VAIO’s new laptops look a lot like the old ones

Sony stopped selling laptops two years ago, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the latest VAIOs. Though the company’s PC line has new ownership, the machines’ design and even naming convention remain the same as when Sony was in charge. Case in point: The VAIO Z and S, both of which are arriving in the US soon, and which attempt to fill the holes left by Sony’s earlier VAIO Z and S laptops. As ever, the Z is a halo product, one that puts an emphasis on both thinness and performance. All told, it weighs just 2.9 pounds — not bad considering it packs both a 13-inch 2,560 x 1,440 touchscreen and a 28-watt Core i5 or i7 processor.

Unlike other modern Windows 10 machines, which use a 360-degree hinge to flip the touchscreen back into tablet mode, the Z has a release that allows the screen to flip over the underlying panel — a design we first saw on Sony’s VAIO Flip series from three years ago. To accommodate that hinge, touchscreen and heavier-duty processor inside such a svelte frame, VAIO used a custom, shrunken-down motherboard that makes room for a bigger battery and fans. Speaking of the sort, the Z is said to last 11.5 hours on a charge. It also makes room for 8GB or 16GB of RAM and either a 256GB or 512GB SSD.

On the outside, the design looks quite familiar, with a monochrome aluminum chassis, carbon fiber bottom and a keyboard layout that looks a lot like what Sony used to offer. The designers used Sony’s own audio technology too. Heck, even the signature metal VAIO logo and glowing green, side-mounted power button are the same. This time, though, the keyboard has an anti-smudge coating, and the touchpad is crafted from a tough mica stone. The screen also supports pen input, with the same pressure-sensitive pen used on VAIO’s “Canvas” Surface Pro competitor.

The Z series will arrive in the US in early February starting at $1,799 with a Core i5 processor. There will also be a lighter, 2.58-pound variant that makes do with a lower-res, 1080p non-touch panel. In exchange, you get not just a lighter design and lower price, but longer battery life: 15.5 hours. Other than that, the internals are the same, as is the design. That version starts at $1,499.

The S series, meanwhile, remains what it always was: more of a mainstream machine, at a more affordable price. Starting at $1,099, you get a 13-inch, Full HD screen, 15-watt Core i-series processors, nine-hour battery, 8GB of RAM, up to a 256GB PCIe SSD and a lot of ports. So many ports. The list includes three USB 3.0 connections, HDMI-out and even RGB. If that’s your thing, the S series will arrive here in the states in early March, about a month after the higher-end Z.

ICYMI: UAV for land and sea, Boeing’s super rocket and more

Today on In Case You Missed It: The Drones For Good competition turned out a dual-purpose drone submission for use in search and rescue operations. The Loon Copter can both fly through the air and dive underwater — a useful trait for evading other bad guy drones in any upcoming spy movies, we’re certain.

Boeing is making progress on what will be most world’s most powerful rocket. It’s building the Space Launch System for NASA with the eventual goal of it bringing astronauts to Mars.

Evil little firestarters are going to have a harder time burning down their house if the new Plumis Automist fire sprinkler system gains popularity. It can detect hot spots with an infrared camera and targets any fires with a fine water mist. No word on what happens to the wildin’ out home chefs with kitchen torches for their special crème brûlée. But we’ll hope for the best.

Finally we had some fun with the Face Swap Live app and hope you do, too. Please share any interesting science or tech videos, anytime! Just tweet us with the #ICYMI hashtag to @mskerryd.

Lyft will pay $12.25 million to settle drivers’ lawsuit in CA

One company is done battling a gig economy-related lawsuit, at least in California. Lyft has agreed to grant its drivers more workplace protection and to pay $12.5 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit. The California drivers who filed the lawsuit against the company wanted to be reclassified as employees in order to receive minimum wage and benefits, as well as to get Lyft to pay for their gas and vehicle maintenance. While they’ve unfortunately failed to get their status changed — they’re still considered contractors — drivers in the state will get part of the settlement fund based on the hours they’ve put into working for the company.

Lyft also can’t drop drivers whenever it wants. The company can only terminate someone based on a number of predetermined reasons, such as low passenger ratings. Even then, the driver will be given the chance to air their side of the story. Finally, drivers who consistently get high ratings and who passengers pinpoint as their favorites will be rewarded with bonuses.

Jackdaw Research chief analyst Jan Dawson told Reuters that while Lyft is losing millions, it still got off “fairly lightly.” Reclassifying drivers as employees, he said, would have cost the company much, much more. Uber wasn’t able to prevent a similar case from becoming a full-fledged class action lawsuit, but this proves it’s possible to settle with the plaintiffs without changing how the company operates.

[Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

Source: Reuters, Bloomberg

Can drone racing become as big as eSports?

Is drone racing the sport of the future? That’s certainly what the Drone Racing League, and a growing number of followers, sponsors and event holders seem to think. Taking a page from competitive gaming, quadcopter racing pilots are self organizing into leagues (there’s also the Aerial Sports League, and Drone Worlds among others) and growing their competitions into a fully-fledged spectator sport. At least that’s the hope.

It makes sense, too. After all, race anything and it’s almost already a sport — add in potential for crashes, and dizzying, breakneck aerial turns and you’ve got a potential crowd-pleasing recipe. The FPV component (where pilots wear video goggles to see the quadcopter’s “first person view”) only serves to make the race more interesting. Not least because spectators can choose between watching the race itself, or seeing what their favorite pilot is seeing, live as they fly, in their own goggles. The difference between what the pilots are seeing, and how the spectators see them (usually a few guys with goggles, sat quietly on a bench) adds an inexplicably compelling component to live proceedings.

While small quadcopters might not have the deafening engines, or intoxicating smell of gas that lure so many to motorsport, it does have a few tricks that might entice audiences. One being that races can take place almost anywhere. Not just in a stadium, but through it, down the halls, up the stairs, past the hotdog cart and back into the main arena — in three dimensions. Also, there’s a big mental difference between pushing a multi-million dollar car around a hairpin bend, and shooting an inexpensive racing quadcopter through a tiny window frame. That’s to say, reckless moves and exciting crashes are plentiful.

The DRL claims it has six races coming up this year, with the first one taking place next month in Miami’s Sun Life Stadium, and will pit pilots against each other as they jostle towards the final, and ultimately the crown of world champion. Meanwhile, Drone Worlds in October condenses its World Championships into one week of events. The pilots involved go by names that sound like ’90s chatroom nicks: M0ke, Rekrek, Ummagawd and Kittycopter etc.. It’s clearly a fledgling sport eager to establish identity.

Racing drones isn’t new. Last year’s Drone Nationals successfully brought many smaller charters together. As for the DRL, it was set up last year. While it’s been around for a while, 2016 seems to be the year that drone kit has finally reached a stage that makes racing fast, smooth, and ultimately more presentable as a sport suitable to professional ambitions. Will there be stadiums full of baying fans like a football game, or the bigger eSports events? Possibly not, but that’s not the point. A modern sport panders to a modern viewer. Streams from races can regularly be viewed online, or through a fan’s own video goggles, for that real “in the cockpit” experience.

There will be some who are quick to call this the next Battlebots. Or slot car racing for the connected generation, but then the online critics have a history of not taking things seriously, until, of course, the money starts to flow. The sport’s challenge is to follow gaming’s lead, and secure itself some serious prize money. Drone Worlds is offering a $200,000 total kitty for its October Championships in Hawaii. If the DRL can reach similar numbers on a regular basis, no amount of nay-saying will matter. For now, all eyes are on that first race in Miami. Until then, settle for the season teaser above.

Source: Drone Racing League

A first-hand quest for the future of sex

Over the past two months, I’ve been intimately involved with a series of machines. On a mission to find the future of sex, I’ve masturbated into a crowdfunded sex sleeve, been transported into a porn star’s anus and quite literally fucked myself.

On Friday, I reached my final destination. I can now say that it is a clumsy, unremarkable future.

NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.

It started off simply enough. A friend sent over a series of four virtual-reality porn files and suggested I write something about my experience. I purchased a Gear VR, borrowed a Galaxy S6 and started the rather arduous task of getting those files up and running. The process took nearly two hours and brought back memories of the hours spent waiting for a single beefcake butt to download over dial-up. As with my early experiences with internet porn, hours of anticipation led to a few fleeting moments of release.

Having seen my share of poorly executed VR demos and having worked for a porn studio that, like so many others, valued quantity over quality, I set my expectations low. After downloading the files (each of which ranged from 1.5GB to 2GB); installing software to sideload the videos and eventually sideloading them onto the Galaxy S6; and, finally, registering an Oculus ID so that I could watch them in the official player, I was in.

As a child of the ’80s I was immediately pleased to see Oculus Video’s menu was like stepping inside Xanadu. My excitement ended there.

The four videos were the sort of low-budget European garbage I’d expected; the kind where excessive baby oil and tribal tattoos adorn hairless gym bodies. A quick search for “gay VR porn” turned up the same four videos (and a small handful of others) at VirtualRealGay, the brother company to straight porn VR factory VirtualRealPorn. Unfortunately for the rest of us, immersive porn is still largely a privilege preserved for straight dudes.

I’ve always prided myself on my ability to put personal preferences aside and just bone. So that’s what I did. I strapped on the Gear VR, selected the first of the four videos and explored a generic modern apartment, housing an equally generic muscle stud who stroked himself to completion, all the while uncomfortably staring me in the eye. I’d eventually bring myself to completion watching two unfortunately inked juice heads rub their slippery, bulging bodies against each other. But not before having some of the worst sex of my life.

… It was all I could do to maintain an erection while my face was buried in a wall of smooth, orange back skin.

The offending scene, titled Agency Boy, is shot from the perspective of the top, and the object of his gaze, and presumably the eponymous character, is a thin but well-built young man with a truly unfortunate top knot and one of those methy stares that you can’t unsee. Agency Boy is the antithesis of my type, but what made the experience so miserable was purely technical.

VR is still in an awkward adolescence: The devices, though sophisticated, are either tethered to PCs or dependent on smartphones with limited storage capacity. They’re also quite large and uncomfortable to wear for extended periods of time. My screen fogged up more than once and I had to take myself out of the experience entirely in order to perform simple tasks, like finding lube.

While we’re still in the early days of VR hardware, the headsets are hardly the only obstacle. Content producers are still trying to figure out how to shoot 180-degree video, leading to some truly bizarre perspectives. Getting too close can create a warped, fisheye effect, turning an otherwise normal intimate encounter into a fun-house anatomy lesson. Shooting too far away can create a disconnect. In the case of Agency Boy, it was all I could do to maintain an erection while my face was buried in a wall of smooth, orange back skin.

While novel, my first time with VR porn was, as I’d suspected, complicated, cumbersome and ultimately underwhelming. As a gay millennial accustomed to the ease and abundance of free tube-porn, I just couldn’t see VR upending my solo sex life. At least not now.

Lucky for me, it wasn’t long before I received an unsolicited package containing three identical versions of the Autoblow 2. This male masturbator is a crowdfunding success story that promises to simulate the experience of oral sex. It even has a tiny silicone mouth, because, you know, authenticity is important when a giant plastic tube is fellating you.

The Autoblow 2, dubbed “your blowjob robot” on the company’s website, simulates knob slobbing with a typical silicone sleeve, a motor with adjustable speeds and a series of bead-covered springs that roll up and down the penis. Oh, and it plugs into the wall, so no charging necessary! While this may not be the sentient, Stepford-style companion threatening to replace flesh-and-blood lovers, it occurred to me that this might be my chance to get out ahead of the robo-sexual revolution.

I might as well have stuck my dick in a vacuum.

Like my experience with VR porn, the Autoblow 2 was pure novelty. The barrier to entry was much lower — all you really have to do is plug the thing in, turn it on, pump some lube in the mouth hole and go to town — but the end result was just as unfulfilling.

I would again rub one out successfully and without the hours of setup and obstructed vision. But over the past 20-odd years, I’ve learned how to use my hand in ways no man or machine can emulate. The Autoblow 2 was a poor substitute for my hand and a far cry from a real-life blowjob. In addition to tying me to an electrical outlet, the device is ridiculously large, requiring both hands to hold in place, and the sounds of the motor inside, in concert with an unidentifiable high-pitched squeal, betrayed the “robot’s” lack of sophistication. I might as well have stuck my dick in a vacuum.

But I didn’t, because I’m not dumb, and besides, I was on a mission to find the future of sex, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t involve screwing a Roomba. Another thing I won’t be sticking my dick in anytime soon is a penis pedometer, but in researching these mythical devices for another column I came across yet another supposedly revolutionary sex toy: Kiiroo.

And that’s when things really got weird.

Look for the conclusion to this story in the next installment of Computer Love.

Use the Complete Game Developer Course bundle to take over the Google Play Store

We are still in the early parts of 2016, with everyone hopefully still working towards their New Years Resolutions. Some folks have more than likely chosen to teach themselves to develop. Whether it’s to try to become the face behind the next Flappy Birds, or just something to tinker around with, we’ve got a great deal to help get you started.

The Complete Game Developer Course has loads of content, along with the tools that you will need to create the best games, and take over the Play Store Leaderboards. With the help of Construct 2, a game development engine, and Photoshop, the lessons learned with this tool and the developer bundle, will give you all the necessary tools for success.

• Learn practical, employable skills w/ over 423 lectures & 34 hours of content
• Start making games from scratch w/ Construct 2
• Create 60 real-life games to add to your portfolio
• Make art & game design in Photoshop
• Watch the courses at any speed you want
• Build a variety of different types of games
• Learn from a professional game developer who has released over 40 games

With over 420 courses, and over 30 hours of content, the Complete Game Developer Course will teach you to build 60 real-life games, and teach you numerous invaluable lessons. Normally priced at $300, all of these goodies will set you back only $39. At a savings over almost 90%, this deal is too good to pass up on, if you’re looking to get into the game development world.

You can find this, and many other great tech bargains through our Deals page. Backed by StackCommerce, there are daily promos, giveaways, freebies, and much more!

AndroidGuys Deals: The Complete Game Developer Course

The post Use the Complete Game Developer Course bundle to take over the Google Play Store appeared first on AndroidGuys.