The Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Performance Preview: Meet Kryo I don't think there's any way to sugarcoat this, but 2015 has not been a particularly great year for Qualcomm in the high-end SoC business. The company remains a leading SoC developer, but Snapdragon 810, the company's first ARMv8 AArch64-capable SoC, did not live up to expectations. Seemingly held back by design matters and a rough 20nm planar manufacturing process -- a problem shared by many vendors in the last year... AnandTech
The linguistics of 'YouTube voice' Hey guys! What's up? It's Julie. And today I want to talk about YouTube voice. So the other day, I was watching this YouTube video from the PBS Idea Channel about whether Ron Weasley from Harry Potter is really a time-traveling Dumbledore (as you do), and I realized -- the guy talking sounds exactly like the Vlogbrothers. The Vlogbrothers are John and Hank Green, and their combined YouTube channel, on which they post videos of themselves... The Atlantic
World's first droneport under construction near Las Vegas About 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas, the little town of Boulder City, Nevada has made a name for itself as the home of Nevada Solar One, a giant solar thermal energy power plant that produces enough power to take 20,000 cars off the roads a year. But now, Boulder City is aiming to stake a new claim to fame: home to theAerodrome, the world’s first droneport, a facility aimed primarily at education for commercial users... Fast Company
The camera that sees around corners in nearly real time Using a staccato burst of laser fire, this ingenious camera peers around a distant corner, tracking the position, movement, and rough shape of any solid object that human eyes cannot even see. The team of engineers and optics researcher, led by Genevieve Gariepy and Daniele Faccio at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, say it's the first such camera that can track moving objects around corners in real time. Popular Mechanics
AMD will bring FreeSync to HDMI early next year AMD's FreeSync variable-refresh-rate technology has a lot going for it these days. Just pick out any FreeSync display you like on Newegg or Amazon and compare it to a similar display with Nvidia's G-Sync tech on board. More likely than not, the FreeSync display will be a cool Franklin or two cheaper than its G-Sync competitor. FreeSync displays tend to have more input options than G-Sync monitors, too. The Tech Report
Tor hires a new leader to help it combat the war on privacy The Tor Project is entering a crucial phase in its nearly 10-year existence. In the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks, it has assumed a higher profile in the world of privacy and security than ever before. But it’s also come under increased attack by governments out to demonize it, and by law enforcement and intelligence agencies out to crack it and unmask its anonymous users. Wired
Storing electricity in paper Researchers at Linköping University’s Laboratory of Organic Electronics, Sweden, have developed power paper -- a new material with an outstanding ability to store energy. The material consists of nanocellulose and a conductive polymer. The results have been published in Advanced Science. One sheet, 15 centimetres in diameter and a few tenths of a millimetre thick can store as much as 1 F, which is similar to the supercapacitors currently on the market. Liu.se
I pretended to be a scientist named Gordon Freeman and asked a psychic about 'Half-Life 3' As you might've spotted, earlier in December the ever-observant fellows at SteamDB uncovered a list of games that may or may not (but just might) be headed to PC via Steam at some point in the future. Among the games noted were Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Earth Defence 4.1 and Half-Life 3. Half-Life 3, you say? WTF? OMG! And so on. Vice
The death of surplus I thought the surplus electronics market in Dallas was a byproduct of local manufacturing, after all we have some heavy hitters in our back yard: Texas Instruments, Maxim (Dallas Semiconductor), ST Micro (at one time), Diodes Incorporated. If we widen our radius to include Austin (3 hours down the road) we can make a much more impressive list by including: National Instruments, Freescale Semiconductor... Hackaday
X-Men: Apocalypse official trailer Following the critically acclaimed global smash hit X-Men: Days of Future Past, director Bryan Singer returns with X-Men: Apocalypse. Since the dawn of civilization, he was worshipped as a god. Apocalypse, the first and most powerful mutant from Marvel’s X-Men universe, amassed the powers of many other mutants, becoming immortal and invincible. Upon awakening after thousands of years... YouTube
Who's still using Internet Explorer? And why won't they upgrade? Next month, Microsoft will officially stop delivering updates for all but the latest Internet Explorer version on each Windows version it supports. Although the company provided almost two years' warning, the population still using older versions of Internet Explorer appears to be uncomfortably high. ZDNet
Inside the NSA's hunt for hackers When America's premier federal security recruiters go fishing for new technical talent, they have plenty of lures to dangle. There's the patriotic mission; the promise of a government salary; the thrill of working under the hood on the country's classified cyber mechanics. And then there’s the pile of free purple and orange pens. Politico
Robots and us If you follow technology news -- or even if you don't -- you have probably heard that numerous companies have been trying to develop driverless cars for a decade or more. These fully automated vehicles could potentially be safer than regular cars, and might add various efficiencies to our roads, like smoother-flowing traffic. MIT
