Day: January 4, 2017

Amazon gets to play full-time Santa Claus by delivering almost any imaginable item to customers around the world. But the tech giant does not have a magical sleigh pulled by flying reindeer to carry out its delivery orders. Instead, a recent Amazon patent has revealed the breathtaking idea of using giant airships as flying warehouses that could deploy swarms of delivery drones to customers below.
Many patent filings related to new technology often indulge in fantastical flights of fancy.

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When it comes to shopping, many of us have already made the migration towards online shopping. It is a no-brainer actually — there is no need to fight for parking, and neither do you get lost from trying to look for your vehicle after a particularly long and difficult shopping session. Not only that, you save more money in terms of parking and gas. Well, for those of us who still love to have the touch and feel of a standard grocery store, how about checking out the Dash robotic shopping cart from Five Elements Robotics?

With the Dash robotic shopping cart, the future of shopping is definitely at your fingertips! Specially designed to cater for the frustrated shopper, all that you need to do is to walk up to Dash, transfer your shopping list from your phone, or even come up with one on the fly via the store search feature, and then allow the robot to map out the most effective route to the rest of your items. Of course, I do not expect the kind of artificial intelligence that it has to be able to figure out which aisles are the busier ones at the moment, and if it could, it would be downright uncanny — scary, even.

Dash will come with a scanner and payment system, allowing the customer to scan and pay for their items right at the cart itself. Yes, you read that right, there is no longer any more need to wait in line. Once you are done paying for the items, the cart will then follow you to your vehicle of choice so that you can unload the week’s groceries and purchases there. When emptied, the cart will make its way back to the store and docking station for recharging as well as pick up from a new customer, while you simply make your way home. No longer will there be shopping carts littered all over the parking lots in a haphazard manner. Expect the Dash robotic shopping carts to hit stores this 2017.

Press Release
[ Five Elements Robotics reveals Dash, the robotic shopping cart copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

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ZOTAC plans to demonstrate a prototype of its external GPU enclosure at CES this week. The eGFX chassis from ZOTAC will target notebooks, AIO and SFF PCs with Thunderbolt 3 interface, will integrate a 400 W power supply and provide additional USB ports. The device will hit the market several months from now and its final specifications are still to be determined.

ZOTAC is the sixth company to announce an eGFX enclosure with Thunderbolt 3 interface, so the market of such devices seems to be getting crowded (and we expect several more companies to introduce their eGFX solutions too). Apart from ultra-thin laptops with a TB3 port (and support of eGFX through BIOS and TB3 firmware), the usual target market for this kind of devices, ZOTAC is going to position its external GPU chassis as a solution to upgrade its upcoming SFF ZBOX PCs featuring Thunderbolt 3 interface with high-end external graphics cards.

At present, ZOTAC’s external graphics dock (the company does not have a brand for this product just yet, so it uses a neutral name for now) is still in development, which is why the manufacturer shares only the basic details about this device. Just like competing eGFX boxes, ZOTAC’s chassis will feature one Thunderbolt 3 port (40 Gbps) outside and one PCIe x16 electrical slot inside (operating in PCIe x4 mode, of course). As for power, it will integrate a 400 W PSU in a standard form-factor (it is unclear whether we are dealing with a shortened ATX or an SFX PSU here) that will power the video card inside. As Thunderbolt 3 can transfer up to 100 W of power, the same PSU could also power a notebook or even a miniature PC. The enclosure looks spacy enough for additional fans, but ZOTAC does not say how many of them will be pre-installed in the final product. In any case, a 400 W PSU and an additional cooler are going to provide certain potential for GPU overclocking for those who need it.

ZOTAC eGFX Chassis Preliminary Specifications
Max Video Card Size		Double-Wide, 12.2" Long (312 × 170 × 44 mm)
Max Video Card Power		over 300 W
Connectivity		1 × Thunderbolt 3 (~40 Gbps via active cable)
Chassis Size		Unknown for now, but enough to accomodate a FLFH graphics card
Internal PSU		400 W (80 Plus Gold?)
Cooling		Integrated fans GPU cooling system
Extras		3 × USB 3.0 ports 1 × USB 3.0 port with Quick Charge
System Requirements		Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Certified PC Thunderbolt 3 w/Active Cable (included) Windows 10
Compatible Graphics Cads		AMD Radeon RX-series and later NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10-series and later
Shipping Date		Q2 2017
Price		Unknown

Since many ultra-thin notebooks as well as miniature PCs do not have a lot of spare USB 3.0 ports, ZOTAC’s dock will offer four additional USB 3.0 headers (with one port supporting Quick Charge 3.0). For now, ZOTAC’s dock does not support internal SATA connector for an extra 2.5” storage device (which might be needed to store games, as many PCs do not have capacious SSDs), but remember that the eGFX chassis is still in development.

At CES, ZOTAC plans to demonstrate its external graphics dock in action, therefore, things like electronics and firmware of the product are ready and everything works. The final product may be a little bit different than the one showcased at the trade show, but not radically (it may get LED lighting, grill instead of glass on the side, etc.).

Comparison of Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Chassis
Â	Â	ASUS ROG XG Station 2	AKiTiO Node	PowerColor Devil Box	Razer Core	ZOTAC eGFX Dock
Chassis Dimensions	Length	45.6 cm 17.95 in	42.8 cm 16.85 in	40 cm 15.748 in	34 cm 13.38 in	unknown
	Height	27.8 cm 10.94 in	22.7 cm 8.94 in	24.2 cm 9.52 in	21.84 cm 8.6 in
	Width	15.8 cm 6.22 in	14.5 cm 5.71 in	17.2 cm 6.77 in	10.5 cm 4.13 in
Max Dimension of Compatible Graphics Card	Length	31.2 cm 12.2 in
	Height (PCB+Cables)	over 14 cm over 5.51"	17 cm 6.7 in	14 cm 5.51 in	15.2 cm 5.98 in	14 cm (?) 5.51 in (?)
	Width	4.4 cm 1.73 in		5 1.96 in	4.4 cm 1.73 in	4.4 cm 1.73 in
Maximum GPU Power		500 W (?)	300 W (?)	375 W		300+ W (?)
PSU	Wattage	600 W	400 W	500 W		400 W
	Form-Factor	internal proprietary	SFX	internal proprietary		internal
Cooling Fans (mm)		3 × 80	120	unknown	3 × 80	present
Connectivity	Thunderbolt	1 × TB3	1 × TB3	1 × TB3
	Ethernet	1 × GbE	–	1 × GbE		–
	USB	4 × USB 3.0 1 × USB-B	–	4 × USB 3.0		4 × USB 3.0
	SATA	1×SATA 6Gb/s	–	1×SATA 6Gb/s	–
	DisplayPort	–	–	–
Availability		1/2017	12/2016	10/2016	4/2016	Q2 2017
Price		$?	$299	$379	$499	$?

At present, ZOTAC’s eGFX chassis is a work in progress and at least some of its specifications have not been finalized, which is why the company cannot announce its pricing. Right now, the manufacturer targets Q2 as the launch timeframe, so, we will have to wait a little bit for both the final specs and MSPR.

Related Reading:

• ZOTAC Announces GeForce GTX 1080 for Mini-ITX PCs
• ZOTAC Launches GeForce GTX 1070 Mini for Mini-ITX PCs
• ASUS ROG XG Station 2 eGFX Enclosure with Thunderbolt 3 Launched
• AKiTiO Introduces Node: Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Box for $299
• PowerColor Announces Devil Box: Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Enclosure
• Razer Core Thunderbolt 3 eGFX Chassis: $499/$399, AMD & NVIDIA, Shipping In April
• More on AMD’s XConnect Tech: Thunderbolt 3 for External Radeons

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Check out this amazing paper airplane machine gun that can fire 120 airplanes per minute!

Impressive, isn’t it?

[Papierfliegerei]

The post This Airplane Gun Can Fire 120 Paper Airplanes Per Minute! appeared first on Geeks are Sexy Technology News.

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Tiny Heist, by Terry Cavanagh (VVVVVV, Super Hexagon) is a simple but addictive little stealth game which takes some of the genre’s most established ideas and whittles them down into what feels like Metal Gear vs Pac-Man.

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Sometimes you’ll find yourself out of the house, with nothing but a laptop and a whole lot of time. And while laptops are getting more and more powerful, most are still low-spec machines when it comes to gaming.

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There’s a lot to love about Titanfall 2, but one of the best things is the design of the game’s mechs. And while we wait for expensive action figures to hit, we can pass the time with these awesome LEGO models built by Marius Herrmann.

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