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Amazon told lawmakers it wouldn’t build warehouse storm shelters
Amazon responded to three Democratic lawmakers who asked for it to build storm shelters after a December 2021 tornado killed six workers at an Illinois warehouse.
NOAA's surfing drone captured footage inside Hurricane Sam
The agency says data collected by saildrones could help improve storm forecasting.
Fortnite's new weapon is a storm in a bottle
One of the great things about battle royale games like Fortnite is that no two matches are the same. Random generation ensures that lobbies include different players, varying weapons spawn in known locations and -- perhaps most importantly -- the storm area moves in random patterns. This forces gamers to adapt their strategy each match to ensure they stay in the right areas, and equip the right tools to survive. For its latest Fortnite update, Epic Games is giving players a little more control over some of that randomness. Today, it introduced the Storm Flip, a throwable item that creates a zone that can either create a safe area in the storm, or deal storm damage to those who think they're holding a comfortable position.
ICYMI: Tornado simulators and cranial cracking robo-surgeons
Today on In Case You Missed It: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are leveraging 20,000-core supercomputers to model the inner workings of supercells in hopes of finding out why some storms unleash tornadoes while others do not. In all, the simulation relied on nearly two billion individual data points. We also take a look at a sure-handed robotic surgeon developed at the University of Bern in Switzerland that's designed to drill tiny holes in your skull. See, in order to install a cochlear implant, doctors need to cut a small hole in your skull but the location is packed with facial and taste nerves. One wrong move and the operation can do more harm than good. But with this robo-surgeon on call, doctors can drill more deftly. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Astronomers spot a star with a Jupiter-like storm
Unfathomably large storms aren't reserved solely for gas giants like Jupiter... they can exist on stars, too. Astronomers using the Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have discovered a giant storm on W1906+40, a brown dwarf cool enough ("just" 3,500F) to have clouds full of minerals. It's so large that you could fit thee Earths within its volume, and it's been raging for years. In fact, it wasn't until scientists used Spitzer's infrared detection that they even realized that it wasn't just a massive sunspot.
Wileyfox Swift and Storm review: Two cheap UK phones, one worth buying
There are two ways you can go about buying a new smartphone: Either you spread the cost over a year or two with a carrier contract, or purchase the thing outright. When you're finally done paying it off, a subsidised handset often ends up costing more than it's worth. However, considering the price of new iPhones, Samsung flagships and peers, that can still be preferable to emptying your bank account in one fell swoop. Thankfully, companies big and small are addressing this conundrum with phones that offer the kind of specs and user experience customers want at prices they're happy to pay upfront. Despite an abundance of competition in contract-free handsets already, new British brand Wileyfox is one such company, and it's hoping to make its mark in the UK with the affordable £129 Swift and higher-end £199 Storm.
Wileyfox's Storm is as chic as £199 smartphones come
New smartphone brand Wileyfox arrived on the scene brandishing the Swift, a midish-range device with an agreeable £129 price tag. Last week, it followed up with the Storm, its second contract-free handset you could call Wileyfox's flagship. A flagship of sorts, anyhow, since at £199 it's only a fraction of the price of true top-tier handsets. Now, the Swift is a perfectly charming device, but it doesn't feel like it's punching above its weight to any extent. The orange accents and quirky circular earpiece give it some character, but the physical buttons are plastic, the back panel removable. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but its compact size and general build quality are more or less what you'd expect from an affordable device. The newer Storm, on the other hand, is only £70 more expensive, and yet it feels like it's batting in a completely different league.
Wileyfox's Storm smartphone goes on sale for £199
Fresh-faced British upstart Wileyfox is hoping to make a name for itself in contract-free smartphones, joining plenty of other manufacturers searching for the perfect balance between performance and price. Its first handset, the £129 Swift, launched just last month, and today Wileyfox has announced its higher-end Storm smartphone is now up for grabs for £199. That much buys you a dual-SIM, 4G device with a 1.5GHz octa-core Snapdragon 615 CPU, 3GB of RAM, 32 gigs of expandable storage, a 2,500mAh battery, 20-megapixel rear camera with Sony sensor and an 8MP selfie snapper.
The Big Picture: A massive typhoon as seen from orbit
No, a black hole didn't suddenly open up on the Earth's surface. That's Vongfong, a gigantic storm (then a super typhoon) that has been causing chaos in the Asia-Pacific region for much of October. NASA astronaut Reid Weisman posted this dramatic photo as the International Space Station orbited overhead on the morning of October 9th, when Vongfong was getting close to Okinawa. It had been downgraded to "just" a category 4 super typhoon by then, but that still made it both enormous and dangerous -- the eye alone was about 30 miles across, and it had sustained winds of nearly 150MPH. As beautiful as this orbital view may be, it's comforting to know that Vongfong has since weakened to a tropical storm and isn't posing nearly as much of a threat.
Engadget Rewind 2008: BlackBerry Storm
Smartphone makers were still reeling from the arrival of Apple's touchscreen-only iPhone when 2008 rolled around. Research in Motion (RIM), a mobile manufacturer best known for its BlackBerry line and QWERTY keyboard prowess, was at the top of its game and primed to jump into this emerging form factor. That year, it launched the BlackBerry Storm smartphone -- a direct rival to Apple's handset. As RIM's premier effort in touchscreen smartphones, it offered an interesting spin on the interface with what it called SurePress. This was a touchscreen you could depress or click; an innovation RIM hoped would bridge the gap between the company's current physical keyboard-accustomed clientele and the next generation of smartphone buyers. The Storm was RIM's attempt to solve the "problems associated with typing on traditional touchscreens" and leverage its longtime experience with clickable keys. While the phone had a sleek and solid build, a vibrant 3.25-inch display and was backed by Verizon's network, that SurePress technology ended up doing more harm than good.
The Daily Grind: Who's your favorite Marvel Heroes hero?
I'm having a hard time picking a main character in Marvel Heroes. I started out with Storm, then F2P guilt intervened so I ponied up for Nightcrawler. Then I got a free Spider-man as a result of Gazillion's 10-month anniversary promotional shindig which only added to my indecision. It's a good problem to have, though, and I guess for now I'll go with Nightcrawler because, well, teleporting. What about you, Marvel Heroes players? Who's your favorite and why? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
WRUP: Impressions on the Heroes of the Storm
It's time for another weekend, and the news is still dry as a desert. Unfortunately, we've already made up fake news. We've made up haikus. But not all is lost: we're seeing news and experiences from Heroes of the Storm. So while it's a tiny diversion from WoW, we asked your intrepid WoW Insider staff about their feelings on HotS at this point. It's looking pretty sexy and I can't wait to play it for reals. What about you, dear reader? Are the heroes keeping you afloat while we all wait patiently for WoD?
Visualized: Saturn's relentless 'hexagon' storm
This isn't the first we've seen of Saturn's six-sided jet stream, but NASA's calling the GIF after the break "the first hexagon movie of its kind." The "movie" is made from a compilation of images taken by the Cassini spacecraft, and depicts a hurricane-like storm at the center of the "hexagon" that has populated the planet's north pole for decades, if not centuries. For more check out the press release at the source link below.
Capsized crashes onto XBLA, brings exclusive levels
Alientrap's Capsized has finally made its way to Xbox Live Arcade today, after being announced for the platform nearly three and a half years ago. The game will be available on the PlayStation Network for PS3 later this summer. The game differentiates itself from the already available PC version with "three exclusive levels, online multiplayer and an online multiplayer co-op mode." Namco Bandai, which partnered with indiePub to launch the game, also reveals Storm (already available on XBLA) will make its way to PSN this summer and Vessel will arrive on XBLA "later this year."
'Storm' named as Starbreeze's next sci-fi FPS
Starbreeze Studios (Syndicate, The Darkness) has nonchalantly announced Storm on its company site. The in-development game is billed as a (hyphen-overload) co-op sci-fi first-person shooter.The Storm listing was originally picked up by German site PlaySyndicate, after which VG24/7 theorized a link between the low-key announcement and Starbreeze's "Cold Mercury" project.Besides Storm, which has yet to be described in more detail, Starbreeze is hard at work on Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and Payday 2.
NASA captures red sprite, puts it in a jar
Lightning doesn't always shoot downwards. Just occasionally, a thunderstorm will be accompanied by a red sprite: a huge, momentary electrical explosion that occurs around 50 miles high and fires thin tendrils many miles further up into the atmosphere. Sprites have been caught on camera before, but a fresh photo taken by arty astronauts on the ISS helps to show off their true scale. Captured accidentally during a timelapse recording, it reveals the bright lights of Myanmar and Malaysia down below, with a white flash of lightning inside a storm cloud and, directly above that, the six mile-wide crimson streak of the rare beast itself. Such a thing would never consent to being bottled up and examined, but somehow observers at the University of Alaska did manage to film one close-up at 1000 frames per second back in 1999 -- for now, their handiwork embedded after the break is as intimate as we can get.
NASA to study hurricanes with unmanned Global Hawk aircraft starting this year
From the precursor to our future robot overlords to a galactic collision that just might ruin the day of our future descendants, NASA's been focused on extraterrestrial matters as of late. Still, the space agency isn't about to ignore its own backyard, announcing plans to send unmanned aircraft above hurricanes starting this summer to beef up its environmental science know-how. NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) program is commissioning two of its Global Hawks for the job -- one for sampling storm environments and another for measuring stuff such as rainband winds and precipitation. The goal is to gather data that will help researchers better understand storm intensity and how hurricanes form. While NASA's at it, perhaps it can also research why TV reporters feel the need to deliver those comical field reports while being buffeted by hurricane winds. Then again, we highly doubt there's a logical explanation for that. As always, feel free to peruse the PR after the break for more details.
PSN Tuesday: Killzone 3 Multi, Reality Fighters demo, Gamers' Choice
Cast your vote for which PSN games you'd like to see discounted -- that's what the Gamers' Choice Awards boil down to. (And choosing which ones are the best or whatever.) You can start doing that today with the PS Store update.Also joining us today: Killzone 3's free-to-play, standalone multiplayer is available for download. If we must find ourselves stuck in something called "Killzone," we'd rather not have to pay for it, as that sounds unpleasant and dangerous. Other PS3 releases include a new PSN game called Storm, and PSN releases of retail games Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest.On Vita, you can check out a demo of the upcoming Reality Fighters, along with Touch My Katamari, Dynasty Warriors Next, and ModNation Racers. And you can finally get a dedicated Vita Foursquare app.
Behind the Mask: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
Champions Online released two powersets recently, and I finally got time to sit down and crunch numbers on the new Wind powers. Wind has been live for a few weeks now, and the Squall archetype uses its powers to push enemies around the battlefield and rock the damage charts. Wind has been one of the most frequently requested powersets since Heavy Weapons hit the game, and I was excited to play around with the set. Does the Wind powerset meet the expectations players had for it? This week on Behind the Mask, I set out to find the answer to that question.
This new Storm trailer is quite calming
No loud thunderstorms, no torrential downpours -- this latest trailer for Storm, Eko Software's puzzler headed to XBLA and PSN this summer, is quite serene. In fact, you may not even want to watch the trailer and instead just lay back, close your eyes and enjoy a nice nap.