Has Microsoft's Surface Been Priced Out Of The Market?
'Tablet talk' is becoming ever-more regular around these parts. Sleek, black, slate-like tablet PC's seem to be everywhere these days. From the top-end range featuring Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 all the way down to the likes of ASUS's lovingly-refined Nexus 7 and Amazon's up and coming Kindle Fire HD, there's not a consumer electronic in sight that has appeared to have such an explosive arrival onto the scene.
Astronomers Unearth Planet In Nearest Star System To Earth
Becoming the closest confirmed ‘exoplanet’ in a wider US-European competition to find the nearest and most Earth-like planets outside our own solar system, astronomers at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile have made a remarkable discovery.
The Walking Dead: Episode Four – Around Every Corner Review
The Walking Dead has been the epitome of Telltale's vision of episodic gaming, and Around Every Corner has the particularly difficult task of playing out the penultimate chapter to this: the first of (what we hope to be) many seasons to come. Book of Eli writer Gary Witta leaves his dark signature upon the piece, tackling child endangerment, burying the dead, and a society where the idea of "survival of the fittest" is taken to inhumane lengths. But the one question remains: does this setup make for an episode that lives up to the finely tuned creations of past?
Flatbush Zombies - D.R.U.G.S Review
Flatbush Zombies' debut mixtape is saved from its trite horrorcore lyricism and occasional awkward flows by an unpretentious attitude and excellent production comprised of slick, memorable synth hooks and eclectic samples.
'The Falcon Project' Hopes To Capture Definitive Proof Of Bigfoot
Not to be confused with DARPA’s project of the same name to develop a Hypersonic Weapon System (HWS), ‘The Falcon Project’ is a one of the more preposterous scientific ‘studies’ ever green-lit. Set to utilise a state-of-the-art, remote-controlled, camera-equipped airship, the project is hoping to find definitive proof that ‘Bigfoot’ exists.
'HoneyMap' Shows Where People Are Being Hacked In Real-Time
Many stories are heard across the globe of people having their sensitive online data compromised; but this vast number of hacks you see and read about, it's been difficult to realise the vast size and scale of how many malware infections there are. This is where 'The HoneyMap' comes in, showing the location of both the victim and culprit in said cyber attacks, all in real time.
The Tech Behind Red Bull Stratos And The Death-Defying Leap From The Edge Of Space
Sixty-five years to the day since Captain Charles Yeager became the first man to travel past the speed of sound, Felix Baumgartner yesterday became the only living man to ever break the sound barrier without a spacecraft. Logistically, the Red Bull Stratos mission is a feat in of itself, though it’s the technology behind it that made this particular jump so fascinating.
Red Bull Stratos: The Jump That Puts Us On The Path To Dreaming Again
"NASA, as best as I can judge, is a force of nature like none other." Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2010.
On November 20th 1998, the first components of the International Space Station were launched, beginning the mission that continues to this day. This was the last time that many of us were excited about the exploration of frontiers beyond our grasp. As Dr. Tyson so eloquently said: "We stopped dreaming."
NASA Developing X1 Exoskeleton To Keep Astronauts Fit In Space
NASA and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) with help from Oceaneering Space Systems of Houston have developed a robotic exoskeleton called X1, that can be worn by a person to either assist or inhibit movement in their legs.
Acoustic Barcodes Store Data In Sound Waves
A group of students at Carnegie Mellon University have created Acoustic Barcodes: a series of etched lines placed on almost any surface that is read by a system via the unique audible waveform given off when an object - like a fingernail or pen - is ran across the notches.
Microsoft Investigating Halo 4 Leak
He might be one of the most bad-ass, cybernetically-enhanced super-soldiers we've ever seen, but it seems even Master Chief himself isn't invulnerable to a spot of piracy. Reports are flooding in from numerous online forums from gamers claiming to already have their hands on the long-awaited fourth chapter in the Halo series, Halo 4.
Hackaday Builds Portal Gun That Actually Levitates A Companion Cube
Okay, so this isn't quite an accurate replica of Valve's esteemed gravity gun, or a meaningful bid towards reaching a real-life equivalent to it, but even so it serves well as a hardware love letter of sorts to the company – an amalgamation of inventions from Portal and the seminal Half-Life, all in one pretty neat package.
We're Hiring: News Writers And Editors
Every day we are thankful to our audience of over 250,000 people for spending some of their precious time on this crazy planet we call Earth checking out the content we produce. And as these numbers grow on a daily basis, we realise that the team needs to grow alongside this. With this in mind, New Rising Media is looking to hire a load of news writers and editors from across the globe!
Kindle Under Fire: German Firm Set To Release £10 eReader
Unashamedly basic features for a modern-day eReader, German firm Txtr has uncovered plans to release a £10 eReader, named the Txtr Beagle, to under-cut its rivals and capitalise on the burgeoning e-book marketplace.
'Diamond Planet' Discovered By Researchers At Yale
Get ready to grab your trusty pickaxes, new research led by Yale University indicates the planet last year assumed to have a similar chemical make-up to Earth is in fact a diamond planet; home to graphite, diamond and iron rather than water and granite. At least a third of the planet’s mass – the equivalent of three Earth masses – could be solely diamond, according to the study.
The World’s Most Powerful Lasers Set To Tear Apart The Vacuum Of Space-Time Itself
Hoping to conjure enough energy that it ought to be able to pull “virtual” particles out of the vacuum of space-time – quantum mechanics implies that space-time can never truly be ‘empty’ – the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project is an undeniably tantalising (yet mind-numbingly complex) prospect.
Researchers Devise Test To Determine If We're Living In 'The Matrix'
Are we living in a computer simulation right now? If so, the human race would be completely oblivious to a programmed existence. That is until now, as University of Bonn nuclear physicist Silas Beane and his colleagues have devised a test that exploits a key feature of simulations; the existence of an underlying lattice construct by finding its end points or edges.
US Army Tests Truck-Mounted 10 Thousand Watt Laser Cannon
Boeing, the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command have begun testing the High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD): a truck-mounted laser cannon, capable of shooting down missiles.
Microsoft Unveils Gesture-Sensing Wearable Wrist Sensor
In a project headed by Microsoft Research, a team of researchers are busy putting together and testing a new wrist-mounted prototype that can track finger movement to within one hundredth of a centimetre and interpret simple gestures all in real-time.
‘iPad Mini’ And 4G iPad 3 Rumoured To Be Announced Within Days
“7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone, and too small to compete with an iPad. They are going to be DOA [Dead On Arrival].” So said ex-Apple CEO Steve Jobs during an Apple earnings call in October 2010, resolutely shunning any idea that the so-influential tech giant would follow suit of its competitors and opt for a smaller-sized tablet.