It’s Wednesday morning and Raspberry Pi has made a super-powered PC-on-a-stick, the state of AAA cloud gaming and a look at the Army’s prototype hoverbike. Grab your coffee. We’ll wait.
Raspberry Pi gives its PC-on-a-stick a big speed boost
Raspberry Pi has taken its latest computing board and squished it onto the stick-sized Compute Module 3, giving it about ten times the power of the original Compute Module. The idea is to “provide the ‘team in a garage’ with easy access to the same technology as the big guys.” As such, manufacturers can add it into a dumb device to make it smart, since it can single-handedly do processing, memory and routeing chores. At the same time, it should be relatively easy to program for anyone with some Pi experience.
Why LiquidSky thinks the time is right for cloud gaming
Yes, some have tried to do AAA game streaming before, but LiquidSky CEO Ian McLoughlin says his company will be the first to do it right. As he tells Jessica Conditt, advanced technology that runs virtual PCs on cloud servers combined with a business model that allows for free access will make this different from OnLive, Gaikai or GeForce Now. After two years of testing, LiquidSky will open to the public in late February — we hope it’s ready.
Obama commutes most of Chelsea Manning’s sentence
In a slew of commutations just hours before leaving office, President Obama commuted the sentences of 273 people. That included former Army analyst Chelsea Manning, who leaked files to Wikileaks in 2010 that included video of a US helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed two journalists. General James Cartwright received a pardon, as he was facing up to 5 years in prison for leaking details of the Stuxnet malware that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program.
One prominent name was missing, however, as Edward Snowden did not receive a pardon. Obama had previously said the PRISM leaker would have to return and face the charges, and according to the White House, he never filed paperwork seeking clemency.
Check out a demo of the Army’s hoverbike prototype
This former Kickstarter project is still moving along, as the DoD hosted a demo of the “hoverbike” on January 10th. Officially dubbed the JTARV, it’s a rectangular quadcopter intended for carrying supplies to battlefield positions quickly and autonomously.
Zotac’s tiny gaming PC packs VR-capable power
The Zbox Magnus EN1070K is deceptively powerful, thanks to a new i5 Kaby Lake CPU from Intel and NVIDIA GTX 1070 GPU shoved inside its ultra-compact case. That makes for a gaming PC powerful enough to run a detailed virtual reality environment, and still fit inside your backpack. The only thing missing now is a price or a release date. (It won’t be cheap.)
How an ‘Atmospheric Lens’ could change the battlefield of the future
Ready to discuss future-weapons? An idea from BAE envisions high-flying aircraft that use lasers to alter the Earth’s atmosphere, creating a lens. That effect could be enough to protect from other laser attacks, interfere with enemy communications or act as a magnifying glass to aid recon.
LG’s Watch Sport and Watch Style are due alongside Android Wear 2.0 in February.
For months, rumors have circulated of Google planning a pair of flagship smartwatches — not Google-designed, but certainly intended as reference models like Nexus phones used to be. But what will they be like? Well, a leak suggests they’ll be LG-made… And look something like this.
But wait, there’s more…
- Jerry Seinfeld is going to Netflix, and he’s bringing ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee’
- Mark Zuckerberg testifies in Oculus VR trial
- Autopilot update rolls out to all Teslas with HW2 hardware
- TV this week: ‘Voltron’ on Netflix, ‘Flame in the Flood’ on PS4 and ‘Hunted’ on CBS
- Gravity wave ripples across Venus’ hellish atmosphere
- Mastercard built a mobile marketplace for farmers in East Africa
