Space

What would ‘Civilization’ look like in outer space?

As reported on The Verge. By Andrew Webster The wildly popular strategy game series finally leaves Earth Civilization is setting its sights on the stars. After years of building epic strategy games that follow the course of human history, developer Firaxis Games is taking the next entry in the series into the future with Civilization: Beyond Earth, slated to launch later this year. It’s a game that follows a similar path to its predecessors, putting you in charge…

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Mobile SmartPhone

Sony Xperia Z2 Review: A Waterproof Android Smartphone That Goes Beyond Gimmicks

As reported on TechCrunch. by Darrell Etherington Posted 13 hours ago Twitter Shares Test New All-Time Lows After Its Q1 Earnings Fail To Excite Investors Sony hasn’t had a great time of it in the U.S. smartphone market over the past few years, and it recently announced that its new flagship, the Xperia Z2, would only be made available to U.S. customers unlocked via its website. But the Z2 is still a solid device, and a contender on more…

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Microsoft

Microsoft Is Technology’s Comeback Kid

As reported on TechCrunch. by Danny Crichton Microsoft. For a generation of technology executives, the name strikes fear into even the most iron-willed business leaders. A lion among gazelles, its very gaze into a market could cause investors and analysts to flee in terror. Yet, its name has become a punchline among today’s technorati, a joke about formerly dominant companies evolving into large, plodding kludges. Missed deadlines, delayed products, and canceled features are only some of…

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Local

​New York City is cleaning its ancient Egyptian monument with lasers

As reported on Engadget. BY SEAN BUCKLEY A 69-foot, 3,500-year old granite obelisk has stood in New York City’s Central Park for 130 years, and it’s never, ever, been cleaned. The ancient pillar is deceptively fragile, and conservationists have been hesitant simply to hose it down. The solution? Blast it withlasers, of course. After careful testing, the Central Park Conservancy determined that a gentle bath of infrared lasers is both the most sensitive and environmentally friendly cleaning method…

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Education

Essay generator can spew out BS, still get you an ‘A’

As reported on Engadget. BY STEVE DENT While automated essay-grading machines can tackle 16,000 essays in 20 seconds, are they any good compared to a human? Online course administrators in the machine camp think so, but retired MIT prof Les Perelman has shown that such bots aren’t about to pass aTuring test anytime soon. His proof is the Babel Generator, aka the Basic Automatic BS Essay Language Generator. In less than two seconds, the software can spit out…

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