Attendees & panelists at the Alabama Phoenix Festival count down the Top 10 Sci-Fi “Yo Mama!†jokes.
[Via YouTube]
From Engadget: Noctua’s noise-canceling PC fan gets tested, drops twenty decibels
Having trouble tuning out the hum of your PC fans? Maybe it’s time you took another look at Noctua’s NF-F12 integrated noise cancellation fan. According to the firm, the Computex prototype kept things about 20dB quieter by utilizing a patented RotoSub ANC technology to emit anti-noise directly from the fan’s own blades. Noctura hopes to dampen the cooler’s 2,500 RPM hum to the overall noise level of a slower 1,500 RPM fan. Builders looking to piece together a quieter machine can look for the noise reducing cooler an the latter half of 2013. Your old fan? Well, you could always use as a makeshift turntable. Hit the break for a peek at a more silent tomorrow.
from Engadget
From Ars Technica: $422,000 to stream a movie? The continued “success” of phone cramming
If you were watching Mulholland Drive on your phone, it probably wasn’t through Streaming Flix.
Aurich Lawson
From July 2009 until December 2010, a Minneapolis-based company called Streaming Flix allegedly hit on a hugely profitable business model—slapping steep monthly fees for its online movie service on the phone bills of 253,269 customers. In total, $9.7 million was billed in that year and a half. How many movies did Americans watch after spending all that cash? 23.
That’s no typo—and it means an average of $422,000 was spent each time someone streamed a film. It also suggests that 99.99 percent of the people paying monthly fees for the service weren’t using it.
Perhaps that’s why the very first Google hit for “Streaming Flix” points to a question from one Barbara G. She wants to know what the company is and why “I am being billed for it with my AT&T bill but did not sign up for it?” The situation grew so bad that the FBI opened a probe of Streaming Flix and its related companies. In December 2010, the Bureau asked the public to send in complaints about the company.
from Ars Technica
From Ars Technica: Valve’s Source engine to power upcoming animated film
Valve’s Source engine will make its big screen debut in a movie called Deep, Variety reported on Saturday. The small-budget animated movie will use Valve’s engine as a low-cost solution for real-time rendering and editing, an unusual approach that may grow in popularity for smaller studios. The partnership between the developer and the film production team may also result in the release of the movie on Steam.
The Source engine debuted in 2004, and has powered games including Counter Strike: Source, Half Life 2, and the Portal series. Valve has a working relationship with production studio Brown Bag Films, according to Kotaku, and agreed to license the engine for Deep. The animated film is set in the post-apocalyptic landscape of World War III, where the remainder of mankind huddles in abandoned ship hulls and struggles to survive.
Deep has a budget of €15 million ($18.7 million)—sizeable by European standards, but small by American ones. Companies like Pixar spend well into the hundreds of millions on their 3D animated films. By using Source, Deep may well be one of the first feature film instances of beginning-to-end machinima, a type of animation that involves using game engines to animate (usually short) movies. Red vs. Blue is the canonical example of machinima, and the style was used throughout the World of Warcraft-themed South Park episode, “Make Love Not Warcraft.”
from Ars Technica
From Geeks are Sexy Technology News: John Deere Robotic Lawnmower is Quiet & Durable
While I’m wishing it was a more like a Roomba instead — my apartment is so dirty! — this robotic John Deere lawnmower is pretty darn clever. And sorta cute.
[Via HiConsumption]
From Engadget: Open-mesh PC case keeps heat, dust bunnies at bay
If you haven’t done it in a while, opening your PC case can be like a slasher flick — you know you’ll see something disgusting, but you’re never sure what. Taiwan’s YoungYear Electronics claims to stop the horror with its Green Mesh case, which has neither fans to suck dust, nor filters, and keeps your components cool with a “chimney effect” instead. It’s this same action that repels dust out the top, so that only one quarter the usual amount of filth is drawn in — according to the company. The only downside is that with poor heat dissipation, the maximum power supply unit size is 300 watts — which probably scratches it off the list for most modders or power-users. For the rest, if you don’t mind your computer’s innards blowing in the breeze, at least you’d have no nasty case-opening frights.
from Engadget
From Gizmodo: Watch This Badass Train Smash and Destroy Snow Like a Boss
If you’re a YouTube connoisseur, you’ve probably already seen a train plow through snow before. But that’s because a giganto snow plow is attached to the front of the locomotive—those trains were meant to kill and plow snow. This train? It’s just a regular train. And it’s freaking badass. More »
from Gizmodo