Tag: World

Categories
Tech Radar

Building an adaptable, intelligent world: a Q&A with Xilinx


Demand for live video streaming has skyrocketed during the pandemic with more events, classes, and meetings being conducted online than ever before. This has made things difficult for video service providers who have seen bandwidth costs increase as they try to deliver high-quality video streaming services to their users.

To learn more about how Xilinx’s new real-time video server appliances can help ease this burden and the company’s first 20nm space-grade FPGA, TechRadar Pro spoke to the company’s director of video product marketing Aaron Behman and its space systems architect Minal Sawant. Read More

Categories
Cool Things

Jurassic World Epic Roarin’ Tyrannosaurus Rex


We have no idea whether we’ll love or hate the upcoming Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous animated series on Netflix. We’ll pass our collective judgment on that when it drops sometime in September. What we do know is, they seem to have their merchandise game on point as evidenced by this awesome Jurassic World Epic Roarin’ Tyrannosaurus Rex from Mattel.

From what we can find, this T-rex is supposed to be one of the rampaging dinos wreaking havoc on a summer camp for kids on the other side of the island theme park. Will it eat kids? Probably not. Will it kill them? Probably not. It will, however, come close to doing both of those multiple times, all while inflicting plenty of property damage and creating all-out panic the way only rampaging dinosaurs could. Read More

Categories
The Verge

‘League of Legends’ world championship will be held in Shanghai starting in September


Even though many esports tournaments this year have been postponed or canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, Riot Games announced that it will hold the League of Legends World Championship 2020 in Shanghai from September 25th to October 31st. The finals will be held in Pudong Soccer Stadium. The company says by hosting the event at one site rather than several different sites, they’ll be able to more closely control the show environment.

At present the plans call for early stages of the tournament to have no in-person audiences. The company says it will rely on “local guidelines” to decide whether to allow an in-person audience for the finals. If so, details about tickets and any safety measures that need to be applied will be available later this summer. Read More

Categories
VentureBeat

For World of Darkness, the future of tabletop RPGs is increasingly digital


The early-’90s, in all of its grunge-soaked glory, saw vampires and werewolves roam the night while humanity became part of a herd to be culled and controlled. A World of Darkness had been born in shadow and masquerade. With the birth of the first editions of Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse tabletop role-playing games, White Wolf Publishing had crafted a gritty, cloistered realm where playing with monsters wasn’t just encouraged — it was the whole purpose.

Monsters need management, however. Throughout the early-aughts and into the 2010s, White Wolf was in dire need of restructuring and solvency. CCP Games stepped in for a time — there was even an MMO in the works — but the partnership ultimately faltered. In 2015, Paradox Interactive, which had started to branch out from its grand strategy PC gaming roots more and more by that point, acquired White Wolf Publishing from CCP Games. Read More

Categories
Tech Radar

Games of the Generation: Stardew Valley is a welcome break from the chaos of the world


Games of the Generation

As we approach the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X, TechRadar is looking back at the games that made this generation great. This week’s entry? Stardew Valley.

Have you ever just wanted to leave your busy city life behind and move to a small, country town? No more Starbucks queues. No being sardined onto the subway. Just you, the clean country air and locals who don’t wither when you accidentally make eye contact.

It’s a dream typically reserved for Hallmark films, dripping in cliché and usually fronted by some city slicker who learns to love their hometown roots. But somehow Eric Barone’s Stardew Valley pulls it off. Read More

Categories
VentureBeat

Foresight’s AI-powered wearable helps low-vision users feel the world


Vision is arguably the most important of the five basic senses, providing most people with the ability to navigate through the world — but there are 285 million visually impaired people worldwide who need assistance to augment their sight. In some cases, the best solution might be a large vision-boosting headset, but a less conspicuous haptic wearable might be a great primary or secondary choice. That’s where Foresight’s new AI-powered navigation aid comes in.

Developed by a team of Harvard students, Foresight places soft robotic actuators inside a device that’s worn like a vest, turning camera input from a smartphone into localized sensations of force across the wearer’s torso. Using a custom version of the computer vision AI system YOLO, Foresight detects, classifies, and estimates the movement of objects surrounding the user, then uses the actuators to apply more or less pressure at various points depending on the user’s distance from those objects. Even without vision, a user could distinguish between a mostly open path ahead, a wall to the left, and a person approaching from the front. Read More

Categories
VentureBeat

Shadowlands looks to move World of Warcraft forward by learning from its past


World of Warcraft is gearing up for its next expansion, Shadowlands. After a lukewarm response from many players toward Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands is looking to rebuild some goodwill between Blizzard Entertainment and its community.

Part of this involves looking at what exactly it is that so many disliked about Battle for Azeroth, which included complaints about unpolished experiences like Island Expeditions and Warfronts, a restrictive and annoying system of acquiring abilities through gear, and the difficulty of playing as more than one character for endgame content. Read More

Categories
Mashable

‘The Speed Cubers’ takes on the world of competitive Rubik’s Cube solving

Speedcubing is the sport of solving a classic Rubik’s Cube — or a related combination puzzle — in the shortest amount of time possible. And, no, it is not for the faint of heart.

The new Netflix documentary on this subject, The Speed Cubers, dives headfirst into the friendly but competitive speedcubing culture. The 40-minute film is one of three new documentary shorts debuting on Netflix this summer. (The others are The Claudia Kishi Club, which premiered following the release of The Baby-Sitters Club series,and John Was Trying to Contact Aliens, whicharrives Aug. 20.) Read More

Categories
Tech Radar

This 55-inch TV is probably the cheapest large format display in the world


55-inch Spectre U550CV-U TV – $249.99 (roughly £200)
Whether you plan to use it as a large format screen or a CCTV monitor, you’ll find the Spectre U550CV-U hard to beat. Nothing rivals its whopping 55-inch viewable area at this price and, with four external video connectors, it will cater to most mainstream use cases.View Deal

Spectre is a popular US-based company that specializes in display solutions, primarily for the consumer market. Over more than 35 years in the business, it has carved out an enviable niche as a budget player with keen pricing. Read More

Categories
The Next Web

Has Jeff Bezos ended world hunger? Twitter account skewers Amazon chief’s absurd $178B fortune


Amazon baldking Jeff Bezos added $13 billion to his net worth earlier this week, quite simply a stupid amount of wealth for just one person to acquire in one day — billionaire chief exec or otherwise.

And so, one Twitter account is hilariously posing a very poignant question: has Jeff Bezos decided to end world hunger?

@HasBezosDecided’s bio cites a report from the Institute of Food Policy Research Institute that found that solving world hunger by 2030 would cost $11 billion in extra spending each year. Read More