Tag: gaming

Samsung’s 256-gigabit chip puts multi-terabyte flash drives in your PC

Think that Samsung’s 2TB solid-state drives are pretty capacious? They’re just the start of something bigger. The Korean tech giant has started manufacturing the first 256-gigabit (32GB) 3D vertical flash memory , doubling its previous capacity record. The new tech should turn multi-terabyte SSDs into practical options for your home PC, and help phone makers cram more storage into tight spaces. You might get more bang for your buck, to boot — Samsung’s manufacturing is 40 percent more productive, so you likely won’t pay twice as much for twice the headroom. The company plans to make this 256-gigabit flash through the rest of 2015, so you’ll probably see it crop up in a lot of products (from Samsung and otherwise) over the months ahead. Filed under: Storage , Samsung Comments Source: Samsung Tomorrow Tags: flash, samsung, ssd, storage, v-nand, vnand

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Samsung’s 256-gigabit chip puts multi-terabyte flash drives in your PC

Your Android games are getting a software speed boost

iPhone users have low-level Metal code to speed up games and other visually intensive apps, but what if you’re an Android fan? Don’t worry, you’ll get your boost soon. Google has announced that Android will soon support Vulkan , an open graphics standard that cuts a lot of the computing overhead and gives apps more direct control over video hardware. It’s not as easy to work with as OpenGL, but it should let developers wring more performance out of your phone’s processor. That could prove very important when you’d otherwise struggle to run a game on a lower-end phone, or want to get pretty, high-detail graphics on a shiny new flagship . It’ll be a while before Vulkan for Android is ready — the standard itself isn’t available, let alone Google’s implementation of it — but it should be worth the wait if your Android devices double as game consoles . Filed under: Cellphones , Gaming , Tablets , Mobile , Google Comments Source: Android Developers Blog , Imagination Technologies Tags: android, gaming, google, graphics, khronosgroup, mobilepostcross, opengl, smartphone, video, vulkan

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Your Android games are getting a software speed boost

Coder wins a thousand Twitter contests using a bot

You’ve probably seen “retweet to win” contests on Twitter, and maybe even won a t-shirt, concert tickets or marshmallows . But computer engineer Hunter Scott completely automated the idea and created a bot that entered every Twitter contest it could find — 165, 000 in total. As a result, he claims to have won four contests a day for nine months, for a total haul of over a thousand prizes . A lot of that swag was terrible, and a lot of it he couldn’t accept. But the interesting part was how he allegedly managed to beat Twitter’s system. The most difficult part of this project was preventing the bot from getting banned by Twitter. Scott said that “the most difficult part of this project was preventing the bot from getting banned by Twitter.” The social network has limits in place to stop such activities: unless you have a high follower count, you can only follow up to 2, 000 people yourself, for instance. At the same time, you can’t follow and unfollow users too rapidly or retweet too often. Luckily, Scott’s Python script was able to balance all that and follow every single contest it found. He said his win rate was “pretty miserable” considering the low quality of the prizes. He couldn’t claim the best one, a $4, 000 trip to New York’s fashion week because of taxes and fact that he didn’t live near New York. Nevertheless, he was fond of a few them, especially a cowboy hat autographed by actors in a Mexican soap opera. “It really embodies the totally random outcome of these contests, ” he said. Scott never revealed the name of his Twitter bot, so we’ve reached out to verify his claims — but the prizes appear to check out. Filed under: Internet Comments Source: Hunter Scott Tags: contests, HunterScott, Python, retweet, Twitter, Twitter bot

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Coder wins a thousand Twitter contests using a bot

Quantum VJ puts a glitchy audio visualizer around your neck

Do pendants and other wearable ornaments lack pizzazz for you? Alexander Zolotov has a way to spice things up… if you’re fond of 8-bit graphics gone haywire , at least. His Quantum VJ is small enough to hang around your neck, but clever enough to turn audio into wonderfully glitchy visuals on its 128 x 64 OLED display. As you’ll see below, the result is at once modest yet mesmerizing — plug in some tunes and you’ll have a tiny, synchronized light show several inches away from your face. It runs for 20 hours on a typical coin-sized battery, too, so it can distract passers-by all day long. This is currently a one-of-a-kind device that doesn’t even have video out, but Zolotov tells The Creators Project that future models might have output. If so, you may one day have a dance party backdrop dangling around your chest. Filed under: Misc , Wearables Comments Via: The Creators Project Source: WarmPlace.ru Tags: alexanderzolotov, audio, glitch, music, necklace, quantumvj, video, visualizer, vj, wearable

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Quantum VJ puts a glitchy audio visualizer around your neck

Phone companies ditching copper wires will have to follow the rules

The age of the copper land-line is nearing its end, but traditional phone lines aren’t going quietly: new rules from the FCC now require service providers notify customers of the impending removal and drawbacks of switching to a VOIP line three months before killing a copper network. It sounds like a reasonable move — customers need to know that the technology replacing their traditional land-line won’t work during a power-outage without an external power source — but not everybody at the FCC is happy with the new rules. “It appears that Chicken Little rules the roost, ” writes Commissioner Ajit Pai in a dissent to the updated transition rules. “By dragging out the copper retirement process , the FCC is adopting ‘regulations that deter rather than promote fiber deployment.'” Pai argues that the FCC is making it more difficult for companies to modernize their networks because lobbyists are claiming that retiring copper will cause the “sky to fall, ” disrupting services and hurting their business model. He has a point — but wouldn’t you want to be notified if the phone company was changing out your voice service worked? Check out the FCC’s official announcement at the source link below. [Image Credit: Raymond Kleboe via Getty Images] Filed under: Misc Comments Source: Verge , FCC Tags: copper, copperlandline, fcc, landline, phones, telco, telephone

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Phone companies ditching copper wires will have to follow the rules

Huge malware campaign used Yahoo’s ad network

You’ve probably heard of malware-laden ads causing havoc on the web, but rarely on this scale. Malwarebytes has discovered a malware campaign that was using Yahoo’s ad network to target legions upon legions of visitors — Yahoo’s main site racks up 6.9 billion visits per month. While it’s not clear what would happen if you fell victim to an attack, the Flash-based exploit kit linked to the campaign typically includes both ad fraud and ransomware . In short, there’s a real chance that you could have been locked out of your PC simply by checking on your fantasy sports league . Notice the emphasis on the past tense, though. Yahoo was quick to take this “malvertising” campaign down, so you’re not at risk as I write this. Even so, it’s not exactly comforting that malware writers could even slip their code into such a large ad network. Yahoo’s still investigating what happened, but it appears that online ad giants may need stricter filters on what gets through. [Image credit: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez] Filed under: Internet Comments Via: New York Times Source: Malwarebytes Tags: ads, advertising, flash, internet, malvertising, malware, ransomware, security, web, yahoo

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Huge malware campaign used Yahoo’s ad network

Researchers inject oil into cells and create little lasers

The Massachusetts General Hospital research team that lit up human cells with the help of jellyfish genes a few years ago are back with a more advanced version of the technology. This new version forgoes the complicated external mirror setup in favor of injectable oil droplets impregnated with fluorescent dye. This is the same basic idea as what a team from St Andrews University recently created, except that the plastic bead that served as the their laser’s resonating chamber is now an oil droplet. While the technology isn’t ready for therapeutic applications just yet, it does hold a great deal of promise. The problem with conventional cellular markers and dye is that they have a broad emission spectrum which can make it difficult to spot the marked cells amidst the rest of the tissue. But with these miniature lasers, doctors will be able to mark and track individual cells no matter where they are in the body. The team recently published their findings in Nature Photonics . a dye-impregnated fat cell – Massachusetts General Hospital [Image Credit: Top – Arbi Babakhanians, inline: Matjaž Humar/Seok Hyun Yun] Filed under: Science Comments Source: Nature Photonics

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Researchers inject oil into cells and create little lasers

Microsoft’s HoloLens headset will reach developers within a year

When Microsoft said that its HoloLens headset would arrive ” in the Windows 10 time frame , ” what did it mean, exactly? Thanks to a BBC interview with Satya Nadella, we now have a better sense of when this augmented reality eyewear will show up. The company chief expects developers and enterprise users to get the first version of HoloLens “within the next year” — you won’t be getting one as a holiday gift, folks. It’s not certain just when a personal version will launch, but Nadella describes the overall technology as a “5-year journey” that will eventually branch out to other fields. While that doesn’t necessarily leave you high and dry until 2020, it does suggest that you’ll have to be patient if you want to play some holographic Minecraft . Filed under: Displays , Wearables , Microsoft Comments Via: Piptell , The Verge Source: BBC

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Microsoft’s HoloLens headset will reach developers within a year

Windows 10 passes 14 million installs its first 24 hours

Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi is checking in with a Windows 10 status update, revealing that the OS is already on some 14 million devices. He notes that not everyone who reserved an upgrade has gotten it yet, but that the rollout will continue in phases over the next few weeks. While whether or not you can upgrade to Windows 10 may still be in question, we have information to help decide if you should with our FAQ and review . Of course, if you’re one of the millions already in the door, you can just let us know how the new experience is working so far. Filed under: Software , Microsoft Comments Source: Blogging Windows

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Windows 10 passes 14 million installs its first 24 hours

I’m Playing Xbox On Windows 10, And You Can Too

Yesterday, my wife wanted to play some Kingdom Hearts . I was in the mood for Titanfall . We only have one TV. So I pulled out a Surface 3 tablet, plugged in an Xbox One controller, and started streaming the game from my Xbox to my portable PC. It’s a new Windows 10 feature. Read more…

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I’m Playing Xbox On Windows 10, And You Can Too