| Decade Long World of Warcraft Subscribers to Receive Cool Statue Posted: 19 Jan 2015 09:24 AM PST  Groovy gift for 10-year WoW vets
Our hats are off to anyone who has stuck around with World of Warcraft since the beginning. That takes some serious commitment, and as a token of its appreciation, Blizzard is giving away a rather neat looking statue to its most loyal WoW players, the ones who have been around for 10 years. Not just off and on players, either -- eligible recipients will have maintained an active subscription for a decade. "These gifts have been sent to the physical address associated with eligible Battle.net accounts. To be eligible for this gift, a player must have created a World of Warcraft account within 60 days of the game launching in the NA or EU regions, and maintained their subscription or game time for all ten years," Blizzard stated in a blog post. The statue won't bring back a significant other who might have bailed in year three after growing tired of always being second fiddle to an MMORPG, but hey, it looks neat. We know this because Battle.net user Smitti posted a picture of the statue he received, which would fit right in with any geek's gaming collection. Of course, one look at the comments section puts it into depressing perspective though. "$15/month x 12mo. x 10 years = $1,800... worth it," an Imgur user commented. It will be interesting to see how much these suckers end up selling for on eBay. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| 3D Printed Organs Could Become a Thing Posted: 19 Jan 2015 09:01 AM PST  Using genetic glue to build vital organs
It's probably far fetched to think that we're on the verge of being able to print off replacement hearts, kidneys, and other vital body parts, but perhaps your children or grandchildren will one day benefit from such a sci-fi scenario. The technology is closer than you may think -- researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have shown that strands of DNA can act as glue to hold together 3D printed materials. It's a significant development because those 3D printed materials could someday be used to grow tissues and organs in the lab, the researchers say. Bear in mind that researchers have already used nucleic acids such as DNA to assemble objects, though most of them are nano-sized. The challenge comes in making them bigger. After all, a heart that's too small to be seen with a human eye doesn't do a patient needing a heart transplant any good. But a heart the size of a heart does. The problem is that visible objects are cost prohibitive to produce. This is where 3D printing comes in. The researchers came up with DNA-coated nanoparticles made of either polystyrene or polyacrylamide, both of which are comparatively inexpensive. Binding them together with DNA forms gel-like materials (as seen in the thumbnail picture) that could be extruded from a 3D printer. What's more, researchers showed that human cells could grow in the gels. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Intel Chief Shrugs Off Rumors Suggesting Apple May Turn to ARM Posted: 19 Jan 2015 08:39 AM PST  Intel is confident its relationship with Apple remains strong
There's a rumor going around saying that Apple is looking long and hard at ARM's A-Series chipsets for use in future Mac releases. While it wouldn't be the end of the world for Intel to lose Apple as a client, especially coming fresh off its best year ever, Intel would certainly like to keep that relationship alive. And it probably will -- Intel CEO Brian Krzanich says the rumors of Apple switching to ARM are just that. During an interview with CNBC (credit to The Inquirer for digging it up), he described Intel's relationship with Apple as being "strong," adding that "Apple is always going to choose the supplier who can provide the most amount of capability in innovation to build on. They're a company based on innovation." The rumors of a switch to ARM began to swirl last week when KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested it was possible. However, it didn't faze Krzanich, who maintains that Intel needs to continue focusing on delivering parts that are better than its competitors. While it's probably true that Apple is sticking with Intel to power its Mac machines, mobile devices are a different story. ARM is a major player in the tablet and smartphone markets, and even though Intel had its best year ever in 2014, it's mobile division posted a loss of $4.2 billion for the year. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Watchdog Accuses China of Hacking Outlook Over the Weekend Posted: 19 Jan 2015 08:14 AM PST  More overseas hacking shenanigans
Weeks after Google's Gmail service was blocked in China, Microsoft's Outlook email service was the target of a cyberattack over the weekend, with fingers once again pointing to Chinese authorities. Online censorship watchdog Greatfire.org said that China initiated what's known as a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, affecting people using email clients like Outlook, Mozilla's Thunderbird, and smartphone apps using the SMTP and IMAP protocols. Man-in-the-middle attacks essentially entail hijacking an online connection. The culprit then monitors communication and/or alters the transmission. He or she can also redirect users to malicious websites when they think they're headed towards a legitimate portal. "This attack comes within a month of the complete blocking of Gmail (which is still entirely inaccessible). Because of the similarity between this attack and previous, recent MITM attacks in China (on Google, Yahoo and Apple), we once again suspect that Lu Wei and the Cyberspace Administration of China have orchestrated this attack or have willingly allowed the attack to happen," Greatfire.org stated in a blog post. "If our accusation is correct, this new attack signals that the Chinese authorities are intent on further cracking down on communication methods that they cannot readily monitor." While IMAP and SMTP for Outlook were subject to a MITM attack, the web interfaces at outlook.com and login.live.com were both unaffected, the watchdog organization said. Nevertheless, Greatfire.org still considered it "especially devious" because the pop-up warning messages that people receive in email clients are often vague in nature, prompting users to quickly click through them while attributing the messages to benign network issues. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Spotify Gives Windows Phone App Some Much Needed Attention Posted: 19 Jan 2015 07:50 AM PST  Darker theme heads to Windows Phone users
It's been a battle for Microsoft to increase its Windows Phone market share, which sits at a distant third place behind Android and iOS. By the numbers, only around three out of every 100 smartphones is running Windows Phone, so it's no wonder app developers take their sweet time developing updates. That's also true of Spotify, which just unveiled a refreshed experience for Windows Phone users with what it claims is the best looking version yet. It starts with an overall darker theme and continues with refreshed typography and rounded iconography. The new design is intended to not only look better than before, but also make it "smoother" to access your favorite songs. "The new dark theme and refined interface lets the content come forward and 'pop', just like in a cinema when you dim the lights," Spofity stated in a blog post. Spotify also built in some new features and tweaks, such as improved music management. If you find a song or album you like, just hit save to add it to your collection -- "it's that simple," Spotify says. In addition, Spotify updated its Browse feature to deliver more relevant and localized content. Look for the new design to roll out to Windows Phone 8 users starting today. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Newegg Daily Deals: Dell UltraSharp 27-Inch Monitor, Corsair CXM Series 500W PSU, and More! Posted: 19 Jan 2015 07:35 AM PST |
| Design Student Uses Oculus Rift, VR Gloves to Control Music Creation Software Posted: 19 Jan 2015 02:28 AM PST  Few things can top an Oculus Rift hack that involves hands and music
A Kiwi design student named Bryon Mallett has come up with Pensato, a virtual reality interface for controlling music devices and software that, unlike most other Oculus Rift-based projects out there, makes pretty good use of human hands. In a video he posted to YouTube back in September, Mallet can be seen creating some music — actually the "final compositional output" for his Masters of Design Innovation — using popular music creation software Ableton Live and his Penasto interface, which allows him to interact with various sound controls using a pair of custom VR gloves as if they were physical objects. His custom VR gloves owe their hand tracking mojo to the modified Razer Hydra motion controllers that Mallett managed to squeeze into them, as well as a pair of Teensy microcontrollers that are equipped with bend sensors for detecting hand position and gestures. "This performance features a master version of Pensato running in Unity on the computer monitor to my right, which creates the visuals for the Rift and controls Ableton Live. The projector computer runs another copy of Pensato that listens to the position and orientation of the gloves, as well as the hand gesture and displays a copy of my VR interface on 3 projectors. The laptop runs Ableton Live 9 and is connected to each copy of Pensato using Showtime, a framework that I developed for connecting together realtime performance software and hardware," reads the video's description on YouTube. Follow Pulkit on Google+ |
| Steam for Linux Bug Can Wipe Out All Files on a PC Posted: 18 Jan 2015 11:48 PM PST Even files on external storage  devices are not safe Barely a fortnight into the year and we have already got ourselves a strong contender (if not a shoo-in) for the year's scariest Steam bug. The good news is that the vast majority of Steam users don't have anything to worry about as the bug in question, which was reported by a user named "keyvin" on Valve's GitHub repository, only affects the Steam for Linux client. Many Steam for Linux users have reported encountering a devastating bug when trying to launch the client after manually moving their Steam installation directory. According to GitHub user keyvin who was the first to report the bug, he had "everything owned by my user", including all the files on a 3TB external hard drive, deleted when he tried running the Steam client after having moved the ~/.local/share/steam directory. Apparently, a line in steam.sh that reads 'rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"*' is to blame. Meant to delete everything under the Steam data directory when the script is run with the —reset_steam option, the line can end up being interpreted as 'rm -rf "/"*' by the machine when the STEAMROOT directory is missing, causing the deletion of each and every file owned by the user. Valve has told PCWorld that it has so far failed to reproduce the issue, adding that it is working on "some additional checks to ensure this [bug] is not possible while we continue to investigate." Follow Pulkit on Google+ |
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