Category: Tech

Apple Story Tech

How would you change the mid-2012 MacBook Air?

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As reported on Engadget. By Daniel Cooper Remember when people decried the MacBook Air as a dumb idea when it first launched? Well, given the amount of Ultrabooks that are now floating around the world, we bet they’ve not shared that opinion publicly too often. The most recent vintage of the unit gained USB 3.0 ports, Ivy Bridge chips and, well, not the one thing that would have made the unit unbeatable — a retina-class display. No, instead that feature…

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Story Tech TV

Samsung’s 85-inch Ultra HD TV up for pre-order in Korea, priced at just $38k HD

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As reported on Engadget. By Richard Lawler At CES last week Samsung set a new benchmark in size with its 85-inch S9 that edged past the Ultra HD competition by one inch, and now it’s setting a new high mark for price as well, at least in Korea. While we still don’t have any US pricing or release details, the first 77 models encased in that “Timeless Gallery” frame are going up for pre-order, priced at 40,000,000 won ($37,877 US).…

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Hardware Dev Story Tech

Samsung’s next-gen Exynos 5 Octa rumored to have only current-gen PowerVR graphics

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As reported on Engadget. By Sharif Sakr There’s nothing we can concretely do or say about the Exynos 5 Octa until it’s in a device and in our hands. It’s all just educated guesswork in the meantime, but that happens to be something AnandTech is rather good at. That site has reached the conclusion, based on “numerous sources,” that the Octa probably uses a PowerVR 544MP3 GPU clocked at 533MHz. If true, this implies that the ARM Mali T-604used in Exynos Dual devices…

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Engineering Entertainment Story Tech

‘The Avengers’ visual effects reel reveals how ILM built a fictional New York City

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As reported on The Verge. By Kimber Streams In celebration of its Oscar nomination, ILMVisualFX has released a video breaking down the slew of effects used in Marvel’s The Avengers. The reel shows how the company built and rendered the city of New York as well as the process of animating Tony Stark’s Ironman suit and Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk. In the comments, ILMVisualFX has answered a few questions about its visual effects process, saying that the…

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Apple Business Story Tech

The Apple economy dominates CES 2013, but Samsung isn’t far behind

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As reported on The Verge. By Ellis Hamburger Apple hasn’t made an appearance at CES since 1992, but its products are everywhere. At CES 2013, iPhones and iPads adorn the sides of booths for everything from Bluetooth speaker manufacturers to car audio companies. Booth after booth is named iFrogz, iSkins, and iLounge. Row after row of companies like Otterbox and Speck have made fortunes building cases for Apple products. Just Mobile’s booth is something like an aluminum…

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Space Story Tech

Unblinking Baby Telescopes Will Hunt Exoplanets for Cheap

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As reported on Wired. BY ADAM MANN Image: A schematic drawing showing two of four planned small telescopes in the Minerva project, which will look for exoplanets in our stellar neighborhood. PlaneWave/Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT)   LONG BEACH, California — A new ground-based telescope project named Minerva will be dedicated to uncovering extrasolar planets in our nearby stellar neighborhood. Given its small size and relatively low cost, it could represent a way for astronomers to…

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News Story Tech Trends

U.S. Cities Relying on Precog Software to Predict Murder

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As reported on Wired. BY KIM ZETTER A precog in the film Minority Report who can see the future and predict events. Photo courtesy of Dreamworks/20th Century Fox   Who needs the freaky precogs of Minority Report to predict if someone’s likely to commit murder when you have an algorithm that can do it for you? New crime-prediction software used in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and soon to be rolled out in the nation’s capital too, promises to reduce the homicide rate…

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Story Tech

I Raised My Kids On the Command Line…and They Love It

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As reported on LifeHacker. byJohn Goerzen Two years ago, my son Jacob (then 3) and I built his first computer together. I installed Debian on it, but never put a GUI on the thing. It’s command-line, and has provided lots of enjoyment off and on over the last couple of years. The looks of shock I get from people when I explain, as if it’s perfectly natural, that my child has been able to log…

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Hardware Dev Story Tech

Panasonic Debuts 20-inch 4K Windows 8 Tablet: Less Than Half An Inch With Stylus Input

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As reported on TechCrunch. by DARRELL ETHERINGTON Panasonic showed off a new tablet device at its CES 2013 keynote today. The Windows 8-based device is less than half-an-inch thick, with a 20-inch screen with 4K resolution for ultra-crisp images. The device is clearly aimed at the professional market, and a promo video Panasonic showed featured a photographer talking about how it can help him with his workflow. The tablet has pen input, and is not only…

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Space Tech

Another Major GitHub Outage – This Is Not Good For Its $100M Enterprise Push

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As reported on TechCrunch. by ALEX WILLIAMS GitHub had another outage this afternoon. This is getting old. How can GitHub be taken seriously in the enterprise with these kinds of outages? GitHub started showing exceptions at 3:14 PST. By 3:20, GitHub announced on its status page that a database spike caused the service to have a major outage. It makes no difference if GitHub for Enterprise runs on-premise. With this kind of outage, credibility is a question mark. GitHub has suffered…

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