Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

Mar

02

Listen to David Bowie's First Album in 10 Years for Free Online (Legally)

Label: Technology

You don’t have to wait until March 12 to find out whether David Bowie’s first album in a decade is more Tin Machine than Low; the long-awaited The Next Day is already available, streaming in full on iTunes for a limited period pre-release.The stream continues Bowie’s current interest in previewing content from the album for free online before release; videos for both...

Mar

01

Exclusive Clip: Relive Napster's Big Break in the Documentary <em>Downloaded</em>

Label: Technology

If the 1990s had a baby, it might look something like the documentary Downloaded. For one, it’s about the rise and fall of Napster, complete with plaid-heavy video of the young Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning. For another, it’s directed by Alex Winter, aka Bill S. Preston, Esq. from the Bill & Ted movies. Combined they’re the bookends of the decade that launched web culture.And yet everything...

Feb

28

Good Eggs Aims to Be the Amazon of Local Food

Label: Technology

Good Eggs, which launched last summer as the Etsy of local food, is expanding in a bid to become the Amazon of local food.The San Francisco-based company launched a new web platform Thursday that lets users select items from local vendors and farmers and combine them in a single order ready for delivery or pickup. That’s transforming Good Eggs from a web stand for multiple vendors to a central...

Feb

27

Private Plan to Send Humans to Mars in 2018 Might Not Be So Crazy

Label: Technology

An ambitious private manned mission to Mars aims to launch a two-person crew to fly around the Red Planet and return to Earth in 501 days, starting in January 2018.This bold undertaking is planned by the Inspiration Mars Foundation, a non-profit company founded by millionaire and space tourist Dennis Tito that was officially unveiled on Feb. 27 after early details leaked. Though the spacecraft...

Feb

26

Stuxnet Missing Link Found, Resolves Some Mysteries Around the Cyberweapon

Label: Technology

As Iran met in Kazakhstan this week with members of the UN Security Council to discuss its nuclear program, researchers announced that a new variant of the sophisticated cyberweapon known as Stuxnet had been found, which predates other known versions of the malicious code that were reportedly unleashed by the U.S. and Israel several years ago in an attempt to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.The...

Feb

25

Darpa Wants to Rethink the Helicopter to Make It Go <em>Way</em> Faster

Label: Technology

Helicopters are great. They’re maneuverable in very tight spaces, they haul heavy things relative to their small sizes — and, very importantly, they take off and land vertically, removing the need for a big airstrip or aircraft-carrier deck. That function is so important to the military that the U.S. designed fixed-wing aircraft to do the same thing, like the Marines’ iconic Harrier jet or...

Feb

24

Wired Space Photo of the Day: Glowing Gas in Omega Nebula

Label: Technology

This image is a colour composite of the Omega Nebula (M 17) made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). The field of view is approximatelly 4.7 x 3.7 degrees. Image: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin. [high-resolution]Caption: ...

Feb

23

That Syncing Feeling

Label: Technology

“Smart, or stylish?” That’s the question facing casual watch aficionados looking for a new, high-tech addition to their collection.On one hand (er, wrist), you’ve got the Pebble and other smartwatch upstarts, which come with built-in smartphone connectivity, customizable screens, and burgeoning developer communities eager to feed their app ecosystems. They also, by and large, look like uninspired...

Feb

22

Winter Is Coming to Facebook With <cite>Game of Thrones Ascent</cite>

Label: Technology

Ready your enchanted browser tabs and equip your clicking hand with your sturdiest gauntlets. Westeros just got social.Although Game of Thrones Ascent, recently released on Facebook, shares many of the familiar trappings of social games — click on lots of things, watch a timer go down, and then click more things — developer Disruptor Beam says its game’s value lies in the story, and is promising...

Feb

21

White House Must Respond Publicly to Ban on Mobile-Phone Unlocking

Label: Technology

The President Barack Obama administration must enter the mobile-phone-unlocking fray.Thanks to a whitehouse.gov petition reaching 100,000 signatures Thursday, the administration must respond publicly about a recent decision by copyright regulators making it illegal to unlock mobile phones purchased after January 26.What’s this all about?Unlocking enables a phone to...

Feb

20

Navy Tweets How Budget Cuts Will Sink Its Fleet, Ground Its Planes

Label: Technology

If automatic Pentagon budget cuts go through as scheduled next week, the Navy is going to grind its major operations practically to a halt. Or at least that’s the message it’s sending on social media. The Navy’s top public-affairs officer, Rear Adm. John Kirby, tweeted out an updated plan Tuesday for how the Navy absorbs billions of dollars in budget cuts scheduled to take effect on March...

Feb

19

Barstool Ski Racing Is the Art of Not Spiffing It

Label: Technology

Barstool racing is, as the name suggests, people racing on barstools. Or milk cans, picnic tables and, a few years ago, a stripper pole. It's pretty much the definition of a weird sport.There are different classes for barstool ski racing, including one for steerable skis and one for non-steerable.The course starts atop "Sugar Hill," named so because of the brothel that used to be atop Central...

Barstool racing is, as the name suggests, people racing on barstools. Or milk cans, picnic tables and, a few years ago, a stripper pole. It's pretty much the definition of a weird sport.
There are different classes for barstool ski racing, including one for steerable skis and one for non-steerable.
The course starts atop "Sugar Hill," named so because of the brothel that used to be atop Central Avenue that attracted the local "Canyon Critters" back in the dam days.
In the "anything goes" open division, anything mounted on a ski or skis is eligible. That includes boats and floats.
The rules strictly state you "must ride the stool sitting down, drinking position, butt on top of the stool."
Like all the best weird sports, drinking is not only condoned, but encouraged.
The whole point of barstool ski racing is to make it to the bottom of Sugar Hill in one piece, as these fellows did after a close race. "This is the most fun we have all winter," said bartender Leslie Fuller.

MARTIN CITY, Montana – Barstool ski racing is, essentially, a competition to see who can go the farthest without spiffing it.

“Spiffing it” is, of course, the technical term for tumbling head over heels from your barstool, something far more likely to happen if you’ve knocked a few back beforehand.

This insightful analysis of a wonderfully weird sport came from Dee Hovila, the cabbie who drove me into town one day last week. She also told me that if I saw a guy who looked like Johnny Depp, it probably was Johnny Depp.

Depp has a vacation home up the road in Whitefish. He may, or may not, have been grand marshal of a parade there recently. Rumor has it that it was his double waving to the crowd. Whatever the case, Depp, and his double, did not make it to the 35th annual Barstool Ski Races.

Their loss.

This town of about 400 people near Glacier National Park has long hosted a sport said to have started 35 years ago at a bar at the Belton Chalet in nearby West Glacier. It started, as the best sports always do, with prodigious quantities of alcohol.

“A couple of skiers came in and tried to talk these old-timers into going out skiing,” said Stacey Schnebel, a local bar owner and volunteer organizer for Cabin Fever Days. “They said, ‘The day you put skis on this barstool is the day I’ll go skiing with you.’”

Challenge accepted, it wasn’t long before the old-timers were sliding down a hill behind the chalet. What started with eight sleds has evolved into a weekend-long competition that draws a few dozen entries. People slip and slide down the hill on barstools, in boats and even atop a stage featuring a live band — playing “Wipeout,” of course.

Stools are relegated to one of two divisions — those you can steer and those you cannot. Everything else goes into the “anything goes” division where, a couple of years ago, a woman in her 40s rode a stripper pole down the hill. That seems fitting, given that contestants race two at a time down “Sugar Hill,” so named because there once was a brothel atop Central Avenue where, the story goes, folks went to get some sugar.

It’s all in fun, which is key, because no one watches barstool racing for the racing.

“It’s kind of like NASCAR,” said barstool racer Brandon Kelvin. “You watch it for the wrecks.”

And the beer. So much beer.

“I promise I’ve only had one beer today,” emcee Kilee Stevens said. “And I’ve had so much fun.”

“It’s more than fun. It’s awesome,” said bartender Leslie Fuller. “This is the most fun we have all winter.”

Photos: Sol Neelman/Wired

Feb

18

Pondering the Point of Snow Bikes While Riding With Wolves

Label: Technology

Three Fat Amigos! The green one is a Surly Krampus and runs an even larger 29r wheel size. The orange and blue are Salsa Mukluks and this is the park bench stop on Adams Gulch in Sun Valley. We reached this in an unusually hard effort, 'cause behind us were the wolves.
Hitting the trail on a bike made for it... provided the trail is wide, the terrain is reasonable and you aren't in a hurry.
Seen through our Rolling Huts cabin window in the Methow Valley, the Mukluk awaits another ride.
Hunter orange is easy to spot on the trail in the snow, and this bike was ridden on Sun Valley's famous single track. Riding on the cross-country trails is not permitted there like at the Methow.
It was about 2 degrees on this ride and layered like that kid in A Christmas Story. Seen here are REI's Winterflyte jacket and tights. Underneath there's an eVent shell and under that Merino wool liners from ibex.
A big, fat tire that grips and doesn't damage the groomed trail. The blue spots on the rim are from the rim strip that's poking out through drilled out holes. Drilling out the rim removes considerable weight. A Fat Bike rim is essentially two MTB rims welded together.
Rode the 9 Zero 7 over hill and dale on groomed trails in the Methow Valley at about 9 mph. Once on a downhill, hit 12, and it's super fun to ride where you normally can't, even if it's at a tourist pace.

KETCHUM, Idaho – Snow bikes are good for hucking about on groomed trails. They are not good for outrunning wolves.This became obvious as a group of us, dressed in garish red Lycra suits and riding black, orange and DayGlo-green bikes with cartoonishly large tires, pedaled frantically through the snow after a trio of wolves caught our scent.The experience made me ponder the point of these bikes, and the questions those building them must answer if snow biking is to catch on. It isn’t as if people often see apex predators when riding. But my encounter with canis lupus highlighted the shortcomings of bikes that are a hell of a lot of fun but struggling to find their place.Snow bikes are, of course, designed to ride over snow. Fat, cushy tires pumped to a whopping 5 PSI keep you from sinking. Garage tinkerers in Alaska and other cold climes have been building them forever, welding mountain bike rims together to double up on tires and fashioning frames to straddle them. The DIY ethos went corporate a few years ago when industry juggernaut Quality Bicycle Products joined the party.Although snow bikes remain one of the most esoteric niches in cycling, they are slowly entering the mainstream. A dozen manufactures are making them, as are independent craft builders. There was a Fat Bike Summit last month, where folks got together to talk about land use and access for the bikes. There are some 10,000 snow bikes in the wild, and that number’s expected to double within a year. And the Iditabike, the famous riff on Alaska’s epic Iditarod dogsled race, begins later this month in Anchorage. Yet as the scene gains participants, especially roadies and mountain bikers who already have a bike or three in the garage, expectations increase. And frankly, snow bikes have a long way to go before they approach the sophistication of a Pivot 5.7, Specialized Stumpjumper, or Jamis Dakar 650b. At this point, the bikes have more in common with beach cruisers than proper mountain bikes.Don’t get me wrong; riding in the snow is a hoot, because, well, you’re riding in snow. But trudging along at less than 10 mph wears thin after 45 minutes. Snow biking feels like a sport that hasn’t figured out what it wants to do yet, much like mountain biking in the days when crazy Californians bombed down Mount Tam on bikes they’d built themselves.It’s one thing to ride groomed trails and quite another to scramble up a single track. Fat tires require fat frames, which lack the handling and agility of modern mountain bikes. The bikes are clumsy and, at about 35 pounds, heavy. Trigger shifters are endlessly frustrating when you’re wearing gloves. And riding an 8-inch single track on a 5-inch tire requires exceptional concentration and balance. Bobble your line and you’re off the trail, half-buried in powder. So you bounce along at little more than walking speed, trying to be smooth and find a flow. It’s best to settle in and enjoy the ride. With so much resistance working against your forward momentum, it’s quite an effort to get anywhere. Before hitting Sun Valley, we rode the Methow Valley. Both resorts are interested in buying fleets of snow bikes to draw well-heeled vacationers to underutilized trails. It’s easy enough to design bikes that roll over groomed snow trails at single-digit speeds, but it isn’t enough to sustain the scene, especially when you consider these machines cost $1,500 to $3,500.Snow bikes will never replace dedicated single-track or cross-country machines, but if the industry wants them to be anything more than a fad, they’ll have to go faster, shift better, ride stiffer and weigh a lot less. We’d like to see dropper seat posts, internal gears and the ability to adjust tire pressure on the fly, to start. People made the same complaints about mountain biking back in the day, and look where the sport’s gone. The same thing could happen to snow biking as another generation of builders and tinkerers pushes this budding sport forward — or falls to the wolves.Photos: DL Byron/WiredcreateSummaryAndThumb("summary7804771776614852959");Read More..

<cite>Halo</cite> Creator Unveils Its Next Masterpiece, a Persistent Online World

Label: Technology

"Citadel": Concept art from Bungie's Destiny.

BELLEVUE, Washington — Destiny, the new game from the creator of Halo, isn’t just another shooter. It’s a persistent online multiplayer adventure, designed on a galactic scale, that wants to become your new life.

“It isn’t a game,” went the oft-heard tagline at a preview event on Wednesday. “It’s a world where the most important stories are told by the players, not written by the developers.”

This week, Bungie Studios invited the press into its Seattle-area studio to get the first look at Destiny. Although the event was a little short on details — Bungie and Activision didn’t reveal the launch date, handed out concept art instead of screenshots, and dodged most of my questions — it gave an intriguing glimpse at what the creator of Halo believes is the future of shooters.

Bungie was acquired by Microsoft in 2000, and its insanely popular shooter was the killer app that put the original Xbox on the map. Bungie split off from its corporate parent in 2007, and Microsoft produced Halo 4 on its own last year. The development studio partnered up with mega-publisher Activision for its latest project, which was kept mostly secret until now.

Destiny, slated for release on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, isn’t exactly an MMO. Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg called it a “shared-world shooter” — multiplayer and online, but something less than massive.

“We’re not doing this just because we have the tech,” Hirshberg said. “We have a great idea, and we’re letting the concept lead the tech.”

Built with new development software created specifically for Destiny, this new game is set in Earth’s solar system and takes place after a mysterious cataclysm wipes out most of humanity. The remaining survivors create a “safe zone” underneath a mysterious alien sphere called “The Traveler.”

The enigmatic sphere imparts players with potent weapons, magic-like powers and defensive technology. Thanks to these gifts, people have begun reclaiming the solar system from alien invaders that moved in while humanity was down.

Bungie fired off a list of design principles that guide Destiny’s creation: Create a world players want to be in. Make it enjoyable by players of all skill levels. Make it enjoyable by people who are “tired, impatient and distracted.” In other words, you don’t have to be loaded for bear and pumped for the firefight of your life every time you log on to Destiny.

After this brief overview, writer/director Joseph Staten used concept art and narration to outline an example of what a typical Destiny player’s experience might be.

Beginning in the “safe zone,” a player would start out from their in-game home and walk into a large common area. From here, the player would be able to explore their surroundings and meet up with friends. Then, they might board their starships and fly to another planet, let’s say Mars, in order to raid territory held by aliens.

During this raid, other real players who traveled to the same zone (like visiting a particular server on an MMO) would be free to come and go as they please. For example, a random participant could simply walk on by. They could stop and observe. Or they could get involved in the fight. In this instance, Staten suggested that a passerby would join the raid and then break off from the group after the spoils were divvied up without any user interface elements to fuss with. Walk away, and it’s done.

Bungie made a point of saying several times over that Destiny will not have any “lobby”-type interfaces, or menus from which to choose from a list of quests. Instead, players will simply immerse themselves in the world and organically choose to participate in whatever activities they stumble upon. Bungie promised solo content, cooperative content, and competitive content, though it provided no further examples of these.

The developer said that by employing very specialized artificial intelligence working entirely behind the scenes, players will encounter other real players who are best suited for them to interact with, based on their experience levels and other factors.

Staten didn’t say how many players would be able to exist in the world at the same time, but said that characters will be placed in proximity to each other based on very specific criteria, not simply to “fill the world up.”

Bungie showed off three distinct character classes throughout the day’s presentations: Hunter, Titan and Warlock. Although no differences were outlined between them apart from the Warlock being able to use a kind of techno-magic, the developer was keen to emphasize the idea that each character in Destiny would be highly customized and unique, and will grow with the player over an extended period of time.

While many games make the same promise, Destiny’s vision of “an extended period of time” isn’t 100 hours. It’s more like 10 years.

Bungie’s plan is for the Destiny story to unfold gradually over the course of 10 “books,” each with a beginning, middle and end. Through this will run an overarching story intended to span the entire decade’s worth of games, although like many other topics covered during the day, Bungie gave little detail about how this will work.

The developer spent a lot of time emphasizing its claim that no game has been made at this scale before. Bungie says it has a whopping 350 in-house developers working on Destiny.

Senior graphics architect Hao Chen gave examples of the sort of impenetrable mathematics formulas that allow Bungie to craft environments and worlds at a speed that it claims was previously impossible.

Bungie’s malleable team system was also said to increase its output. With the ability to co-locate designers, artists, and engineers at any time, Bungie says it can go through exceptionally rapid on-the-spot iteration and improvement for each facet of the game.

Apart from highly improved technology and the basic concept of humanity taking back the solar system, there’s just not a lot of hard information on Destiny at the moment. One thing that was made quite clear is that the game will not be subscription-based. Every presenter was clear in stating that players will not pay a monthly fee to participate in this persistent world.

While fees may not be required, a constant connection to the Internet will be. Since the core concept of Destiny is exploring a world that exists outside of the player’s console and is populated by real people at all times, it “will need to be connected in order for someone to play,” said Bungie chief operating officer Pete Parsons.

Representatives from both Bungie and Activision gave vague answers when Wired pressed for further details, often stating that they “were not ready” to discuss specifics. Whether that means those things are still being kept from the press, or whether they have not yet been determined by the development team, was unclear.

Questions currently unanswered: How will players communicate? How will players interact with each other outside of combat? What content exists in the non-combat “safe zones”? Subscriptions may be out, but what about in-app purchases? Will player versus player combat be available? Will the game ship on a disc or be download only? Will its persistent world allow Xbox and PlayStation gamers to play together? What content and interactions will be possible via smartphones and tablets (which Bungie alluded to)? Will the fancy new tools be licensed to other developers?

And so on.

For now, Bungie is asking us to take it for granted that it will execute on a bold 10-year plan for a very different sort of shooter. In the history of the always-changing gaming industry, no one’s ever been able to pull off a 10-year plan for anything. Can Bungie do it?

Hey… they made Halo, right?

Feb

16

The Quirky World of Competitive Snow Carving Comes to California

Label: Technology

Team Truckee entered the competition late, after Team Russia was unable to get visas in time. Their sculpture: "Rising Tide."The weekend at Northstar ski resort in Truckee, California, is beautiful, sunny, and in the 30s. For eight teams of snow carvers from around the world, though, it’s terrible — the melty snow is sloppy, hard to carve, and even dangerous.Teams of three from Finland, Japan,...

Feb

15

Preparing for War, Valve Launches Steam for Linux

Label: Technology

Valve’s gaming service Steam is now available for Linux users, the company said this week.To celebrate the launch, Valve is selling 57 Linux-compatible games at bargain prices, with prices slashed by 50 or 75 percent. Games on sale include classic Valve titles like Half-Life and Counter-Strike: Source, as well as newer games including Bastion and FTL: Faster Than Light....

Feb

14

Think One Fewer Browser Means Less Work? Think Again

Label: Technology

Opera software is abandoning its homegrown rendering engine in favor of the open source WebKit rendering engine. Many developers seem to think this means one fewer browser to test in, but unfortunately, that’s not the case.The problem with the dream of less testing because there’s more WebKit is that “WebKit” can mean many things. The WebKit in Safari does...

Feb

13

Navy: No New Weapons System on Our Future Carrier-Based Drone

Label: Technology

The admiral in charge of the Navy’s drone development says there will be “no new weapons development program” for the drone the Navy wants to operate on an aircraft carrier. Rear Adm. Matthias Winter told a drone-industry conference on Wednesday that the Navy isn’t going to design any new weapons for its future Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System, or UCLASS. The...

Feb

12

Here's How Geology Shows North Korea's Nukes Are Getting Bigger

Label: Technology

You don’t want to be woken up by a magnitude 5.1 earthquake under any circumstances. But you really don’t want to be woken up by one that indicates North Korea’s just tested a nuclear weapon. Especially this one, since it means North Korea’s nukes are getting larger. North Korea’s third nuclear test, conducted overnight while much of the United States slept, follows a pattern set by its first...

Feb

11

Catch a Nostalgic Glimpse of Geocities on Tumblr

Label: Technology

The digital remnants of the long since deleted world of Geocities are slowly being reborn, page by page, on Tumblr.One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age may be the best Tumblr blog we’ve seen, posting screenshots of old Geocities pages for a nostalgic look at the early web, back when everything was “Under Construction.”For a brief time in the early ’90s Geocities...

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