Have you ever noticed that how you drive is often based on what you’re listening to? Softer music can make you a more cautious driver, while loud upbeat tunes make you more aggressive. But with this new app from VW it’s the other way around. It generates music in real-time based on how you already drive, so your habits behind the wheel affect what’s being played on your sound system. Read more…
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Volkswagen’s New App Creates Music Based On Your Driving Style
An unopened bottle of beer recovered from the wreckage of the Hindenburg is up for auction . Again. The 1937 bottle of Lowenbrau sold for over $18, 000 back in 2009 . The bottle has fire damage, but since the airship had a smoking room , I suppose that could’ve happened before it crashed. Read more…
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You Can Own an Unopened Beer From the Hindenburg
A dig at the suspected birthplace of the Buddha has led to the discovery of an unknown timber structure beneath a series of brick temples. Remarkably, it’s the first known archaeological evidence linking the life of the Buddha to a specific century. Read more…
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Incredible Archaeological Discovery May Reset the Buddha’s Birth Date
That game console headlining this text? It isn’t a white PS4 : it’s a commercial Steam Machines box, or at least a prototype of one. iBuyPower tells us that it’s building the box for a 2014 launch, but says it’s still early. The company says the prototypes are running an early build of Steam OS , but it’s not quite a finished product. That rings true of our impressions of Valve’s own reference model , which hosted a version of that same OS devoid of media playback and streaming options and had a very limited selection of games. iBuyPower tells us that it actually has two models, codenamed Gordon and Freeman, in the works. The two consoles are identical, save for the light bar round the middle — one model’s is clear, while the other’s is black when not illuminated. And, while the company wouldn’t tell us about the boxes’ internals, it did confirm that the hardware will run all Steam titles in 1080p resolution at 60fps. Not as much info as we’d like to know, but s till, it’s good to see hints of what we’ll see from Steam Machines when they hit the market — though we’ll likely have to wait until CES to see them in action. Filed under: Gaming Comments
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Here’s the first non-Valve Steam Machine prototype, care of iBuyPower
MojoKid writes “Benchmarks are serious business. Buying decisions are often made based on how well a product scores, which is why the press and analysts spend so much time putting new gadgets through their paces. However, benchmarks are only meaningful when there’s a level playing field, and when companies try to ‘game’ the business of benchmarking, it’s not only a form of cheating, it also bamboozles potential buyers who (rightfully) assume the numbers are supposed mean something. 3D graphics benchmark software developer Futuremark just ‘delisted’ a bunch of devices from its 3DMark benchmark results database because it suspects foul play is at hand. Of the devices listed, it appears Samsung and HTC in particular are indirectly being accused of cheating 3DMark for mobile devices. Delisted devices are stripped of their rank and scores. Futuremark didn’t elaborate on which specific rule(s) these devices broke, but a look at the company’s benchmarking policies reveals that hardware makers aren’t allowed to make optimizations specific to 3DMark, nor are platforms allowed to detect the launch of the benchmark executable unless it’s needed to enable multi-GPU and/or there’s a known conflict that would prevent it from running.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Futuremark Delists Samsung and HTC Android Devices for Cheating 3DMark
An anonymous reader writes “The Xeon Phi co-processor requires a Xeon CPU to operate… for now. The next generation of Xeon Phi, codenamed Knights Landing and due in 2015, will be its own CPU and accelerator. This will free up a lot of space in the server but more important, it eliminates the buses between CPU memory and co-processor memory, which will translate to much faster performance even before we get to chip improvements. ITworld has a look.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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A Co-processor No More, Intel’s Xeon Phi Will Be Its Own CPU As Well
No company out there wants to admit it, but the fact is, there’s always a reasonable chance they’ll get hacked. If they don’t encrypt your data, those hacks reveal all kinds of information about you very easily. So, to see who’s doing encryption well, the Electronic Frontier Foundation decided to come up with a chart that looks at a number of the big companies. Read more…
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This Infographic Shows Which Sites Properly Encypt Your Data
Half of the fun of the holidays is ripping into presents from family and friends or watching someone else do it . We might feel just a twinge or two of guilt as we crumple shreds of once-pristine paper waste into a trash bag and toss it to the curb for garbage collection, but what the hell, you’re on much-needed vacation and you left all of your cares at the office. Wrong. The facts: In 2011, Great Britain alone racked up 227, 000 miles of wasted paper after the holiday season. (That’s enough paper to wrap the world nine times over around the equator.) And according to a study done by Stanford, if every American wrapped three presents in reused materials, the saved paper would cover 45, 000 football fields. The upshot of the guilt trip is that it leads to solutions like wrapping your gifts in the comics section and recycle it when the present party is done, or, say, reusable packaging . UK-based agency BEAF does the DIYers one better with Eden Paper, wrapping paper for the rest of us that you can plant once you’re finished tearing into those gifts. It’s simple: By planting the used paper in some soil and watering it like a regular potted plant, you’ll see sprouts in no time. As with Democratech’s sprouting pencil and plantable OAT Shoes , the gift wrap is produced with the seeds embedded right into the paper. The brand is currently offering the paper in five flavors—chili peppers, onions, carrots, tomatoes and broccoli—but looks to include various flowers and herbs in the future. The gift wrap looks good, too—as good as it tastes, I’m sure. Design-wise, it’s a much-needed upgrade from a lot of the holiday wrap you see around the time of year. There’s only so much you can take when it comes to iridescent snowflakes and glittery ornaments. (more…)
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Eden’s (Plantable) Paper Takes the Cake When it Comes to Holiday Gift Wrapping Must-Haves
The original Kindle Paperwhite. Cesar Torres Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX tablets have already broken the 300 PPI barrier, but the sharpest of its E Ink readers sits at a much lower 212 PPI. According to a report from TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino, that may be about to change—Amazon is apparently working on a new version of its backlit Kindle Paperwhite with a 300 PPI display of an unspecified size and resolution. Since E Ink screens are meant to mimic the printed page, a sharper screen would bring the e-reader that much closer to the experience of reading an actual book. While the new e-reader is still apparently “several months away,” we know a little more about its other planned features. On the hardware side, Amazon will reportedly be adding an ambient light sensor to adjust the device’s backlight based on the light in the room you’re in, and hardware buttons for page turning will be making a return (the current Paperwhite relies on touch input for page turning). On the software side, the device’s UI will of course be upscaled to take advantage of the high-density screen, and Amazon will be introducing some new fonts and other tweaks to improve the Kindle’s typography. Finally, the new Paperwhite’s design will be tweaked to bring it more in line with that of the newest Fire tablets. Amazon isn’t the first to bring a high-density e-reader to market. Kobo’s Aura HD has a 265 PPI, 6.8-inch screen and has been out since May, though Kobo is a bigger presence in its home country of Canada than it is in the US. (The Aura HD was supposedly a limited-edition product, but it’s still on sale for $170 six months later so it’s clearly not that limited.) The newest Paperwhite will however be the first E Ink reader with access to Amazon’s gigantic e-book library and the Kindle brand, two potent weapons in the battle for e-book market supremacy. Read on Ars Technica | Comments
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Report: Amazon’s next Kindle Paperwhite will pick up a 300 PPI screen
Let’s play a little game called Good Idea/Bad Idea. Round One: Saving money. That’s a good idea! Round two: Saving thousands of dollars in a Bitcoin wallet that’s highly susceptible to hackers and heists. As the customers of Bitcoin payment processor BIPS will tell you, that’s a bad idea. Read more…
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$1 Million Heist Reminds Us That Bitcoin is Neither Safe nor Secure