Here’s a trailer for the “cinematic” story mode that’s being added to Street Fighter V tomorrow via a free update. More details on the update, including pricing if you want to play the game’s new characters right away ($6) is over at Capcom’s blog.
Source: Kotaku – Here’s a trailer for the “cinematic” story mode that’s being added to Street Fighter V tomorrow via
Because Japan will never stop being Japan, the people of the world’s weirdest nation are recording themselves vacuuming harmonicas. Does everybody in Japan own a harmonica? Beats me. You know what else beats me? The bridge troll that lives between my cave and the nearest village. It’s either pay him two fish or take a beating, and I always choose the beating because I can’t fish for shit. I can catch frogs like nobody’s business, but he doesn’t want frogs, he wants fish. One time I found a dead fish washed up on the riverbank and I gave him that and he let me pass with just a dirty look. Usually I get a beating though. One day I’m going to blow up that bridge and crush his f***ing skull.
Keep going for the video that started it all as well as the Billy Joel Piano Man remix because this is the internet where amazing things happen.
Source: Geekologie – All The Rage In Japan: Vacuuming Harmonicas
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: If you have about $400K to spare, IMAX’s Private Theatre division will now build an IMAX cinema setup in your own home. The entry-level IMAX Private Theatre is the “Palais,” which starts at about $400,000 for a screening room with up to 18 seats. For your money you get dual 4K 2D/3D projectors, a proprietary IMAX sound system, and a media playback system that supports everything you might want to throw at it (TV, games, Blu-ray, etc.) No word on the exact specifications of the projectors, but they’re probably not IMAX-with-laser. Screen size will vary depending on the setup, but generally they will be 3 metres (10ft) tall or more. Stepping up to the “Platinum” IMAX home theatre for about $1 million gets you a much larger screening room with space for up to 40 people.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – IMAX Will Build You a Home Theater — Starting at 0K
Because giants aren’t real and hurting actual horses is bad, the production team behind Game of Thrones had some challenges to overcome when drawing up and filming the show’s epic Battle of the Bastards.
Source: Kotaku – How Game Of Thrones’ Battle Of The Bastards Was Made
The Toyota Mirai looks like it’s ready to swallow you whole. From the front, the hydrogen fuel-cell car has the aggressive stance of a bulldog. But as you circle the vehicle, the styling quickly softens to clean lines that lead to a rear end that wou…
Source: Engadget – Toyota’s car of the future drives like a Camry
A hilarious remix of a classic image demonstrates that the new high-tech alternatives are not solving every problem.
Source: TreeHugger – A picture is worth: Space required to transport 60 people by car, uber and AV
Hitman’s fifth Elusive Target, The Gunrunner, will be available in Marrakesh for 72 hours starting July 1st. You can check Io’s blog for your local start and end times.
Source: Kotaku – Hitman’s fifth Elusive Target, The Gunrunner, will be available in Marrakesh for 72 hours starting J
When prominent pilots were dying in the 1900s some people started to wonder if aviation really had a future. French daredevil Leon Delagrange died in early January of 1910, leading magazines like the Literary Digest to have doubts about whether air travel could become a serious means of transportation.
Source: Gizmodo – Doubts About the Airplane in 1909: ‘Emotion Has Run Away With Reason’
Cable landing at Minami-boso city, Chiba, Japan (credit: NEC)
The Faster Cable System. (credit: NEC)
Google and five Asian telecoms have begun using an undersea cable connecting Oregon and Japan. At 60Tbps, “this is the highest-capacity undersea cable ever built,” and Google will have access to 10Tbps of that, the company said in an announcement yesterday.
“We’ll use this capacity to support our users, including Google Apps and Cloud Platform customers,” the announcement said. “This is especially exciting, as we prepare to launch a new Google Cloud Platform East Asia region in Tokyo later this year. Dedicated bandwidth to this region results in faster data transfers and reduced latency as GCP customers deliver their applications and information to customers around the globe.”
NEC is the supplier that built the $300 million “Faster Cable System” for Google, China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI, and Singtel. It won’t be the highest-capacity cable for very long, as Microsoft and Facebook recently announced a 160Tbps undersea cable from the US to Europe, to be completed in October 2017.
Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Google boosts its cloud with “highest-capacity undersea cable ever built”
Source: Engadget – Google puts earthquake data directly in search results
Google’s Gmail and YouTube went down for a few minutes.
Source: TG Daily – YouTube Was Down For A Few Seconds And The Whole World Noticed
A lot of Android phones are loaded with ads and crapware. It hurts the user experience, but in exchange for using your phone as a billboard, the OEM gets cold, hard cash from the advertiser. Amazon is now moving the choice for this option to the user, where it is loading unlocked Android phones with ads and offering them to users at a discount.
The program is called “Prime Exclusive Phones,” and at launch it offers the unlocked Moto G4 for $149.99 with lock-screen ads or the BLU R1 HD for $49.99 with ads, both $50 off. Amazon’s announcement calls this “breakthrough pricing” that is enabled by “personalized offers and ads, including deals and product recommendations, displayed on the phone’s lock screen. When a customer sees an offer, they can tap to learn more about it or simply unlock their phone to dismiss.” Besides preloaded Amazon apps, there are full-screen lock screen ads and ads in the lock screen notification panel.
The good news is that this is a choice. On the Amazon listing page, the phones are listed are available with and without ads, listed as “Prime Exclusive – With Offers & Ads” and “Standard Version – Without Offers & Ads.” This hardware offer mirrors a similar strategy Amazon took with its Kindle line, which was also available at a discount in exchange for ads.
Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Amazon offers smartphone discounts in exchange for baked-in ads
The debut of Netflix’s Stranger Things is just a few weeks away, and while this new trailer gives us a glimpse of its biggest-name star, Winona Ryder, it focuses on the four boys and mysterious girl who are the real focus of this E.T.-meets-Close Encounters of the Third Kind-meets-”basically everything Steven Spielberg was thinking about in the 1980s” story.
Source: io9 – Netflix’s Stranger Things TV Series Openly Worships at the Altar of Spielberg
With the Radeon RX 480 Linux review now being out of the way and our various other RX 480 Linux benchmarks, the latest results I have to share with being a benchmarking fanatic are RX 480 results with high-end AMD GPU tests of each generation going back to the Radeon HD 4850/4870 (RV770) days. This article has high-end GPUs from the RX 480 to RX 200, HD 7900, HD 6900, HD 6800, HD 5800, and HD 4800 series compared side-by-side with the latest open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver code. Not only is the raw performance being looked at but the system power consumption was also being polled in real-time for looking at the performance-per-Watt too. For any other benchmarking fanatics curious about the Radeon GPU evolution over the past eight years (RV770 launch in 2008), here are the numbers to enjoy.
Source: Phoronix – The OpenGL Speed & Performance-Per-Watt From The Radeon RX 480 To HD 4850/4870
Sarah Jeong, reporting for Motherboard:38,000 websites hosted by the automated publishing service Surge went down today, after the National Rifle Association sent a legal notice over a parody website created by the Yes Men. A few days ago, the Yes Men released the parody video, “Share the Safety” — announcing a supposed NRA program to deliver firearms into the hands of those too impoverished to afford guns. The opening frame of the video says “Paid for in part by the National Rifle Association of America with additional support from Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation.” “Systemic poverty and dumb laws keep the urban poor unable to acquire life-saving firearms,” says the video, which is available on YouTube. “That’s why we at the NRA are teaming up with Smith & Wesson to share the safety.â The YouTube description includes a link to the “official” website, ShareTheSafety.org.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – NRA Complaint Takes Down 38,000 Websites
Smart outlet switches have exploded in popularity in the years since Belkin released the original WeMo switch, and we’ve spotted great deals on two different alternatives today.
Source: Gizmodo – Here Are Two Great Smart Outlet Switch Deals, Including One That Tracks Energy Use
If you like the sudden realization that Facebook knows more about you than some of your closest friends, you will love the new Slideshow feature.
Source: Gizmodo – Facebook’s New Slideshow Feature Almost Leaked My Secret Relationship
NBC began outlining its plans for broadcasting Rio 2016 yesterday, but a few more juicy tidbits have now filtered through. The AP (via ABC News) is reporting that around 85 hours of programming will be available to watch in VR, but only if you use Sa…
Source: Engadget – The Olympics will be shown in VR, but only on Samsung headsets
Valve’s Steam-y fingerprints are all over the system software, but its HTC’s logo that’s found on the headset itself.
The SteamVR-powered Vive headset is the most exciting thing that struggling handset maker HTC has had going for its brand in years. HTC seems to realize this, at some level, because it’s now separating its virtual reality business into a wholly-owned subsidiary. The new HTC Vive Tech Corporation will be somewhat separated from the struggles facing the rest of HTC’s business.
In a statement provided to The Verge, HTC called the new subsidiary “a vehicle for developing strategic alliances to help build the global VR ecosystem.” But it’s not hard to see the move as a way to create space between HTC’s blossoming VR interests and a headset manufacturing business that has posted historic losses, been forced to lay off thousands, and hit a ten-year stock market low in recent years.
The Vive sold roughly 25,000 to 30,000 units in its first month on sale earlier this year, according to an Ars Technica Steam Gauge analysis. At an $800 asking price for each unit, that represents a significant infusion of new revenue for the company. Now, that revenue can be managed free from the troubles affecting the rest of the company.
Read on Ars Technica | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – HTC separates successful VR sales from struggling smartphone side
I’m noticing a strange trend in the news lately and it’s starting to bug me. In the past few years, there has been more raids on technology companies than on drug cartels and international crime syndicates. I’m not saying Google, Apple, Facebook and others didn’t do anything wrong, I just think maybe some of these countries might want to reexamine their priorities. Just a thought.
Spanish officials raided Google’s Madrid offices on Thursday in a tax probe, authorities said, barely a month after the internet company had its headquarters in France searched on suspicion of tax evasion. A spokeswoman for Google said in a statement the company complied with fiscal legislation in Spain just as it did in all countries where it operated. The company was working with authorities to answer all questions, the spokeswoman added.
Comments
Source: [H]ardOCP – Google’s Offices In Spain Raided By Tax Authorities