The man behind Metal Gear continues to hone his persona as a really weird creative dude. At the Tribeca Film Festival’s games event, Hideo Kojima revealed why the teaser for Death Stranding opened on a naked Norman Reedus as well as some other random Kojima Facts™.
Source: Kotaku – Hideo Kojima Talks About Naked Norman Reedus And Death Stranding At The Tribeca Games Festival
SG Esports had already conquered a titan in Team Secret, and just a day later, the team found itself facing another giant in Evil Geniuses. Though the underdog didn’t overcome the odds this time, the match between these two was a barnburner.
Source: Kotaku – David And Goliath Clash In Climactic Dota Quarterfinals
If you’re starting a new gaming festival, having Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima aboard is a good way to prove you mean business. That was the case for the inaugural Tribeca Games Festival, which featured Kojima in a keynote conversation tonigh…
Source: Engadget – Hideo Kojima on his cinematic influences, ‘Death Stranding’ and VR
Source: Engadget – Apple, Tesla want changes to California’s self-driving car tests
Acer this week announced its new high-end gaming laptop, the Predator Triton 700. Designed to strike a balance between features and weight, the laptop features a quad-core Intel CPU, a yet unspecified NVIDIA GPU, 16 GB of memory, as well as a mechanical keyboard. Meanwhile the laptop measures in at just 18.9 mm thick and weighs around 2.6 kilograms, or roughly about the size of a mainstream notebook from a decade ago.
The Acer Predator Triton 700 comes with a 15.6” FHD display and is based on Intel’s Core i5-7300HQ or Core i7-7700HQ processor, depending on exact model. The laptop is equipped with 16 GB of DDR4-2400, up to two 512 GB SSDs, Rivet Networks Killer DoubleShot Pro network solution (featuring a 2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi and a GbE controller), Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, and other features one would expect from a high-end laptop.
| Acer Predator Triton 700 | |||
| i7-7700HQ | i5-7300HQ | ||
| Display | 15.6″ IPS panel with 1920×1080 resolution | ||
| CPU | Core i7-7700HQ (4C/8T, 6 MB, 2.8/3.8GHz) | Core i5-7300HQ (4C/4T, 6 MB, 2.5/3.5GHz) | |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10-series with G-Sync support for external displays | ||
| RAM | 16 GB DDR4-2400 (upgradeable to 32 GB) | ||
| Storage | Up to two 512 GB SSDs with PCIe 3.0 x4 or SATA interface | ||
| Wi-Fi | Rivet Killer Wireless-AC 2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi | ||
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth 4.1 | ||
| Ethernet | Rivet Killer E2x00 GbE controller | ||
| USB | 2 × USB 3.0 Type-A 1 × USB 2.0 Type-A |
||
| Thunderbolt | 1 × USB Type-C Thunderbolt 3 connector | ||
| Display Outputs | 1 × DisplayPort 1 × HDMI 2.0 |
||
| Keyboard | Mechanical backlit keyboard with programmable keys | ||
| Other I/O | Microphone, stereo speakers, audio jacks, webcam (with HDR imaging) | ||
| Dimensions | Width: 393 mm/15.47″ Depth: 263 mm/10.35″ Thickness: 18.9 mm/0.744″ |
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| Weight | 2.6 kilograms | ||
| Price | Starts at $2999 or €3399, depending on configuration and market | ||
In terms of overall design, the Predator Triton 700 is one of a number of recent thinner-and-lighter high-end gaming laptops to hit the market in recent years. As the popularity of gaming notebooks has continued to rise, various makers of such PCs started to diversify their lineups with thinner machines aimed at gamers, essentially splitting these niche products to classes that differ by performance and weight/dimensions. With the Predator Triton 700, Acer is looking to bring the performance of a gaming desktop to the “thin-class” gaming laptops, and gives us an idea what to expect from next-gen gaming notebooks in general.
A feature of the Predator Triton 700 that Acer is especially proud of – and is a major component of allowing the laptop to be as small as it is – is its cooling system, which has five heatpipes and two thin AeroBlade 3D fans with curved metal blades that create increased airflow. A large Corning Gorilla Glass plate that acts like a touchpad covers the cooling system and the innards of the laptop, whereas the backlit mechanical keyboard resides towards the user, giving the system a very distinctive look.
Meanwhile, one of the things that Acer is not disclosing are the graphics processors options available: the only thing we know is that the system runs an undisclosed GeForce GTX 10-series processor, and that the high-end configuration scores ~17,000 points in 3DMark11 (based on Acer’s presentation). Such a performance level is common for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 GPU (when working with the i7-7700HQ), but this GPU consumes 110 W of power, so it’s not clear whether a 15.6”/18.9mm chassis with two blowers offers enough cooling capacity to prevent significant throttling. Typically, relatively thin gaming notebooks use GeForce GTX 1060 graphics chips with around 80 W TDP, but such GPUs hit around 12,000 – 13,000 in 3DMark11 (with the same CPU). It’s highly probable that Acer will be offering a GTX 1060 version as a mid-range configuration anyhow, so the real question is what exact GPU will go into the high-end configuration. NotebookCheck.net speculates that the Predator Triton 700 is equipped with a yet unannounced version of NVIDIA’s GP104 GPU with a considerably reduced TDP.
Wrapping things up, the Acer Predator Triton 700 gaming laptop will be available in Europe and North America this August. MSRPs will start from €3399 and $2999, depending on configuration, with exact specs and prices varying from market to market.
Related Reading:
Source: AnandTech – Acer Announces Predator Triton 700 Gaming Laptop: Core i7, GeForce GTX 10 Series, & 1 TB SSD
An anonymous reader wants to start a grassroots effort to build a self-organizing global radio mesh network where every device can communicate with every other device — and without any central authority.
There is nothing in the rules of mathematics or laws of physics that prevents such a system. But how would you break the problem up so it could be crowdfunded and sourced? How would you build the radios? And what about government spectrum rules… How would you persuade governments to allow for the use of say, 1%, of the spectrum for an unlicensed mesh experiment? In the U.S. it would probably take an Act of Congress to overrule the FCC but a grassroots effort with potential for major technology advances backed by celebrity scientists might be enough to tilt the issue but would there be enough motivation?
Is this feasible? Would it amass enough volunteers, advocates, and enthusiastic users? Would it become a glorious example of geeks uniting the world — or a doomed fantasy with no practical applications. Leave your best thoughts in the comments. Could we build a global wireless mesh network?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Ask Slashdot: Could We Build A Global Wireless Mesh Network?
Long-time Slashdot reader MarcoPon writes: I created a thing: SeqBox. It’s an archive/container format (and corresponding suite of tools) with some interesting and unique features. Basically an SBX file is composed of a series of sector-sized blocks with a small header with a recognizable signature, integrity check, info about the file they belong to, and a sequence number. The results of this encoding is the ability to recover an SBX container even if the file system is corrupted, completely lost or just unknown, no matter how much the file is fragmented.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Developer Shares A Recoverable Container Format That’s File System Agnostic
And that’s it! All the entries are in and after looking through all of them, I think one thing is clear: the events of WWII have been terribly misunderstood.
Source: Kotaku – Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: The Stare Of Duty, Winners!
Netflix bingers received a weekend surprise when they woke up this morning to find the first ten episodes of the new season of Orange Is the New Black have allegedly been leaked to torrent networks. A hacker group has claimed responsibility and they say it only occurred because Netflix refused to pay a ransom. The…
Source: Gizmodo – Hackers Leak New Episodes of Orange Is the New Black and Claim More Leaks to Come
On a typical, bipartisan Friday night in Ohio, Mark Zuckerberg did a totally normal human thing that anyone definitely not awkwardly going about testing the waters for a major political run would: he had dinner with a family, who didn’t know him or that he was coming, at their house.
Source: Gizmodo – Mark Zuckerberg Invited Himself to Dinner With Random Strangers in Ohio
“After seven unsuccessful attempts NASA has launched a stadium-sized balloon in Wanaka,” reports the New Zealand Herald, adding that the super-pressure balloon will collect data from “near space” over the next 100 days. Reuters reports: The balloon, designed by NASA to detect ultra-high energy cosmic particles from beyond the galaxy as they penetrate the earth’s atmosphere, is expected to circle the planet two or three times. “The origin of these particles is a great mystery that we’d like to solve. Do they come from massive black holes at the centre of galaxies? Tiny, fast-spinning stars? Or somewhere else?” Angela Olinto, a University of Chicago professor and lead investigator on the project, said in a statement.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – NASA Launches Super Balloon To Detect Cosmic Particles From Near Space
Turkey may have just stepped up its efforts to quash online free speech. The country has blocked Wikipedia for supposedly running a “smear campaign” by allowing articles claiming that the Turkish government was coordinating with militant groups. The…
Source: Engadget – Turkey blocks Wikipedia over an alleged ‘smear campaign’
Ever wondered what sailing down the River Styx would be like? Taking a boat into a scary and unknown world, only to be greeted by a terrifying figure signaling your impending fate? Thanks, Disney!
Source: io9 – Oh God, Disney’s Avatar Ride Sings Now
Bungie has begun sending out physical invitations to various outlets for the Destiny 2 Gameplay Premiere event, which will take place 5/18 in Los Angeles. YouTube personalities and other shills will rave about what they see so they won’t get banned from future events, but at least both console and PC footage will be livestreamed so you can decide if they actually improved on the original.
As it’s being suggested, this will event will take place in Los Angeles, and the keynote will begin at 10AM. Attenders will get their hands on Destiny 2 after the keynote. It’s worth noting that this event will be livestreamed. As Bungie claimed: “The broadcast will showcase a variety of fun, action-oriented activities within Destiny 2, and will highlight the brand-new, epic adventure waiting for players. With a fresh start for all players right from the opening cinematic, Destiny 2 will expand across the globe with a worldwide release on September 8.”
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Destiny 2: First PC Gameplay Footage Coming May 18th
An anonymous reader quotes Computerworld:
Revenue generated by Microsoft’s Surface hardware during the March quarter was down 26% from the same period the year before, the company said yesterday as it briefed Wall Street. For the quarter, Surface produced $831 million, some $285 million less than the March quarter of 2016, for the largest year-over-year dollar decline ever… The revenue decline “indicates that the aging product needs a refresh badly,” Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, wrote in a note to clients today. “Price cutting and competing vendors’ products will continue to create declines until new product is released, rumored for later this year.” Microsoft threw cold water on any significant changes to the Surface line before June, forecasting that the current quarter will also post a revenue decline.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Microsoft’s Surface Revenue Drops By 5M (26%)
Mac: Your Mac has a world clock built into it, but it’s relegated to the Notification Center and stuck in analog for some reason. Clocker lets you jam that world clock into the menu bar, where’s it’s easily accessible.
Source: LifeHacker – Clocker Crams a World Clock into Your Menu Bar
25 years ago this week, the pink puff ball made his Japanese debuted in Kirby’s Dream Land for the Game Boy. But the game’s titular character was originally just a placeholder. One of Nintendo’s most iconic characters almost didn’t get created, at least not in the form we’ve come to know and love.
Source: Kotaku – The Accidental Origins Of Kirby
Many SpaceX rocket landings have gotchas for viewers. Drone ship landings frequently mean shaky satellite video feeds, and nighttime launches just aren’t very photogenic. You’re about to have a much better look, however. SpaceX is launching a US sp…
Source: Engadget – Watch SpaceX try a picture-perfect rocket landing at 7AM ET
I’m not the only one who misses Blockbuster, am I? It may be totally pointless now because of streaming and digital delivery, but browsing the action/horror/sci-fi and gaming aisles was such a big part of my childhood, man. While the chain has basically been eradicated, some of the stores are still going strong in Alaska, where limited internet service has forced moviegoers to rent physical copies instead.
…Internet service is substantially more expensive than in most states, since most data packages are not unlimited, but rather charge by the gigabyte, as CBS News reported. Heavy Netflix streamers could end up paying hundreds of dollars per month in Internet bills, Payne said. For this reason, a hefty 20 percent of sales in Payne’s Blockbuster stores come from rentals of TV shows — from the “binge watchers,” he says. Alaska’s cold, long and dark winters also lend themselves to plenty of in-home entertainment, Payne said. The most profitable Blockbuster store is in bitterly cold Fairbanks, where temperatures can reach 50 below zero.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Blockbuster Has Managed to Survive in Alaska
Enlarge (credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Global ocean temperatures have been rising, but the consequences of these increases are not fully clear. A recent paper published in PNAS clarifies one of them by showing that harmful algal blooms have already become more intense.
Some types of algae naturally produce toxins. When these algae grow rapidly, they create a bloom that can kill off other species in the same ecosystem. A number of species (including Alexandrium fundyense and Dinophysis acuminate) produces toxins that accumulate in shellfish. People who eat these shellfish can experience paralytic or diarrhetic shellfish poisoning. So these blooms can hurt aquatic ecosystems, fisheries, and people.
The recent paper in PNAS used data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to model sea-surface temperatures and track algal blooms. These models showed that warming in the North Atlantic since 1982 has significantly increased the growth rate of the two most dangerous species of algae. For both of these species, algal blooms have grown to cover a much larger area of the oceans in the last 35 years. Additionally, the length of bloom season has increased by as much as eight weeks over that same time period.
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Source: Ars Technica – Toxic algae on the rise as our oceans warm
