Ion Storm's lost Deus Ex Sequels Invisible War and Human Revolution - these are the sequels every Deus Ex fan knows. But they're only a fraction of the real story. Prior to Human Revolution, Ion Storm Austin, the studio behind the first two Deus Ex titles, worked on a third game in the series. Twice. Now, exclusive research and interviews offer a look at Ion Storm's creative process and a glimpse at the trilogy that might have been; at the never-announced games known as Deus Ex: Insurrection and Deus Ex 3. Eurogamer
Finland dumps handwriting in favor of typing It seems incredible that in the 21st century schools are still teaching children to scratch marks on paper. Well in Finland they are taking a step in the direction of the future by giving up teaching handwriting. Of course there is no way to know if this transition will be implemented in the best way. The Savon Sanomat newspaper reports that from autumn 2016 cursive handwriting will no longer be a compulsory part of the school curriculum. I Programmer
The fastest camera ever created will be used to study invisibility cloaks If you're wondering what scientists can do with a camera that captures 100 billion frames per second, you're not alone. We've already got cameras that can film bullets as they burst through an apple, and watching high frames-per-second videos online is a pastime of many. So, what happens when you improve on existing cameras by several orders of magnitude? Vice
NASA's Orion lands safely after first test flight At this point, you might be wondering why there's such a furore surrounding this first launch of Orion. In short, Orion is NASA's first manned spacecraft since the Space Shuttle, which debuted way back in 1981. Perhaps more importantly, Orion will be the first US spacecraft to take humans beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO) since the Apollo missions -- which wrapped up 40 years ago. ExtremeTech
The SSD Endurance Experiment: Two freaking petabytes More than a year ago, we drafted six SSDs for a suicide mission. We were curious about how many writes they could survive before burning out. We also wanted to track how each one's performance characteristics and health statistics changed as the writes accumulated. And, somewhat morbidly, we wanted to watch what happened when the drives finally expired. The Tech Report
The Verge's holiday gift guide Happy Secret Santa, guy in the cubicle next to you who smells kind of bad but knows the secret to making great office coffee! Sure, you don't need spend truckloads of money for everyone on your list this year, but come on: get them something nice. For only a few bucks you can make someone's desk a little neater, their house a little smarter, their brain a little sharper. The Verge (also, their video history of Android:)
Don't call it a netbook (or a "Chromebook killer") – HP's $200 Stream 11 reviewed Netbooks never really went away -- it's just that no one calls them netbooks anymore. The label became a byword for cheap, plasticky, slow, cramped little laptops that no one would make the mistake of buying twice, but these devices are still around. Sometimes they look like convertibles or even tablets with keyboard accessories... Ars Technica
A fighting Poland: The birth and growth of Eastern Europe's hottest game industry It's almost impossible to talk about gaming in Poland without mentioning The Witcher. It's the iconic role-playing game, based on a uniquely Polish series of fantasy novels, that announced the country's presence on the global market, and its name came up in nearly every meeting I had during my six days in Poland last month. VentureBeat
The real and complete story - Does Windows defragment your SSD? There has been a LOT of confusion around Windows, SSDs (hard drives), and whether or not they are getting automatically defragmented by automatic maintenance tasks in Windows. There's a general rule of thumb or statement that "defragging an SSD is always a bad idea." I think we can agree we've all heard this before. Scott Hanselman
Unreal Tournament's 'Facing Worlds' is still the best multiplayer map Above us, the moon. Beneath us, the Earth. In front of us, a massive, three-story tower. Overlapping bleeps and bloops accentuate the eerie calm. We're blasting off into orbit, and you might know where we're headed. Never before, nor since, has Capture the Flag been so much fun. For the uninitiated, here's a little bit of context... Kotaku
See it, touch it, feel it: Researchers use ultrasound to make invisible 3-D haptic shape that can be seen and felt Technology has changed rapidly over the last few years with touch feedback, known as haptics, being used in entertainment, rehabilitation and even surgical training. New research, using ultrasound, has developed an invisible 3D haptic shape that can be seen and felt. Science Daily
The state of SanDisk Back at Flash Memory Summit I had the opportunity to meet with all the key people at SanDisk. There is a lot going on at SanDisk at the moment with the Fusion-io acquisition, TLC NAND, and other things, so I figured I would write a piece that outlines SanDisk's current situation and what they're planning for the future. I'll start with the client side. AnandTech
Code of ages If you are a very large, rich technology company today, it seems it is no longer enough to have your own humongous data centers, luxurious buses, and organic lunch bars. You need your very own programming language, too. Google has Go, first conceived in 2009. Facebook introduced Hack last spring. And Apple unveiled Swift not long after. Medium