black-friday – Tech Today w/ Ken May

New Release Of StarCraft In 4K Ultra High Definition Annouonced

The classic 90s-era videogames StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War will be re-released this summer — remastered in 4K Ultra High Definition. An anonymous reader quotes The Verge: It will also include a number of updates, such as remastered sound, new additional illustrations for the campaign missions, new matchmaking capabilities, the ability to connect to Blizzard App, the ability to save to the cloud, and more… Blizzard also announced that it was issuing a new update to StarCraft: Brood War this week, which will include some bug fixes and anti-cheat measures, but will also make StarCraft Anthology (which includes StarCraft and Brood War) available to download for free. Kotaku reports that the news was announced at this weekend’s I

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New Release Of StarCraft In 4K Ultra High Definition Annouonced

An iPhone 4 Survived a Year at the Bottom of a Lake

If you’ve ever submerged your phone in liquid, you know the utter devastation that follows immediately afterward, during which you alternately shake your fist at yourself and the offending liquid. One guy, however, got lucky. Read more…

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An iPhone 4 Survived a Year at the Bottom of a Lake

The Disgustingly Awesome World of the ‘Double Dare’ Obstacle Course

Our friends at The A.V. Club just published an insanely awesome oral history of the obstacle course from Nickelodeon’s classic game show Double Dare, and it’s chock-full of icky, messy fun. This look behind-the-scenes comes is timed right: Nickelodeon is airing a one-night only Double Dare special on Wednesday to… Read more…

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The Disgustingly Awesome World of the ‘Double Dare’ Obstacle Course

Google Bans Hundreds of Accounts For Participating in Pixel Tax-Dodging Scheme

Google suspended hundreds of accounts used by people trying to take advantage of a US sales tax loophole in order to make a profit on the resale of Pixel phones. Although the accounts were restored after a few days, this creates an unsettling precedent for Google users. Read more…

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Google Bans Hundreds of Accounts For Participating in Pixel Tax-Dodging Scheme

Los Angeles Flirts With Pre-Crime

An anonymous reader writes: The city of Los Angeles is considering a new plan to fight prostitution: sending letters to men who solicit prostitutes in the hopes that the letters are seen by family members. Why not just arrest them while they’re doing it? Because these letters aren’t being sent to the houses of men who were convicted, or even arrested. Instead, automated license plate readers would scan the cars driving down streets known to have a prostitution problem, and the letters would be sent to the address associated with those vehicles. An article about the plan says, “There isn’t ‘potential’ for abuse here, this is a legislated abuse of technology that is already controversial when it’s used by police for the purpose of seeking stolen vehicles, tracking down fugitives and solving specific crimes.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Flash-based drives may soon be as cheap as the spinning kind

If you’ve noticed that solid-state drives (and the PCs that include them) no longer cost an arm and a leg, you’re not alone. Researchers at DRAMeXchange understand that the price per gigabyte of an SSD has fallen off a cliff in the past three years, and the trend is only accelerating. If the company’s estimates are on the mark, these drives could cost just 11 cents more per gig than conventional hard drives by 2017. At that rate, you might not have to choose between high capacity and breakneck speed when you’re on a budget — you could easily afford both. Via: Computerworld Source: TrendForce

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Flash-based drives may soon be as cheap as the spinning kind

Adobe Photoshop update brings custom toolbars and artboards

Before the sun sets on 2015, Adobe has another round of updates for its Creative Cloud software. The new features span a number of apps, but we’ll focus on Photoshop CC . To boost overall productivity, and to save you time and a few headaches, Adobe is giving the photo-editing software custom toolbars. This means that you’ll be able to add, delete and rearrange what appears in that set of tools on the left side of the interface. The new feature allows to you customize the layout of your workspace so that only the items you use are taking up valuable space. In theory, you’ll spend less time hunting for the tool you’re after, too. Slideshow-344396

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Adobe Photoshop update brings custom toolbars and artboards

Sit in the orchestra pit with Google’s 360-degree video

To get a good view of a world-class orchestra in New York’s Carnegie Hall, you normally have to buy an expensive front row seat. With a little help from Google, however, you can now sit on stage for free. The company is launching a “virtual exhibition” today called Performing Arts which includes four performances recorded with multiple 360-degree camera rigs. Alongside Carnegie Hall , you can experience the Berliner Philharmoniker , London’s Royal Shakespeare Company and the Theatro Municipal in São Paulo. Via: Google (Blog Post) Source: Performing Arts

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Sit in the orchestra pit with Google’s 360-degree video

Google hires the lead for Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving tech

Apple and Tesla aren’t the only two tech companies grabbing each other’s staff to fulfill their automotive dreams — Google has quietly hired Robert Rose, the lead for Tesla’s semi-autonomous Autopilot program. It’s not clear what he’s working on besides software at Google Robotics, but it won’t be surprising if he’s working on self-driving cars . He’s unlikely to be working for Boston Dynamics , whose staff are relatively independent from the Google mothership. One thing’s for sure: Tesla will notice his absence. Rose was the lead engineer for some of SpaceX’s earlier rocketry and reported directly to Elon Musk while at Tesla, so this clearly wasn’t a trivial move. [Image credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images] Via: 9to5Google Source: LinkedIn

6 hypermiling cars that get over 100 miles per gallon

By Cat DiStasio Fuel efficiency is one rating that can really set a car apart from the pack. Although you can’t yet walk into just any dealership and drive away in a vehicle that gets more than 100 miles a gallon, there are some sweet rides out there that demonstrate just how incredibly efficient a car can be. To get a better idea of what the uber-efficient car of tomorrow looks like, we’ve compiled some of the most efficient vehicles on the planet, all of which exceed that 100-mpg marker. In fact, most of the cars featured here leave that rating in the dust, and several break into the quadruple digits .Slideshow-342967