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Activision signs a deal with Google to let players live stream game play of the latest in the blockbuster series, Call of Duty: Black Ops II. [Read more]

It wasn't one of the more publicized features, but Windows 8 actually comes with a brand-new backup feature called File History, that works similar to Apple's Time Machine: It automatically backs up files in the background and lets you restore them from a simple, time-based interface. More »

I'm not sure how long GameFly plans to give away this awesome game, so grab it while you can. [Read more]

Four days ago, the rage comic above was posted to Reddit by CappnPoopdeck . It described the true story of her friend, a man who decided to try his ex-girlfriend's pregnancy test himself. To his surprise and confusion, the results came back positive. Funny? Sure, sort of. But also, Reddit commenters quickly noted, a symptom of a potentially deadly disease. More »

The company's plants would be designed to handle LCD TV production, according to the report. [Read more]

TechCrunch is reporting that a number of users received an email from Twitter this morning claiming their account was compromised and that they should change their passwords now. Many users are also finding spammy tweets coming from their account that they didn't send. More »

You wouldn't immediately think of the ear's cochlea as an energy source, but MIT knows that every mammal effectively has a pair of very small power plants because of the ionized environment. School researchers are trying to harness that energy through a new sensor that exploits the whole ear canal system. As eardrum vibrations naturally create a usable voltage from brain signals, the prototype can build enough charge in a capacitor to drive a very low-power wireless transmitter that relays the electrochemical properties of the ear and potentially diagnoses balance or hearing problems. The beauty of the system is its true self-sustainability: once the transmitter has been been jumpstarted with radio waves, it powers itself through the resulting transmissions. Energy use is also sufficiently miserly that the sensor doesn't interrupt hearing. Work is still early enough that there's a long way to go before such implants are part of any treatments, but there's hope that future chip iterations could help fix inner ear maladies, not just report on them. Something tells us, however, that the doctor won't ask us to take two dubstep tracks and call back in the morning. Filed under: Wearables , Science , Alt MIT ear-powered wireless sensor sustains its charge through sound originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 11:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink   CrazyEngineers  |  MIT  |  Email this  |  Comments

Cray has just fired a nuclear salvo in the supercomputer wars with the launch of its XC30, a 100 petaflop-capable brute that can scale up to one million cores. Developed in conjunction with DARPA , the Cascade -codenamed system uses a new type of architecture called Aries interconnect and Intel Xeon E5-2600 processors to easily leapfrog its recent Titan sibling, the previous speed champ. That puts Cray well ahead of rivals like China's Tianhe-2 , and the company will aim to keep that edge by supercharging future versions with Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors and NVIDIA Tesla GPUs . High-end research centers have placed $100 million worth of orders so far (though oddly, DARPA isn't one of them yet), and units are already shipping in limited numbers -- likely by the eighteen-wheeler-full, from the looks of it. Continue reading Cray unleashes 100 petaflop XC30 supercomputer with up to a million Intel Xeon cores Filed under: Misc , Science Cray unleashes 100 petaflop XC30 supercomputer with up to a million Intel Xeon cores originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 10:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink   The Register  |   |  Email this  |  Comments

When we do eventually reduce the Earth to an uninhabitable wasteland through our careless consumption of natural resources and inevitable nuclear wars, we'll need someplace else to go. We haven't picked a successor yet, but a new candidate has been identified a mere 44 light years away, orbiting dwarf star HD 40307. The super-Earth orbits its host star right at the edge of the so-called habitable zone , where a stable atmosphere and liquid water are possible. We don't know for sure the planet is, in fact, capable of supporting life, but there's at least a chance. And given that it's roughly seven-times the mass of Earth, it shouldn't have much trouble playing host to our exploding population. Filed under: Science , Alt Potentially inhabitable super-Earth discovered in 6 planet solar system originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 10:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink    |  Astrobiology Magazine  |  Email this  |  Comments

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art When ancient Egyptians play Dungeons & Dragons with this D20 die above, we betcha they played with real dungeons! The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a nifty collection of the Ptolemaic Period (304 - 30 B.C.) dice, carved out of serpentinite rock: Link - via CNET's Crave