Mayor of London Boris Johnson has announced that game development in London will receive a £1.2 million monetary injection to help fund future developments. On top of that, to help promote the region, industry and the games it creates, there will be a new gaming festival held at Somerset House …
Read More »Derren Browne’s VR Thorpe Parke ride uses the HTC Vive
Although virtual reality has a lot of potential for giving us amazing gaming experiences in the home, there's also huge potential for more advanced entertainment at bespoke locations. Take the upcoming re-imagining of the ghost train in a partnership between Thorpe Park and Derren Brown, utilising virtual reality to enhance …
Read More »Amazon’s 30 minute drone delivery has distance, weight limits
As advanced as the drones of the future which deliver our online purchases to us sooner than ever before are, there will be some limitations. Despite Amazon's drones being designed to operate efficiently in various environments, chances are they won't be able to travel much more than 10 miles from …
Read More »EU demands tighter controls for U.S. data requisitions
Following its ending of the EU-U.S. Safe Harbour data exchange scheme last year, the European Union is demanding tighter controls and protections on how America requests information from EU companies. If those assurances aren't received soon, it may start taking enforcement actions against various firms. Safe Harbour previously gave U.S. companies the …
Read More »Rocket League season one to end in February
Rocket League, one of the biggest break out successes of 2015, has been running its first season of ranked play for several months now, with no initial announcement about how long it would be. Well now we know, roughly. Psyonix' first update of 2016 will bring an end to Season …
Read More »Accused movie pirates in U.S. can receive free legal counsel
Although its much less of a common tactic today than it once was, some movie distributors still like to target individual downloaders and attempt to have them pay through the nose for pirating a single movie. Considering defending yourself can be an expensive practice, one judge in the U.S. has …
Read More »Daesh has its own encrypted chat app
In an effort to help obscure its communications from the many worldwide intelligence agencies trying to hunt them down, members of terrorist group Daesh now have their own encrypted chat application. This follows members of the organisations being kicked off of the likes of WhatsApp, Telegram and other platforms. Governments …
Read More »New study predicts robots to take five million jobs by 2020
The race is on it seems to find a career that won't be taken over by a robot in years to come. A new study from economic forum, Davos (not Seaworth), has suggested as many as five million jobs in developed countries around the world will be lost over the next five …
Read More »Space X Falcon rocket touches down… and then falls over
Space X has once again narrowly missed out on a successful drone-ship landing of its Falcon 9 first stage booster rocket. Although the orbital launch vehicle did manage to touch back down on the automated platform, it only stood upright for a few seconds before toppling over and exploding on …
Read More »The Division takes PC graphics options seriously
One of the more irritating trends that's emerged out of games being made for console and ported to PC, is that the graphics options can be extremely limited. That's not the case with the upcoming Tom Clancy's The Division though, as its list of tweakable settings in the graphics menu …
Read More »G.Skill boosts mechanical keyboard range with new KM780R
G.Skill only recently entered the peripheral game, but it made big strides in 2015 with some of our favourite peripherals of the year coming from that camp. So it's good to hear that it plans to stay in the keyboard business, with the announcement of a new addition to that …
Read More »Forget passenger drones, what about a drone ambulance?
Although drones have promised lots of interesting developments in film making, surveillance and delivery, they are getting powerful enough to transport people, as we saw recently. But forget making travel easy for the rich, transporting injured people between the scene of an accident and a hospital quickly and without disturbance …
Read More »U.S. government to invest $4 billion in autonomous cars
President Obama's secretary of transportation, Anthony Foxx, announced this week that the government had pledged to spend $4 billion over the next 10 years to help advanced autonomous vehicle technology. It's currently thought that partially self-piloted vehicles will be available by 2020 and fully autonomous ones by 2025, but this …
Read More »NBC executive not concerned about Netflix, Amazon, Youtube
If you look back to the late '90s, early '00s, there were a lot of people claiming that the internet wasn't a threat to their business and wouldn't change the way we do things. That's why it feels like deja vu when head of NBC's research and media development, Alan Wurtzel, claims …
Read More »ESPN just launched it own Esports site
ESPN has finally begun to take Esports seriously, launching a new website dedicated entirely to pro-gaming. It features coverage of many of the latest news stories for some of the more popular competitive games, as well as twinned social media accounts, strategy videos and profiles of the most iconic players …
Read More »UK public doesn’t want 10 year piracy prison sentences
The British public has almost unanimously rejected a call from the government to extend the maximum prison sentence for media pirates from two years to ten, following a consultation on the matter. The results suggest that the public just doesn't see piracy in the same way the government does. To …
Read More »VR mini golf could be perfect for limited room-scale VR
As much as many people love the idea of room-scale virtual reality, the ‘reality' is that most won't have the space for it. What might be possible for a lot of people though, is a small scale room, a few metres by a few metres of clear space. That will be …
Read More »PewDiePie launches game dev, promo firm with other Youtubers
Felix Kjelberg, more famously known as the most popular Youtuber Pewdiepie, is launching a new promotional firm and production company in one, called Revelmode. He's bringing some friends with him too, signing on other big Youtubers like Mark “Markiplier” Fishbach, Sean “JackSepticEye” McLoughlin and Emma Blackery. The idea behind Revelmode …
Read More »Rock Jaw Audio Alfa Genus V2 earphones review
As much as Beats may have gone a long way to making the idea of having decent quality headphones cool, not everyone wants bass heavy cans, or giant over-the-ear sets. Some prefer an in-ear design for their stealth and ability to stay in place during vigorous activity. It is to …
Read More »Qualcomm switches allegiance, gives chip contract to Samsung
Qualcomm has made a landmark choice for its next-generation Snapdragon mobile chips, as it's chosen to have Samsung manufacture it, rather than its long standing partner, TSMC. This marks the first time that Qualcomm has had any firm other than TSMC manufacture its high-end chips. The chip in question is …
Read More »Satoru Iwata to receive posthumous lifetime achievement award
Recently deceased Nintento President, Satoru Iwata, is set to have his years at the Japanese game maker honoured, by being given this year's Lifetime Achievement award at the 2016 DICE awards. This will be the first time it has ever been handed out posthumously. Iwata was one of Nintendo's most …
Read More »Ross Ulbricht appeal kicks off with attack on corrupt feds
Convicted Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht has served a year of his double-life sentence without parole, but is now getting the chance to appeal his original conviction. The first step on that road is a big one too, as his legal team submitted a 140+ page document requesting the original trial …
Read More »EU Court rules bosses can read employee private messages
If you access Facebook messenger, Twitter DMs, Skype or any other messaging service during work hours, be careful, as there is now legal precedent for your boss to look over your shoulder. In a landmark ruling that could have serious repercussions for in-work privacy, the European Court of Human Rights has …
Read More »U.S. national intelligence director had his phone hacked
In yet another instance of top intelligence officials in U.S. agencies having their personal details revealed to the world, director of national intelligence, James Clapper has had his phone hacked, with calls redirected to the Free Palestine Movement. Those involved also purportedly accessed his wife's personal email account too. “We …
Read More »Fleye shows not every drone needs exposed blades
As drones become more popular, the conversation has turned to safety. With their multiple rotors, exposed blades and ever increasing weights, there is some danger to them flying around near humans. Not so much with Fleye though. The circular drone was revealed at last week's CES show and using an …
Read More »AltSpace VR is going on a virtual reality tour of North America
While you, I and a lot of enthusiasts and gamers are excited by virtual reality, there's still a lot of people that have no idea what all the hype is about. Some just haven't tried it, but others don't believe in it and more still, have yet to even hear …
Read More »Information commissioner attacks UK’s new Snooper’s Charter
Independent public data rights authority, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), has attacked plans by the government to push through the Investigatory Powers Bill, often called the Snooper's Charter. It claims that there is little justification for some of the measures it wishes to push through and claims that it weakens …
Read More »Elon Musk: Falcon 9 will try to land on barge again this weekend
Although Space X spent much of 2015 not launching rockets after a singular failure, it's starting 2016 off with a bang by launching a new payload into orbit this weekend. Better yet, after proving that its Falcon 9 first stage booster can be landed back on land, it's going to …
Read More »Apple has secured half the smartwatch market in under a year
Although the smartwatch industry has hardly taken off in the way many manufacturers would have hoped, it turns out the analysts were right about Apple helping seed what is there. In less than a year since its launch, Apple has secured more than 50 per cent of the whole smartwatch …
Read More »In drone wars of the future, we already have our Retiarius
It's not clear where drone development will eventually take us, but it seems inevitable that there will be drone on drone battles and if that happens, using a net like a Roman Retiarius gladiator may be the way forward. Shooting off webs of impeller tangling netting, the drone equipped with such …
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