Code covered all alternative currencies, which included virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and others. With the ban on alternative currencies now lifted thanks to the new law, it is obvious that the California state government is looking to accommodate the growth of virtual currencies, something that companies have been racing to do in order to support as many customers as possible.
Source: TechHive
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Making Solar Panels Less Expensive with Tofu Ingredient
While a roof covered with solar panels can look very clean and harmless, manufacturing those panels can be anything but. Some of the materials used to create solar panels can be highly toxic and make special safety and disposal methods necessities. Researchers at the University of Liverpool however, have discovered a potential replacement for one of these toxic chemicals, and it is actually found in tofu, bath salts, and is used for de-icing roads.
Magnesium chloride is found in seawater and used in many products already, demonstrating its safety. At $0.001 per gram, it is also relatively cheap, especially compared to cadmium chloride at $0.3 per gram. The reason the latter chemical is used in solar panels is to improve the efficiency of some of the cheapest solar cells made today. Thin films of cadmium telluride can be cheaply turned into solar cells that can convert about 2% of light into electricity, but by applying cadmium chloride, the efficiency can surpass 15%. As it turns out though, magnesium chloride can have the same affect, at a fraction of the cost and much more safely.
To test magnesium chloride, the researchers applied it to solar cells at a bench using a spray gun from a model shop. Applying cadmium chloride requires the use of a fume cupboard to prevent exposure, for comparison.
Source: University of Liverpool
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Dark Fairy Tale Platformer Woolfe: The Redhood Diaries Coming to PC, PS4, and XBO in Q1 2015
Belgian studio GRIN has been hard at work on its first independent title, Woolfe: The Redhood Diaries, since receiving support from the Flemish Game Fund in May 2013, and it's just about ready to show off the game publicly. Woolfe is a 2.5D side-scrolling platformer that takes a "non-sugarcoated" and twisted look at the pre-Grimm, French fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. Players control a vengeful Red Riding Hood seeking to eliminate her demon, B.B. Woolfe, across various dark fantasy locations, "including dangerous smoke-spewing factories, charming medieval villages and woodland landscapes twisted by evil forces."
Source: Press Release and Official Blog [1] and [2]
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Video Game Behavior Linked to Pro-Social Behavior
As a gamer, it can be very annoying to see one of my interests and passions regularly blamed for violent crimes. This makes research into video games all the more interesting to me, to find at least more truth about the topic. Researchers at the University at Buffalo have recently studied how immoral behaviors in video games can affect people, and the result is definitely interesting.
With the plethora of video games currently available, all manner of behaviors and acts have been committed in one or another, including some that are particularly morally repugnant. For this study, the researchers had some of their 185 subjects play a shooter as a terrorist, some as a UN soldier, and asked others to recall guilt-inducing acts they had committed. Afterward they were all asked to fill out a questionnaire and guilt scale. The researchers found that the subjects felt more strongly the moral foundations they violated in the game. Because the players felt guilty about a behavior from the game, they became more morally sensitive to those behaviors outside of the game, according to the answers they provided.
This research aligns with similar studies that also considered how mediated and indirect experiences affect one's morality, though those other studies used real-world behaviors, instead of virtual worlds. It will definitely be interesting to see how video games are considered in more moral psychology studies in the future.
Source: University at Buffalo
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