Lifeboat Foundation

After years in the wilderness, Halo: The Master Chief Collection will bring Halo Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo 3: ODST (minus the Firefight mode), Halo 3 and Halo 4 to PC.

The only previous games in the FPS series to launch on PC were Halo and Halo 2, both well over a decade ago (if you don’t count the Halo Wars spin-offs). This is obviously a big moment, and it seems like Microsoft is making some good decisions in bringing them to PC: Namely launching them on Steam, rather than trapping them on the Microsoft Store (though you can buy it there too). There’s much more to go into below, too.

Continue reading “Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC: everything we know” »

The 17” x 14” X-ray film, gels, and blots are widely used in DNA research. However, DNA laser scanners are costly and unaffordable for the majority of surveyed biotech scientists who need it. The high-tech breakthrough analytical personal scanner (PS) presented in this report is an inexpensive 1 lb hand-held scanner priced at 2–4% of the bulky and costly 30–95 lb conventional laser scanners. This PS scanner is affordable from an operation budget and biotechnologists, who originate most science breakthroughs, can acquire it to enhance their speed, accuracy, and productivity. Compared to conventional laser scanners that are currently available only through hard-to-get capital-equipment budgets, the new PS scanner offers improved spatial resolution of 20 microns, higher speed (scan up to 17” x 14” molecular X-ray film in 48 s), 1–32,768 gray levels (16-bits), student routines, versatility, and, most important, affordability.

Razer has announced a new iteration of its Blade 15 Advanced gaming laptop. Its new, clickier keyboard might be the biggest change. Otherwise, much of what this configuration offers isn’t new for Razer.

The most prolific musical artists manage to release one, maybe two, studio albums in a year. Rappers can sometimes put out three or four mixtapes during that same time. However, Auxuman plans to put out a new full-length album, featuring hot up-and-coming artists like Yona, Mony, Gemini, Hexe, and Zoya, every single month. How? The power of artificial intelligence of course.

Before this goes any further, don’t worry: You’re not hopelessly out of touch with today’s pop music. Yona, Mony, Gemini, and the rest of the bunch aren’t real musicians. Well, at least not in the sense that you could meet them and shake their hands. They’re A.I. personalities, each with their own characters and genres, which have been created by Auxuman, an artificial intelligence startup based in London.

Continue reading “A.I. musicians are a growing trend. What does that mean for the music industry?” »

What is the fastest thing we as the human race know of? Gav and Dan try and film that.

If you’re going to do right by DC Comics’ “Crisis on Infinite Earths” saga, you need the Monitor, yes. But you also need a Harbinger at his side. And now, it has been confirmed that Lyla Michaels, a character who has been played on Arrow over the years by Audrey Marie Anderson, will fill that role in the Arrowverse’s next, five-part crossover.

We say “confirmed” because while it did seem that Oliver Queen, in fulfilling his deal with the Monitor, might serve as an ersatz Harbinger, the fact is that in the comic books Lyla Michaels became Harbinger, and the Arrow character has used that codename since Season 1.

You can get a look at Anderson’s full costume here; Arrowverse EP Marc Guggenheim said they explored the idea of a comics-accurate helmet but it “didn’t look right.”

Even if you play games solo, you’re increasingly accompanied by a virtual sidekick.

While most of the attention has been on Google Stadia and Microsoft xCloud, Tencent has also been working on cloud gaming. China’s biggest gaming company has been talking about letting people go from viewing live streams to playing along with the same streamer with just a click — without ever having to download the game.

One of the big reasons China is perfect for cloud gaming? 5G.

Google Stadia and Microsoft xCloud are pushing cloud gaming, but Tencent could be the real one to watch.

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Humanity is moving ever faster towards a perfect world, but we’ll probably never get all the way to perfect. A somewhat plausible alternative to this utopian future is that humanity destroys itself. Typical science fiction dystopias, on the other hand, are quite unrealistic, in my view.

Interstellar is one of my favorite movies, but there’s one thing about it I don’t like; it’s set in a dystopian future where sandstorms and blight make it increasingly difficult for humans to survive. Although science fiction is my favorite genre, it annoys me a bit that science fiction movies are often dystopian to some degree.

Continue reading “Why The Future Will Be An Unimaginable Utopia Beyond Our Wildest Imaginations” »