Latest News - Page 2880

Last night Warner Bros. released the first full-suit photo of Grant Gustin as The Flash, and I have to say: Barry Allen is looking pretty good right about now. Gustin is set to play Barry Allen, an eccentric forensic scientist who moonlights as the DC Universe superhero, The Flash, on a prospective television series on CW. The future of the series is contingent upon the success or failure of the pilot episode, which is currently in the process of being filmed.

The television network CW first introduced Gustin as Barry Allen in season two of their highly successful superhero melodrama, Arrow, where he appeared to shine light on the investigation of a mysterious break-in at a warehouse owned by Queen Consolidated. After establishing himself in the world of Oliver Queen, and charming the lovely Ms. Felicity Smoak, Barry Allen returns to his lab in Central City, where he is struck by lightning and thrown into a mix of chemicals, effectively supercharging his body and giving birth to his alter ego, The Flash.

Though Gustin was originally set to play The Flash on the set of Arrow, due to the success of Arrow and the depth of the DC Universe, producers decided to give The Flash a show of his own. If the new series is picked up, it is set to run alongside Arrow on the CW. Prospects for The Flash as a television series look quite good at this point in time. The series will be co-written and produced by Geoff Johns, a renowned comic book writer for DC titles like Green Lantern and The Flash, and like Arrow, the show will introduce a plethora of heroes from the DC Universe, which has DC Comics fans quite excited.

With just days left before HTC unveils the 2014 edition of its flagship, the HTC One, the company has began sending out "dummy units" to retailers in advance so they can work out showroom floor displays and marketing materials. Fortunately for us, one of those dummy models has made its way to the internet in the form of the most detailed images of the device we have seen to date.

The images come from an eBay France shop called dummy_store, a retailer that specializes in selling... you guessed it, Dummy Phones. While the phone is not a functioning model, it is an exact replication of what the new HTC One will look like. The new HTC One appears thicker than the current model, and the dual cameras are actually there. The current HTC One features an anodized aluminum chassis, but the gunmetal grey version of the new HTC One appears to sport a brushed finish, giving it an amazing look. When combined with the darker gray plastic inserts, this is one of the best looking smartphones I have ever seen.

Specifications appear to have remained the same with no new reports surfacing today. The HTC One 2014 Edition will feature a full 1080p screen like its predecessor, a 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor, and 2GB of RAM will be present. 16GB and 32GB models will be available and a 2,600mAh Lithium-Ion battery will provide ample up-time for even the heaviest of users. Android 4.4.2, Sense 6.0, and a new version of BlinkFeed will installed as well. The big unveil happens on March 25th and TweakTown will be providing full coverage.

The National Security Agency (NSA) reportedly wants to infect millions of computers with malware, and the TURBINE program is based on hacking routers, impersonating Facebook, and other shady practices. Not surprisingly, the information was made public based on revelations released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The NSA posed as a fake Facebook server, and successfully infected a user's computer to gain access to stored files on a HDD, according to a report posted on The Intercept. Previously, the NSA would use this tactic for a small number of select targets that couldn't be tracked with regular wiretaps, but greatly expanded use over the past 10 years.

Security experts are disheartened by yet another data snooping case from the NSA, potentially opening up additional security issues by intentionally infecting computers with malware.

For people who suffer from medical conditions, being able to help their condition using gadgets rather than medications can be a big deal. A medical gadget called the Cefaly headband has received FDA approval recently to treat pain associated with migraine headaches.

The Cefaly headband is a device that is worn on the head and has tips that go behind the ears like glasses. The device is positioned on the forehead above the eyes and features a self adhesive electrode.

The headband is able to deliver an electrical current to the skin and underlying tissues in the area. The positioning of the headband and electrode allow the electrical signal to stimulate the branches of the trigeminal nerve that are associated with migraine headaches.

Superheroes are very hot right now. We can thank Marvel and its Iron Man and Avengers franchises for that. CW is a network that many cable and satellite providers offer and it has another cool show called Arrow that follows a comic book superhero.

I happen to be a fan of that show, and if you are too you have been wondering what is going on with scientist Barry Allen after he was struck by lightning in that one episode of Arrow. Comic book fans know Allen is the later ego of The Flash.

CW is preparing a new series that will focus on The Flash with the same actor from Arrow that played Barry Allen, Grant Gustin, donning the red leather. CW has offered up a close up photo of the costume that The Flash will wear. Honestly, I'm not feeling the costume. It's a bit too cartoonish compared to the more gritty super heroes we are used to seeing.

For the better part of the past decade 3D printing has mainly been relegated to printing objects in hard solid plastics such as PLA, ABS, and Nylon, but recently, great progress has been made in the advancement of flexible, more rubber-like filaments. One of the major hurdles has been the development of a reliable extruder that can feed the flexable filament into the hotend.

Today Lulzbot released its new Flexystruder Tool Head designed for use with its TAZ 3 3D Printer. Lulzbot says that the FlexyStruder was specifically designed for use with NinjaFlex flexible 3D Printing filament, and that setting up the new tool head is fast and easy. From what I can tell, the Flexystruder is based off of Lulzbot's Budaschnozzle design and is mounted on a carrage designed to fit into the TAZ 3's Z quick-change extriuder carrier.

Lulzbot has also released its full line of NinjaFlex filament which is based on a thermoplastic elastomer composition (TPE). "Ninjaflex, or TPE (thermoplastic elastomer), is an exciting combination of sheer strength, low-temperature performance, abrasion resistance, and flexibility. Simply put, it is the stretchiest material we've ever tested," say Lulzbot.

We all know that Titanfall has launched officially this week for the PC and Xbox One game console. Gaming PCs typically have hardware inside to support a great graphics experience for the game and the Xbox One certainly has the hardware for a next gen experience with the game.

Gamers looking forward to the Xbox 360 version may be worried that the older console will mean they have to give up some of the great visuals the game has. Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi says that the version of Titanfall for the Xbox 360 will be a first class experience. The 360 version of the game is being developed by Bluepoint Games and is set for launch on March 25.

The Xbox 360 version of the game was supposed to launch this week along with the PC and Xbox One versions. The launch of the 360 versions was delayed so that Bluepoint could "put the finishing touches on the game."

This New York City Residents awoke to a loud explosion that reportedly shook buildings and busted windows for dozens of blocks. The explosion was centered on the corner of 116th Street and Park Avenue, and it appears that two buildings have collapsed due to the explosion and resulting fire. No cause has been determined as to what may have caused the explosion, but there were reports of a natural gas smell near the buildings just before the explosion.

Around 9:15am this morning, New York City utility company ConEdision dispatched a crew to reports of a "strong gas smell" at a building on Park Avenue. Before the crews could arrive, the two buildings exploded and blew debris for blocks and shutting down the Metro subway system's North Line. At the moment, authorities are reporting just one fatality, and more than 20 injuries ranging from minor to serious.

NBC Channel 4 is reporting that the Metro North Line may be shutdown for the rest of the day, and the news station has confirmed that the smell of gas was reported by several people in the area just before the explosion. Residents and business owners in the area have also reported shaking around the time of the explosion, which has lead to speculation that construction inside the two buildings could have ruptured a major gas line. At the moment, the fire is under control, and first responders are now combing the rubble at the scene for anyone who may be trapped in the debris.

Pando Daily is reporting that Google has acquired parts of Green Throttle Gaming, a small company who developers Bluetooth controllers and Android-based virtual gaming consoles.

Google scooped up Green Throttle Gaming's two founders, as well as the parts and labor division of the company. A Google spokesperson has confirmed the deal, but didn't extend its terms to the public. The deal sees Green Throttle's business rights stay with co-founder Charles, while the company's staff and co-founders move over to Google.

The other co-founders of Green Throttle are Karl Townsend, who is the company's Lead Engineer on the original and second generation Palm Pilot, and President and Chief Operating Officer Matt Crowley, who used to work for Nokia and Palm. The company has worked on an Android-based virtual console, which allows gamers to connect their smartphones and tablets up to their TVs through an HDMI connection to play mobile games with Green Throttle controllers.

When we reported about the mammoth installation of Titanfall on the PC, we wondered what could be so big that it warranted a 48GB installation. Well, that 48GB install is filled with a massive 35GB of uncompressed audio.

The installation of Titanfall on the Xbox One weighs in at just 17GB, so jumping up to 48GB on the PC is quite ridiculous. Respawn decided to give PC gamers uncompressed audio, to account for less powerful hardware configurations. This is due to the large amount of dual-core machines, which just meet the minimum requirements on PC for Titanfall.

Respawn's Lead Engineer, Richard Baker, said that "a two-core machine would dedicate a huge chunk of one core to just decompressing audio," so the studio decided to go for uncompressed audio, in order to squeeze more performance out of the slower machines. This comes at the cost of 35GB, which is quite the chunk of hard drive space.

During next week's Philly Tech Week, Tetris will be played on the city's 29-story Cira Centre as screens. Frank Lee, a professor at Drexel University and founder of the school's Entrepreneurial Game Studio, is continuing what he did last year.

Last year, with the help of Brandywine Realty Trust, the company who owns the Cira Centre, played a special version of Pong on the side of the building. It happened during mid-April, when Philly Tech Week 2013 took place, setting a Guinness World Record for "Largest Architectural Video Game Display."

The massive game of Pong used 460 LEDs on one side of the building, taking up a giant 59,800 square feet of space. Lee's version of Tetris will take place on both the north- and south-facing walls of the building, expanding over a space of more than 100,000 square feet. Lee said in a press release: "One regret that I had was that we only used one side of the building. So it was only visible to half of the city. This year, I wanted to find a way to use all sides of the building and truly created an aesthetic of a unique and fleeting moment shared by all the people in Philadelphia."

CD Projekt Red has some bad news for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, that it has been delayed until February 2015. The studio had originally pinned the release of the game for 2014, but the game is still in a technically "unfinished" state.

The delay comes at a time when the studio talked about other game studios bragging about the performance in their games when in an unfinished state, so maybe this delay has something to do with it. CD Projekt Red won't just release a game of this scale in an unfinished state, so some more time for the vast title is obviously needed, and welcomed.

The studio's official board members talked about the delay, saying they weren't happy with the game's overall quality and projected release date, as it wouldn't give them enough time to provide gamers with The Witcher 3 that the studio had originally envisioned: "We recently re-examined what we had achieved thus far, and faced a choice about the game's final release date. The decision we made was difficult, thoroughly considered, and ultimately clear and obvious."

This past weekend the WB film 300: Rise of an Empire made waves at the top of box office charts, bringing in a total domestic gross of $45,038,460, and a total worldwide gross of $132,838,460. The film is a sequel to the 2006 fantasy action film based on the highly popularized 1998 comic book series "300" by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley. Much like its successful predecessor, 300: Rise of an Empire is a dark, gritty, action-packed, historical fiction film that focuses on the Greek conflict with Persia.

300: Rise of an Empire was written and produced by Zack Snyder, and is supposedly based off of a graphic novel by Frank Miller that is pending release. Frank Miller, the master of darkness in the comic book world, is responsible for the dark, brooding tone of the 300 movie franchise. The film features a populous cast of beautiful actresses like Eva Green and Lena Headey, and bulked-up actors like Sullivan Stapleton and Hans Matheson.

Earlier this month, as news outlets reigned in on the film with projections of its success or failure, it was reported that the beefed-up actors spent an astounding three to four hours a day weight-lifting in preparation for the film -with that much dedication, and a reported budget of $110 million, it would have been a shame to see the film flop. Thankfully, the film seems to be off to a strong start, holding the top box office position at over ten million above its nearest contender, Mr. Peabody & Sherman.

This past weekend the first trailer for Frank Miller's new film Sin City: A Dame to Kill for hit the web and sparked interest among fans and critics of the Sin City film series. The fast paced film trailer features an all-star cast which includes Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Eva Green, just to name a few. Keeping with the theme of the Sin City franchise, and the graphic novel series, the film will be primarily monochromatic, with a few color highlights to accent significant items or aspects in the film, like Manute's golden eye.

As soon as the trailer hit the web, fans and critics moved to weigh in with a surprising amount of positive emotions despite the doubts cast upon the prospects of the film since its announcement. Initial doubts about the film were cast upon the film quickly following its announcement, based upon the failure of Frank Miller's 2008 film The Spirit, which was filmed and directed in the same style as the Sin City films. Even more doubts about the film were voiced last year when the film was pushed back from its original 2013 release to the August 22, 2014 release date.

Despite the initial doubts fans and critics had surrounding the film, as the trailer continues to gain more and more hits, and the film's release date inches closer, fans and critics alike are expressing resounding optimism toward the film. Critics on a variety of news outlets are showing optimism toward the outstanding cast, and fans on YouTube are showing quite a bit of excitement for the film's release.

As the auditions come to a close on NBC's hit singing competition The Voice, the internet is a buzz with its favorites for the big win. While Adam Lavigne, Blake Shelton, Shakira, and Usher were battling it out to see who gets who, fans are weighing in on their favorites for the overall win. So who's looking hot for the win? Based on chair spins and internet chatter, these are the likely winners:

Night 1: Christina Grimmie "Wrecking Ball" (Team Adam)

Night 2: Delvin Choice: "A Song for You" (Team Adam)

The National Broadband Network in Australia has tested out some truly breakneck Internet speeds, where a successful trial has been completed by the NBN Co and network transport company Coraint at 1Tbps super-channel.

The trial was conducted over the company's 1066km fiber ring in Queensland on a 396GHz grid using Coraint's FlexiGrid technology. Coriant said that the trial featured a 35% improvement in spectrial efficiency, where it could eventually provide a maximum theoretical transmission capacity of 13Tbps over a distance of over 1000km.

NBN Co's Chief Technology Officer, Gary McLaren, said that the trial proved that the NBN Co's potential upgrade path for its transit network is huge. He said in a statement: "It highlights how established backbone infrastructure can be upgraded with sophisticated optical and electronic equipment to provide extra capacity for the future needs of the National Broadband Network."

The Jawbone UP24 launched way back in November, and ever since then only iOS users got to partake in the the fitness trackers full mobile experience. Today Jawbone announced that it has officially updated its UP app for Android and now allows Bluetooth syncing with Android phones. Previously the app was only compatible with the UP fitness tracker which has less features than the popular UP 24.

"We believe that helping people understand the context and meaning of their data is key in helping to make sustained behavior changes," said Travis Bogard, Jawbone's vice president of product management and strategy. "Through our investment in data science we have been able to provide personalized insights to help nudge people to meet their sleep or activity goals. Now, our entire community can enjoy the benefits of these insights in real-time."

The update also adds other features to the Android app such as better alerts, push notifications, and milestone tracking. I wrote off fitness trackers for a long time, but with a recent purchase of another fitness tracker that is on the market, I am almost completely sold on he concept and look forward to recording and tracking data every time I head out for a workout, hike, or bike ride.

During a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Sprint's chairman, Massayoshi Son said that he would like to see his company purchase T-Mobile in a effort to truly compete with AT&T and Verizon in the mobile phone marketplace. Sprint is currently running at the number 3 position with T-Mobile following closely behind and gaining more traction every month.

Reports suggest that Sprint has been planning the acquisition of T-Mobile for months now and has been working with OEMs in the industry, and has even secured banks to help provide the financing needed to make such a large acquisition. One major hurdle is those at the Securities and Exchange Commission who might see the acquisition as bordering on Antitrust laws, but executives from both T-Mobile and Sprint have told regulators that a merger would be beneficial to consumers as it would allow more fair competition with AT&T and Verizon.

"We would like to have the real fight, OK? Not the pseudo fight, the real fight," Son said about competing with AT&T and Verizon. Son is in Washington DC this week lobbying for the acquisition as well as testifying before the Chamber of Commerce on broadband's important role in invention, innovation, and education, and how a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile could benefit those fundamentals as well.

Google says that it has already laid about 6,000 miles of fiber optic broadband cable throughout Kansas City, and now the company is ready to expand even further. The company plans on extending its Google Fiber coverage to residents in South Kansas City, Kansas City, Grandview, Raytown and Gladstone areas.

Google says that if there is enough demand in these areas and residents sign up with a $10 registration fee, then they will expand their fiber network to these areas just weeks after the signups are complete. There is a deadline to signup for Google Fiber and its ranges based on the area you live in so check the list below and sign up as fast as possible!

In the normal civilian world people worry about things like being a glasshole while wearing their Google Glass headset. On the battlefield all most soldiers care about is getting their job done and keeping themselves and their friends safe. BAE Systems has a headset that is sort of like Google Glass that could help soldiers stay safe on the battlefield.

The system is called Q-Warrior and it fits on a helmet that helps protect the soldier. The eyepiece can give the wearer a 3D view of things that are going on outside their field of view. The idea is that the soldier could get video from a drone feed or other types of data showing what the baddies are doing as an operation unfolds.

The coolest part about the Q-Warrior headset is that the system is capable of being used as promised right now. It's not something that is a decade away from feasibility. One of the things holding deployment now is work to secure the wireless video feeds that make the headset useful. It wouldn't do to field something like this if the drone feeds could be hacked or blocked.