Day: January 6, 2020

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New Gaming PC Comes With Built-In Xbox One or PS4

https://kotaku.com/new-gaming-pc-comes-with-built-in-xbox-one-or-ps4-1840832690

PC gaming or console gaming? Why not both? Today at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, custom system builder Origin PC launched the Big O, a gaming rig that starts at $2,500 and comes with your choice of Xbox One S or PlayStation 4 Pro built into the case.

Originally conceived as a gaming PC with all three current-generation consoles built in, Origin PC trimmed back its original concept for a multi-system Big O computer into something much more sellable. Rather than three consoles, customers can choose between either a PlayStation 4 Pro or an all-digital Xbox One S. The console hardware is housed within a custom Corsair Crystal Series 280X chassis sporting a dual-chambered design.

Rather than just tucking the console into the case’s second chamber and calling it a day, the folks at Origin OC have integrated the PS4 and Xbox One hardware into the machine. Both game console and gaming PC are serviced by the same water cooling system. If you look at the backside of the system, it’s clear the console hardware was taken apart and put back together to fit Origin’s design.

The PC specs aren’t too shabby, either. The Big O can be configured with up to an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X or Intel i9-9900K CPU with a Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080 Ti video card and up to 32GB of RAM. Optional upgrades include SSD storage upgrades for the consoles and an internal video capture card so footage from the console can be captured on the PC for video sharing and streaming.

This is a PC that could come in very handy in my particular line of work. The only downside is the timing. There are new Xbox and PlayStation consoles due out this year. I don’t know if I’m keen on spending several thousand dollars for a system containing a console that’s soon to be phased out. I might have to wait for an even bigger O.

via Kotaku https://kotaku.com

January 6, 2020 at 12:03PM

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Valuable Information: Adding Milk To Coke Can Render It Transparent

https://geekologie.com/2020/01/valuable-information-adding-milk-to-coke.php

clear-coke-experiment.jpg
This is an ASMR (read: tingly brain boner) video of a man experimenting to determine what the proper milk to Coke ratio is for the milk proteins to bond to whatever the hell gives Coke its color (caramel? I actually have no clue what the hell I’m talking about here I’m not a food biologist) and render the Coke transparent after 24 hours, and undrinkable instantaneously. Fascinating.
Keep going for the video while I speculate if Coke just comes up with stuff like this to get people to buy more Coke so they can try it. I know they invented the whole Mentos thing.

Thanks to Josie, who agrees there’s probably a reason Coke hasn’t release a milk flavor of its cola.

via Geekologie – Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome https://geekologie.com/

January 6, 2020 at 12:01PM

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Samsung will sell its rotating Sero TV outside of Korea

https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/05/samsung-sero-tv-landscape-portrait-us/

Back in April, Samsung announced a rotating TV called ‘The Sero.’ Like Microsoft’s Surface Hub 2, the screen can swivel between a conventional landscape setup and portrait orientation that’s optimized for smartphone-centric content like Snapchat, Instagram Stories and TikToks. Samsung launched the 4K display in Korea for 1.89 million won (roughly $1,630) last May. But what about the West? Well, the company announced today that the same attention-grabbing design is coming to "several global markets" this year.

According to Samsung, The Sero is designed "for the mobile generation." (Read: millennials.) The TV connects to your phone over NFC and will mirror almost anything — videos, games, social networks and e-commerce sites — that you would normally consume on a smaller screen. If you own a Galaxy smartphone, The Sero will swivel automatically to match the orientiation of the content. It’s a neat party trick that should keep black bars to a minimum. I do wonder how the system will cope, though, if you start flicking through a photo album full of landscape and portrait shots.

Samsung Sero TV

The Sero can be used like a conventional TV, of course. It’s a 43-inch panel — no word on the resolution, but we assume it’s 4K — with 4.1 channel, 60-watt speakers and a microphone-enabled remote that supports Bixby (yes, Samsung is still pushing Bixby.) The set is being positioned as the third part of Samsung’s design-centric Frame and Serif TV family. It’s also part of a broader push to attract younger customers with eye-catching designs. Seven months ago, for instance, the company unveiled Project PRISM, a range of customizable appliances that include colorful refrigerators.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

January 5, 2020 at 08:51PM

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New lithium-sulfur battery could let phones last five days between charges

https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/06/lithium-sulfur-battery-powers-phones-for-five-days/

Lithium-sulfur batteries have been in the news for years, but a new design might be worth your notice. Monash University researchers have crafted what they claim is the most efficient lithium-sulfur battery to date. An appropriately-sized unit reportedly has enough of a charge to run your smartphone for five days, while a car-sized pack could theoretically keep an EV driving for more than 621 miles. It has a reduced environmental impact and an "extremely low-cost" manufacturing process, too.

The key was to rework the particle bonds in sulfur cathodes to help them handle higher loads without decreases in capacity, performance or stability. The technique was derived from the bridging architectures you see in processing detergent powders, the university said.

The challenge is to get the battery to production. Many researchers have touted battery breakthroughs that never seem to reach shipping products. There’s a lot of work involved in bringing batteries to market, whether it’s refining the design or finding a way to produce it in large volumes, and many of these inventions either don’t escape the lab or are stuck there for years.

The Monash team may be closer than most to offering a practical product, mind you. Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute has already produced test batteries, and scientists plan to test the design in cars and solar power grids in Australia later in 2020. They’ve also received a patent for the invention. It could still take a long time before the tech reaches the real world. If and when it does, though, it could not only reduce battery hassles for mobile devices, but make it easier to justify EVs for those wary of range limits and long-term environmental costs.

Source: Monash University

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

January 6, 2020 at 04:33AM

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Bosch creates a sun visor that automatically blocks the sun

https://www.autoblog.com/2020/01/05/ai-auto-dimming-sun-visor-bosch-ces/

German supplier Bosch traveled to CES 2020 to introduce an artificial intelligence-powered sun visor called Virtual Visor. It’s a major update to a part that has barely evolved in the history of the car.

The Virtual Visor takes the form of a rectangle that swings down from the headliner to block sunlight, but the similarities between it and the sun visor in your daily driver stop there. It’s a transparent LCD screen that uses an occupant-monitoring camera to track shadows across the front passengers’ faces. Artificial intelligence then identifies facial features, like the nose, the ears, and the mouth, and uses this information to tint only the parts of the visor through which sunlight hits the passenger’s eyes, creating a shadow that looks like a robotic Venetian mask. The rest stays transparent.

While this innovation sounds relatively minor compared to the massive changes sweeping across the automotive industry, Bosch predicted it will have a major effect on safety, especially at dawn and at dusk. The company’s research found the sun’s glare causes nearly twice as many accidents as other weather-related conditions, and statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) back up that assertion. The agency annually blames thousands of accidents on the sun.

Interestingly, Bosch didn’t begin the project by throwing millions of development dollars at it. The supplier explained the idea came from three forward-thinking powertrain engineers who built the original prototype with an LCD screen they found in a trash bin. Executives liked what they saw, so they gave the group the proverbial green light, and much-needed resources. While the Virtual Visor is still at the concept stage, and its implementation in a production car depends on automakers, Bosch told Autoblog it’s talking with manufacturers about bringing the technology to production.

via Autoblog https://ift.tt/1afPJWx

January 5, 2020 at 07:02PM