The next game from the creators This War Of Mine
is Frostpunk, a game about steam-powered survival on a frozen world. Slated for PC next year. Scant details. Devs 11Bit say the game “utilizes strategy & management elements [but] revolves around empathy & devision-making rather than optimization & resource management.”
Source: Kotaku – The next game from the creators This War Of Mine is Frostpunk, a game about steam-powered survival o
Boat builder puts a tiny house in a shipping container and it makes so much sense.
Source: TreeHugger – This shipping container house is designed to move
A few months ago, Sonos said it was working on bringing voice control to its speakers. Today, Sonos is announcing a long-term relationship with Amazon whereby you’ll be able to control your Sonos speakers from your Amazon Echo. This is just awesome news.
Source: Gizmodo – Amazon Echo Will Be Able to Control Your Sonos Speakers Soon
For as much as Sonos is known for high-quality connected speakers, it’s also built up a reputation for lackluster software and a closed ecosystem. And that’s getting harder to live with as alternative platforms like Google’s Cast (formerly Chromecast…
Source: Engadget – Sonos opens up: Spotify Connect and Amazon Echo control is coming
A tale of scientists creating a monster isn’t quite a tale as old as time, but it is a familiar one. Director Luke Scott— second-unit director on father Ridley’s The Martian and Exodus: Gods and Kings—uses his expertise to turn Morgan into a gorgeously shot film, but unfortunately it’s one that doesn’t break much new ground with its story.
Source: io9 – Scifi Thriller Morgan Is a Striking But Predictable Modern Monster Movie
Raccoon the grizzled Outlaw Rogue stands in demon-besieged Dalaran, moments before Azeroth’s greatest mages pull off their most amazing feat yet: making me even more alt-crazy than I already was. Judging from the first few hours, Legion is going to be a very good problem for me.
Source: Kotaku – World of Warcraft: Legion Starts Really Well
iOS, Android: Stargazing is fun even when you have no idea what you’re looking at. Star Chart is a free app that makes the experience more informative, though. It tells you exactly what you’re seeing based on your location.
Source: LifeHacker – Star Chart Tells You What You’re Looking at While Stargazing
After originally being delayed, Fedora 25 Alpha made it out today for those wanting to test this initial development snapshot of this next version of the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution that is aiming to use Wayland by default…
Source: Phoronix – Fedora 25 Alpha Released With Wayland By Default
Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, the Dealmaster is back with a big bundle of deals for your consideration. Today we’re offering 30 percent off the Lenovo X1 Carbon and all ThinkPads. There’s also a sweet deal on the 3D Collector’s Edition of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Laptop and desktop computers
For more computer deals, visit the TechBargains site.
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Source: Ars Technica – Dealmaster: Get 30 percent off the X1 Carbon and all ThinkPads
These days all you need to recreate Hollywood-caliber visual effects is a fast PC and some expensive 3D software. But if you want to try your hand at recreating old-school special effects, find yourself a 3D printer, make a miniature version of Ghostbusters’ Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and go to town with a blowtorch.
Source: Gizmodo – Watch a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Melt Away in the Most Horrific Way Possible
The newly-announced
Fitbit Flex 2 improves on its predecessor with water resistance, swim tracking, colored LEDs, and a smaller design. And for my money, it’s the most attractive fitness tracker I’ve ever seen.
Source: LifeHacker – The Gorgeous New Fitbit Flex 2 Isn’t Even Out Yet, and You Can Already Save
Source: Engadget – Samsung launches first Exynos chip with all radios built in
An upcoming Nintendo Direct focused on 3DS games will take place this Thursday, September 1st at 10AM Eastern Time. It’s sure to show off some amazing games. Nintendo’s press release notes that “NX will not be discussed or revealed in this broadcast.”
Source: Kotaku – An upcoming Nintendo Direct focused on 3DS games will take place this Thursday, September 1st at 10A
Here’s a bit of schadenfreude for those of us who can’t afford to breathe in New York’s Upper West Side: A water main break last night created a sinkhole, and that sinkhole swallow an entire BMW worth around $55,000*.
Source: Gizmodo – Manhattan Sinkhole Swallows Fancy SUV
We all know how much Ryan Reynolds loves Deadpool, both the character and the movie, thanks to his extensive marketing
for it and that heart-warming story about how the actor made sure the movie included a tiny Bea Arthur cameo. As it turns out, Reynolds didn’t stop there.
Source: io9 – Yet Another Heartwarming Tale of Ryan Reynolds’ Commitment to Getting the Deadpool Movie Right
(credit: Spencer E Holtaway)
Facebook faces more pressure from lawmakers in Europe, after Germany’s interior minister called on the company to quickly remove hateful and illegal posts—on the same day that its chief Mark Zuckerberg reiterated that the free content ad network wouldn’t morph into a media empire.
The call from Thomas de Maiziere comes less than a week since a committee of MPs in the UK concluded that Twitter, Google, and Facebook were “consciously failing” to police extremism on their services.
“Facebook should take down racist content or calls for violence from its pages on its own initiative even if it hasn’t yet received a complaint,” said de Maiziere on Monday. “Facebook has an immensely important economic position and just like every other large enterprise it has a immensely important social responsibility.”
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Source: Ars Technica – “We’re a tech company, we’re not a media company,” says Facebook founder
Reader MojoKid writes: Intel is readying a new family of processors, based on its next-gen Kaby Lake microarchitecture, that will be the foundation of the company’s upcoming 7th Generation Core processors. Although Kaby Lake marks a departure from Intel’s “tick-tock” release cadence, there have been some tweaks made to its 14nm manufacturing process (called 14nm+) that have resulted in significant gains in performance, based on clock speed boosts and other optimizations. In addition, Intel has incorporated a new multimedia engine into Kaby Lake that adds hardware acceleration for 4K HEVC 10-bit transcoding and VP9 decoding. Skylake could handle 1080p HEVC transcoding, but it didn’t accelerate 4K HEVC 10-bit transcoding or VP9 decode and had to assist with CPU resources. The new multimedia engine gives Kaby Lake the ability to handle up to eight 4Kp30 streams and it can decode HEVC 4Kp60 real-time content at up to 120Mbps. The engine can also now offload 4Kp30 real-time encoding in a dedicated fixed-function engine. Finally, Intel has made some improvements to their Speed Shift technology, which now takes the processor out of low power states to maximum frequency in 15 milliseconds. Clock speed boosts across Core i and Core m 7th gen series processors of 400-500 MHz, in combination with Speed Shift optimizations, result in what Intel claims are 12-9 percent performance gains in the same power envelope as its previous generation Skylake series, and even more power efficient video processing performance.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Intel Unveils Full Details of Kaby Lake 7th Gen Core Series Processors
It looks like Kim Dotcom’s extradition hearing will be live streamed on YouTube with a few caveats. The video will have a 20 minute delay, it will not stay online after the hearing and comments will be disabled.
Kim Dotcom’s request for his extradition hearing to be live streamed on the Internet has been granted by a New Zealand High Court judge. Beginning tomorrow, proceedings will be broadcast live on YouTube, despite protests from the United States that the stream could prejudice Dotcom’s criminal trial in the U.S. should he be extradited.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – Dotcom’s Extradition Hearing Will Be Live Streamed
We take the XFX Radeon RX 460 Double Dissipation and use it to play some of our favorite GPU-intensive games and find out how much of an upgrade this $149 video card provides compared to last generation GPUs in this price range. What will upgrading net you in terms of a performance upgrade in the sub-$200 category? We find out.
Source: [H]ardOCP – XFX Radeon RX 460 Double Dissipation Review
It’s going to be pretty damn interesting to watch Apple try to squirm its way out of this one. According to the article, Apple paid tax at 1% on profits attributed to its subsidiaries in Ireland, well below Ireland’s 12.5% rate and the 35% corporate tax rate in the US.
“Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years,” said Competition Commission Margrethe Vestager, whose crackdown on mainly U.S. multinationals has angered Washington which accuses Brussels of protectionism.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – EU Demands Apple Pay Ireland .6B In Taxes