Author: kenmay

Mario and Sonic look absolutely stunning in Unreal Engine 4

Unreal Engine 4 has shown us what the next generation of video games can look like: large, realistic and mind-bogglingly gorgeous. Frankly, its tech demos are breathtaking — technical marvels that show off photo-realistic apartments and stunningly beautiful landscapes ; but what happens when you cram cartoonish mascots like Mario and Sonic The Hedgehog into these technical marvels? Mind-blowingly awesome YouTube videos, that’s what. It was bound to happen eventually. Back in March, Unreal made its incredibly popular game engine free to anybody who wants to use it, leaving amateur game developers with immediate access to professional game creation tools. Search around YouTube, and you’ll find more than a few folks using it to put our favorite game characters into hauntingly realistic worlds. Check it out: See that vast landscape? That’s the setting for Unreal Engine 4’s Kite demo, which shows off the engine’s ability to handle large worlds and procedural asset placement. YouTube user CryZenx decided it was the perfect place to drop in Sonic The Hedgehog. The resulting demo isn’t much of a game (though it does show off just how fast a blue hedgehog can run), but it binds the potential of Unreal Engine 4 to a familiar face — letting us imagine what the coming generation of games could really look like. CryZenX made a Mario demo, too — but the plumber looks a little out of place in the Unreal’s endless prairie. YouTuber Aryoksini put Mario in a more familiar environment, a series of castles and caverns more suited to his adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom. The canned environments (taken directly from the Unreal marketplace) look a little too polished for the off-beat world Nintendo’s mascot normally inhabits, but it’s still a stunning look at where console gaming could be in a few short years. Want to see more? Hit up the YouTube search bar with “Unreal Engine 4” and your favorite video-game mascot. Let us know if you find anything good. Filed under: Gaming Comments Source: YouTube (1) , (2)

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Mario and Sonic look absolutely stunning in Unreal Engine 4

SanDisk’s wireless flash drive gives your phone more storage

For all the advances we’ve made in mobile computing, transferring files between your phone and your desktop is still kind of a pain in the ass. We’ve tried using dongles, adapters and even double-sided USB thumb drives , but none of them really solved the problem. Today, Sandisk announced a new solution: a wireless, battery-powered USB flash drive. SanDisk’s Connect Wireless Stick was actually designed to address two problems — the chore of moving files between devices and the internal storage limitations of modern smartphones. Want to cart some movies and high resolution pictures around with you, but only have 16GB of storage on your phone? Put them on the Connect Wireless Stick: it can hold up to 128GB and can stream data to your phone for 4.5 hours on a single charge. The stick can also automatically back up photos and videos from your phone’s the camera roll. Not bad. As a file transfer system, Sandisk’s new stick still sounds a little cumbersome — but as a small, wireless storage expansion system for iOS and Android devices, it’s pretty unique. Interested? It hits stores today for $30-100 in 16, 32, 64 and 128GB sizes. Filed under: Misc , Mobile Comments Source: BusinessWire

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SanDisk’s wireless flash drive gives your phone more storage

UW-Madison researchers invent a metal-free fuel cell

The development of fuel cell technology has been hamstrung by the need for expensive and difficult-to-manufacture catalysts like platinum , rhodium or palladium. But a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe they’ve found an ingenious alternative that employs a molecular, rather than solid, catalyst . A fuel cell generates electricity from chemicals by reacting hydrogen and oxygen at its anode and cathode , respectively. Specifically, a catalyst at the anode oxidizes the hydrogen fuel to create free electrons and charged ions. The ions pass through the electrolyte while the electrons pass through a separate wire (to drive an electronic device) and the two recombine in the cathode with oxygen to create water or CO2. The team, led by Professor Shannon Stahl and lab scientist James Gerken, noticed that the aerobic oxidation reactions they had studied in their previous work closely mimicked the oxygen reaction in fuel cells. To see if this aerobic reaction could work as a fuel cell, they built one using a catalyst composed of nitroxyl and nitrogen oxide molecules to react with its electrode and oxygen. “While this catalyst combination has been used previously in aerobic oxidations, we didn’t know if it would be a good fuel cell catalyst, ” Stahl said in a statement. “It turns out that it is the most effective molecular catalyst system ever reported.” The results are more than impressive. “This work shows for the first time that molecular catalysts can approach the efficiency of platinum, ” Gerken continued. “And the advantage of molecules is that you can continue to modify their structure to climb further up the mountain to achieve even better efficiency.” [Image Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto] Filed under: Science Comments Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison

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UW-Madison researchers invent a metal-free fuel cell

Pocket on iOS Finally Lets You Listen to Articles with Text-to-Speech

Pocket is one of our favorite services for saving articles to read later , but the iOS app was missing a killer feature Android users have had for a while: Text-to-Speech. That changes today with an update for the Pocket app on iPhones and iPads. http://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-poc… Read more…

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Pocket on iOS Finally Lets You Listen to Articles with Text-to-Speech

Surely someone cares about the official ‘Angry Birds’ sequel

Angry Birds revolutionized the mobile gaming market after its launch in 2009, and developer Rovio has since released numerous off-shoots , follow-up games and bits of retail merchandise , plus it’s working on an animated film due in theaters next April, starring Peter Dinklage and Maya Rudolph. Now, six years and 3 billion series downloads later, Angry Birds 2 is officially on its way. The sequel is due to hit app stores worldwide on July 30th and, yes, it seems the game will still feature exploding crates, a bunch of pigs and some deeply upset birds. Rovio doesn’t specify which app stores Angry Birds 2 is coming to, but it’s safe to expect a fairly comprehensive, simultaneous launch across iOS, Android, Amazon and Windows app stores. While Angry Birds remains a ubiquitous name in mainstream mobile-gaming conversations, it now operates in a crowded marketplace filled with fresh experiences such as Monument Valley , Device 6, Minecraft, Crossy Road, Goat Simulator, Five Nights at Freddy’s and thousands more. Surely Rovio wants excitement for Angry Birds to remain high ahead of its theatrical debut in April, so expect more announcements from the company after the launch of this month’s full-fledged sequel. Filed under: Gaming , HD Comments Source: Rovio

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Surely someone cares about the official ‘Angry Birds’ sequel

This 50 million year old worm sperm is a scientific treasure

Scientists in Antarctica have come across one of the rarest specimens on record: ancient, fossilized worm sperm. “Because sperm cells are so short-lived and fragile, they are vanishingly rare in the fossil record, ” explains Benjamin Bomfleur, one of the palaeontologists who discovered the preserved cells. In fact, the find itself was an accident: Bomfleur’s college, Thomas Mörs, came across the ancient sperm while examining a fossilized worm cocoon. According to the a paper published in the latest edition of Biology Letters, the preserved sperm is very similar to the sperm of modern-day crayfish worms, but its location suggests that the prehistoric animal lived in a wider geographic area than its modern counterpart. Perhaps more important than this specific find itself is where it was found–in an annelid cocoon that takes several days to harden. The team believes this environment is ideal for trapping micro-organisms, and hopes to find more rare specimens by specifically targeting similarly fossilized cocoons. [Image credit: Swedish Museum of Natural History] Filed under: Science Comments Source: National Geographic

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This 50 million year old worm sperm is a scientific treasure

Judge says Uber should be suspended in California and fined $7.3 million

A California administrative judge ruled that Uber’s license to operate in California will be suspended in 30 days if it doesn’t appeal or start complying with state laws. Read the rest

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Judge says Uber should be suspended in California and fined $7.3 million

Why Airplane Flights Are Taking Slightly Longer Every Year

In the future, hopping on a plane from LA to Honolulu might take a minute longer than it does today. You probably won’t miss that lost moment, but the airline industry will: The tiny additional flight time could amount to thousands of extra hours and millions of dollars of additional jet fuel each year. Read more…

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Why Airplane Flights Are Taking Slightly Longer Every Year

Find the Wi-Fi Password for Your Current Network with the Command Line

If you’ve connected to a Wi-Fi network, your computer usually saves that password so you don’t have to enter it in every time. But sometimes you forget that password. To figure out what it is, Digital Inspiration points out that all you need to do is enter in a simple command in the command line. Read more…

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Find the Wi-Fi Password for Your Current Network with the Command Line