Best Racing Games for VR
What are the best racing games for VR?
If you’ve invested in a VR setup and haven’t yet tried a racing game, you owe it to yourself to at least experience it once. The speed, combined with the feeling of actually sitting in the driver’s seat, delivers an unmatched experience. Here are the best racing games you can grab right now.
Read more at VR Heads!
The 21st century tricorder: MrMobile goes hands-on with the Scio Spectrometer
The Scio Spectrometer phone allows you to scan all the things you put into your body and make sure they’re good for you. Then, you can scan your body and make sure you’re actually getting healthier! The perfect phone for the hypochondriac. While it’s not a great phone by most measures, the spectrometer inside the phone is a truly interesting feature.
MrMobile expounds on all his Star Trek fantasies by scanning things and talking chemical composition and captain’s-logging everything in this video. Michael Fisher has the inside scoop on what’s going on inside everything, thanks to the Scio Spectrometer Smartphone.
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Where to buy the Huawei Mate 9 in the U.S.
Where do I buy the Huawei Mate 9 in the U.S.?
Huawei’s Mate 9 is big, powerful and, at $599, incredible value. While it may be too big for some, its entry into the U.S. market heralds a turning point for the Chinese company, which is competing extremely well with Samsung and Apple for global smartphone market share.
Unfortunately, Huawei still has roadblocks to overcome before it can sell its phones at U.S. carriers, but in the meantime it has launched the Mate 9 at several well-known and accessible online retailers.
Jet.com
The Huawei Mate 9 is available at Jet.com for $599.99, the standard price for the device. But Jet.com offers a way to save money by opting out of free returns, paying by debit, or both. With both of those options ticked, the phone drops to $584.48, and goes even cheaper if you purchase more than one. Jet.com is our pick for the best place to buy the Mate 9.
See at Jet.com
Amazon
Amazon is usually the gold standard for products like this, and the Mate 9 fits right into the retailer’s lineup. Available for $599.99 from Amazon in either Moonlight Silver or Space Gray, the phone comes with a U.S. warranty and is eligible for Prime Shipping.
See at Amazon
Best Buy
Best Buy offers the Huawei Mate 9 at its standard $599.99 price with free 2-day shipping and a price match guarantee. Pretty standard stuff, but you can get decent financing and some cash-back rewards options with the right credit card, and you know that Best Buy has enough stores to make it easy to return the phone in case of problems.
See at Best Buy
Newegg
Newegg is selling the Huawei Mate 9 in both colors, white and silver, for $599.99, and each unit comes with a free Huawei-branded selfie stick, if you’re into that sort of things. Newegg has a great reputation for efficient delivery and easy returns, and has a Premier membership program that, like Amazon, offers free shipping and no restocking fee.
See at Newegg
B&H Photo Video
The New York-based B&H Photo Video is well-known for stocking hard-to-get products, and Huawei’s Mate 9 is available and ready to ship. The company doesn’t collect tax outside of New York State, which can help you save a few dollars in the process. Like the other vendors, B&H also stocks both colors of the Mate 9, and offers same-day shipping.
Canadians also benefit from B&H Photo Video, as it is the only one of the retailers listed to ship to Canada — free after $99.
See at B&H Photo Video
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Sony HT-ST5000 Dolby Atmos soundbar preview: 7.1.2, Chromecast and Spotify Connect
Sony was one of the manufacturers at this year’s CES to throw its weight behind Dolby Atmos, the audio format with extra height channels to create a more immersive bubble of sound.
The Sony HT-ST5000 soundbar, which perfectly matches the company’s Dolby Atmos-supporting UBP-X800 4K Blu-ray deck, has two extra channels on the top – left and right – that fire audio upwards to a ceiling up to 17 feet above. This is then reflected down to the seating position of the listener to create the illusion of sound coming from above.
The soundbar also has seven channels ranged across the front and a separate wireless subwoofer provides the bass.
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- Dolby Atmos explained: What is it and how do I get it?
It also acts as an AV receiver, with three HDMI inputs, all with HDCP 2.2 so can be fed three different 4K Ultra HD sources. It has an optical audio input too and one HDMI output.
Pocket-lint
There is Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on board for wireless audio streaming, with Spotify Connect and Chromecast both supported. You can also pair your smart devices to it simply through NFC.
But it is its oomph that impresses most, at least it did during our demo at CES 2017. The extra channels really make a difference when you’re enjoying Dolby Atmos content. The audio field becomes massive and you can’t help but feel carried away with the action.
It’s also clever in its spatial separation, with a clear sense of audio coming from left, right and above.
The Sony HT-ST5000 soundbar with wireless subwoofer will be available this spring for around £1,500.
Dell XPS 27 (2017) preview: Audiophiles – look no further than this 4K touchscreen AIO
Not everybody wants a laptop, especially people who are audiophiles and desire more than tiny speakers crammed into a slim form factor.
But that doesn’t mean they want a tower setup either.
For those type of niche people, Dell has something new: the 2017 XPS 27 all-in-one. The company unveiled it at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, and the first thing we noticed about is its whopping 10-speaker Bang & Olufsen speaker array. It has four for mid and bass frequencies, with tweeters in both corners, plus two full-range speakers and two passive radiators.
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Laptops and desktop PC-makers normally don’t add this type of audio hardware to their machines, as they leave it up to customers to buy separate speakers or headphones if they want more than a basic listening experience. Dell’s new AIO takes a different approach. According to Dell, it is two times louder than a 27-inch iMac and has 10 times the bass of an HP Envy 27, giving it “the absolute best sound for an all-in-one PC.”
During our brief demo with the PC, which occurred on the busy show floor in a casino in Las Vegas, a Dell representative cranked music from the XPS 27 to show how loud it could get and practically everyone in a 25-ft radius turned to look at us as Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” blasted into the air. Not exactly our type of music, but we got the point: this thing is loud, and it sounds absolutely fantastic.
That’s not the only thing we loved about the XPS 27. It comes with a standard 4K display or a touch 4K display and a stand that allows the computer to lay down to an almost flat position, just like the new Surface Studio from Microsoft. We played with the touch version and immediately noticed the 17kg weight when we tried to lift up the screen using the stand. Warning: it isn’t exactly nimble.
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First Impressions
We think it looks great, and could totally imagine music creators using it to effortlessly make and playback new tunes, as well as artists laying it down to draw and paint with their hands. Anyway, enough of the outside hardware. Inside you’ll find Intel’s sixth-generation CPUs (Core i5-6400 3.3GHz with Intel Turbo Boost or Core i7-6700 4GHz) and up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM. But you can add more sticks to reach 64GB.
Storage choices start at 1TB of solid state storage and go up to 2TB plus a 32GB M.2 SSD. However, Dell also offers 512GB or 1TB M.2 SSD. There’s AMD’s R9 M470X graphics chip you can get, too, and eventually the R9 M485X will be available. Dell basically told us you can completely customise the specs to your heart’s desire. So, while the audio makes the XPS 27 stand out, spec-wise it is equally a beast.
Plus, it features an InfinityEdge display, machined-aluminum construction, two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, five USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output, headphone jack, SD card reader, Gigabit Ethernet connector, audio output, and Windows Hello support.
Amazingly, you can get all that at a starting price of $1,499. Dell told us the top-out price should be around $3,500.
GM and Girls Who Code partner for after-school STEM program
As technology jobs continue to rise in importance, a troubling statistic shows that the number of women in the computing workforce dropped from 37 percent in 1995 to only 24 percent today. That’s a staggering drop, and one that the education program Girls Who Code is hoping to reverse. Today automaker GM announced it’s giving Girls Who Code a $250,000 grant to help bring after-school STEM clubs to thousands of underserved areas.
GM CEO Mary Barra says that her engineering education helped pave the way for her career. The automaker will not only be giving Girls Who Code a grant, but some of GM’s top female leaders will also be mentoring students and talking about the possibilities of a STEM-focused education.
The partnership will expand after-school programs in underserved communities. GWC Founder and CEO Reshma Saujani told Engadget that the grant from GM will help GWC build 5,000 clubs in rural and urban areas. Barra told Engadget “this is one of my personal passions. We’ve got to build a pipeline that focuses at the junior high and high school level.” Once those students enter the workforce, both GM and Girls Who Code are dedicated to helping build a community that will give female technology employees a place to talk about issues in the workforce.
ESO will upgrade its Very Large Telescope to hunt for exoplanets
The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope is getting an upgrade. ESO signed an agreement with Breakthrough Initiatives, a program created to search for extraterrestrial intelligence, to modify its infrared instrument called VISIR (VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared). Once it’s done, the observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile will easily be able to spot exoplanets in the Alpha Centauri. According to ESO, the astronomers’ discovery of a habitable planet in our neighboring star system late last year “adds even further impetus to this search.”
Exoplanets are hard to spot since the brightness of the massive stars they orbit tend to overwhelm their presence, making them hard to see from our little corner in the universe. While observing them in infrared makes exoplanets easier to detect, the upgrade will give VISIR an even more powerful technique called coronagraphy. It greatly reduces stellar light to make their comparably tinier planets more visible to the telescope.
Breakthrough Initiatives — backed by Stephen Hawking, Mark Zuckerberg and Russian tech investor Yuri Milner — will treat any habitable planet VLT finds in the Alpha Centauri as a possible destination for the spacecraft it plans to make. The program aims to develop a “nanocraft” fast enough to travel to the star system, and it wants to reach that goal within one generation.
Via: Popular Mechanics
Source: ESO
LG’s G6 will have a unique 18:9 screen aspect ratio
We already know LG is abandoning its modular effort for the upcoming G6, but today the company delivered another interesting nugget: It’ll sport a 5.7-inch Quad HD+ panel with an 18:9 aspect ratio. Yes, that’s really a 2:1 screen (math!), which means it’ll be a bit taller than a typical 16:9 screen. While that might seem unwieldy, it could be a way for the company to implement some features from its dual-screen “V” phones in the G6. And really, at this point LG needs to do whatever it can to stand out from the pack.
The display will pack in 1,440 by 2,880 pixels, a bit more than a typical Quad HD screen. LG says it’ll be thinner than before, at less than 1mm thick, and it’s reduced the bezel width by 20 percent on the top of the screen and 10 percent around the sides. Additionally, the company says it’ll be 10 percent more visible outdoors and it’ll use 30 percent less battery life.
LG is expected to announce the G6 at Mobile World Congress at the end of February, and the latest rumors suggest it’ll release the phone in Korea on March 10. That could allow the company to beat Samsung’s Galaxy S8 to the shelves, but as we’ve seen time and again, being first on shelves doesn’t necessarily lead to a sales win.
Twitch reveals dates and new venue for TwitchCon 2017
Following the reveal of its new IRL section, streaming giant Twitch is hoping to attract more international visitors to this year’s TwitchCon by moving to a new, better-connected venue.TwitchCon 2017 will be held at the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center in California from October 20th to 22nd.
Last year’s TwitchCon attracted over 35,000 visitors, a big increase on the 20,000 attendees that flocked to 2015’s iteration of the event. With the streaming company extending its reach outside of gaming, Twitch has announced that this year’s event will incorporate more non-gaming events into its schedule in order to attract a broader scope of viewers and attendees.
TwitchCon also now has a new director, ex-streamer Krystal Herring. After 10 years of streaming experience, she’s stepping up from event marketing at Twitch to head up Twitch Con. In a bid to promote Twitch’s upcoming mobile streaming app, Herring insists that streamers will ensure that the mobile app helps viewers who can’t attend feel like they’re there.
Event schedules and ticket prices are set to be announced soon, but eager fans can sign up here to be the first to get new information. In an attempt to lure in more traveling visitors, this year Twitch is also offering discounted hotel rooms close to the convention center, which will be on sale soon through the Twitch Con website.
LG UltraFine 5K Display Now Ships in Quicker 3-5 Business Days
Apple’s website has been updated to indicate the LG UltraFine 5K Display now ships in 3-5 business days in the United States, compared to a previous estimate of 2-4 weeks listed since just minutes after the display launched on December 20. The improvement suggests the display’s supply and demand mix has improved.
The new 5K display, created in partnership with Apple, remains on sale for $974 until March 31, when the price will return to $1,299.95. Shipping estimates vary in other countries, including 2-3 weeks in the United Kingdom, 4-6 weeks in Australia, and upwards of 1 week in Canada.
LG’s UltraFine 5K Display connects to the latest MacBook Pro with a single Thunderbolt 3 cable, which simultaneously streams up to 5K video, transfers data, and charges the notebook at up to a full 85W. Apple also sells a 21.5-inch UltraFine 4K Display for $524 until March 31, when it returns to $699.
In addition to 5K resolution, the 27-inch display has a wide DCI-P3 color gamut that shows more vibrant colors compared to the traditional sRGB standard. It also has a built-in camera, microphone, stereo speakers, and three downstream USB-C ports at 5 Gbps speeds for connecting peripherals.
MacRumors editor-in-chief Eric Slivka called the LG UltraFine 5K Display a “worthy companion” to the latest MacBook Pro, even without the same look and feel as Apple’s discontinued Thunderbolt Display. Also be sure to read our USB-C Display Buyer’s Guide for other display options with single-cable connectivity.
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