Weekend tech reading: Grand Theft Auto V hands-on, eBay & the FBI, Galaxy S4 ad trashes Apple

[Julio Franco]

Grand Theft Auto V: It's all in the Details Above everything else, Grand Theft Auto V is a game about scope. It’s more than just the sheer physical size of the environment. Sure, the land mass in GTA V is three-and-a-half times the size of Red Dead Redemption alone. In fact, it’s bigger than Red Dead Redemption, GTA IV and GTA: San Andreas combined. But there’s more to GTA V than square miles. IGN

How eBay Worked With The FBI To Put Its Top Affiliate Marketers In Prison eBay paid Hogan a staggering $28 million in affiliate marketing sales commissions over the years, according to court papers. Affiliate marketers place ads or links for eBay on their own networks, or on other people's sites, and they collect a cut of any sale the online auction company generates from them. eBay has about 26,000 of them, or more, at any one time, feeding traffic to its auctions. Business Insider

In Malaysia, online election battles take a nasty turn Ahead of Malaysia's elections on Sunday, independent online media say they are being targeted in Internet attacks which filter content and throttle access to websites, threatening to deprive voters of their main source of independent reporting. Reuters

New Galaxy S4 ad trashes Apple: iPhone is so old Having gotten over its tame international launch of the S4, Samsung's American arm resumes its denigration of Apple, suggesting only old folks own an iPhone. Cnet

Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" released This new version of Debian includes various interesting features such as multiarch support, several specific tools to deploy private clouds, an improved installer, and a complete set of multimedia codecs and front-ends which remove the need for third-party repositories. Debian.org

Run silent, run deep: The life of Brian Krzanich at Intel It took him 30 years, but Brian Krzanich - the understated, analytical engineer who started his career at an Intel chip factory in New Mexico - quietly worked his way up to the top. Now, the man who once prided himself on halving production times will have to act swiftly to move the company into new areas of growth. Yahoo

Hands-on with Acer’s Aspire R7, the strangest convertible PC we’ve ever seen Two things make it interesting: first, its 15.6-inch, 1080p touchscreen is mounted on a stand called an "Ezel" (pronounced "easel") that allows you to tilt the screen, flip it over to show something to a person in front of you, or fold it down over the keyboard and trackpad. Second, it swaps the traditional positions of the keyboard and trackpad, putting the trackpad nearer to the monitor and moving the keyboard nearer to the user. Ars Technica

This Is The World's First Entirely 3D-Printed Gun Eight months ago, Cody Wilson set out to create the world’s first entirely 3D-printable handgun. Now he has. Early next week, Wilson, a 25-year-old University of Texas law student and founder of the non-profit group Defense Distributed, plans to release the 3D-printable CAD files for a gun he calls “the Liberator.” Forbes

Will these guys make Google Glass uncool? The Segway. The Bluetooth headset. The pocket protector. What do these three technologies have in common? They all pretty much work as promised. They all seem like good ideas on paper. And they're all too dorky to live. CNN

Epic Citadel released for web browsers The port comes thanks to a collaboration between Epic and Firefox firm Mozilla. While it should run on most HTML5 browsers, Firefox 23 (Nightly) is recommended for optimal running. CVG

5 Reasons tablets could become extinct by 2020 Like a lot of other people, when BlackBerry CEO Thorstein Heins’ publicly stated that tablets would cease to exist in 5 years’ time, I found myself baffled. What an outrageous thing to say. How could the CEO of a mobile device manufacturer believe such a thought? Tabtimes

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https://www.techspot.com/news/52475-weekend-tech-reading-grand-theft-auto-v-hands-on-ebay-the-fbi-galaxy-s4-ad-trashes-apple.html

 

[Scshadow]

The Aspire R7 looks interesting. Too bad its made by Acer. It wouldn't seem effective as a true LAPtop but they're intuitive enough to suggest that we might not need the trackpad by creating a unit that can hide the trackpad behind the display. I wonder about the center of gravity on that thing. When the center of gravity is closer to you like when the display is positioned in front of the trackpad, perhaps you can rest it closer to your knees, giving your hands typing room.

 

[m4a4]

I still think that people are misinterpreting the CEO of Blackberry (like in the last article). They assume it's the tablet form factor that will become "extinct". I think he was referring to the smartphone-esque OS's that power the tablets (hence why he said "Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such." and didn't leave it with just "...not a tablet." ).

That also might be why he doesn't seem to support tablets; Blackberry OS is meant for mobile. And MAYBE in 5 years MS will get Windows 8(?) right, and redefine "tablets"?

 

[TS-56336]

Pretty psyched for GTA V. Time to change my system

 

[ET3D]

I think he was referring to the smartphone-esque OS's that power the tablets

Seems like a strange interpretation. In any case I see no reason why these OS's would die. There's little in Android which prevents it from being used in any form of devices and for any purpose Windows for example may be used for. It even supports the basics for creating windows, and some apps do that, so if that ever becomes an issue for bigger devices I'm sure it won't be a problem to make windows part of the OS.

I'm looking forward to seeing how Linux fares on tablets and phones, and I hope that Microsoft finds a good strategy for them, but I don't see a reason for Android to fail.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Pretty psyched for GTA V. Time to change my system

Me too. Don't do anything silly now by spending a ton of cash on a complete new rig, wait until it's confirmed for the PC.

 

[Guest]

I really want a S4 on sprint but none of the carriers have the 32GB or 64GB models yet. AT&T is the only one that has confirmed they are even getting the 32GB model.