It’s like a giant’s lunchbox! This house, which is named Shadowboxx, is in the San Juan Islands in the state of Washington. Olson Kundig Architects designed the 16 by 20 foot roof over the bathhouse to open and close with the push of a button. Link -via Dornob
Read the original post:
The House with a Pop-up Roof
redletterdave writes “Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner have teamed up to create The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation, which now offers the most lucrative annual prize in the history of science: A $33 million pot to be split among 11 people, with individual rewards worth $3 million apiece. Comparatively, the monetary value of the Nobel prize is just $1.1 million. ‘Our society needs more heroes who are scientists, researchers and engineers,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘We need to celebrate and reward the people who cure diseases, expand our understanding of humanity and work to improve people’s lives.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
View article:
Tech Leaders Create Most Lucrative Science Prize In History
Mobile image processing in itself isn’t special when even high dynamic range shooting is virtually instant, at least with NVIDIA’s new Tegras . A new low-power MIT chip, however, may prove its worth by being a jack of all trades that works faster than software. It can apply HDR to photos and videos through near-immediate exposure bracketing, but it can also produce natural-looking flash images by combining the lit photo with an unassisted shot to fill in missing detail. Researchers further claim to have automatic noise reduction that safeguards detail through bilateral filtering, an established technique that uses brightness detection to avoid blurring edges. If you’re wondering whether or not MIT’s work will venture beyond the labs, don’t — the project was financed by contract manufacturing giant Foxconn , and it’s already catching the eye of Microsoft Research . As long as Foxconn maintains interest through to production, pristine mobile photography won’t be limited to a handful of devices. Filed under: Cameras , Science , Alt Comments Source: MIT
See original article:
MIT imaging chip creates natural-looking flash photos
As with any gaming console, good hardware only tells half of the story. Today, Sony announced a stable of games that’ll play a large role in determining the early success of the PlayStation 4 , which is set for availability this holiday season. Leading the charge will be biggies such as Killzone Shadow Fall , Bungie’s next first-person shooter known as Destiny , Diablo III and a new installment of Final Fantasy . These games will be joined by creative efforts such as Knack , a game directed by the PlayStation 4’s lead architect, Mark Cerny, Watch Dogs from Ubisoft, and Driveclub , which aims to bring team-based racing to new levels. PS4 owners can also expect exclusives such as InFamous: Second Son and The Witness . Rounding out the list — for now, anyway — is a game from Capcom with the working title of Deep Down , along with an unnamed entry from Media Molecule. While it’s clear that Sony and the development community have a number of surprises that’ve yet to be revealed, you’re invited to check out a preview of what’s to come in the following gallery. Gallery: PS4 Titles Filed under: Gaming , Sony Comments
Read the original post:
PlayStation 4 games revealed: a preview of what’s to come
After showing us tons of awesome looking games, straight up denied us the console. We have specs , we’ve seen the controller, but we haven’t seen the box yet. Or triangle, or orb, or whatever this non-existant hardware might look like. Oh and no price or release date, either. We don’t even know when Sony will tell us more. Sony stoked our excitement, and there’s no way to be satisfied. What a bummer. More »
When Android 4.2.2 quietly debuted last week , most users were left guessing about what exactly had been included in the software update. Helpful community sites like AndroidPolice had put together a thorough listing of some of the new features in Android 4.2.2, but any official listing of updates had yet to be made. Today, Google published its official changelog for its Android 4.2.2 update, as well as everything else that comes as a part of the Jelly Bean package. Many of the bullet points marked as “new” actually identify features that have been included in Android 4.2 since its initial launch and have since been thoroughly discussed. However, the changelog does include some of the minor features not previously touched on, like networking changes that were made to improve Wi-Fi Direct support and faster captive portal detection. Updates also include minor features, like the fact that TalkBack can now be accessed right from the power menu. You can also view the entirety of the Google Cards updates that have been made in Android 4.2. If you’re curious, you can view the official changelog at Google’s official Android site, then try out some of the features you may not have known existed on your Android 4.2 device. Read on Ars Technica | Comments
See more here:
Google shows the world its official Android 4.2.2 changelog
During today’s PlayStation event Gaikai ‘s Dave Perry revealed that the PS4 will not natively support PS3 games and that Sony’s next-gen console will instead stream PS1, PS2 and PS3 games from the cloud — something that the company has already confirmed on Twitter. Check out our liveblog of Sony’s event to get the latest news as it happens. Filed under: Gaming , Sony Comments Source: Sony (Twitter)
Read the article:
PlayStation 4 will not have native PS3 backwards compatibility
Gaikai’s Dave Perry took the stage at the PS4 event today to describe how Gaikai would be adding cloud gaming elements to the PS4, which will make it possible to jump in and try games in the PlayStation store, make sharing with your friends a snap, and also invite spectators and get friends to help you by remotely taking over your game. The PS Vita will also finally get a lot more useful, thanks to Remote Play. Perry said that the team has dramatically reduced transmission times, turning the PS4 into a server and the Vita into a client allowing for remote play of titles run on the PS4 direct to the Vita. It’s exactly like the Wii U, but with a controller you can walk away with and use as a standalone mobile console. The ability to easily jump right into PS4 games and try out titles via streamed gaming is a huge addition for Sony, which had more limited demo capability in the PS3 PlayStation store which required sizeable downloads when it was even available (which wasn’t for every title). Inviting players to join and watch your game also includes the ability for spectators to chim with with on-screen comments as you play, and the ability to take over your controller to help you out if you run into trouble. It’s a much more social version of Nintendo’s handholding modes in recent releases. Will gamers opt to call a friend, so to speak, instead of jumping on GameFAQs? That’s a good question, but clearly the company is doing everything it can to try and build a real social network, instead of the loosely affiliated group of often crude, sometimes racist anonymized gamers that made up the PlayStation Network of the past.
Read the original post:
Gaikai Cloud Gaming In PlayStation 4 Brings Easy Free Trials Of Games, Sharing, Spectating And Remote Play
Sony had an event today and as expected, it introduced the PlayStation 4. The next-gen platform is designed to shift focus from the living room to the gamer, Sony said, and overall, PlayStation’s approach is meant to make it possible for gamers to play wherever they want, whenever they want. PS4 lead system architect Mark Cerny talked about how the evolution of the PS4 came about, saying it began five years ago, earlier on in the life of the PS3. The PS3 was a first step, which was designed to connect to a variety of services, but it was limited because of how early it launched in that world, Cerny said. “Much less value is found today in blast processing or a system-on-a-chip,” Cerny said. He suggested tech could interfere with design innovation. The tech remains important, he stressed, but the idea was to create a platform that was all about experience. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s a tune Apple and Steve Jobs started playing years ago when they realized the spec race was a nonstarter in the mobile phone world. “By game creators, for game creators. It is a powerful and accessible system,” Cerny said on stage, suggesting that this time around there was a strong emphasis on ease of development, hence the use of a standard x86 PC CPU. The GPU is designed for use with “practical tasks,” he said, with the overall goal of making development a painless experience. Essentially, the PS4 is an advanced, x86-based personal computer, which means that it should be easy for developers to build. All of this is clearly an answer to a major complaint from studios about the previous generation, which was infamously tricky to master from a software perspective. Sony also unveiled a redesigned DualShock 4 controller, which has the Vita-style touchpad depicted in rumors, ad works with a 3D “stereo” camera accessory to track its movements in a loose approximation of what’s possible with Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect. The hardware is clearly also borrowing some tricks from mobile games. It has save states that allow users to quickly freeze and resume gameplay, without having to save just by switching on and off the console. There’s also background downloading, which allows digital titles to be played before they’re even completely on your local drive. Social is another key tentpole for the PS4, according to Cerny. He described a new function that allows you to quickly pause and upload gameplay videos as easily as you might have done with static screenshots in the past. There’s also spectator functionality for watching “celebrities” gaming, something which seems to have been borrowed from Twitter’s success with famous members. Networking will also be based around real names and profile pictures, instead of strictly on gamer tags and avatars, too, and all of this will plug into mobile apps to help gamers stay in touch.
Read the original post:
Sony Officially Unveils The PlayStation 4: X86 CPU And 8GB Memory, But About Experiences, Not Specs
Backed by tech luminaries, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, a $3 million reward, is being presented to 11 different scientists for their efforts to cure diseases. [Read more]
More:
Mark Zuckerberg co-sponsors $33M prize to extend human life